My People's Waltz

by Dale Ray Phillips

Book Overview

When I was thirty-five and freshly separated and still a stouthearted pilgrim to myself, I took a job on the Gulf Coast swindling people. I sold fake trailer lot deeds to investors with souls more... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393047156
• ISBN13: 9780393047158
• Release Date: March 1999
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

A marvelously brave, poetic, American voice

My People's Waltz is the most memorable book of stories I have read in years. It's set in the humid, salty South, but the futility and blown opportunities that Richard and his parents experience is so real and rich that even a transplanted Jersey girl like myself got sucked right into the amazing narrative, identifying very strongly with Richard, Lisa (his [ex] wife), and even Richard as a child. Every line in this book is believable and entertaining. I hope this author has a novel in the works. His skill is that big. ...

A near-genius debut

These linked stories announce a major new voice in American fiction. They investigate through the narrator, Richard, the demise of the American dream at the end of a millennium. Written in prose that takes your breath, I would suggest these stories anyone brave enough to take a hard look at the landscape of loss. To quote the book jacket blurb by Fred Chapel, "My People's Waltz is an experience during which you forget to breath." Highest reccommendations.

A collection of excellent, moving stories.

Dale Ray Phillips is a great voice in American fiction. Summing up the life of the character he calls Richard, Dale Ray breaks into the broken human heart like a burglar and finds the lost riches there. His characters are lost, deaf, and knowingly unholy in a landscape of mischance, love, and unbearable knowledge. Fathers betray sons as naturally as crappies bite hooks, and lovers try to force each other into different shapes. A forceful collection of stories.

Expresses the nature of risk taking, loving, and traveling

Dale is able to weave the ordinary, humerous, and profound in his stories. I can visualize the places he has been and taste the seafood seasoned with Old Bay, lemon, and butter. This will sound like a cliche but his main character Richard is like a modern day, adult Huck Finn: knowing, aching, and ready to venture out to new territorys.

Touching; a visit to another's childhood, a return to my own

I am a writer myself, and every now and then I read something that just screams at me, something that needs to be remembered, something so powerful that it will simmer in my mind for the rest of my life. Phillips' has done this. I have a list of "Examples of Greatness" where I collect "perfections", things that, as a writer, I wish to return to. Phillips has a place on this list.