Description
Book SynopsisLyric fictions by a master fabulist of America's Midwest.
The Moon over Wapakoneta is vintage Michael Martone, the visionary oracle of the American Midwest with the gift for discovering the marvelous in the mundane. In these stories Martone shows us how traveling across time zones from Ohio to Indiana is a form of time travel; how a beer bottle can serve as a kind of telescope, how Amish might power their spaceships with windmills as they travel through space and time. These stories capture the paradox of feeling that one is in the heart of the country while at the same time in the middle of nowhere, of natives who find themselves strangers in their once familiar, but now strange, lands.
On display is a love of obsolete technologies, small-town whimsy, home movies of proms and birthday parties, steam engines and baseball games. If Italo Calvino lived in Indiana rather than Italy, these are the fictions he might have made.
Trade ReviewA playfully poetic exploration of place, proximity, relativity, and time. Refreshingly original and poignantly sentimental. A feast for the mind. Some of my favorite bits were ‘Four Yearbook Signatures' and ‘Girl Who Cried Sweetly.'"" - Chinelo Okparanta, author of
Under the Udala Trees and
Happiness, Like Water: Stories""In
Moon over Wapakoneta, Michael Martone has turned his literary gaze to the moon and the stars and we're all the luckier for it. Within these pages are Amish astronauts, atomic clocks, moon museums, and holographic movie stars. Once again, the Mark Twain of metafiction offers us a collection of fictions and beautiful universes—including our own."" - Alexander Weinstein, author of
Children of the New World: Stories""Oh, this world is wondrous and strange. Michael Martone, the Indiana trickster, makes amusements of a serious, silliest, surrealist sort. In this, his book of games, Martone electrifies distances across outer space; lost lusts; the lore of locomotives; the love, love, love of literature and all its lands. A journey far beyond."" - Samantha Hunt, author of
The Dark Dark: Stories and
Mr. Splitfoot
