We’ve partnered up with Rural Lit Rally to help bring back some wonderful old books that have gone out of print. And now, for their anniversary issue, they’ve interviewed Susan Taylor Chehak. A truly great organization and we’re so glad to be working with them.
Read the interview HERE.
“Set in L.A., Diana Wagman’s Bump begins (appropriately enough, in that car-carpeted town) with a fender bender. Gradually, the story metamorphoses (more appropriately still, in that city of dreams become film) into a fairy tale. This remarkable journey from a commuter’s daily life to a zone of romantic enchantment is marked by keen sociological observations and flashing moments of humor.” —Brad Leithauser, author of A Few Corrections: A Novel
From an award-winning writer, this is a darkly funny, cinematic page-turner that explores the line between obsession and love. Bump is the story of a trio of motorists and one policeman linked together by a tangled, life-altering web of coincidence in the immediate aftermath of a three-car pileup in Los Angeles. Dorothy is to be married in less than 24 hours but can’t shake the memory of her ex-boyfriend. Madelyn is a married mother of two who falls in love with a double-amputee she met through a suicide hotline. Leo is a golden-eyed Latino who speaks no Spanish and has come to L.A. to reclaim his girlfriend. Ray is a suicide-obsessed Beverly Hills cop whose wife has just left him. Diana Wagman’s fast-paced and vividly cinematic narrative presents an engrossing tableau of synchronicity steered by obsession and alienation. Beautifully written and deeply affecting, Bump is hard to put down, and hard to forget. “Diana Wagman is wicked fun, and…Bump shows off her talents to a T. Witty, perceptive and compulsively readable.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
“Wagman’s crisp and lively prose makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read: the pages flew by.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and The Color Master: Stories
“Darkly funny and compelling…Bump belts the reader in for a trippy Carveresque adventure.” —East Bay Express
“[Diana Wagman's] minidramas recall Ann Beattie’s or Lorrie Moore’s clarity.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“…[D]espite the relentlessly dark subject matter, Wagman’s writing has a hypnotic, rhythmic quality that keeps the reader interested till the end.” —Kathleen Hughes, Booklist
Mouse Wendler’s account of her father’s disappearance in Linwood, Iowa, June 2006.
In which 85-year-old Louis Bell bumps his head and collapses (same place, same time— Linwood, Iowa; June, 2006). Fearing that people will think she killed him, Lew’s middle-aged daughter Alma panics and runs away to Colorado, where she holes up in a cabin with an apocalypse-predicting evangelist and a troubled young woman, in whose rebirth Alma will finally gain redemption for herself.
Episode One
In which 55-year-old Ralph Wendler goes missing (in Linwood, Iowa; June 2006). The story is an account of his daughter Elizabeth (Mouse) Wendler’s search for her father and the effect that his disappearance has on all the members of the family: his brother James, his sister-in-law Kathryn, his mother Dardie, his ex-wife Ginger, his present wife Mary, and finally Mouse herself.
In which 55-year-old Ralph Wendler goes missing (in Linwood, Iowa; June 2006). The story is an account of his daughter Elizabeth (Mouse) Wendler’s search for her father and the effect that his disappearance has on all the members of the family: his brother James, his sister-in-law Kathryn, his mother Dardie, his ex-wife Ginger, his present wife Mary, and finally Mouse herself.
In which 85-year-old Lewis Bell bumps his head and collapses (same place, same time— Linwood, Iowa; June, 2006). Fearing that people will think she killed him, Lew’s middle-aged daughter Alma panics and runs away to Colorado, where she holes up in a cabin with an apocalypse-predicting evangelist and a troubled young woman, in whose rebirth Alma will finally gain redemption for herself.
“Set in L.A., Diana Wagman’s Bump begins (appropriately enough, in that car-carpeted town) with a fender bender. Gradually, the story metamorphoses (more appropriately still, in that city of dreams become film) into a fairy tale. This remarkable journey from a commuter’s daily life to a zone of romantic enchantment is marked by keen sociological observations and flashing moments of humor.” —Brad Leithauser, author of A Few Corrections: A Novel
From an award-winning writer, this is a darkly funny, cinematic page-turner that explores the line between obsession and love. Bump is the story of a trio of motorists and one policeman linked together by a tangled, life-altering web of coincidence in the immediate aftermath of a three-car pileup in Los Angeles. Dorothy is to be married in less than 24 hours but can’t shake the memory of her ex-boyfriend. Madelyn is a married mother of two who falls in love with a double-amputee she met through a suicide hotline. Leo is a golden-eyed Latino who speaks no Spanish and has come to L.A. to reclaim his girlfriend. Ray is a suicide-obsessed Beverly Hills cop whose wife has just left him. Diana Wagman’s fast-paced and vividly cinematic narrative presents an engrossing tableau of synchronicity steered by obsession and alienation. Beautifully written and deeply affecting, Bump is hard to put down, and hard to forget. “Diana Wagman is wicked fun, and…Bump shows off her talents to a T. Witty, perceptive and compulsively readable.” —Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander
“Wagman’s crisp and lively prose makes for a thoroughly enjoyable read: the pages flew by.” —Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and The Color Master: Stories
“Darkly funny and compelling…Bump belts the reader in for a trippy Carveresque adventure.” —East Bay Express
“[Diana Wagman's] minidramas recall Ann Beattie’s or Lorrie Moore’s clarity.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“…[D]espite the relentlessly dark subject matter, Wagman’s writing has a hypnotic, rhythmic quality that keeps the reader interested till the end.” —Kathleen Hughes, Booklist
Phantom Limb is a wise and courageous memoir that moves between past and present, chronicling an adult daughter’s journey through the final years of her parents’ lives. A story of discovering love through adversity as well as an inquiry into contemporary neurology and spiritual life, Phantom Limb is a moving meditation on the struggle to make peace with physical and emotional ghosts of the past. Janet Sternburg write with such warmth and honesty that loss itself becomes luminous: “This is the grace of the last years, the children coming to understand the contradictions in their parents, not to reconcile them but encompass them in a larger love.”
Take a look HERE.
Bill will be reading and signing copies of his new story collection, ASHES RAIN DOWN: A Story Cycle, at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center on Friday, April 19, 2013 at 8:00 p.m. 681 Venice Blvd., Venice, CA. He’ll be reading with our friend, novelist David Rocklin, author of The Luminist.
Also, in the Bay Area:
Heyday Books: April 24, 6:30 p.m., Heyday Books, 1633 University Ave., Berkeley
San Francisco Main Library: April 23, 6:30-7:30 p.m., 100 Larkin St., San Francisco
Book Passage: April 25, 7:00 p.m., Book Passage, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Core Madera, CA
“A word broke in two the other day, right in front of my eyes.
A familiar word: automotive
becoming
auto
motive,
breaking into unfamiliar meanings: auto (self); motive (reason for acting).
I had been thinking about a film I adored but didn’t quite understand.
Auto motive: a key?
The self is the reason, the motor for acting
Acting?
In the film Holy Motors, a man has a reason for acting, a motive, a motor.
He is performing himself.”
