Kirjahaku

"George Garrett is one of the most remarkable reporters of news that I have ever known. He has always had the ability to smell a good story and to report on it honestly and accurately." --Jim Pattison, Canadian business magnate Starting from humble beginnings as a farm boy in Saskatchewan, George Garrett rose through the ranks of journalism and came to be known as the reporter who, as radio personality Rafe Mair recalled, "seemed to know details almost as soon as the police did" on such infamous stories as the Clifford Olson murders. He was willing to take risks to get to the real story, which resulted in his being assaulted in the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles among many other scrapes. In this memoir, Garrett shares the behind-the-scenes tales of his harrowing, humorous and occasionally humiliating investigative tactics, from posing as an accident victim to uncover the questionable practices of an insurance claim lawyer, to acting as a tow truck driver to expose a forgery scheme, and baring it all for the sake of an interview with a local nudist colony. Garrett also delves into the personal details of his life, sharing the hardships and resilience that marks him as an empathetic storyteller. He reveals the heartbreaking loss of his son in a canoeing accident, and his wife Joan's devastating diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease which inspired him to dedicate his time to supporting the Alzheimer Society. Through it all, George Garrett never lost the insatiable curiosity that, according to Rafe Mair, made him the "standard by which good reporting is judged."

Although George Garrett is best known for his outstanding fiction, he has also written a large body of superb poetry. This generous compilation, which brings together the work of almost a half-century and adds to it some forty-three new poems, splendidly affirms Henry Taylor's assertion that ""[George Garrett's] poetry is among the treasures of contemporary literature.""Garrett's older poems are arranged in roughly chronological order, enabling the reader to see how his work has changed even as it addresses his unaltering central concerns. Through various styles and forms, ranging from bawdy satires to quiet lyrics, Garrett remains an unwavering moralist, one who confronts larger issues without affectation or evasion. The new poems here cover fresh ground and offer surprising discoveries, but their voice is unmistakably Garrett's. Garrett's poems can be intensely personal, extremely witty, evocative of real places, or beautiful love ballads. Yet, for all of its diversity, Garrett's poetry has an extraordinary unity of vision that is magnified in this remarkable collection of his life's work.

To drink deep of the direction and sensibility of contemporary southern fiction, savor each dram in this delectable volume. Nineteen of the South's most venerable writers- Madison Smartt Bell, Doris Betts, Fred Chappell, Ellen Douglas, Shelby Foote, George Garrett, Allan Gurganus, Barry Hannah, William Hoffman, Madison Jones, Michael Knight, William Henry Lewis, Jill McCorkle, Lewis Nordan, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, Walter Sullivan, and Allen Wier- have selected a short work for inclusion here. All of the contributors are affiliated with the Fellowship of Southern Writers, organized in 1989 under the inspiration of the late Cleanth Brooks for the purpose of encouraging and honoring excellence in southern letters.Each piece in The Cry of an Occasion celebrates the distinctness of southern experience, giving expression in story form to a singular episode of mind, heart, or will. Varying from whimsical to ominous to sidesplitting to melancholy, the stories share a regard for the people who brush against us and in so doing shape us- generations of family especially, neighbors, as well as those occasional individuals who can mysteriously yet profoundly affect our lives.On a freezing December night, a woman returning home from a first date with a man finds herself locked out of her apartment; the pains he takes to help her surprise them both. A teenage girl suffers the day of her grandmother's funeral attempting to be adult, furious with the pessimism of her mother and wounded by the absence of her father since she was three. A slave fleeing Mississippi in 1862 draws on the wisdom of breaking horses passed down from his grandfather to win assistance in his flight for freedom. Fourteen years after his teenage son's death, a man realizes his mourning is incomplete despite therapy, relocation, and the outward signs of contentment. A pregnant woman has vivid dreams- of giving birth to a kitten, of -forgetting her baby on the hood of her car, and of concealing a joint in her bra- as she watches Boston's changing seasons and struggles with her torturous enjoyment of smoking.""Now where will it all end?"" asks one character. ""All this pain and loving, mystery and loss. And it just goes on and on."" The occasion and expression of southern fiction are in hale and hardy form, and reading this exemplary collection is pure pleasure.

