One paragraph from his entry: Larry Brown's Dirty Work is amazing: best book I've read this year. Basically, it's two Vietnam vets, side by side in a hospital, talking. One of them is a quadruple amputee, the other's just arrived after an accident. The two of them take turns with the narration, recounting their lives and what they've lost. I was stunned by the way Brown harnessed the energy of these voices, the way he was able to evoke the history of two absolutely wrecked lives and sneak in a storyline whose ending had me shaking my head for days.[read on]Matthew Vollmer's work has appeared in a number of journals and magazines,
including Paris Review, Epoch, VQR, Tin House, and Oxford American.From a recent review of his short story collection, Future Missionaries of America, in the New York Times:
Vollmer's irresistible first collection offers a large cast of yearning characters: some lonely, some lost, some in love and some who, landing on the other side of life's devastations—the loss of spouses, children, parents, lovers, friends, money—now find their grief restive and revolting.... Expertly structured and utterly convincing, these stories represent the arrival of a strong new voice.Visit Matthew Vollmer's website.
Writers Read: Matthew Vollmer.
--Marshal Zeringue
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