THE HIGH RIDGE

by John Berry


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Book Details

Language : English
Publication Date : 3/17/2002

Format : Softcover
Dimensions : 6x9
Page Count : 128
ISBN : 9780759687295
Format : E-Book
Dimensions : E-Book
Page Count : 128
ISBN : 9780759687288

About the Book

Unlike John Berry's earlier book of stories FLIGHT OF WHITE CROWS, in which most of the stories were set in India, the present collection of sixteen stories is varied in locale and in treatment of subject matter. Some are surreal, some futuristic and nearly all have an element of the fantastic. The only "true" story in the sense of being fact-based is The Swan Poet, the story of a woman living in the Depression era (the thirties). The art student in the story is fictional, but the "Swan Poet" herself is not.

In The Hot Homage, Damon Guster, a successful British poet and textbook publisher, unreflectingly takes on the identity but not the name of a poet who had been the idol of his youth, but who is now long forgotten and presumed dead. When the latter surfaces in a London Hospital reportedly dying, Guster, in a state of genuine grief, has a hallucinatory experience. An Angel with a Flaming Pen descends before him and forces him to write or rather to collaborate on an elegy commemorating the death of the old poet. After the Angel departs, Guster knows that this elegy is by far his best work, the one he will be remembered for. But a problem arises. The "dying" poet gradually recovers and Guster is left to decide what to do about his now publishable masterpiece.

In a futuristic journey over the mountains of the High Ridge, which had been much altered by late climatic and Geotectonic events, the protagonist, who is taking a small boy to the lamasery at Tarak Dzong, stumbles over the tip of the long lost Mount Everest. It had been one of the first peaks to subside in the cataclysmic retraction of the Himalayas.

Loved By A Malevolent Force is the story of a young man in Brazil who falls under the spell of a witch. This ill-omened relationship results in an unusual misadventure in the Brazilian jungle.

In The Kiss a young man and his wife are visited in their forest cottage by a wolf, who appears enigmatically at their screen door. They discuss the pros and cons of the reason for the wolf's visit. The wife is certain the wolf has a benign expression, but her husband is skeptical. In a sense they are both right.


About the Author

John Berry's first collection of stories, FLIGHT OF WHITE CROWS (published by Macmillan in the U.S., Gollancz in England) was enthusiastically reviewed in literary journals. Santha Rama Rau wrote in the New York Times "Wildly original, funny and profound... Any reviewer must bless a writer for exploring new frontiers in a new way . . .crammed with entertainment, satire, excitement and reflection." Stories from this collection were reprinted in a number of anthologies including Martha Foley's THE BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES.

The five years that followed its publication John Berry devoted to his long poem TRAVELS OF THE PRINCE, a work he revised over several decades.

During the seventies and eighties he wrote several novels and most of the stories in the present collection. Eight of these stories appeared in Literary Quarterlies including Prairie Schooner, The Massachusetts Review, Chelsea and Denver Quarterly.

Like many writers, John Berry always preferred mornings as the best time to write. Afternoons he frequently worked on sculpture, using designs and drawings by his wife, Ynez, and transforming them into wood. Some were then cast in bronze and some were painted. So it is no coincidence that one of the characters in his novel NAMES OF THE EYE HUNTER is a sculptor, or that in the series of sketches in THE HIGH RIDGE called "Tight Spots" there is a painter who tries to perform a daring-feat that only one artist before him has successfully attempted.