Richard Burgin, Author . Johns Hopkins Univ. $13.95 (208p) ISBN 978-0-8018-6796-5
Most of the characters in these 11 hard-edged stories fall well outside our culture's conception of normalcy. Lonely, damaged people who desire love and intimacy, they're doomed to thwart every opportunity for connection. The eponymous...
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Author . Ontario Review $24.95 (330p) ISBN 978-0-86538-115-5
A master of elevating perversity, callousness and loneliness to the level of story premise, Burgin offers shorts that read as if Raymond Carver and Edgar Allan Poe shared a body and had to write about it. In "The Spirit of New York," a man &#
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Texas Review (Consortium, dist.), $26.95 (224p) ISBN 978-1-933896-45-8; $18.95 trade paper ISBN 978-1-933876-46-5
Five-time Pushcart-winner Burgin (Ghost Quartet) straddles the psychological thriller and modern literary genres with mixed results. Nearing the end of his university teaching contract, Elliot Martin renews ties with Barry Auer, his independently...
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Author Triquarterly Books $25.95 (312p) ISBN 978-0-8101-5095-9
The balancing act between art and ambition has been an enduring literary theme since Balzac's Lucien de Rubempre lost his virtue in 19th-century Paris. In Burgin's novel, Ray Stoneson is a composer who compromises his heart in the rarefied air of...
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Author Johns Hopkins University Press $40 (175p) ISBN 978-0-8018-8518-1
Burgin, author of 11 books (including The Spirit of Returns) and publisher of Boulevard, dwells on the violence, and the humor, of misconnection in impressive detail. In ""Mayor Bat,"" a man picks up a drunken woman at a bar, takes her home, and...
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Author Johns Hopkins University Press $28 (200p) ISBN 978-0-8018-5745-4
Myst, the spectacularly successful computer game devised by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller in 1993, has spawned two clumsy print prequels, Myst: The Book of Ti'ana and Myst: The Book of Atrus. Similarly bereft of the game's dazzling graphic wizardry
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin. Johns Hopkins Univ., $30 (280p) ISBN 978-1-4214-0273-4
Burgin (The Conference on Beautiful Moments) taps into humanity at its weakest in his seventh collection of darkly captivating stories. Gritty realistic scenarios, such as “The Dolphin,” in which a bystander attempts to persuade a fellow drinker at...
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Author, Burgin, Author University of Illinois Press $14.95 (124p) ISBN 978-0-252-01602-8
With the odd assortment of troubled characters in this slim collection, Burgin proves himself an author with a harrowing vision of predicaments peculiar to the current American scene. Told in the first person, these nine stories depict confused and...
READ FULL REVIEW
Richard Burgin, Author, Burgin, Author University of Illinois Press $16.95 (155p) ISBN 978-0-252-01843-5
The characters in this disconcerting collection of 11 short stories are often alienated intellectuals, withdrawn because of childhood torments or adult psychoses. When Burgin ( Man Without Memory ) creates a disturbed individual and writes from his...
READ FULL REVIEW
