{"product_id":"the-old-priest-hardcover","title":"The Old Priest - Hardcover","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eAnthony Wallace\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Old Priest\u003c\/i\u003e is a book of transformations. From the cigar-smoke-and-mirrors world of casino life, to the collection's title character morphing into a goat-man before the narrator's eyes, to a family drama upended by a miniature dinosaur in the backyard, Anthony Wallace writes about life-changing events. The characters seek to escape their earthly boundaries through artifice and fantasy, and those boundaries can be as elegant and fragile as a martini glass or as hardscrabble as an Indian reservation. In these eight vividly detailed short stories we encounter cheating husbands, neurotic housewives, out-of-control teenagers, desperate gamblers, deluded alcoholics, and a host of others who would like a chance at something more. Some face the consequences of their actions, while others simply begin to see what they've been missing all along. Through wry, ironic prose--and what feels like firsthand experience--Wallace describes a comic and often misguided search for self-knowledge in the most unlikely locations--like the Emerald City, a low-rent gambling den where a cocktail waitress dressed as an X-rated Dorothy offers gamblers more than a Scotch on the rocks; or the Bastille Hotel-Casino, where a dealer dressed as an eighteenth century footman deals five-dollar blackjack to a reminiscing Holocaust survivor. Occasionally a real demon appears, but the collection is mostly about personal demons and the possibility of exorcising them. The stories in \u003ci\u003eThe Old Priest\u003c\/i\u003e have to do with time and memory, and they convincingly open out beyond ordinary daily time to reveal something else--the present moment, perhaps, but a larger, more mysterious conception of it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAnthony Wallace\u003c\/b\u003e is a senior lecturer in the Arts and Sciences Writing Program at Boston University, where he is codirector of \u003ci\u003eArts Now\u003c\/i\u003e, a curriculum-based initiative to support the arts at BU. He has published poetry and short fiction in a number of literary journals, including \u003ci\u003eCutBank, \u003c\/i\u003e the\u003ci\u003eAtlanta Review, Another Chicago Magazine, \u003c\/i\u003e the \u003ci\u003eFlorida Review, River Styx, \u003c\/i\u003e and the \u003ci\u003eRepublic of Letters.\u003c\/i\u003e His title story, \"The Old Priest,\" won a Pushcart Prize and was included in \u003ci\u003ePushcart Prize XXXVII\u003c\/i\u003e (2013 edition). He and his wife Allene reside in Brookline, Massachusetts.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 184\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.8 x 8.3 x 5.7 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 09, 2013\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAward:\u003c\/strong\u003e Drue Heinz Literature Prize (2013)\u003c\/div\u003e\n                \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eAward:\u003c\/strong\u003e Hemingway Foundation\/PEN Award (2014)\u003c\/div\u003e\n                ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45910509846725,"sku":"9780822944294","price":41.82,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0757\/6718\/5605\/files\/kKN14XJ4us9780822944294.webp?v=1772050888","url":"https:\/\/selloorium.com\/products\/the-old-priest-hardcover","provider":"Selloorium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}