Secure Dying Light And Other Stories Conceived By Donald Hays Rendered As Manuscript

uneven collectionnot bad, mind you, and incredibly great in places, but uneven, "Ackerman in Eden" sets itself up with a conceit that goes nowhere, "Orphans" stops before it really gets going but would not work as a novella, either, "Private Dance" is entertaining, but ultimately feels like an attempt to elevate smut to literature, and "The Rapist," while a compelling picture of the vilest of crimes, just leaves you feeling unsatisfied.


But four of the stories are simply breathtaking, The opening story, "The Rites of Love," is an incredibly moving picture of the ambiguities of romance, and what we owe those we loveand how defining who it is we love, and why we love them, is the messiest and most difficult of all human decisions.
The story's dinner scene is one of the most beautifully and erotically romantic moments I've read, and the closing image just sears itself into your mind, not to be forgotten.
"Material" is a nuanced and exceptionally welltold story about storytelling itself, illustrating how the very act of creating art is itself a perhaps violent action this seems to be a fairly consistent theme throughout the collection, and Hayes thus feels like a poor man's James Salter.
"Redemption" is both disgusting and incredibly human, and "Dying Light" is a truly moving and beautiful portrait of a marriage, a family, a father and son, and how we often don'tand perhaps can'tunderstand each other until the very end.


These stories are thus both incredibly beautiful and incredibly upsetting and vile, often simultaneously, Which is, I think, the result of Hayes' use of sex, both the most beautiful and the most violent, disgusting thing human beings do.
These are stories, then, of individuals facing a choice between the beautiful and the vile, and their very human inability to often do anything to move from one to the other.
Hayes's talents as a humorous writer are not on display here, and this colors the entire collection with a darkness that makes the stories often overlap, run into each other.
But, on the whole, despite some problems with differentiation between certain stories, despite a few that fall flat, there are three or four absolutely golden stories here, especially the opening and closing ones.
For those alone, this book is worth your time, As with any collection of stories, I found myself preferring some to others, But, in the end, I was glad I stuck with it, especially for the last four stories, Hays' stories are character driven, and often find people in the middle of some dramatic change in the course of their lives, as often as not for the worse.
There's a pathos that undergirds the whole collection, but that isn't to say the stories are without humor, They are though, many of them, informed by a frank acknowledgment of the inevitability of death, I find quite a few of the characters and their lives still bumping around in my head, And that's as good a mark as any of a good story, This was written by a faculty member at Arkansas, The language is rich and precise, creating not only characters, but people, Hays was always one step ahead of me which is the way it should be, but often isn't it will keep you reading to the end.
Although humorous, dark and wellwritten, the stories left me wanting a little more sustenance, The common theme that runs through this new collection of short stories from Donald Hays, is people at moments of crisis in their lives.
They run from the title story, where the main character has come to see himself as a failure as a painter and as a husband, and attempts to come to terms with himself by moving in with his dying father, a tough, sometimes brutally honest man, to the comic story Private Dance, where a high school football coach, who never understands what is happening to him, loses his wife and his job, punches a policeman, and gets arrested in a sleazy strip club in the course of a day and two raucous nights.
Each story touches upon what it is to be human and the choices and decisions that we all must face again and again.
Donald Slaven Hays aka: “Skip” Hays Arkansas author Donald Slaven “Skip” Hays has published novels and short stories as well as edited an anthology of Southern short stories.
He served as director of the Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas UA in Fayetteville Washington County fromto.
Hays is most noted for his novel The Dixie Association, written inand reprinted as part of the Louisiana State University Presss series Voices of the South.
Skip Hays was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June,, His father, Donald E. Hays, a chief petty officer in the U, S. Navy during World War II, returned to Arkansas with his family to farm and work in a furniture factory.
His mother, Mary Slaven Hay Donald Slaven Hays aka: “Skip” Hays Arkansas author Donald Slaven “Skip” Hays has published novels and short stories as well as edited an anthology of Southern short stories.
He served as director of the Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas UA in Fayetteville Washington County fromto.
Hays is most noted for his novel The Dixie Association, written inand reprinted as part of the Louisiana State University Presss series Voices of the South.
Skip Hays was born in Jacksonville, Florida, on June,, His father, Donald E. Hays, a chief petty officer in the U, S. Navy during World War II, returned to Arkansas with his family to farm and work in a furniture factory.
His mother, Mary Slaven Hays, taught school, Hays and his brother, Philip, grew up in Van Buren Crawford County in the midst of a huge family of grandparents, aunts, and uncles who loved to tell a good story.
As a young boy attending school in rural Arkansas, Hays read voraciously, His mother encouraged his reading, often borrowing books for him at the library at Fort Chaffee Sebastian County, Hays earned a BA in English from Southern State College now Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia Columbia County in.
Soon after graduation, Hays faced being drafted by the military to serve in Vietnam, He believed that “people should never be asked to fight and die for a cause as vague” as the one in

Vietnam.
He was granted status as a conscientious objector and served two years in alternative service as a psychiatric aide at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences UAMS Medical Center.
The painful choices his generation made regarding Vietnam became a recurring theme in his writing, Hays married Patricia Chambers on September,, and the couple has one son, The young family lived near Mountainburg Crawford County, where Hays wrote a novel about Cabeza de Vaca, a sixteenth century century Spanish nobleman who led survivors of a failed expedition through Florida and the southwest.
Although thepage manuscript written over three or four years was never published, the experience taught Hays much about storytelling and perseverance.
For eight years, he played semiprofessional baseball on Cape Cod and in eastern Oklahoma while holding other jobs, such as the two years he worked in Van Buren as a social worker with foster children and with abused or neglected children and juveniles.
Hays received an MFA in creative writing at UA in, His first published novel, The Dixie Association, about an Arkansas minor league baseball team, loosely based upon the Arkansas Travelers, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in.
The Dixie Association centers upon ex convict Hog Durham and his ragtag teammates who play minor league baseball for the Arkansas Reds.
Critics have called this witty, satirical, Southern baseball novel sacrilegious, exquisitely funny, and occasionally poetic, Thereprinting of the novel in the Voices of the South series recognizes The Dixie Associations established position in the history of Southern fiction.
Hayss other works include the novel The Hangmans Childrenand Stories: Contemporary Southern Fiction, edited by Hays, His short story “Dying Light” was reprinted in New Stories from the South: The Years Best, His most recent work, Dying Light and Other Stories, is a collection of Hayss short stories, In, he was awarded the Porter Prize, Arkansass premier literary award, He retired from UA in, Mary HawksUniversity of Arkansas for Medical Sciences Library sitelink,