Description
“John Clayton, with his Parkinson?s, admits to feeling like a ghost, but his work here is a tour de force of flesh, blood, and a vital spirit. An acute act of memory, a lifetime?s moral reckoning, a refusal to go gently, the pinnacle of an elegant writer?s talent – Parkinson?s Blues is a book of healing and of hope.??James Carroll, author of The Cloister
?Written not with pity or anger, but with grace, dignity, and love, we see the world through the lens of rich character descriptions and masterful use of dialogue help this journey unfold through powerful slices of religion, family, and friendships. This is an important book.?
?Jeffrey S. Copeland, professor of English, University of Northern Iowa and author of Plague in Paradise: The Black Death in Los Angeles, 1924, Shell Games: The Life and Times of Pearl McGill and many other stories.
This book begins describing the onset of Parkinson?s, the arrival of the dark unexpected. In a Monty Python skit, someone is nagged by questions. ?I didn?t expect the Spanish Inquisition,? he complains. Suddenly Michael Palin, in red 16th century costume, bursts into the room. ?Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!? he shrieks. Who expects the onset of Parkinson?s? Or cancer? Or stroke? Or the loss of a child? The terrible surprise isn?t limited to Parkinson?s. It?s the existential condition of everyone?s life. In fourteen sketches, John J. Clayton links the experience of PD with the experience of childhood sickness, family battles, the struggle to make a good life out of a painful life.
Author
Clayton, John J.
JOHN J. CLAYTON has taught modern literature and fiction writing as professor and then Professor Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since 1969 and has taught as Visiting Professor at Mt. Holyoke College and Hampshire College. He has long been mining the fusion, the intersection, of psychology and spirituality.
Minyan is his fourth collection of short stories. He is the author of five novels, most recent Taking Care of Charley. Mitzvah Man, his fourth novel, received the Bronze Award from the Book of the Year Awards in Literary Adult Fiction, and Kuperman’s Fire, his third novel, about criminal evil, Jewish heritage, and the miracle of survival, was made into a Blackstone Audiobook. He has written two books of literary criticism: Saul Bellow: In Defense of Man and Gestures of Healing, a psychological study of the modern novel.
Clayton’s stories have appeared in AGNI, Virginia Quarterly Review, TriQuarterly, Sewanee Review, a dozen times in Commentary; in Kerem, Notre Dame Review, Missouri Review and The Journal. His stories have won prizes in O.Henry Prize Stories, Best American Short Stories, and the Pushcart Prize anthology. His collection Radiance, won the Ohio State University award in short fiction and was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. “The Man Who Could See Radiance” was read at Symphony Space in New York and has been aired often on NPR since fall, 2001, as part of the Selected Shorts series. It has been included in the audio anthology, Getting There From Here: Best of Selected Shorts.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.