We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,587,937.37 | Books Available: 791,976 | Members Online: 42

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - The Valley of Ashes

The Valley of Ashes
Author: Tim Miller, Gustave Dore

The Valley of Ashes is a collection of six short stories, one poem, and the final piece, Acceleration, a collage of poetry and prose voice fragments and vignettes. The book begins in childhood with Icarus, which describes a young boy's realization of death and the insufficiency of his parents or religion to sustain him. The story ends with a... more »n almost apocalyptic depiction as the boy enters adolescence, which is covered in the next story, The Confessions of Cain. In the author's own words, 'The Confessions of Cain' was born of this question: what would the diary of someone like Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris be like in the months and days that led up to their massacre? From this premise The Confessions of Cain becomes one of the most brutally disturbing and honest pieces of fiction in recent memory, the diary of the numbing of the moral sense. This is followed by an excerpt from Tim's forthcoming novel Death by Water, a chapter that details the ascent out of adolescence and into adulthood. It depicts the wandering twenty year-old Orestes as he hitchhikes over surreal landscapes. On the way he decides to briefly unite with the chaos he sees around him and participates in a symbolic orgy of selfish satisfaction. As this also proves spiritually inadequate, he finally overcomes his physical impulses and emerges in control of his irrational desires. The poem Ash follows, a Waste Land-inspired piece about a unnamed narrator who again rails against the spiritually empty society he sees around him--members of which are given the stage in the last three stories. What Wasn't Possible is about a quiet and tormented day-laborer who is ridiculed at work and who lives alone. When he decides to visit his elderly neighbor out of pity, their brief dialogue rises to almost Biblical tone in its discussion of God and the meaning of suffering. Angels With Envy is the regret-laden sketch of a middle-aged man who can't forget an affair from twelve years before and who is willing to do anything to feel alive in stifled suburbia. Petronius Applauding is the final, brutal tale, which imagines the debauchery of Nero's Rome brought up to date in a town empty of all morality and full of orgies and mass violence. Interspersed between these horrific descriptions are philosophic pronouncements assuring the town of the death of God and therefore of morality and all other institutions (religious, political, and otherwise) that are now held up as contradictory establishments seeking only control. The final piece, an answer and compliment to the whole, is Acceleration, a collection of voices and vignette fragments ranging from a racist neighbor, a road-rage motorist, a concerned citizen seeking censorship, a politician's speech, a mall proprietor's exaggerated sale advertisement, a meditating spiritualist, and (among others) a final, visionary and exuberant voice that suggests hope in the face of madness, that sums up the suffering and doubt and illumination of an age.

ISBN-13: 9780970384027
ISBN-10: 0970384025
Pages: 232
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Six Gallery Press
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Back to the Top ↑

Search - The Valley of Ashes

Loading...