Archive - February 27, 2019

RSVP AT: info@voicesforservice.org> Saturday, March 2, 2019 2:00pm Cramton Auditorium – Howard University 2455 6th Street NW, Washington, DC 20059

Tacoma Stories by Richard Wiley (Korea, 1967-69) Bellevue Literary Press, 2019 270 pages $16.99 (paperback)   Reviewed by Mark Jacobs (Paraguay 1978-80) I can’t get through a day without it. Reading, that is. Sometimes, I have a hard time going pageless for a couple of hours. I’m so habituated to reading, I can forget why I do it. Tacoma Stories just reminded me why: one reads in the hope of delight. And that’s what Wiley’s new book provides. The linked stories that make up the collection are deeply pleasureful reads. How does he do it? One way is with the sentences. Wiley writes nothing like Kafka, but the unexpected leap from one sentence to the next in Tacoma Stories can evoke Kafka’s extraordinary, nerve-jangling transitions. Apposite sentences end paragraphs where they need to be ended. They describe a character. They figure in dialogue. Real readers, true recidivists who cannot resist . . .