In Distance No Object, Gloria Frym turns her ironic, passionate gaze
to post-Vietnam Berkeley and San Francisco. Private lives are still
swept along by the currents of history, as in the sixties. But the names
of the wars have changed...the bombs fall on Iraq, and the war on
poverty becomes a war against the poor. The stories of Distance No
Object evoke the deep frustrations between generations, friends,
neighbors, and races. Yet civility, quotidian justice, a common
language, and new love are imagined...and Kafka finds his true bride.
Frym turns an unflinching eye on human interaction, capturing casual and
intimate exchanges between strangers on trains, estranged husbands and
wives, and errant children and their parents in this sensitive and
assured collection...Frym focuses on sensitive social issues...her
politically charged narratives are among her best.--Publishers Weekly
...a collection that is possibly ahead of its time while it masquerades
as an elegy for an end to an era.--Austin Chronicle
Quiet and moving in their intensity of feeling.--Kirkus Reviews
Put Gloria Frym's splendidly knowing vision of the urban with Grace
Paley's and Stephen Dixon's. Her voice is tender, searching, and ever so
slightly insolent--you greet these stories like friends stopping by
unannounced, friends so beguiling that you wish they'd stay longer than
they do.--Jonathan Lethem, author of Gun, with Occasional Music and
Amnesia Moon
Gloria Frym's stories strike me as going directly to the heart in a
rational way. They hurt by being clear and reasonable--like William
Carlos Williams' poetry, say. But hurt doesn't mean hurt, exactly; it
means affected in a necessary way.--Alice Notley, author of Mysteries
of Small Houses
Gloria Frym is no stranger to the literary scene, having been a
writer and teacher for over two decades. She attended the University of
New Mexico under the tutelage of poet Robert Creeley. Creeley had quite
a bit of national acclaim by that time, says Frym, but I didn't know it.
I just knew he was important to me and his presence brought a lot of
important writers--Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Denise Levertov, and
others--to what was essentially an outpost on Route 66. Gloria Frym is
the author of a previous collection of short stories, How I Learned,
as well as several volumes of poetry, including By Ear, Back to
Forth, Impossible Affection, and the forthcoming Homeless at Home.
She is also the author of a book of interviews, Second Stories:
Conversations with Women Artists. Since 1987, she has been a member of
the core faculty of the Poetics Program at New College in San
Francisco.
