The Man Who Would Be God: Stories (Southwest Life and Letters)

Literature & Fiction

RUFFIN, Paul

United States

Southern Methodist Univ Pr

Short Stories & Anthologies

The Texas Legislature recently named Paul Ruffin 2009 Poet Laureate of Texas. To those who read literary journals or mid-list popular books, Paul Ruffin is a well-known author and poet. Ruffin is prolific in his writing, having published over a thousand poems, short stories, novels, and nonfiction pieces with decades of unfailing artistry. In the fifth installment of the TCU Texas Poet Laureate Series, editor Billy Bob Hill writes in his introduction that he has long admired Paul Ruffin’s use of poetic devices. Ruffin uses alliteration and subtle textured sounds throughout his poetry, making them likeably conversational while full of crafted sound patterns. Ruffin also employs whimsical narratives, coining the word “Necrofiligumbo” in “When the Mummy Became a Mommy.” But, Hill explains, the true power of this book comes from its storytelling. With the new material, readers will encounter compelling, often drop-dead funny storytelling.The state of Texas has honored Texas Poets Laureate for seventy-five years, but much of their work has gone unpublished and unrecognized. In a significant step toward recognizing their achievements, TCU Press publishes a series of the work of the Poets Laureate, with a volume dedicated to each poet. The series began with the 2005 and 2006 laureates and continues through each bi-annual appointment. These beautiful volumes collect the finest work of each individual poet. While a single volume may stand alone as a valuable selection of a poet’s work, the series as a whole will draw their different voices together into a singular poetic expression of Texas. The next book in the series will focus on the work of 2010 laureate, Karla K. Morton.

Paul Ruffin: New and Selected Poems (TCU Texas Poets Laureate Series)

Poetry

TCU Press

Pompeii Man

Set on the Mississippi Coast and New Orleans, Pompeii Man is the story of the descent of an innocent couple into a hell of fear and violence, a world that neither of them could have imagined in the Big Easy. The reader watches in horror as Stafford loses his wife to a terrifying night of assault and rape in the dark heart of New Orleans, manages to get her back home, then loses her again, perhaps forever, except for the emergence of a detective who takes a personal interest in the case and driven by imagination and determination sets off to free her and bring down the drug lord who holds her captive.

Louisiana Literature Pr

Mystery, Thriller & Suspense

Mystery

The Book of Boys and Girls

Islands, Women, and God is a collection of stories of sacrifice and courage set in the South. The stories are populated with incredibly authentic universal characters who rise out of their regional milieu, whose world is the human heart, as real as our very own. The work is reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, William Goyen and Faulkner.

Islands, Women, and God

Browder Springs Pub

Islands, Women, and God is a collection of stories of sacrifice and courage set in the South. The stories are populated with incredibly authentic universal characters who rise out of their regional milieu, whose world is the human heart, as real as our very own. The work is reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor, William Goyen and Faulkner.

Here's to Noah, Bless His Ark: And Other Musings

Stone River Press

"Mister, most stories about people are sad. The ones about animals sometimes turn out all right, but not them about people," muses a character in master storyteller Paul Ruffin's yarn of obsession and quest "In Search of the Tightrope Walker." Raging against this fated sadness―and often against a deadening and inescapable status quo―the characters in Ruffin's newest collection, Jesus in the Mist, populate an imaginative vision of the hardscrabble Deep South where history, culture, and expectations are set firmly against them. Like Flannery O'Connor before him, Ruffin views the South as dark with humor and rife with violence. He writes of places and times where religion, race, class, sex, abuse, poverty, mythology, and morbidity coalesce to expose humanity at its basest and its most redeeming. Peppered with the vivid dialogue, colorful descriptions, and idiosyncratic comedy that define Ruffin's work, this volume is divided into two sections: the first group of stories addresses complexities of relationships between men and women, and the second recounts episodes of initiation in which characters grapple with divided loyalties. Collectively these stories paint a panoramic view of Southern culture as dynamic characters take a stab at their destinies―and sometimes at each other. Whether they are facing the visage of Christ in a motel bathroom mirror, blasting a murder of crows with military-grade artillery, outrunning a mythical beast through moonlit woods, or taking an armed stance against integration at a gas station water fountain, many of Ruffin's characters are zealots on the edge of reason. Here confidence men, thugs, and rednecks push their agendas on unsuspecting audiences. But there are those as well who search for a lost childhood love, exorcise a sexual predator from the home, return to a discarded life, and spare a man's life when no one would be the wiser. These individuals long for restoration, redemption, and righteousness. Both populations come together in Ruffin's South, where madness and faith hold equal sway and no amount of sadness can keep yearned-for possibilities from still being perceived as attainable.

Jesus in the Mist: Stories (Non Series)

University of South Carolina Press

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