Bonnie
Jo Campbell American Salvage Wayne State University Press
Video from the 2009 National
Book Awards Finalist Reading
Photo credit: John
Campbell
CITATION
In American Salvage,
Bonnie Jo Campbell picks through the ravages of a small-town
America gutted by shifting demographics, new technology,
and methamphetamine. Eschewing nostalgia or bitterness,
she leads with her curiosity, using canny observation
and sensuous prose to coax the reader into dark, strange,
primordial territory. These short stories approach their
subjects from an array of perspectives, but what they
share is freshness, surprise, and a compulsion to plumb
some absolute extremes of American existence.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Michigan writer Bonnie Jo Campbell’s
American Salvage is rich with local color and peopled
with rural characters who love and hate extravagantly.
They know how to fix cars and washing machines, how
to shoot and clean game, and how to cook up methamphetamine,
but they have not figured out how to prosper in the
twenty-first century. Through the complex inner lives
of working-class characters, Campbell illustrates the
desperation of post-industrial America, where wildlife,
jobs, and whole ways of life go extinct and the people
have no choice but to live off what is left behind.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author
of a collection of stories, Women & Other Animals,
and a novel, Q Road. She is the winner of a
Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and
the Southern Review’s 2008 Eudora Welty
Prize for “The Inventor, 1972,” which is
included in this collection. Her work has appeared
in Southern Review, Kenyon Review, and Ontario
Review.
She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan,
where she studies and teaches kobudo, the art of Okinawan
weapons, and hangs out with her two donkeys, Jack and
Don Quixote.
Oct 24
Salem South Lyon District Library
2:00 to 3:00pm on October 24, 2009. The library is located
at 9800 Pontiac Trail South Lyon, MI. For more information
please contact the library at 248-437-6431.
Nov 3
Concordia University
(4090 Geddes Road, Ann Arbor) on November 3, 2009 in
the Riverside Rooms (Lower lever of Student Center)
at 7:30PM.
The event is free and open to the public.
Nov 12
Elgin Community College
Reading and class visitation at Elgin Community College
(1700 Spartan Drive, Elgin, IL) on November 11 -12,
2009.
She will be reading at the VPA 191D on Thursday November
12, 2009 at 7:30 pm. Please contact Elgin Community
College for more information.
Nov 21
Barnes & Noble, Battle Creek
Will sign copies of her new book at the Barnes &
Noble Battle Creek (Lakeview Sq., 5701 Beckley Rd.,
Battle Creek, MI) on Saturday, November 21, 2009 from
2:00 to 4:00pm. Please contact the bookstore for more
information at (269) 979-8060.
Mar 7
University of St. Thomas
Will do a residency at University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis
MN from March 7-12, 2010 where she will be giving several
readings and working with students.
More information to follow.
Mar 18
STORY WEEK, Chicago, IL
Will participate in Story Week March 14 - 19, 2010 in
CHicago, IL. She will be reading from her book on Thursday
March 18, 2010 at Metro (3730 N. Clark, Chicago, IL).
The event is open to the public and all ages are welcome.
Apr 7
AWP
Will attend the Association for Writing Programs Annual
Conference April 7-10, 2010 reading as part of the Southern
Review 75th anniversary reading.
More information to follow.
EXCERPT
Excerpt from “The Inventor,
1972”, American Salvage. All rights reserved.
The girl’s freckles
seem like holes through which her life might pour
out--she may already be dissolving. Each of the three
dead rabbits in the back of his El Camino, each flea-ridden
pelt, contains about a pound of meat. After seeing
the girl’s wounds, he will not be able to skin
the rabbits, knows, too, that they are not enough
to bring his old man, who thinks his son should have
more to show for his life. The siren grows louder,
and the girl is still alive. He is alive with her.
Tears are falling out the sides of the girl’s
eyes, and he feels grateful; his own tear ducts have
been damaged by his not wearing goggles at the foundry.
His eyes remain locked with
hers until the technicians (Modern uniformed miracles,
they have arrived!) push him aside. “I didn’t
see her,” he says in his nonsense syllables.
He wonders if they sense his hunger for venison, if
his hunger shows on his face. The girl sees it; he
feels her watching him until they place her in the
ambulance, until he hears the swoosh-swoosh-click
of doors closing and latching, as securely as those
on a space ship. The police ask him to get into the
back of the cruiser.
He will never tell them
or anyone about the outline of the girl stepping from
the fog with such animal grace, her head tipped back
to reveal her throat. In the next hour they will ask
him repeatedly if he drove over the white line--he
could have when he was looking at the Hendrickson
house, although he honestly doesn’t think he
did. He will not tell them how the girl’s face
looks like Ricky’s face. They will ask him if
he has been drinking, and they will not believe him
when he says no. The county sheriff’s department
has recently purchased their first Breathalyzer machine,
and a second police cruiser will arrive with the machine
in the trunk, and they will test him and fiddle with
the adjustments and retest him repeatedly, and repeatedly
he will pass. Inside his own body, however, he feels
the residue of what he has drunk over the years, feels
the residue of all those Friday night binges acutely,
as exhaustion in his joints, in the shaking of his
burned hand, in his infected jaw.
