Under the Western Sky: Essays on the Fiction and Music of Willy Vlautin Volume 1

Description: A series of essays examine how one author and musician's work reflects much larger social concerns in the West

Review Quotes: "Bringing a sophisticated set of contemporary lenses to bear upon the musical and novel-writing career of Willy Vlautin, Under the Western Sky makes a strong case for Vlautin as a resonant voice in a new kind of West a considerable distance from earlier regional mythologies. In fact, Vlautin emerges as not only a representative, but a central figure whose fictions and songs evoke a series of landscapes--urban, rural, desert--characterized by marginalization, failure, and transience in many forms. Vlautin emerges as a literary son of Raymond Carver, but one who writes in his own voice and for whom music forms a profound and intimate complement to the fiction."
--O. Alan Weltzien, University of Montana Western

"A welcome overview of Vlautin's output to date. ... If good criticism serves to elevate a reader's appreciation of the subject at hand, then Under the Western Sky certainly succeeds, underscoring Vlautin's position as an important voice in postwestern American literature."
--Western American Literature