Nye, Robert

New York. 1969. Hill & Wang. 1st American Edition. Bookplate, Otherwise Very Good in Dustjacket. 0809091062. 173 pages. hardcover. Jacket drawing - ‘How They Met Themselves’ by D. G. Rosetti. keywords: Literature England . FROM THE PUBLISHER - The author says that some of these stories began as dreams. Like dreams they are both subtle and crude; they take us along irresistibly and seem - however fantastic - incontrovertible. (And the fantastic in these stories, as in dreams, is not an occasional peak but the ground underfoot). A pleasure of these tales (and of dreaming) is delight in spontaneous ‘storying,' in an invention so free and fertile, a humor so boisterous, that there is never pause for thought. Some of the characters appear in only one story, others come and go. Among them are Currer, who can kill by pointing his finger; Captain Rufus Coate, who keeps his books on the shelves with their titles to the wall; Mr. Midshipman Simple, whose mission to convert the heathen Fuegians employs two ships (the Is and the Was) powered by ‘windword machines' (which turn words into wind) and ends with the extinction of the whole Christian company; and Gerard Benjamin, upon whose buttocks, underneath his cyclist's leathers, is tattooed a letter from the boy-poet Thomas Chatterton, with clues to his death at the eighteen. Robert Nye's style more than meets the demands of his imaginative gifts. His writing is the work of a devoted natural: resourceful, precise as poetry, without a slack place in it. And for all its finish, there is the feeling of extemporaneity. Robert Nye is a young, important, and original writer, already well known in his native Britain. TALES I TOLD MY MOTHER should earn him the admiration of American readers as well. Robert Nye received the James Kennaway Memorial Award for his collection of short stories, TALES I TOLD MY MOTHER. inventory #6677 ISBN: 0809091062.