Rails Under My Back

Начало книги

The ear trieth words as the mouth tasted meat. Cause the whole language resembled the body of a trained athlete where every muscle, every sinew, is developed into full play.

Train, carry me. Train, bring me back.

Jeffery Renard Allen’s Rails Under My Back is a remarkable book, and what the author said of his second novel, Song of the Shank, in a 2014 interview could easily apply to this debut work of fiction:

The first thing I would want any reader to say about this novel is that “Jeff Allen gave everything he had when he wrote this book, every bit of himself, on every page, head and heart” because that is true. I really tried hard to get it right. Art may be the only form of perfection available to humans, and creating a work of art might be the only thing in life that we have full control over. So we might ask, How is great measured? Craft is certainly one thing. I also would like to think that certain works of art transform the artist.1

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