The Last Bizarre Tale

Stories by David Madden

David Madden, James A. Perkins

• Publisher: University of Tennessee Press
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781621900801
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

"Some writers have a talent for storytelling. Far fewer writers have a talent for literary innovation. Madden masterfully combines both talents."
—Winston Groom, author of Forrest Gump

"This collection of stories by the celebrated David Madden showcases a wide variety of themes, styles, and approaches. It is also as if the author dared himself to undertake as many novel forms as possible; to each of them he brings deft artistry, piercing observation, and an uncanny understanding of the inner lives of outsiders. A fine achievement!"
—Fred Chappell, author of Ancestors and Others: New and Selected Stories

Though he has authored more than eleven novels including, Cassandra Singing, The Suicide’s Wife, Abducted by Circumstance, and the recent London Bridge in Plague and Fire, David Madden has been publishing short stories for all six decades of his active career. The Last Bizarre Tale consists of works that appeared in journals but that have not appeared together as a collection.

Madden used two stories, “The Singer” and “Second Look Presents: the Rape of an Indian Brave,” as chapters in his 1980 novel On the Big Wind. “The Headless Girl’s Mother” was first published as a chapter in a serialized novel entitled Hair of the Dog. Two other stories developed out of longer versions of Madden’s novels. “A Demon in My View” is part of a sequel, not yet published, to Bijou.

All of the stories in David Madden’s third collection are distinguished by variety of content and by shifting styles and often innovative techniques. They are to varying degrees and in various ways bizarre in their characters and their relationships, in the kinds of internal and external conflicts, and in locales and themes. The title story, The Last Bizarre Tale, involving a corpse that has hung on a hook in a funeral home garage for decades, is evocative of Poe and, in its dark, grotesque humor, Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers. “Process is as important as product to David Madden,” writes editor James Perkins, “and one can learn as much about the process of writing as about the human condition by a careful reading of these stories.”

The author of eleven novels and two short story collections, David Madden is known for his innovative style and technique in crafting fiction. His work is praised by critics and fans alike as complex yet lyrical and always masterfully done. He lives in Black Mountain, North Carolina.

James A. Perkins is a professor of English Emeritus at Westminster College. He is the author of The Cass Mastern Material: The Core of Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. He is coeditor, with Jeffrey J. Folks, of Southern Writers at Century’s End and coauthor, with Randy J. Hendricks, of David Madden: A Writer for All Genres.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Introduction: Reading David Madden for Half a Century - James A. Perkins
• A Piece of the Sky
• She’s Always Had a Will of Her Own
• Lights
• Who Killed Harpo Marx?
• James Agee Never Lived in This House
• A Secondary Character
• Hurry Up Please It’s Time
• The Singer
• A Human Interest Death
• The Master’s Thesis
• Over the Cliff
• By Way of Introduction
• Seven Frozen Starlings
• Second Look Presents:The Rape of an Indian Brave
• The Retriever
• A Walk with Thomas Jefferson at Poplar Forest
• A Demon in My View
• Wanted: Ghost Writer
• Lying in Wait
• The Headless Girl’s Mother
• The Last Bizarre Tale
• Acknowledgments