This ""smorgasbord of literary offerings"" (Publishers Weekly) self-selected by its contributors- ""a long list of luminaries"" (Library Journal)- includes works by Madison Smartt Bell, Doris Betts, Fred Chappell, Ellen Douglas, Shelby Foote, George Garrett, Allan Gurganus, Barry Hannah, William Hoffman, Madison Jones, Michael Knight, William Henry Lewis, Jill McCorkle, Lewis Nordan, Louis D. Rubin, Jr., Lee Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, Walter Sullivan, and Allen Wier. All are affiliated with the Fellowship of Southern Writers, organized in 1989 under the inspiration of the late Cleanth Brooks for the purpose of encouraging and honoring excellence in southern letters.Each piece in The Cry of an Occasion celebrates the distinctness of southern experience, giving expression in story form to a singular episode of mind, heart, or will. Reading this exemplary collection is pure pleasure.

The Fellowship of Southern Writers was founded in 1987 under the inspiration of Cleanth Brooks for the purpose of encouraging excellence and recognizing distinction in southern letters. Membership is by invitation only, and the group meets biennially and bestows prizes in fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction. Locales thus represents poetry of truly superlative quality, gathering works by Fellowship members and by esteemed writers who have won Fellowship awards for verse: A. R. Ammons, James Applewhite, Wendell Berry, Fred Chappell, Kelly Cherry, James Dickey, George Garrett, Rodney Jones, Andrew Hudgins, T. R. Hummer, Yusef Komunyakaa, Robert Morgan, George Scarbrough, Dave Smith, Henry Taylor, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Robert Penn Warren, and Charles Wright. Chosen by Fred Chappell, these poems reflect the truth that the general is most securely held to when in the grip of the particular. They are not just specific, not only regional, but tightly joined to highly detailed places within the southern sphere, wielding a far greater force and universal application than a placeless poetry might have. This ""southern gazette of heart and mind with mountains and valleys, forests and farms, rivers and marshes, graveyards and barrooms,"" as Fred Chappell describes the volume, offers a lyrical topography of the southern- and of the American- spirit that is inviting, entertaining, always surprising, and sometimes ominous. Far from being of merely regional interest, Locales demonstrates that there is no place, however small or remote or obscure, that cannot call forth a resonant outcry of the heart.

A writer named George Garrett, suffering from double vision as the result of an illness, is asked to review a biography of the late Peter Taylor, a renowned writer and his longtime friend. Reflecting on their relationship, Garrett conceives of a character - not unlike himself - a writer in his early 70s, ill and suffering from double vision, named Frank Toomer. He gives Toomer a neighbor, a distinguished writer named Aubrey Carver. As the real George Garrett and Peter Taylor are replaced by two very different and imaginary writers, the story becomes a wise and insightful exploration of American literary life, the art of biography, notions of literary success, and the knotty relationship of art to life, fact to fiction, and life to death. ""Double Vision"" is a witty tour de force and an elegy for a gifted generation of American writers.

The fifteen stories of George Garrett's ""Empty Bed Blues"" (his eighth book-length collection) are vintage Garrett - no two alike - with each moving, one way and another, in new and daring directions. His stories are deeply concerned with the old verities of love and death and filled with the joys and woes of characters who come to life and command our attention. Diversity is the key word for Garrett's short fiction. He works in every known form and invents a few himself. In ""A Story Goes with It,"" Garrett fondly remembers an old friend while retelling a story the man once told him. Most of it is probably not accurate, as Garrett is quick to admit, but the mixture of fact with fiction makes for an entertaining read. His stories turn like the sharp curves of a mountain road, abruptly changing from a fond trip down memory lane to a sleazy reporter's quest along the backroads for the ultimate crime story in ""Pornographers."" He tops off his collection with ""A Short History of the Civil War,"" a series of poems written by two participants: one a Confederate, the other a Yankee. In the marriage of fact and fiction, of comedy and pathos, and the music of many voices, the stories of ""Empty Bed Blues"" reconfirm the judgment of novelist and story writer Richard Bausch, who said in 1998: ""There is no writer on the American scene with a more versatile, more eclectic, or more restless talent than George Garrett.