Bøger af George Singleton

"George Singleton is a very funny man. He could write about a tootsie roll and keep me reading," says Abigail Thomas, author of Safekeeping and A Three Dog Life, about Singleton's new collection of personal essays. Readers of his celebrated short story collections (The Half-Mammals of Dixie, You Want More, and The Curious Lives of Non-Profit Martyrs, among others) know just what a master storyteller Singleton can be. Yet in this collection of essays, readers will discover Singleton's best kept secret: he also has a keen eye for the well-told and hilarious truth.His subjects range widely: dogs, food, restaurants, jobs, music, family, and the benefits and challenges of, as he puts it, "a questionable upbringing." ¿Frequently published in magazines like Oxford American and Garden and Gun, Singleton explains in these essays how he came to be a writer (he blames barbecue), why he still writes his first draft by hand (someone stole his typewriter), and why he ran marathons (his father gave him beer.) He also will tell you why Aristotle would have been a failed philosopher had he grown up in South Carolina, how Laugh-In's Henry Gibson is to blame for his education in literature, and what was in the most delicious soup he has ever eaten. Readers are invited to join George Singleton as he gets his dogs to promise they won't use his new garden as a Porta-Potty, learns about his not so famous relations, and generally charms anyone sensible enough to read this delightful book.

Celebrated Southern author George Singleton delivers a new collection of short fiction, brilliant and absurd, for fans of George Saunders and Tom FranklinA restaurant owner runs into trouble when his wife starts a well-intentioned, poorly named rooster rescue. A boy navigates his parents’ split between a stretched phone cord and a flooded septic tank. A drunk sequestered in the middle of nowhere wakes up to find a tractor parked in his driveway. And in a big Cadillac, a grandfather and a grandson and a wayward dog hit the road, searching for a life not downloadable, nor measured in bandwidth.Loosely linked by characters and themes, The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs follows shysters and schemers, film buffs and future ornithologists, unlikely do-gooders, and the men who make up Veterans Against Guns in North America, all doing the best they can with what they possess in smarts and cunning. With Singleton’s signature comic flair, these stories peer through the peepholes of small-town South Carolina into the lives of everyday martyrs—prodigal sons, wayward fathers, and all those who are a little of each.

My dog Tapeworm Johnson needed legitimate veterinary attention. It had been two years since she received annual shots. I read somewhere that an older dog can overdose on all these vaccinations, and I have foundI share this information with every dog owner I meetthat if you keep your pet away from rabid foxes, raccoons, skunks, bats, and people whose eyes rotate crazy in their sockets, then the chances of your own dog foaming at the mouth diminishes drastically. I also believe that dogs don't need microchips imbedded beneath their shoulder blades if you keep the dog leashed or in the house, or with the truck windows rolled up when you drive around showing the dog farm animals living in pastures. I brought this up to Dr. Page one time, back four years earlier when Tapeworm Johnson was somewhere between eight and nine. Tapeworm showed up at my door one morning, her ribs as visible as anything you'd order down at Clem and Lyda's Barbecue Shack off Scenic Highway 11, her paw pads split open from, I assumed, days traveling from wherever her conscienceless owner dropped her off. Eleven stories, all previously published in journals like The Atlantic, The Oxford American, and The Georgia Review, in which George Singleton brings small-town South Carolina alive. Using everyday situations like a dog needing its annual vaccination and buckets of humorous observations, Singleton pokes and prods his readers into realizing we're all simply restless for a pat on the head.

Set in and around the fictional town of Steepleburg, South Carolina, the loosely tied stories in George Singleton's Staff Picks place sympathetic, oddball characters in absurd, borderline surreal situations that slowly reveal the angst of southern history with humour and bite.

A new edition of Singleton's comic tales of coming-of-age in the small-town South