Demonology [Paperback]

Rick Moody is a traditionalist. Despite his page-long paragraphs, brand-name dropping, obsessive cataloguing of workplace ritual, seemingly random italicising and inevitable digs at "multinational entertainment providers", Moody makes classically beautiful short stories. His tools are those of any master storyteller: detail, catharsis, the right word at the right moment. Granted, the details can be unexpected: e.g., comparative values of different Pez dispensers. And his brand of catharsis can be mighty abrupt: "Now the intolerable part of this story begins", he warns us in the title story of Demonology, while "Hawaiian Night" includes the ominous spoiler, "Here comes tragedy". Yet his word choice is always immaculate.

Moody's collection is framed by two stories in which the narrator ruminates over his dead sister. In the first, "The Mansion on the Hill", he speaks directly to the departed:

"You were a fine sister, but you changed your mind all the time, and I had no idea if these things I'd attributed to you in the last year were features of the you I once knew, or whether, in death, you had become the property of your mourners, so that we made of you a puppet."

The story promptly turns into a revenge fantasy, with an absurd climax wherein the narrator attacks his sister's former fiancée. "Demonology" deals with the actual circumstances of her death. First we see her tucking the kids into bed prior to her fatal seizure: "And my sister kissed her daughter multiply, because my niece is a little impish redhead, and it's hard not to kiss her". Moody then switches tone smoothly and beautifully as the medics work on the dead woman: "Her body jumped while they shocked her--she was a revenant in some corridor of simultaneities--but her heart wouldn't start". A writer who pins down such fluidities can get up to all the experimentation he likes and the reader will go along willingly. --Claire Dederer

Here there is not just a whole but a whole that is totally coherent. It is absolutely more than the sum of its parts. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

'A feast of stories... Honest, raw, and deeply moving.' Time Out 'This fine collection confirms Rick Moody's status as one of the stars of contemporary American fiction... He's a formidable talent, and Demonology finds him at his wicked, wonderful best.' Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

His new collection of short stories is wickedly revealing about American society. Vibrant and inventive. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

... the narrative is poised between hilarity and poignancy. Moody's currency may be old, but you seldom feel shortchanged. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

This collection of short stories takes many forms, from domestic comedy, to pseudo-fairytale and philosophical argument. The underlying elements linking them together concern loss and pleasure, and the difficulty of really expressing love. All the stories are characterized by an antic humour.

Rick Moody was born in New York City and studied at Brown University and Columbia University. He has attracted considerable attention and received lavish praise for four books: Garden State (1992) (winner of the Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award), The Ice Storm (1994) (Ang Lee directed a film version released in 1997), Purple America (1997), heralded as Book of the Year by both the New York Times and New York Post and, most recently, his highly acclaimed collection of short stories, Demonology.$$$In 1998, Moody received the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2000, he received a Guggenheim fellowship. His short work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, Harper's, Esquire, the Paris Review, The Atlantic and he is a regular contributor to the on-line magazine, McSweeneys. He has taught at the State University of New York at Purchase, the Bennington Writing Seminars, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown and the New School for Social Research. He lives on Fishers Island, New York.$$$His most recent book The Black Veil: A Memoir with Digressions, was published by Faber in August 2002. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.