[KS] Leonard Chang's new novel

Walter K. Lew Lew at HUMnet.UCLA.EDU
Thu Jul 16 13:12:35 EDT 1998


Dear List,

I am happy to pass along news of the publication of Leonard Chang's deftly
written new novel, DISPATCHES FROM THE COLD.

Yours, Walter K. Lew

>***************************************
>                FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>***************************************
>
>News from BLACK HERON PRESS
>Contact:  Jerry Gold
>
>BLACK HERON PRESS ANNOUNCES THE PUBLICATION OF
>LEONARD CHANG'S NEW NOVEL
>
>DISPATCHES FROM THE COLD
>a novel by Leonard Chang
>Published by Black Heron Press
>Publication Date: July 20, 1998
>Price:  $23.95 (Cloth)
>ISBN:  0-930773-49-7
>
>What would you do if strange letters began appearing in your mailbox?
>When the unnamed narrator of this novel opens misdirected letters, he
>enters the harsh and disturbing world of Farrel Gorden.
>
>Gorden, an assistant manager at a sporting goods store in New Hampshire,
>violently hates his new Korean American boss, and is on the verge of losing
>control. As we watch the narrator reconstruct the recent events in
>Gorden's life, which include an affair and the wrenching consequences that
>follow, the paths of these two disparate characters--letter reader and
>letter writer--soon converge shockingly as one violates the terrain of the
>other.
>
>Following up his highly-praised debut, THE FRUIT 'N FOOD, Leonard Chang
>weaves in DISPATCHES FROM THE COLD a complex narrative that blurs the
>distinction between the real and the imaginary, the violent and the
>mundane, while skillfully negotiating the interior and exteriors of a
>vengeful mind.
>
>Leonard Chang's first novel, THE FRUIT 'N FOOD, won the Black Heron
>Press Award for Social Fiction, and is now taught at colleges around the
>country. His short stories, essays, and book reviews have appeared in
>numerous periodicals, including THE CRESCENT REVIEW, PRAIRIE
>SCHOONER, CONFLUENCE and the SAN FRANCISCO BAY GUARDIAN. He was
>born in New York City and raised on Long Island. He studied Philosophy at
>Dartmouth College, received his B.A. from Harvard University, and his
>M.F.A. from the University of California at Irvine. He lives in the San
>Francisco Bay Area, and teaches at the graduate writing program at Antioch
>University.
>
>Advance Praise for DISPATCHES FROM THE COLD:
>
>3Chang narrates his passionate, downbeat tale with naturalistic distance
>and an authentic, even microscopic grasp of the...dead-end world Farrel
>[Gorden] inhabits...Chang is an exceptionally talented writer... "
>                 -- Kirkus Reviews
>
>"Chang's gift for unsentimental storytelling is indisputable..."
>     -- Library Journal
>
>"In his provocative second novel, Chang deftly varies a formula used by
>Hitchcock in REAR WINDOW: a man in a position of enforced idleness
>becomes obsessed with the activities of a total stranger...In clean and
>vernacular-accurate prose, Chang painstakingly evokes the working-class
>lives of both characters, as well as their ethnic prejudices and
>misunderstandings. The deliberately slow pace of the narrative accentuates
>the impact of the step-by-step account of Gorden's descent into murderous
>rage, building to the narrator's disastrous intervention. In the end, the
>trajectory of both their lives acquires an air of tragic inevitability."
>                -- Publishers Weekly
>
>Black Heron Press
>P.O. Box 95676
>Seattle, WA  98145
>
>For more information, please contact Black Heron Press,
>or visit their web site:
>http://mav.net/blackheron/index.htm
>
>Order from Amazon.com:
>http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0930773497/
>




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