Norman Lock‘s new book, Pieces for Small Orchestra & Other Fictions, has just been published by Spuyten Duyvil.
I’ve been excited about this book ever since I was able to publish two of the “Pieces” in jmww.
Here is how I introduced Lock before his recent reading (a Vol. 1 Brooklyn and Big Other event) at the Brooklyn Winery:
If you’re like me, when you hear words like “mastery” and “virtuosity,” you become incredibly suspicious of its source, but when I think of Norman Lock I think of those words, because he is, un…doubtedly, a master of story, a master storyteller attentive to the acoustics of language, concerned as much with sense and story and meaning as he is sensitive to sound and music, to the sound of music, to the music of sound.
His surname is ironic, to me, because what Lock does, in fact, is un-lock: he unlocks mysteries, terrors, and delights, and whatever odd number of gods and monsters, but unlike that other famed picker of locks, Pandora, Lock’s unlocked nested boxes don’t unleash mayhem into the world, but, rather, things of extreme beauty.
Lock’s the author of many novels and story collections, including, most recently, Shadowplay, published by Ellipsis Press; Grim Tales, published by Mud Luscious; and Pieces for Small Orchestra, from Spuytun Duyvil.
YESSSSSS. I’ve read this in manuscript form and hot damn it is lovely lively livid. Buy this people, it is yes yes.
Just received at note from Tod Thilleman at Spuyten Duyvil that they’re “getting the links in place this weekend for ordering,” and that SPD “should have them in stock within a few days but it might take them a bit more time to list.”