What is Scott Gould reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Scott Gould, author of Strangers to Temptation.

His entry begins:

I tend to read in fits and starts, depending on how many student essays are stacked on my desk, whether the fish are hitting, the current phase of the moon. Serious things like that. But right now, I’m on a pretty good tack. Here’s what I’ve had my nose in lately:

The River of Kings by Taylor Brown

I read Taylor’s work because I can be sure every page is chock full of gorgeous sentences that send me into fits of wonder and jealousy, simultaneously. Case in point: “There below them, in a wing of moonlight, stands a stag the size of a thoroughbred horse, head motionless and erect, trees of bone-white antlers twinned crooked and perfect from the crown of his skull.” A wing of moonlight? Damn. Two other reasons I sought this book out: Taylor blends three distinct time periods and their narratives together to create something bigger than its separate parts. I needed to see how that worked. And (probably most importantly), The River of Kings is...[read on]

About Strangers to Temptation, from the publisher:

The debut collection from award-winning short story writer Scott Gould, Strangers to Temptation, takes us to the white sand banks of the Black River in lowcountry South Carolina during the early 1970s, a place in time where religion and race provide the backdrop for an often uneasy coming-of-age. Linked by a common voice, these thirteen stories introduce us to a cast of uniquely Southern characters: a Vietnam vet father with half a stomach who plays a skinny Jesus in the annual Easter play; a mother/nurse attempting to heal the world, all the while sneaking sips of Smirnoff and Tang; a best friend whose reckless dive off a bridge earns him a fake eyeball and a new girlfriend; and our narrator, a baseball-playing, paper-delivering boy just hoping to navigate the crooked path out of adolescence. With the narrator’s eventual baptism into adulthood beneath the dark surface of the Black River, Strangers to Temptation reminds all of us what it felt like to be young, confused, and ultimately redeemed.

Visit Scott Gould's website.

The Page 69 Test: Strangers to Temptation.

Writers Read: Scott Gould.

--Marshal Zeringue