Chris Offutt

Cuando Andrew Offutt murió, su hijo Chris heredó un escritorio, un rifle y ochocientos kilos de porno. Andrew fue considerado el rey de la pornografía escrita del siglo xx, con una carrera literaria que comenzo como un medio para pagar la ortodoncia de su hijo y que pronto cobro vida hasta alcanzar su punto algido durante la decada de los setenta, cuando la popularidad comercial de la novela erotica llego a su apogeo. Con su esposa ejerciendo como mecanografa, Andrew escribio desde su casa en las colinas de Kentucky, encerrado en una oficina en la que nadie osaba entrar, mas de cuatrocientas novelas. Pero, cuanto mas escribia, mas crecia su ambicion y mas dificil era para sus hijos formar parte de su mundo.En el verano de 2013, Chris regreso a su ciudad natal para ayudar a su madre, ya viuda, a salir de la casa de su infancia. Cuando comenzo a leer los manuscritos y las cartas de su padre, por fin tuvo la oportunidad de conocer a aquel hombre dificil, voluble y, a veces, cruel al que habia amado y temido a partes iguales, y se dio cuenta de que en ausencia de su padre podria dar sentido a su vida y a su legado.

From the critically acclaimed author of the collection Kentucky Straight and memoir My Father the Pornographer, The Good Brother is the finely crafted debut novel from a talent the New York Times calls a fierce writer.Virgil Caudill has never gone looking for trouble, but this time hes got no choicehis hell-raising brother Boyd has been murdered. Everyone knows who did it, and in the hills of Kentucky, tradition wont let a murder go unavenged. No matter which way he chooses, Virgil will lose. The Good Brother is the story of a mans struggle to find his real self in the wake of an impossible choice. Traversing the American landscape from the hollows of Eastern Kentucky to the plains of Montana, Offutt explores the hunger for belonging that drives our most passionate beliefs, and in the process shows himself to be one of our most powerful storytellers.

dans cet ouvrage à caractère autobiographique, chris offutt nous convie à un double voyage. tout d'abord à la suite du narrateur qui, d'une côte des états-unis à l'autre, partira, pionnier moderne à la recherche de lui-même et de " nouveaux territoires ", sur les traces du légendaire explorateur daniel boone. dans cette quête initiatique il croisera la route d'une femme, rita, avec qui il éprouvera enfin le désir de se fixer et de fonder une famille. c'est alors que l'autre voyage pourra commencer, celui qui mène à la maturité et à la paternité.

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer, Out of the Woods is Chris Offutts fiercely original short story collection the New York Times calls a magical book.Arriving seven years after Offutts debut collection Kentucky Straight, Out of the Woods returns a masterly writer to the form which garnered him not only critical praise but many prestigious awards. Offutt, who draws landscape and constructs dialogue with the eyes and ears of a native son (The Miami Herald), is on strong home turf here, capturing those who have left the Kentucky hills and long to return. These nine stories of gravediggers and drifters, gamblers and truck drivers a long way from home, are tales so full of hard edges they cant help but tell some hard truths.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF THE YEARAfter inheriting 400 novels of pornography written by his father in the 1970s and 80s, critically acclaimed author Chris Offutt sets out to make sense of a complicated father-son relationship in this carefully observed, beautifully written memoir.Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious of placesthe cave of a monstrous enigma named Andrew J. Offuttarmed with nothing but his own restless curiosity. Spoiler alert: He makes it out alive, walking into the daylight to bring us a deeper, funnier, more tender and more heartbroken truthand his masterpiece. Michael Chabon When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and eighteen hundred pounds of pornographic fiction. Andrew had been considered the king of twentieth-century smut, with a writing career that began as a strategy to pay for his sons orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the 1970s when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel reached its height. With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon. In this fashion he wrote more than four hundred novels, including pirate porn, ghost porn, zombie porn, and secret agent porn. The more he wrote, the more intense his ambition became and the more difficult it was for his children to be part of his world. Over the long summer of 2013, Chris returned to his hometown to help his widowed mother move out of his childhood home. As he began to examine his fathers manuscripts and memorabilia, journals, and letters, he realized he finally had an opportunity to gain insight into the difficult, mercurial, sometimes cruel man hed loved and feared in equal measure. Only in his fathers absence could he truly make sense of the man and his legacy.In My Father, the Pornographer, Offutt takes us on the journey with him, reading his fathers prodigious literary output as both a critic and as a son seeking answers. This is a book about the life of a working writer who supports his family solely by the output of his typewriter; its about the awful psychic burdens one generation unthinkingly passes along to the next; and its about growing up in the Appalachian hills with a pack of fearless boys riding bicycles through the woods, happy and free.

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer, Same River Twice is the second volume from an American literary star. If you havent read Chris Offutt, youve missed an accomplished and compelling writer (Chicago Tribune).At the age of nineteen, Chris Offutt had already been rejected by the army, the Peace Corps, the park rangers, and the police. So he left his home in the Kentucky Appalachians and thumbed his way northinto a series of odd jobs and even stranger encounters with his fellow Americans.Fifteen years later, Offutt finds himself in a place he never thought hed be: settled down with a pregnant wife.Writing from the banks of the Iowa River, where he came to rest, he intersperses the story of his youthful journeys with that of his journey to fatherhood in a memoir that is uniquely candid, occasionally brutal, and often wonderfully funny. As he reckons with the comforts and terrors of maturity, Offutt finally discovers what is best in life and in himself.

