Ambulances have been known to wait outside the venues at which he gives his readings and foyers have been filled with stretchers carrying victims of his gore-filled prose. And, to paraphrase Dorothy Parker, if it falls in the ocean … what the hell, it falls in the ocean.Chuck Palahniuk's stories make people faint. Joan Crawford: Hollywood Martyr by David Bret (Da Capo, $15). Of course, there’s redemption, but not before a ton of laughs. The dream falls apart as he sprouts breasts he can’t conceal inside his skimpy spandex costume, then suffers high colonics in order to pass mandatory drug tests. After a dark childhood, steroids launch the author into a new life as a national celebrity built from mountains of chemically enhanced muscle. Clark played the character “Nitro” on the television series American Gladiators, and if you read only one book on vacation this year, this has to be it.
Gladiator: A True Story of ’Roids, Rage, and Redemption by Dan Clark (Scribner, $25). The life of this Southern Gothic belle makes the somber existence of Emily Dickinson look like a barrel full of monkeys.
She survived the back-to-back snake pits of the Iowa Writers Workshop and the Yaddo colony only to find herself trapped at home with her strong-willed mother and crippling lupus. Why do the lives of writers seem so … train-wrecky? Mary Flannery O’Connor was no exception. For the next 10 years, Pollock’s work will be tough for any writer to beat.įlannery by Brad Gooch (Little, Brown, $30). In the past, those collections came from Barry Hannah, Mark Richard, and Thom Jones. Every decade, we get a stunning collection of dynamic, heartbreaking short stories. Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock (Anchor, $14). No one does this better than Joy Williams. We’re so much more likely to feel sympathy for an animal than for another person, thus the best fiction uses animals to define truly humane behavior. Don’t let the praiseīy highbrow critics scare you away from this 2004 story collection. Honored Guest by Joy Williams (Vintage, $14). His 10th novel, Pygmy, has just been published by Doubleday. Novelist Chuck Palahniuk is the best-selling author of Fight Club, Choke, and Invisible Monsters.
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