Price: $16.95

HERE'S TO NOAH, BLESS HIS ARK AND OTHER MUSINGS

Essays and nonfiction prose

By Paul Ruffin

Cover Graphic: Noah's Ark, Edward Hicks (1780-1849) Published by Stone River Press

ISBN 0-9728775-2-5

• 6x9 Paperback with Perfect Binding
• 224 Pages

Also available in hardcover

In this, his first collection of nonfiction, Paul Ruffin, best known for his fiction, poetry, and edited works, gives us a broad sampling from his treasure chest of hundreds of column pieces and essays published over a fifteen-year period. A master of dialogue and southern humor, these pieces are witty, intelligently written and often poignant, but with the author's insight into the human psyche and a never-wavering search for the truth of things, they are never mundane. From "Spreading the Gospel of the Grape" about a hitchhiking jaunt in Ruffin's youth to "The Lady with the Quick Simile" which tells of his brief encounters with Eudora Welty, we are entertained, and imbued with smiles, belly laughs, and the thought provoking "Yes, that's the way it is."

LINES FROM "MUSING ON THE GYPSIES."

"I never, ever, saw a Gypsy in Mississippi when I was a boy, even though they were as real to me as the Devil, whom I never saw either but certainly was reminded of often enough. I was more afraid of them than Him because He didn't get you until you were dead, but Gypsies wanted you alive and kicking."

LINES FROM "THE BEST WAY TO COVER YOUR LOINS."

"First of all, you put some butter in a large skillet and heat it just to the point of darkening--don't want to burn it, you know, just get it to the point of smoking. Lay the tenderloins in, curled to fit, like they're a couple sleeping snugly against each other. Oh, they'll get happy real quick, as Emeril puts it. Let 'm sizzle and carry on a few seconds until you have a nice brown on that side, then roll 'm over, just like a couple rolling over in bed."

WHAT OTHERS SAY:

As has been noted by reviewers and critics of Ruffin's fiction, here is a man who has total command of his language in these sharply etched pieces. He writes with what Library Journal described as "a hardened American elegance," and he demonstrates what The Journal of American Studies called "an eye for significant detail and his ear for dialogue is impeccable." The Mississippi Press echoed: "Ruffin has a weather ear for believable conversation, and a keen eye for balanced detail." In the New York Times Book Review Susan Lowell wrote of his first collection of stories, the Man Who Would Be god: "Mr. Ruffin's poignant stories linger in the memory like the scent of wood smoke-or gun smoke-on the skin."

From the Houston Chronicle "...one of the best writers of his generation."

PAUL RUFFIN is Regents Distinguished Professor of English at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas where he edits The Texas Review and directs Texas Review Press. He is the author of two novels, Pompeii Man and Castle in the Gloom: two collections of short stories, The Man Who Would Be God; and Islands Women, and God; and five collections of poetry, and he is the editor or coeditor of eight other books. His work has appeared in hundreds of journals, magazines, anthologies, and textbooks in the United States, and his fiction has been aired on National Public Radio. He writes a weekly newspaper column, Ruffin-It, from which most of these essays were taken.