Meyer

The twenty-seventh book of fiction by one of America’s leading avant gardists, the award-winning Baltimore writer Stephen Dixon, sets up a situation that the protagonist, Meyer—a prolific fiction writer from Baltimore—finds preposterous: writer’s block.

In a story rife with Dixon’s trademark zest and style, Meyer proceeds to rifle through all the possible aspects of his life that could make for good fiction, and to try whatever it takes to get himself writing again. Sometimes, sex with his wife works, so he tries that, but without luck (even after several tries, just to be sure). He wonders if he should try sex with one of the neighbors. He wonders if he should try writing about his parents’ death…again. He wonders about concocting awful things to happen to himself and his family. He wonders about concocting wonderful things to happen to himself and his family. He tries sex with his wife again…

Is there nothing in Meyer’s life worth writing about?

It is, in short, Stephen Dixon at his best: stylish, funny, moving, and relentless as ever in his pursuit of the small, meaningful, and ultimately powerful revelations of everyday life.

"In his 27th work of fiction, Guggenheim fellow, National Book Award finalist and Pushcart Prize — winner Dixon explores an affliction that neither he nor his protagonist would seem to know much about: writer's block. Meyer Ostrower is an aging, accomplished fiction writer living in Baltimore who one day finds himself at a loss for words. As he rummages through his past looking for material, the factual events of his existence morph into fiction. The novel is a set of themes and variations on major episodes of Meyer's life, many of them imagined: there is his death, his wife's death, his sister's death, his mother and father's deaths, all in various incarnations, side by side with childhood memories and sexual fantasies. He catalogues a lifetime of injuries (ranging from a stickball scar to a small white mark where his typewriter's 'line space lever went into his upper eyelid'), worries in typical neurotic fashion about his arthritis and his heart, and reflects on the dwindling number of letters in his mailbox. Although writing about writer's block risks relying on a tired conceit, Dixon not only pulls it off, but puts together a series of quirky and powerful vignettes about aging. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Stephen Dixon is the author of 26 books of fiction, including National Book Award-nominations for FROG and INTERSTATE. His short fiction has won every major literary award, as well as honors from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is on the faculty of Johns Hopkins University.