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Hypocritic Days and Other Tales
Douglas Woolf was a writer's his tales of serene down-and-outers, belated frontiersmen, and cross-country spiritual seekers were much admired by fellow-artists Ed Dorn, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, and Paul Mazursky. "He was so gentle," wrote Creeley shortly after Woolf's death in 1992, "so particular to the ways people live together. It is in his intimate focus, in the unobtrusive detailing of gesture, conversation, place, that his genius is clear."Woolf's quiet genius is on display in each of the twenty-seven short stories in Hypocritic Days, a career-spanning collection edited by his literary executor, Sandra Braman. Take the title story, for it's a kind of improvised, Laurel-and-Hardy dance between a washed-up Saratoga horse jockey and his large, slow, uncommunicative son, both characters stepping lightly, in tandem, as they negotiate the boy's awkward passage from teenager to young man. Or "Bank Day," in which Woolf tenderly depicts an impoverished young couple expecting their first child, full of hopeful, high-minded plans for the future even though they subsist on a diet of cat food and cold coffee. None of his characters ever lose hope, despite the horrors and despairs surrounding them, and not because they are fools but because, in the words of Robert Creeley, "they have the talent, and the pleasure, of making in this world a place of their own."
400 pages, Hardcover
First published October 28, 1993
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July 4, 2018lmao just lmao if the fiction of douglas woolf doesn't make you feel less alone in the world
June 17, 2012
A collection of Douglas Woolf's shorter fiction, including some that were published in now hard to find limited editions - Hypocritic Days, Signs of a Migrant Worrier, Had, and Spring of the Lamb - plus his longer novel The Timing Chain.
Wonderful writing - as is all of Douglas Woolf's work.
Wonderful writing - as is all of Douglas Woolf's work.
November 30, 2014
Dreadful writing, simply dreadful. Of him, Publishers Weekly wrote "Woolf can make a story out of nothing, then take it nowhere." I quite agree, but not in the complementary way they meant it; Woolf's style of writing grates on me.
March 29, 2017
This book is almost unreadable. To categorize Woolf as an author is a stretch; which is probably why if you go to look up information on him on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ...there isn't any. I haven't read much about the guy's background but the little I have gives a pretty good picture of a guy bumbling around the US making pit stops at this college or that to teach and write. Perhaps he was a better teacher than a writer. I stumbled across this book in a bargain bin at a used shop I frequent and took a chance because of the publisher, Black Sparrow, which also has the rights to a lot of the Bukowski canon, so I thought maybe there was something worthwhile within the thing. Uh...nope. If this book comprises this guy's life work I'm going to assume he had a day job because he didn't really right much. If this is what made it to print...I can only imagine how awful the stuff that didn't was. The book is fairly chronologically laid out, moving from the 40s through the late 80s when mercifully, it stopped. I'll say this - there actually was a period of a few years during his "career", post WW2, where it appeared the war experience has disillusioned or embittered him enough or effected him in some way, to the point where his stuff was at least coherent and not mired in weird metaphors, bizarre non-sequiturs and flowery adjectavia dredged from the thesaurus' 4th or 5th synonym for the common word. These stories reminded me a little of John O'Hara, if not a bit darker and bitterer. I prayed he was evolving into something I might have true appreciation for at that point but nope, he recovered from his war experience and it was back to pointless linguistic gymnastics to camouflage the uninteresting story lines. In fact I'm not even sure some of the stories had a line. The two novellas in here were the worst of all. After one of them he thanks the support of his in-laws during the writing of the thing. I'll bet they were begging their daughter to look for someone who could at least pay the rent. OK that's enough, the guy's relatives are going to sue me for slander if I keep on. Note to wannabe authors; if you can't write - keep your talentlessness to yourself or the guy you're paying to tell you you're a genius in your creative writing seminar at the local community college on Wednesday evenings. Woolf brings to mind a line penned on a dust jacket of a punk band I used to favor back in the early 80's - Flipper - Somewhere written on their debut albums packaging was the line "we suffered for our art...now it's your turn." That pretty much sums up Woolf's approach here. - life is too short to spend reading this book. ~fin~
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