The farmhouse floats, an island in a sea of rape.
From a bus labouring on high roads you gaze down
at a boreen, visible now, snaking through an ocean of amarillo.
Wide-Eyed to the World
Watch What Develops
I have never been to Coney Island
yet the Ferris wheel in sepia-drenched
pictures, the greenish tint of old Polaroids,
Carousel Court by Joe McGinniss Jr.
John Cheever was a surrealist but I think the suburbs made him crazy which allowed him to write they way he did. Raymond Carver presented a sculpted world littered with chiseled drunks, sloppy whores, baby killers, lovesick lovers, unwashed truckers, and belligerent bakers – never mind the loners down to their last bone marrow transplant. I re-read Carver’s Vitamins whenever I get down in the mouth about my fiction and that fills me with hope. I dare add, A.M. Homes is an heir to these suburban chestnuts, a daughter born out the bonfire they created.