Bøger af Carl Watson

Scott Schroeder dreams of a day when he and his father can have a home of their own. Following an accident that took his mother's life eight years before, doctors discovered Scott was suddenly deaf. Blessed with being an accomplished gymnast and skilled at signing and reading lips, Scott's biggest challenge is convincing others he is able to do all the same things as those in the hearing world. Picking up on conversations he observes along the way, Scott figures out a big family secret concerning his father and uncle and makes his mind up to play a part in their reconciliation.

"Amongst the oil fumes and the briny dinge of the sea, greasy, tired, frustrated, I had a flash. Suddenly, I had it all figured out-the psychology of despots and CEOs. I figured that in order for civilization to exist, people have to stay in one place, and so it seems somehow natural that the evolution of society would be to create an illusion of motion where none exists. Faster cars. Faster editing. Increased sensory stimulation. But all the while we are actually sitting more and more still. The population is placated by the feeling of progress, when in reality they are imprisoned. Even if we feel or strive to be utterly irresponsible, we're still somehow doing our job." Carl Watson evokes his desolation angels with great empathy and care, but also with ruthless candor. He writes like someone who pushed himself to the wall, then pushed through it to the void and came back with stories to tell. Here he reclaims the Seventies, one of the more desolate of recent epochs, with the clarity of Proust, the balefulness of Bodenheim, and the raw honesty of an Iggy song. -John Strausbaugh, author of Black Like You and Sissy Nation "CW writes like he put his thumb in the air on some two-lane American highway that used to be an Indian Trail, where he got picked up by God. Like he has come back to the fire in the woods we have gathered around at the end of the world with our loved ones to tell us what he saw. -Andrew Huebner, author of We Pierce, American By Bloodand East of Bowery With prose unfurling like cigarette smoke bleeding into that cloud of half-forgotten memories forever shadowing missed opportunities that hangs over a noonday dive somewhere during the twilight of the last blown century, heartbreak rock-n-roll on the radio crackling in exquisite precision between am stations and windswept interstates, Carl Watson daydreams before silent black-and-white televisions in SRO lobbies or as he drinks himself sober in crumbling Chicago tenements. Backwards the Drowned Go Dreaming explodes the bleary-eyed myth of the American road. -Donald Breckenridge, author of This Young Girl Passing Carl Watson's work is desolate poetry. He writes with sharp nostalgia for a past that really wasn't all that great. It feels like a stay in a down-and-out motel, but right on the other side of the paper-thin wall is transcendence. Watson never lets you forget that even in the most desperate situations, there is humor (even if it's mostly black) and greatness of the spirit. -Emily XYZ, United States of Poetry

Mike Watkins thinks about a question that bothers him like a pesky fly buzzing inside his head. Why would a guy who spent a good part of his life climbing around on a mountain suddenly fall off a cliff?Unfortunately, he and his cousin, William, must start their vacation by attending the funeral of his grandfather's ranch foreman. A mysterious shaman also attends and warns people to beware of the white wolf.The boys find a map in the foreman's room taken from a library book that tells of a historic bank robbery. They decide to follow the clues in the map to Lookout Mountain where the robbers hid the stolen gold coins. Unfortunately, someone else has the same idea. William is kidnapped and the boys' copy of the map is stolen.With the help of Karana, an Indian neighbor, Mike locates the secret entrance to the cave where the coins were taken. It is the home of the great white wolf and a place of worship for the Indians that reside near there. Mike finds William, and they discover the coins in a room among the skeletons of the robbers who became trapped there many years before. Roscoe, the librarian, appears as the one who wants the treasure for himself.The shaman and wolf arrive on the scene. They tell Roscoe the gold is cursed and cannot leave the cave, but Roscoe doesn't care. Can he be stopped from claiming the treasure? What will happen to Mike and William?

In these days when most short fiction is so affected that it seems to move across the page like a vain actor across the stage, Watson''s words give us something good and something real. In this his work is of rare value. No one who enters into it will emerge quite the same.