Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey - Softcover

Mueller, Daniel

4.32

41 ratings by Goodreads

9781937402495: Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937402495 ISBN 13: 9781937402495

Publisher: Outpost19, 2013

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Eleven stories by the author of the critically-acclaimed HOW ANIMALS MATE. Daniel Mueller reveals the distance between our everyday masks and the selves we strain to recognize in them. A boy whose parents live apart decides to model himself after a neighborhood sociopath. A corporate systems analyst attempts to reconcile a homoerotic childhood with his conventional nuclear family. A divorcee dating a rape survivor must admit that what he loves most about her would, in his daughter, completely destroy him. Funny and grim, stylish and provocative, these stories find in disjunction and misalignment unparalleled tension and exquisite grace. Advance praise from Peter Ho Davies: “Daniel Mueller is a true American original, his raucous, ribald vision (call it sub-division surreal) at once chokingly funny, and fiercely felt. These stories move from gut-busting to gut-churning to gut-wrenching in the blink of an eye, uncovering along the way the tender in the grotesque, the lovely in the lurid, and the soul in suburbia. Mueller – big-hearted and fearless as he is – has long been one of my cult writers. Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey should give many new readers the chance to discover him.”

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Review:

"These storie are outrageous and big-hearted, disturbing and beautiful, wretched and redeemed. Half of them made me want to sleep with the lights on, and all of them reaffirmed that Dan Mueller is some kind of mad artistic genius" - Paul Harding

"These stories are outrageous and big-hearted, disturbing and beautiful, wretched and redeemed. Half of them made me want to sleep with the lights on, and all of them reaffirmed that Dan Mueller is some kind of mad artistic genius" - Paul Harding, author of "Tinkers"

"Daniel Mueller is a true American original, his raucous, ribald vision (call it sub-division surreal) at once chokingly funny, and fiercely felt. These stories move from gut-busting to gut-churning to gut-wrenching in the blink of an eye, uncovering along the way the tender in the grotesque, the lovely in the lurid, and the soul in suburbia. Mueller -- big-hearted and fearless as he is -- has long been one of my cult writers. NIGHTS I DREAMED OF HUBERT HUMPHREY should give many new readers the chance to discover him." - Peter Ho Davies, author of "The Welsh Girl"

"Online, we glibly tell one another 'Pics or it didn't happen, ' unaware of that cliche's deep ontological implications, the way it links our existence with our never-ending performance of that existence. At a time when it's difficult to talk about how disconnected we might feel, Mueller's fiction highlights the unspoken and intense suffering and loneliness we often have to endure alone. It's a suffering the world rarely recognizes, but one that endlessly echoes within each of us, no matter how many subdivisions we might raze and rebuild." - Michael Jauchen, The Rumpus

." . .Most of the stories in [Nights I Dreamed of Hubert Humphrey] are, roughly enough, about people (largely boys and men) trying to find their place in the world, trying to find where they fit. One may fairly/safely expect, therefore, for the stories to be animated by notions of desire, but a trick of desire is that articulating desire depends to a degree on awareness, specifically self-awareness. Mueller's characters are folks of various clenchings, seemingly unable to be clear regarding what's in them, at any depth. The murk of the thing's tidal, or at least it was to me. . . in these stories, such lack of clarity's hugely generative: we read to the end of each of these stories, basically discovering if life is satisfying to these characters while they're processing the same. It's a heady way to read. . . there's zero argument against the power of these stories." - Weston Cutter, Corduroy Books

"What Daniel Mueller provides in his collection, Nights I Dream of Hubert Humphrey, is more like a boxing match during which the opponent switches tactics and moves, and the reader is knocked out with surprises everywhere. . ." - Melanie Page, Necessary Fiction

"Daniel Mueller appears to have great talents that deserve wider reading. His writing has a relaxed terseness that's marvelous." - Peter Kelton, examiner

." . .a strong collection that captures slices of Americana, from its subdivisions and trails, to its skinny jeans, heroin addicts, and orgy-having hippies." - Gina Myers, Fanzine "

About the Author:

Daniel Mueller is the author of HOW ANIMALS MATE, which won the Sewanee Fiction Prize. He is the grateful recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He directs the creative writing program at the University of New Mexico and teaches on the faculty of the Low-Residency MFA Program at Queens University of Charlotte. He lives in Albuquerque.

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