The second (generous, happy-making) blurb came in today for Praying Drunk, which will be published in 2014 by Sarabande. Daniel Handler wrote it. He’s the author of several books I admire, including Adverbs and The Basic Eight. He also wrote A Series of Unfortunate Events, under the pen name Lemony Snicket.
“Praying Drunk gets the whole thing down: the cosmic muck and the local glory, the big questions and the tiny lives, the bullies and the saviors, the screaming at the sky and the lights by the side of the road late at night on a long drive. I finished this book with my heart pounding and grateful, my coffee cold and my smile wide and crying like a baby.”
– Daniel Handler
George Singleton wrote the first. He’s the author of several story collections I admire, including The Half-Mammals of Dixie and Stray Decorum and These People Are Us. His is so good and generous I want to read it over and over again:
“When the characters residing in Kyle Minor’s engrossing and lively Praying Drunk find a toehold on the good life, I hope that it’s autobiographical. When the characters find themselves enveloped in desperate situations, irreversible circumstances, and despair, I pray that it’s solely out of the writer’s imagination. These fine stories–up there with the best works of Padgett Powell, Donald Barthelme, and Robert Coover–never straddle a milquetoast fence: they’re extreme in humor, extreme in sorrowfulness, and 100% individually-wrapped masterpieces. I am haunted and mesmerized by this collection.”
– George Singleton, author of Stray Decorum
kyle minor - stories, photographs, films 