Since publishing his first collection in the eighties,
John J. Clayton has continued to write “powerful stories of urban life in America, of life often enough among Jews who carry their exile and their wilderness within them. The prose is powerful, an impressive mixture of sinuous sentences—which one reads as if one overhears thoughts. All of these characters are bruised. They are often enough triumphant, though, even if locked into mortal flesh, because they have an astonishing belief in the spirit.” (Fredrick Busch)
We are pleased to be publishing the definitive collection of Clayton’s remarkable stories. Included are two previously published collections, Bodies of the Rich and Radiance: Ten Stories, together with a selection of previously uncollected stories, and a large collection of new stories, Wrestling with Angels, plus an introduction to his work by the author.
Clayton has been published in nearly all major
literary magazines and has been reprinted in The
Pushcart Prize anthologies and volumes of Best American
Short Stories and O Henry Prize Stories.
About the Author
 JOHN J. CLAYTON, born and
raised in New York City and educated
at Columbia College and Indiana
University, has taught modern
literature and fiction writing at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
since 1969.
|
The Critics Praise:
“Clayton sees his reluctant Jewish prophets as wildly lucid, drunk on spirituality in a secular
world…. Writing with compassion, simplicity and power, Clayton adjusts their visions
just enough so they can find the way home.” The New York Times
“Clayton risks sentimentality but the risk is exhilarating....a suspense, sadness and irony rare in contemporary fiction.” Publishers Weekly
“…a poignancy that comes from an intense sensitivity to the quiet suffering that most often goes unexpressed in the rush of daily life.” Kirkus Reviews
|