From the critically acclaimed author of the novel The Good Brother and memoir My Father the Pornographer comes the unforgettable memoir No Heroes. If you havent read Chris Offutt, youve missed an accomplished and compelling writer (Chicago Tribune).In his fortieth year, Chris Offutt returns to his alma mater, Morehead State University, the only four-year school in the Kentucky hills. He envisions leading the modest life of a teacher and father. Yet present-day reality collides painfully with memory, leaving Offutt in the midst of an adventure he never imagined: the search for a home that no longer exists. Interwoven with this bittersweet homecoming tale are the wartime stories of Offutts parents-in-law, Arthur and Irene. An unlikely friendship develops between the eighty-year-old Polish Jew and the forty-year-old Kentucky hillbilly as Arthur and Offutt share comfort in exile, reliving the past at a distance. With masterful prose, Offutt combines these disparate accounts to create No Heroes, a profound meditation on family, home, the Holocaust, and history.

Mick Hardin is an Army CID officer home on leave, recovering from an IED attack, when a body is found in the centre of town. Its Barney Kissick, the local heroin dealer, and the city police see his death as an occupational hazard. But when Barneys mother, Shifty, asks Mick to take a look, it seems theres more to the killing than it appears. Mick should be rehabbing his leg, signing his divorce papers and getting out of town - and most of all, staying out of the way of his sister Lindas reelection as Sheriff - but he keeps on looking, and suddenly hes getting shot at himself.A dark, pacy crime novel about grief and revenge, with surprises hidden below the surface, Shiftys Boys is a tour de force that confirms Chris Offutts Mick Hardin as one of the most appealing new investigators in fiction.

Après des années de service, Mick Hardin entend profiter d’une retraite bien méritée. De retour dans les collines du Kentucky après deux ans d’absence, il compte saluer brièvement sa famille et s’env

Une enquête étouffante au sein dune communauté reculée du Kentucky, au code moral violent et inflexible.Mick Hardin se remet dune blessure de guerre chez sa sœur Linda, shérif de Rocksalt dans le Ken

Mick Hardin est un ancien marine de retour dans son Kentucky natal.Il officie comme shérif le temps que sa sœur, titulaire du poste, récupère d’une blessure par balle. Mais les difficultés s’accumule

FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CHRIS OFFUTT.Excellent Kentucky noir Offutts third Mick Hardin novel is the best yet. KirkusAn explosive return to the mayhem of the Kentucky hills, Code of the Hills is a harrowing novel of family of what were willing to do to protect and avenge the ones we love.Mick Hardin is back in the hills of Kentucky. Hed planned to touch down briefly before heading to France, marking the end to his twenty-year Army career.In Rocksalt, his sister Linda the sheriff is investigating the murder of Pete Lowe, a sought-after mechanic at the local racetrack. After another body is found, Linda and her deputy Johnny Boy Tolliver wonder if the two murders are related.Linda steps into harms way just as a third body turns up and Mick ends up being deputised again.The dark, gripping, and propulsive thriller of murder and secrets in Rocksalt, Kentucky where little is as it seems.This is a marvellous series These have become must-reads for me and I enjoy every minute of the reading experienceDeadly PleasuresBeautifully descriptive... Offutts Mick Hardin novels are powerful books that feature characters with questionable ethics.Library JournalRighteous Kentucky noir... I gulped it down, relishing the burn Ian Rankin on Shiftys Boys

LONGLISTED FOR THE CWA GOLD DAGGER Mick Hardin, a combat veteran now working as an Army CID agent, is home on a leave that is almost done. His wife is about to give birth, but they arent getting along. His sister, newly risen to sheriff, has just landed her first murder case, and local politicians are pushing for city police or the FBI to take the case. Are they convinced she cant handle it, or is there something else at work? She calls on Mick who, with his homicide investigation experience and familiarity with the terrain, is well-suited to staying under the radar. As he delves into the investigation, he dodges his commanding officers increasingly urgent calls while attempting to head off further murders. And he needs to talk to his wife.The Killing Hills is a novel of betrayal - sexual, personal, within and between the clans that populate the hollers - and the way it so often shades into violence. Chris Offutt has delivered a dark, witty, and absolutely compelling novel of murder and honor, with an investigator-hero unlike any in fiction.

Enquêteur dans larmée, Mick Hardin revient en permission dans ses collines natales du Kentucky pour constater la fin de son mariage. Sous le choc, il senferme dans la cabane de son grand-père avec un

— Cest où, chez vous ?— Kentucky.— Quelle partie ?— Celle que les gens quittent.Le déracinement, la route, lerrance, comme une part de lidentité de lAmérique profonde.Huit histoires de petites gen

« Personne sur ce flanc de colline na fini le lycée. Par ici, on juge un homme sur ce quil fait, pas sur ce quil a dans la tête. Moi, je chasse pas, je pêche pas, je travaille pas. Les voisins disent

De retour de la guerre de Corée, Tucker, jeune vétéran de dix-huit ans, traverse à pied ses Appalaches natales pour rentrer chez lui.Sur son chemin, il croise Rhonda, quinze ans à peine, et la sauve

FROM AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR CHRIS OFFUTTA dark and fierce return to the Kentucky hills, where nothing is what it seems.Mick Hardin returns to the trials and tribulations of local sheriff duties, whilst the previous sheriff, his sister Linda, recovers from a gunshot wound sustained in the line of duty.Living in Lindas house in Rocksalt, Mick finds himself entwined in the trials and tribulations of being a sheriff in the perturbing Kentucky community. Unable to retire from a world of dubiousness and violence, Mick Hardin is back with determination to deliver retribution.

Kentucky straight is bourbon with no mixer. Kentucky Straight is Kentucky seen without nostalgic gloss. These riveting, often heartbreaking stories, take us through country that is unmapped. They are set in a nameless Appalachian community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation; where hunting is not a sport but a means of survival. These are stories of coal miners and backwoods medicine men, of gamblers and marijuana farmers, tales of real tragedy and unutterable strangeness that convey their sense of place so vividly that we feel its ground rise beneath our feet. Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award.