But Tell It Slant: Fierce Fictions

Matt Pavelich's stories wait quietly for a reader to discover them, and once they do-drawn in no doubt through a mesmerizing opening line or through seeing newly captured even the most mundane and familiar elements in our lives-they will keep turning pages, unaware of anything else around them until the reverie is broken by impending darkness, and they have to stand up to turn on a lamp so as to keep reading. From the moment he first appeared on the literary horizon with his Montana Book Award-winning story collection, Beasts of the Forest, Beasts of the Field in 1989, Pavelich has distinguished himself as a master of the form, penning story after story (and a few novels along the way) to remind discriminating readers what honest, organic wordsmithing looks like. Absent any of the lingering electronic glow of the writing factories, Pavelich's stories gleam like embers in a woodstove; the odors of larch smoke and oranges cling to them the way that true insight comes from hiking alone over the continental divide, or sewing a quilt, or chopping cordwood. If you want to remember what well crafted writing used to mean, get a copy of But Tell It Slant.