Synopses & Reviews
Ron Carlson is a master of the contemporary short story. In
The Blue Box, he extends that mastery to the
short short story, offering us a captivating glimpse of a writer at play. With that voice of hissharp, sensitive, and wry, brimming with good humorCarlson inhabits one standby after another of the American pop landscape, past and present: monster flicks, action heroes, unsupervised teenagers, blogging. Coming in for special scrutiny is the world of education, in hilarious send-ups of recommendation letters, teacher evaluations, style guides, and a MOOC. Whimsical, wistful, and gently surreal,
The Blue Box delights in lifes unending absurdities, and reminds us not to take anythingespecially ourselvestoo seriously.
Review
Carlson never drops an extra word or a false phrase.”
The Washington Post
Carlsons focus is transporting, absorbing. It shakes you from stupor, strips you down. He understands that most of us live in a world of enervating crap, whether in the cliffs of Idaho or the canyons of the city.”
Esquire
Carlson transforms the comic junkpile of Americas waning prosperity into a livable, if harsh, landscape.”
The Chicago Tribune
His poems are conversational, extremely accessible, willfully casual and consistently funny, but also laced with a lightly worn sadness, a symptom of everyday heartache.”
Ron Padgett
Carlsons a romanticeven when hes writing about failings, folly and violence.”
The Los Angeles Times
Carlson writes about the natural world with convincing authority
with Ron Carlson, you really are in expert hands.”
The New York Times Book Review
Carlson captures the ordinary occurrences that define our lives.”
Publishers Weekly
Review
Carlsons a romanticeven when hes writing about failings, folly and violence.”
The Los Angeles Times
Carlson writes about the natural world with convincing authority
with Ron Carlson, you really are in expert hands.”
The New York Times Book Review
Carlson captures the ordinary occurrences that define our lives.”
Publishers Weekly
About the Author
Ron Carlson is the author of five story collections and six novels, including
Return to Oakpine and
The Signal. His fiction has appeared in
Harpers,
The New Yorker,
Playboy,
GQ,
Best American Short Stories, and
The O. Henry Prize Stories. His book of poems,
Room Service: Poems, Meditations, Outcries, and Remarks, was published by Red Hen Press in 2012. His book on writing,
Ron Carlson Writes a Story, is taught widely. He is the director of the writing program at the University of California at Irvine and lives in Huntington Beach, California.