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Eugene Wildman’s latest
collection offers a wide-ranging tour of the final decades
of the twentieth century. In a series of related stories,
The World of Glass touches on the crucial issues and events
that came to define and shape this period, including the
corrosive impact of the Vietnam War. Through his protagonist,
Todd White, Wildman explores the theme of spiritual isolation
in a variety of gritty settings. Issues of identity also
play a key role in Wildman’s tightly-drawn
stories, with look-alikes and the erotic attraction of the “Other” featured in pieces such as “Songbird,” in which there are two Juliets, and in a sense a third, and “The
Waning of the Middle Ages,” in which a new tenant
moves into Saul Bellow’s old apartment.
Wildman’s stories are replete with the
betrayal of love and lovers. The wounds inflicted by and
for love haunt his characters, and yet they try vainly to
hold on to love. The stories in The World of Glass, though
classic in the deepest sense, are also, in their varied way,
distinctive and contemporary. This first-rate collection
is the work of a powerful and accomplished writer.
EUGENE
WILDMAN directs the creative writing program at the University
of Illinois, Chicago. He is a former editor of the Chicago
Review and a winner of four Illinois Arts Council awards
for fiction.
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