Bell, Matt

Cataclysm Baby

ISBN: 9780983026372
Fort Collins, CO: Mud Luscious Press, 2012. First Edition. Softcover. Inscribed & signed by Matt Bell to Dan Rzicznek. “This smoldered cigar, last of a box of twenty, bought to celebrate happier times, now smoked to keep away the smell of our unwashed skin, our slipping flesh, of our baby grown in my wife’s belly, the submerged sign of a prophecy burning, stretching taut her hard bulge: All hair, just like the others, gone wrong again. Fists of black hail fall from the cloudless sky and spatter the house, streak the skin of our walls, break windows above broken beds. The birth-room fills the air with the texture of mud, with black birds forgetting how to fly, these crows and vultures waiting to make a nest of our child, and still I focus, keep my eyes on shattered glass, on my wife’s pelvis tilting toward sunlight, toward sun turned the color of baby’s first stool, then the color of blood. Then the blood, flowing between my wife’s legs. Hopeful cigar smoked, held between loose teeth, I say, Push. I say, Push right now.”--Matt Bell, “Abelard, Abraham, Absalom,” pg. 1. Matt Bell (b. 1980) is an American writer. He is the author most recently of the novel Appleseed (a New York Times Notable Book) and the craft book Refuse to Be Done, a guide to novel writing, rewriting, and revision. He is also the author of the novels Scrapper and In the House upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, as well as the short story collection A Tree or a Person or a Wall, a non-fiction book about the classic video game Baldur's Gate II, and several other titles. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Tin House, Fairy Tale Review, American Short Fiction, Orion, and many other publications. A native of Michigan, he teaches creative writing at Arizona State University, where he directs the ASU Worldbuilding Initiative. Offered today is the 2012 novella, Cataclysm Baby. A blend of New-Weird sensibilities and experimentation, with the classic feel of some of the greats of genre fiction—Cormac McCarthy, Stephen King, William Faulkner, and William Gibson to name a few—Cataclysm Baby is an exciting & wildly creative work. A dark, introspective, dystopian narrative about the world in decay, Cataclysm Baby is a work that meditates on the nadir of mankind. From back cover: “Beset with environmental disaster, animal-like children, and the failure of traditional roles, the twenty-six fathers of Cataclysm Baby raise their desperate voices to reveal the strange stations of frustrated parenthood, to proclaim familial thrashings against the fading light of our exhausted planet, its glory grown wild again. As the known world disappears, these beleaguered and all-too-breakable men cling ever tighter to the duties of an unrecoverable past even as their children rush ahead, evolve the complicated gaze of parental love, Matt Bell’s Cataclysm Baby is a powerful chronicle of our last days, and of the tentative graces that might fill the hours of our dusk.” From the collection of Dan Rzicznek (b. 1977), an esteemed Ohio poet & professor at Bowling Green State University. Rzicznek has hand-written his ownership signature ("F. Daniel Rzicznek") in black ink at upper left margin of blank front paste-down. Signed & inscribed by the author in thin black ink at title page: “Daniel, / Thanks so much for [undiscernable] / and for your own great / poems. / Best, / Matthew Bell.” Softcover original. First edition, first printing though neither explicated as such at copyright page. In very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges, and light smudging/scratching to font and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #9087]

Price: $50.00