Bell, Matt

How They Were Found: Stories

ISBN: 9780982151259
Nashville, Tennessee: Keyhole Press, 2010. First Edition, First Printing. Softcover. Signed by Matt Bell "With How They Were Found, Matt Bell joins the company of the great fabulists like Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Italo Calvino, or closer to home, the American masters, Steven Millhauser, John Crowley, and Thomas Pynchon. In reading this collection, you will be forgiven if you have to constantly remind yourself that this is the author's first full-length book. These tales are mysterious, recondite without being just intellectual exercises, extravagant and fanciful, and ultimately winning. And Matt Bell's control of his material is imposing and his spectrum often dazzling. This is a collection of verbal virtuosity, and a flat-out wonderful book: it is a book full of wonders." (Corey Mesler, American Book Review). Matt Bell (b. 1980) is an American writer born in Saginaw, Michigan. He is the author of Appleseed, Cataclysm Baby, and In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods (see our item #7621). He received his BA from Oakland University in Michigan and his MFA from Bowling Green State University and currently teaches in the English department at Arizona State University. The subjects who wander through the haze of Matt Bell's short stories in How They Were Found are all horribly damaged and hopeless souls who bump against tragedy after tragedy. They are ugly, gnarled, deformed and maligned. And probably, this is the reason they are so affecting: they do unspeakable things both to themselves and others, and there is but a negligible delineation between them and us. Perhaps, even, they have the courage to act on their impulses, and we can only hope to be so brave. Trade-format softcover original, first edition, first printing though neither explicated at copyright page. On the title page, below his printed and pen-scored name, Bell has hand-written his signature in black ink. From the collection of Dan Rzicznek (b. 1979), an esteemed Ohio poet who is also an academician at Bowling Green State University. On the top right corner of the half-title page Rzicznek has written his ownership signature ("F. Daniel Rzicznek") in black ink. A rich & rewarding collectible compilation of Bell's short stories, in its rarest contemporary form, greatly enhanced by the author's signature & with distinguished provenance. In relatively quite fine-very-fine condition with light rubbing, faint scratching to front, back covers & spine; a touch of wear & a few tiny bumps, creases at edges & corners of same; slight rubbing, occasional light spotting to edges of text block. Interior fine-very-fine with only a bit of age-toning to margins/edges of blank inner covers; tiny creases at corners of a few page leaves. Fine-Very Fine. [Item #7623]

Price: $40.00