by Rick Moody
These stories first appeared in the following places: “The Mansion on the Hill”in the Paris Review, and in Pushcart Prize 24; “On the Carousel”in Fence; “The Double Zero”(based on Sherwood Andersons “The Egg“) in McSweeney’s; “Forecast from the Retail Desk”in the New Yorker; “Hawaiian Night”in the New Yorker;“Drawer”in Esquire;“Pan’s Fair Throng”in Conjunctions, and in a gallery pamphlet at a show of Elena Sisto’s paintings; “The Carnival Tradition”in the Paris Review;“Wilkie Fahnstock: The Boxed Set”in Primal Primers, and on Word.com; “Boys”in Elle;“Ineluctable Modality of the Vaginal”in Lit, and in Fiona Giles’s anthology Chick for a Day; and “Demonology”in Conjunctions, in Pushcart Prize 21, in O. Henry Prize Awards, in The KGB Bar Reader, and in Survival Stories.
Quotations from Nijinsky are from the excellent Joan Acocella translation; quotations from Nietzsche are from the translation by Douglas Smith.
For encouragement and support: my family, Julia Slavin, Amy Hempel, Mary Robison, Susan Minot, Mary-Beth Hughes, Heather McGowan, Elizabeth Gaffney, George Plimpton, Bradford Morrow, Alice Quinn, Bill Buford, Gregory Crewdson, Fiona Giles, David Ford, Adrienne Miller, Margaret Nagle, Dave Eggers, Laura Iglehart, Courtney Eldridge, Bill Henderson, Michael Pietsch, Walter Donohue, Michael and Nina Sundell, all at Yaddo, all at Cranberry’s, and the most extraordinary Melanie Jackson.
Lyrics excerpt from “If I Loved You”by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II copyright 1945 by Williamson Music. Copyright renewed. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by Permission.
Lyrics excerpt from “The Wedding Song”copyright © 1971 (Renewed) Public Domain Foundation. All Rights Reserved. Used by Permission. Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.
Also by Rick Moody
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GARDEN STATE
A Novel
“Rick Moody’s first novel, set in New Jersey, has established its author as his generations foremost chronicler of middle-class malaise in tristate exurbia. Moody’s dark wit and unflinching eye for the bathetic render him a particularly appropriate seer of con temporary alienation, and the inevitable —not wholly unjust —comparisons have been made: to Updike, to Cheever, and, more accurately, to Amis fils.“
—Claire Messud, Village Voice
“Impressive.… An auspicious debut.“
—New York Times Book Review
THE ICE STORM
A Novel
With a new afterword by the author about the movie The Ice Storm
“A bitter and loving and damning tribute to the American family… . This is a good book, packed with keen observation and sympathy for human failure.”
—Adam Begley, Chicago Tribune
“Moody is a stylishly clever writer.“
—Time
“The Ice Storm works on so many levels, and is so smartly written, that it should establish Rick Moody as one of his generation’s bell wether voices.“
—Hungry Mind Review
THE RING OF BRIGHTEST ANGELS AROUND HEAVEN
A Novella and Stories
“Intense and unnerving.… A narcotizing tour-de-force of sex, drugs, and dementia.”
—Vanity Fair
“Often wonderful… . Moody’s language pushes and pulls boundaries; it avoids and seeks intimacy, with the same insistence, terror, and self-consciousness as Moody’s protagonists.”
—Amy Bloom, Boston Globe
PURPLE AMERICA
A Novel
“A tough, funny, gorgeously detailed domestic thriller… . Purple America is the stuff of classical tragedy, told in insistent, laser-bright prose. Reading it is a transfiguring experience.”
—Ben Neihart, Baltimore Sun
“By turns utterly harrowing and guiltily hilarious.… An emotional roller coaster destined to be considered one of the fictional achievements of a generation.”
—Rob Spillman, Details
“Mr. Moody at his best.”
—JANET MASLIN, New York Times
“Rick Moody is one of those writers you can’t ignore, because you don’t know what he’ll come up with next Yes, on the surface it’s Moody’s daring and talent that exhilarate us, but on a deeper level we recognize the effort his people make to memorize their losses, to somehow keep alive what can’t be saved, to placate their demons.”
—STEWART O’NAN, Minneapolis Star Tribune
“By turns terrifying and wickedly funny… . A delightfully quirky collection.”
—MICHAEL SHELDEN, Baltimore Sun
“Demonology, both the story and the collection, is a shriek of pain, a rending of garments, a howl… . It seems totally beside the point to ask whether these stories are good, or bad, or entertaining. They’re overwhelming. For me, the appropriate response to a book like this is an answering cry, a matching confession.” —NAN GOLDBERG, New York Observer
In Demonology Rick Moody writes with equal force about the blithe energies of youth (“Boys“) and the rueful onset of middle age (“Hawaiian Night“), about midwestern optimists (“The Double Zero“) and West Coast strategists (“On the Carousel“), about visionary exhilaration (“Forecast from the Retail Desk“) and delusional catharsis (“Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13“). This exuberantly praised collection, full of deep feeling and stunningly beautiful language, firmly establishes Rick Moody as one of the leading literary voices of his generation.
RICK MOODY is also the author of the novels Purple America, The Ice Storm, and Garden State, which won the Pushcart Press Editors’ Book Award; one previous collection of short fiction, The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven; and a memoir, The Black Veil. He has received the Paris Review’s Aga Khan Prize, the Addison Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, the Paris Review, Harper’s, and Grand Street.
