Thus, we read 'At the end of my drinking … I started writing my first novel,' and 'In 1987, I institutionalized myself.' The line between Moody's life and his fiction is always a thin one, and Moody both encourages this tendency (as in 'Primary Sources' and the introduction to the new edition of Garden State ) and discourages it at the same time (as in the note before Purple America where he disavows comparison between his character Billie Raitliffe and his own mother). With Barthes, Derrida, Eco, Foucault, and Angela Carter among other theorists, Moody footnotes theirs and other books in places where they correlate to significant events of his own life. He ends his short story collection The Ring of Brightest Angels around Heaven with a section called 'Primary Sources,' which lists those books that have most influenced him. Stylistically, Moody is an author who takes postmodernism for granted. These are Americans (a word Moody often uses to ironic effect) who lived through the Vietnam War as pre-teens, came of age during the Reagan-era 1980s, and who are intensely aware of the significance of pop cultural references, right down to the significance of their own clothing. Like the fiction of his contemporary, the Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland, Moody's fiction features protagonists of Moody's own generation. His three novels, Garden State, The Ice Storm, and Purple America, and his short story collection, The Ring of Brightest Angels around Heaven, all published at a prolific pace within five years, create not only a distinct literary geography but also a fascinating temporal picture. Like the work of other well-known East-Coast American writers ( John Irving, John Updike), Moody's fiction is firmly rooted in, as well as written in response to, the urban, rural, and suburban landscapes of the area roughly bounded by New York City to the south and Boston to the north. Paul's School Hoboken, New Jersey, where he lived after graduating from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and Columbia University in New York City all appear in barely disguised form in his fiction. The suburbs of New York City Manchester, New Hampshire, where he attended St. Born in New York City, Moody spent his childhood and youth in many northeastern American locations. Rick Moody is one of the most gifted American novelists of his generation. Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, 1995.* Film Adaptations: San Francisco, Artspace Books, 1998.Ĭontributor of essays, Judith Schaechter: Heart Attacks by Judith Tannenbaum. Hover (text), photographs by Gregory Crewdson. Joyful Noise: The New Testament Revisited (editor, with DarceySteinke).

The Ring of Brightest Angels around Heaven: A Novella and Stories. Address: Brooklyn Heights, New York, U.S.A. Awards: Pushcart Press Editors' Book Award O. Columbia University, New York, graduate writing program. Education: Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, B.A.

The Ice Storm by Rick Moody