There Is Happiness: New and Selected Stories
Brad Watson
Jul 2024 · Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by John McLain
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Audiobook
10 hr 27 min
Unabridged
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Eligible
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About this audiobook
"Here is a generous portion of the work of a swiftly passing lifetime. Bountiful is the deserving page," Joy Williams writes in her introduction to this selection of Brad Watson's published and unpublished stories: "excellent, assured, funny, startling, heartbreaking, wild," full of "freakish flair" and "melancholy realism." Brad Watson was a master of dark comedy, extraordinary lyricism, appalling grotesquerie, and unabashed vulnerability; a sublime prose stylist whose novels and stories drew upon the fecundity and moodiness of the South. Male meltdown is a theme, as is young love and its disillusionment, as are strange neighbors who cannot be understood. A leopard that consumes its zookeeper, pronghorn antelope tenderly transporting the poop of their young, insufferably articulate birds and restless, tolerant dogs-this is also eco-fiction of a very peculiar sort, in which nature reassures, transcends, and finally escapes judging or being judged by us. Roller-coastering from the mournful to the comical, Watson's work is both embedded in a literary heritage tied to place and at home in a universal literature of the absurd. His stories waltz with lovely and strange melancholy, infused with wit and astonishing beauty. There Is Happiness embodies the twisted hilarity and undeniable grace of an underrecognized literary genius.
About the author
Brad Watson was the author of two critically acclaimed novels, The Heaven of Mercury and Miss Jane, and two story collections, Last Days of the Dog-Men and Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives. His work has been recognized by the National Book Award, the International Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award, and more.
John McLain is an award-winning storyteller with over 200 audiobook credits. John is a SOVAS Voice Arts Award winner, a two-time nominee for the prestigious Audie Award, and a winner of the Audiobook Reviewer Listeners' Choice Award.
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