"It's lucky for us all that you're holding Koch's collected fiction in
your hands right now. Koch's seasons on our earth were blessed ones and
these traces, some of them among his last, are gifts."--Jonathan Lethem
Hilarious and profoundly moving, this volume restores to print all the
fiction of the writer John Ashbery called "simply the best we have."
Koch, who once characterized New York School writing as about "the
fullness and richness of possibility and excitement and happiness,"
imbues his prose with humor, wit, and a beautifully tender exuberance.
The Collected Fiction of Kenneth Koch is a must-read for anyone
interested in discovering what American literature might still hope to
be.
Published simultaneously with The Collected Poems of Kenneth Koch
(Knopf), Collected Fiction includes Koch's innocent and rambunctious
novel The Red Robins, as well as Hotel Lambosa, his book of
semi-autobiographical short pieces inspired equally by Hemingway's Nick
Adams stories and Yasunari Kawabata's Palm-of-the-Hand Stories. Fans
of Koch's unparalleled gift for comic invention will turn immediately to
"The New Orleans Stories," a cycle about the family of a small-time
criminal, published here for the first time along with "The Soviet
Room," a gentle story of requited love at the end of the Cold War.
Koch's previously uncollected work includes a warm-hearted parody of a
children's adventure narrative and a story detailing the mysteries
uncovered by an obsessive postcard detective. Together, the work of
Kenneth Koch opens up a wonderful world--one where the pursuit of
happiness is taken very seriously indeed.
Kenneth Koch was born in Cincinnati and served in the South Pacific
during World War II. A poet, playwright, novelist, and Columbia
University professor, Koch also published several books about teaching
and reading poetry, including the groundbreaking Wishes, Lies, and
Dreams; Rose, Where Did You Get That Red?; and Making Your Own Days:
The Pleasures of Reading and Writing Poetry. He was the recipient of
the Bollingen Prize and the Bobbitt Library of Congress Prize, a
finalist for the National Book Award, and winner of the Phi Beta Kappa
Poetry Award.
