Shepard Marley's Minor American Authors
An Anthology: Third Edition Revised
Shepard Marley’s Minor American Authors is a work of skillful literary mimicry that balances crafted prose with absurd descriptions and dialogue.
Offbeat and engaging, Shepard Marley’s Minor American Authors anthologizes the work of fictitious writers under the editorial direction of an imaginary literary aficionado, Shepard Marley.
The stories range in age of attribution from the 1800s to the late twentieth century. Each entry’s style and subject matter satirizes the literary trends of its era in a sly, or occasionally overt, manner. Marley provides introductory information and anecdotes regarding the selected authors; though his narration is at times pedantic and self-focused, his passion for reading and discovering obscure writers is sincere and expansive.
“A Very Grave Heading” is told with the verbose flourish of nineteenth-century moralistic adventure tales. A hangman rides his horse through a thunderstorm until “dry lightning” strikes the horse “dead between the eyes.” The unsettled yet determined executioner continues his travels until he falls into a large pit, where he remains “in certainty and solitude, save for the eventual squeaks of approaching rodentia.”
Estelle Galbreath’s “gumshoe” detective story, “God’s Own Chump,” is complemented by Marley’s brief biography of Galbreath, which is as entertaining as the story itself. A World War I nurse, Galbreath, he says, later worked as a Hollywood actress while patenting her recipe for “blood sausage.” Donald Ent’s “Pop Goes the Weasel” evokes the stoic camaraderie of male-centered World War II fiction. Amid gunfire and mordant banter, a German soldier is killed; American corporal Norris contemplates writing the man’s family about the death: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Kraut, if only Helmut had worn his helmet. Yours truly, A. Hitler.”
The anthology’s skillful literary mimicry balances crafted prose with more absurd descriptions and dialogue. This technique sustains each story’s readability while heightening the underlying satire. The rambling Southern narrator of “Yours Forever, Winsome Jim” describes familiar regional elements of biscuits, grits, and Piggy Wiggly stores, but there are also distinctive moments of drinking sherry while naming “constellations in the sky,” and missing a lover with “every breath and every beat” of the heart.
Within the book’s layered mini-universe, some stories are too lengthy, and the lack of chronological placement makes the collection feel disorganized. But Marley emerges as a separate and intriguing character as he reveals details about his life. A school librarian, his love of literature began early, with books providing “refuge” from the “brutes and ‘air-heads’ that overpopulated” his childhood. Always “on the trail” of forgotten authors, he describes travels spanning from New Zealand to Oklahoma, with details as of a quaint bed-and-breakfast overwhelmed by floral patterns.
Indeed, Marley’s often tangential observations add humor, particularly when they have little to do with the referenced topic. Though Clémence Pascale was neither Russian nor communist, Marley links the writer’s birth date to “the day the Soviets replaced their five-day work week with a six-day system.” And beyond his narrative chatter (filled with actual and invented facts), Marley provides epistolary encouragement to an aspiring author and former student, trying to help the younger man with his substance abuse, insisting, “The world needs writers, Jackson! Without them, I will run out of books to read.”
The fabulated literary anthology Shepard Marley’s Minor American Authors weaves fictions around the art of fiction with esoteric finesse.
Reviewed by
Meg Nola
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
