Jungle Wedding: Stories
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Book Overview
Few writers of fiction have demonstrated so early in their career such a firm grasp of the forms disaster can take as Joseph Clark does in Jungle Wedding. Fewer still have been able to balance their unnerving feeling for apocalypse with an equally unerring sense of the possibilities for grace and transcendence, however provisional.
In the title story a cutting-edge video artist is hired to document a shamanistic New Age wedding ceremony deep in the Central American jungle -- and gets far more than he bargained for. In Public Burning a sociological experiment in the study and surveillance of an average American spirals down into a literally incendiary conclusion. Wild Blue is a tour de force narrative of one man's collision with the scarily dysfunctional American armed forces of the 1970s.
Other stories in Jungle Wedding hold out possibilities for communion, reconciliation, and absolution. In Revenge emotional rescue for a psychologically besieged divorc?e arrives in the form of a clearly too-young lust object, while Oasis stages a haunting father-daughter reunion in terrain reminiscent of a Sam Shepard play. Whatever his subject, Clark stakes out his territory with an imaginative authority and vigor of language that is truly exciting.
In the title story a cutting-edge video artist is hired to document a shamanistic New Age wedding ceremony deep in the Central American jungle -- and gets far more than he bargained for. In Public Burning a sociological experiment in the study and surveillance of an average American spirals down into a literally incendiary conclusion. Wild Blue is a tour de force narrative of one man's collision with the scarily dysfunctional American armed forces of the 1970s.
Other stories in Jungle Wedding hold out possibilities for communion, reconciliation, and absolution. In Revenge emotional rescue for a psychologically besieged divorc?e arrives in the form of a clearly too-young lust object, while Oasis stages a haunting father-daughter reunion in terrain reminiscent of a Sam Shepard play. Whatever his subject, Clark stakes out his territory with an imaginative authority and vigor of language that is truly exciting.
Format:Paperback
Language:English
ISBN:0393341909
ISBN13:9780393341904
Release Date:November 1998
Publisher:W. W. Norton & Company
Length:218 Pages
Weight:0.62 lbs.
Dimensions:0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"
Customer Reviews
1 rating
Scary Stuff
Published by Thriftbooks.com User , 24 years ago
Jungle Wedding is an often brilliant, often scary look at American life. "Public Burning" is one of the finest stories I've read in recent memory and serves as a wake-up call to the people who think Columbine and "American Beauty" were the first harbingers of doom for the 21st Century. My only question is why we haven't seen more from this talented writer.
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