There Is Happiness

New and Selected Stories

By: Brad Watson, Joy Williams - foreword by

Narrated by: John McLain

"Here is a generous portion of the work of a swiftly passing lifetime. Bountiful is the deserving page," Joy Williams writes in her introduction to this selection of Brad Watson's published and unpublished stories: "excellent, assured, funny, startling, heartbreaking, wild," full of "freakish flair" and "melancholy realism."

Brad Watson was a master of dark comedy, extraordinary lyricism, appalling grotesquerie, and unabashed vulnerability; a sublime prose stylist whose novels and stories drew upon the fecundity and moodiness of the South. Male meltdown is a theme, as is young love and its disillusionment, as are strange neighbors who cannot be understood. A leopard that consumes its zookeeper, pronghorn antelope tenderly transporting the poop of their young, insufferably articulate birds and restless, tolerant dogs-this is also eco-fiction of a very peculiar sort, in which nature reassures, transcends, and finally escapes judging or being judged by us.

Roller-coastering from the mournful to the comical, Watson's work is both embedded in a literary heritage tied to place and at home in a universal literature of the absurd. His stories waltz with lovely and strange melancholy, infused with wit and astonishing beauty. There Is Happiness embodies the twisted hilarity and undeniable grace of an underrecognized literary genius.

©2024 Nell Hanley; Foreword copyright 2024 by Joy Williams (P)2024 Tantor

Interesting stories!

Unforgettable short stories! The performance was excellent as well. Looking forward to more books by this author!