Sparkman in the Sky & Other Stories

by Brian Griffin

[jamiereadthis]

I wanted to drop back in on these stories a little while later, see what I thought of them then. Having read a little more Barry Hannah. Having let them percolate a while longer. I found them waiting, just as wild and grand.

“Sparkman” is magnificent. So too are “Big Ash,” “A Few Casualties,” and really, the rest, but my favorite stays “Dixie Pepper.” As the master Barry Hannah himself writes in the forward, “[Griffin] knows, as all honest writers do, that the anarchy of the planet is likely to rush in and bust up your little story at any given time,” and he praises, “Dixie Pepper, a woman of the sticks with great wicked anarchy in her. She seems to have remained at home only to wreck normal life, like an angry big fish in a little pond.” God love her, and thank God, then, for writers like Griffin, who know when to let the anarchy in.

June 2012

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January 2012 review:

Damn do we need more writers writing stories as good as these. And more readers reading Brian Griffin.