On the Edge of the Desert: Stories (ISF)

SWAN, GLADYS

Literature & Fiction

University of Illinois Press

"One of the finest books in the short fiction series...one feels and tastes her world's weather, sees its terrain, and becomes involved with its people. The author reminds me in some respects of Sherwood Anderson." - George Core, editor, Sewanee Review

ON THE EDGE OF DESERT: Stories (ISF)

When Dusty's traveling carnival is stranded in New Mexico, he meets an exotic dancer and becomes convinced that she can revitalize the troupe

CARNIVAL FOR THE GODS

Vintage

hese eleven compelling stories reveal the interplay and varying hues of two basic elements of human experience -- memory and desire, Gladys Swan's characters are frequently forced to shed their illusions as they struggle to shape their lives.The title story, like many of the others in the collection, has as its backdrop the beautiful but sometimes harsh landscape of the American Southwest. There a reclusive farmer known as Goat Man takes in a young Mexican boy as his companion. When the greed of a tax collector and the complicity of a community destroy Goat Man, the boy vanishes into the night but returns in the form of a legend, a reminder to the residents of the valley of their changing, crueler world. In another story a traveling carnival breaks down when a sandstorm does final damage to the dreams of the company, and a tired, almost defeated woman attempts to regroup and continue what has been so hopefully called "Carnival for the Gods." An older couple, carrying their Jewish past to a "Land of Promise." Discovers instead an alien territory and must struggle from day to day, one leaning to the past, the other inclining toward an unattainable vision of the future.In "The Ink Feather" a small, lonely girl, witness to endless quarrels between her mother and her much older brother, draws comfort from the world of her dolls and the prospect of adventure outside the mist-covered windows of her house. In "Getting an Education" a diffident young woman, "trying to be a student and to discover what she ought to be learning," finds insight in the details of the lives around her, especially the secretive, eccentric existence of one of her professors. A widowed grandmother, in "Black Hole," is impregnated during a chance encounter with a nameless stranger and shocks her family when she determines to give birth to and raise her child.Like that grandmother, all of the characters in these fictions -- whether from the comfortable middle class or the fringes of society -- are at odds with themselves and their world. It is Gladys Swan's special gift that she can so seamlessly depict the particular terrors and wonders of their lives. This is a mesmerizing collection.

Of Memory and Desire: Stories

United States

LSU Press

In this chapbook, you will find the first chapters of Carnival for the Gods, and the four novels that form a sequence from Gladys Swan’s comic fantasy, first published in the Vintage Contemporaries Series. The World of Carnival continues with its original inhabitants and their struggles against the odds: Alta and Dusty, who dream big; the midget Curran, who undertakes a journey at the behest of the acrobat Elise, whose son has gone mad (Small Wonder); Amazing Grace, whose talents as a performer bring gasps from her audience, lead her to the challenge of creating herself (Dancing with Snakes); the Kid, who, after a long search, sets out to find the Seventh City, picking up along the way a melancholy Jew, who grew up there (The Dream Seekers). And, finally, a return to Alta, who finds herself drawn back to the circus to follow another set of dreams (Down to Earth). The series of novels explores the relations between life and art, reality and illusion, the openness to possibility and the capacity for the renewal of energies within a culture. It is the writer’s major work, and it is her dream that the sequence may one day be published.

The World of Carnival

Literary

Serving House Books

The stories in this book have been selected from the six previous collections of short fiction, as well as from recent work, Gladys Swan has published in that genre over the past four decades. Although she also has published novels, poetry, and essays, she finds that she cannot do without the short story-"it is such a beautiful form. I love the challenges it presents in dealing with characters and situations that light upon the cusp of the moment and which must be handled with an eye to economy and unity of effect."

The Tiger's Eye: New & Selected Stories

Short Stories & Anthologies

A Dark Gamble, a Western epic inspired by the great epic of Gilgamesh, is set in New Mexico during the era when gold and silver were being discovered and prospectors, miners and ranchers were pouring into the territory, the local Apaches consequently being hunted down and displaced. The novel is an attempt to explore an aspect of the American past, with its roots in an untamed land and the uneasy transition to the modern world. The action takes place in the town of Destiny, which shoots up when gold is discovered in the region. The story is told by a narrator who has heard tales of Gil Weston and Jack Cameron since his youth, men who still engage his imagination of those around him. Out of his own fascination and curiosity, he feels compelled to take up their story himself as part of his own quest for an understanding of the past and a meaning for his own life.

A Dark Gamble

Among Gladys Swan's many short story publications, a number of the most significant have appeared in The Sewanee Review, the oldest, continuously published literary magazine in America. Now they are collected for the first time, together with the prize-winning story, "Jungle."

Jungle: Stories from The Sewanee Review

Nine stories...skillfully track time's toll on the ability to live and love fully. -- Publishers Weekly. "With A GARDEN AMID FIRES Swan claims new mastery of the short story. A wide variety of settings adds brilliance to important thems: the irresistible powers of memory, the confusions of exile, genuineness and falsity in art, the integrity of loneliness...Uncannily good." -- Fred Chappell.

A Garden amid Fires: stories

BkMk Press

Carnival for the Gods

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