It’s time to play...
It’s time to play...
Thank you for playing Book Trivia with
us! In the movie Castaway, if Tom Hanks unearthed a copy of The
Sense of Touch, how would that help Tom find a way off the island?
Well, the book is so interesting
and affecting that it would keep his volleyball companion, Wilson, occupied for
hours so that Tom would be able to concentrate on building that raft.
Superman has decided to pull out one of your
characters to be his sidekick. Who is it and why?
I’m pretty sure that the Man
of Steel would select MIT standout physics student Naseem Sayem, the lead
character in “Hezekiah Number Three,” to be his sidekick, both because of
Naseem’s demonstrated commitment to creating his own spectacular destiny and
his documented experience in floating high above the earth.
A homeless man was caught stealing your book
out of a bookstore. When asked why he did it, he opened the book and
pointed a passage out. What was that passage?
We talk on the phone several times a week.
We are known in each other’s circles as friends. Invisible and removed, she
presumes to understand me, watching from the precarious perch of her own
unfinished experience. Up here in Minnesota, though, I’ve learned it’s true: Absence
disembodies. If a person isn’t there for you to touch, they are not real.
From the story “The Sense of Touch.”
You have a chance to appear on the hit
talent show for authors, American Book Idol, and the mighty judges will
determine whether your book will make it to Hollywood and become a big screenplay. What
would impress them more – your book cover, an excerpt or your best review – and
why?
I think the cover would be my
best shot. It was beautifully designed by my publisher, Cynthia Reeser,
and actually has a slight pleasing “waxy” feeling to the touch that many people
who have read the book have commented upon.
You have five seconds to tell us who the
greatest author of all time is. In your opinion, who would that be?
George Orwell. Animal Farm.
Nineteen Eighty-Four.
The Arbor Day Foundation has decided to pick
one tree in your honor because of your writing brilliance. What kind of
tree is it and why did they choose that tree in relation to your book?
They would select the birch
tree, with that odd peeling black and white bark, because of its prominence in
the childhood backyard empire of the narrator of the collection’s final story,
“Be Not Afraid of the Universe.”
Barack Obama has become the author of
several books and he has requested your presence at a special hush hush meeting
to discuss ways to promote it. Through luck of the draw, you were
chosen. What would be the first thing you would say to Barack?
“Mr. President, the absolute
best way to promote your book is to embark on a worldwide tour and you will
need to take me along to introduce you at each of your events.”
About the Book:
Old
friends uncomfortably reunited and lovers who cling to their distance from one
another; disappearing fathers, fiercely loving grandfathers, and strangers who
pass through and radically change lives...These are among the characters who
populate the rugged Midwestern landscapes of the mesmerizing fiction world of
Ron Parsons. In his debut collection, THE SENSE OF TOUCH (Aqueous Books; May 1,
2013), Parsons captures people of various ages in the act of searching for
meaning and connection and themselves. Firmly set in South Dakota, Minnesota, and Michigan, the lush but often brutally cold
heartland of America, the eight stories explore
universal themes--loneliness, betrayal, transformation, hope--in fresh,
sometimes fanciful, sometimes comical, sometimes jarring, and always moving and
memorable ways.
In THE
SENSE OF TOUCH, readers will meet:
*
Naseem Sayem, the brilliant, troubled, and mystifying young man at the center
of "Hezekiah Number Three." A native of Bangladesh abruptly
transplanted to the stark white suburbs of Rapid City at age nine, Naseem never
fit in and eventually moved on to study physics at MIT--where, shortly before
graduation and after shocking news of his father's infidelity and abandonment,
he apparently unraveled and vanished. Three months later, he reappeared out of
the blue on his stepmom's doorstep, holding a three-legged cat. Naseem's long
search for belonging reaches its apex in a hot air balloon floating over the Crazy Horse Monument.
*
Waylon Baker, wheat farmer from birth, and Evie Lund, his wife of twenty-four
years and counting, even though she had chosen to live far away--in the alien
world of the Twin Cities--for eight years. The odd couple at the heart of
"Beginning with Minneapolis," Waylon and Evie can't bear to live
together or to divorce because they still love each other with a passion,
reignited when they find themselves deep in the dirt, in a hole Waylon dug in
his wheat field to serve as Evie's grave.
* The
nameless narrator of "The Sense of Touch," a serious, young freshman
at the University of Minnesota, fleeing yet still attached to
his youth in Texas, haunted both by its predatory
demons and its romantic dreams. His liberation comes through an alluring muse:
his fiction-writing teacher. A ravishing, wild-haired, Memphis-born
African-American graduate student, Vonda speaks directly to him when she makes
her dramatic pronouncements. Like, "Our masks are not worn, people.
They're grown, day by day." And "Never trust anything, not until you
can touch it. With touch, you know you know."
The old friends
in "The Black Hills," long separated by distance and tragedy, who
unexpectedly compete for the affections of a lovely, vulnerable, and married
Lakota woman...the young woman who, in the midst of a Halloween blizzard,
stumbles into saving an elderly piano teacher's life and faces hard facts about
her own snow-bound relationships and emotions in "As Her Heart Is Navigated"...the
exceptional grandfather in "Big Blue" and the playboy reformed by
someone else's grandson in "Moonlight Bowling"...and the professor of
dead languages facing the mysteries of mortality in "Be Not Afraid of the
Universe"... Through Ron Parsons, they all come to life, vividly and with
emotional resonance, and work their way into the minds and hearts of readers.
Purchase your copy:
AMAZON
About the Author
RON PARSONS is a writer living in Sioux Falls. Born in Michigan and raised in South Dakota, he was inspired to begin writing fiction
in Minneapolis while attending the University of Minnesota. His short stories have appeared in many
literary magazines and venues, including The Gettysburg Review, Indiana Review,
Storyville App, The Briar Cliff Review, Flyway, and The Onion. His debut
collection of stories, THE SENSE OF TOUCH, was released by Aqueous Books in
2013.
You can visit his website at http://ronparsonswriter.com/
or http://www.aqueousbooks.com/author_pages/24_parsons.htm.