Friday 7 November 2008

MEET WELLS TOWER

There's more than a touch of Saki in 'Leopard', a short story by Wells Tower in this week's New Yorker. Both writers seem to share an instinctive understanding of the battle lines separating children from adults. In 'Leopard', as in the collection Beasts and Super-Beasts, the animal kingdom is a metaphor for the forces of nature that can invade the most ordered human existence.

Wells Tower is a new (and unusual) name, but something tells me we will be hearing it more often in the future. Oh, and I must also thank the author for adding a new word to my vocabulary: everything about his story is copacetic, in fact.

UPDATE: Read The Roving Editor's review of Wells Tower's debut collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wells has been around for some years now, and his first story collection is out in March. Great nonfiction too.

Will Guzzardi said...

If you're curious, I'm the editor of a new online-only literary quarterly called Wag's Revue, and in our first issue (just released!) we're lucky to have a great interview with Wells Tower . He talks about choosing the second person for 'Leopard', as well as life as a carnie, his radical revisions of his stories, and a good deal more. We also have interviews with Dave Eggers and Mark Greif of n+1, as well as terrific fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Please stop by: www.wagsrevue.com. Thanks!

-Will Guzzardi
Poetry Editor, Wag's Revue

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