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Overview
For years Robert Cohen has been praised by reviewers and readers alike for his masterful prose and his exuberant and penetrating comic vision. The New York Times has even called his writing redemptive -- so satisfying as to "remind readers why they continue to cast their lines into the shrinking lake of contemporary fiction ... his prose is not merely gorgeous, it's also terrifically funny; his humor is the ghastly variety embedded in everyday life."Now, the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of Inspired Sleep delivers a collection of ten dazzling stories that not only show off Cohen's exhilarating prose and startling ironic humor but also provide a platform for his virtuoso range of tone and style and his ongoing investigation of the hazy, bedraggled American sensibility.
In "Oscillations," a man verbally paralyzed by his obsession with language retreats to a special institute, where he will relearn the art of communication. "Points of Interest" is an ingenious and timely exploration of the boundaries between life and art, as told through the revolving -- and dizzyingly revealing -- perspectives of its three self-absorbed protagonists. The title story features a hilariously out-of-touch psychology professor whose introductory lecture becomes an inadvertent confession of his own long, disastrous career of sexual mistakes. And in the more somber, moving "The Boys at Night," a suburban teenager, on the fringes of a family crisis, makes his first tentative forays into maturity, discovering how accidents at once reveal, imperil, and sustain us.
In each of these stories, the characters must wrestle with the slippery, invisible curtain between the world and their own fevered misapprehensions of it. What results is the urgently serious comedy we call Romanticism -- the yearning of the mind for contact with the actual, which is always receding from view. That these characters' desires and anxieties are familiar to us is the second thing we realize upon reading these stories. The first is how much we're laughing.
Synopsis
In the title story of this dazzling comic collection, a psychology professor delivers a lecture that segues into a confession of an embarrassing affair. An elderly man worried that his life is going downhill heads to an Indian casino in hopes of some relief. A recently divorced man arrives half an hour late to a bachelor party to find that the frightened groom has sent everyone else home. A reclusive writer visits a small college at the invitation of a former student, and nothing goes right. Funny and generous, these stories are virtuoso performances–moving forays into disconcertingly familiar territory that line the often slippery boundaries between masculinity and humanity in American life.
Publishers Weekly
Cohen explores the unexpected twists and turns of love and lust in his first short story collection, an introspective and illuminating series in which he sidesteps the usual clich s of his subject with a wide array of intriguing and unusual situations. The hilarious title story is a perfect example, as a college teacher lectures to his class about his own brief but disastrous affair with a graduate assistant. "Influence" offers an equally literary take on the tumultuous side of romance, when a writer's decision to invite his mentor into town for a reading ends up backfiring, fracturing his marriage. On the more poignant side, "A Flight of Sparks" describes the journey that ensues when a man recovering from cancer sends a friend to Mexico to track down the man's old flame. "The Boys at Night" tracks the growing tension in a family after the newest member turns out to have Down's syndrome, while "Between Hammers" delves into the decline of a couple's sex life when they try to conceive a child. Most of the stories revolve around cleverly formulated premises, but Cohen also demonstrates a deft sense of control over narrative voice, and his dry, sardonic sense of humor serves him well throughout. The award-winning author of three novels, including the bestseller Inspired Sleep, he proves himself to be adept in the world of short fiction as well. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.