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    • Home
    • About
    • The Nihilistics
    • Reading Lists
    • Published Links
    • Art
    • Prose/Poetry
    • Pix
  • Home
  • About
  • The Nihilistics
  • Reading Lists
  • Published Links
  • Art
  • Prose/Poetry
  • Pix

Published Links

Kingsford Charcoal Factory Tour USA TODAY

I covered the first Kingsford Invitational BBQ Championship and got a private tour of the Kingsford Charcoal Factory in Belle, Missouri.  It was published in USA Today.

MY Books on Amazon

The Nihilistics, The Reclusives, YOU with The Ill-usives, The Killer Detective Novelist

How to recognize Horse meat on foreign menus Usa Today

Wrote an article about how to avoid eating horse meat when it's disguised on menus.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Thanks Mom

Chicken Soup for the Soul Thanks Mom

Chicken Soup for the soul Thanks Dad

Chicken Soup for the Soul Thanks Dad


REVIEW OF THE RECLUSIVES BY POET JORN AKE

With The Reclusives, Mark Puckett has written a gem of a collection. Each story is what a writer might scrawl on the backs of rejection letters for submissions that followed the rules set by workshops and literary journals. The language is impatient and emphatic, stating directly those first associations of image and meaning that come from the creation of narrative made of the observed absurdity of daily life. Freer and more open to asymmetric logic than the typical short story, each reflects the psychology of their protagonists, who, while recluses, are not rejects. Rather Puckett's characters are recluses from the hypocrisy of the cliches that construct the go-nowhere 9-to-5 work-a-day world. Their inability to remain tidily numbed by the sedative of no-meaning makes them unable to just be. A salary man discovers the cubicles of his office have the internal logic of a multi-floor crossword puzzle. A novelist finds success only by writing unpublishable novels in the voice of a Czech literary figure who does not exist. A Willy Lomanesque businessman has his moment of self discovery in the halls of a dog show among artificially coiffed poodles. And in the extended final piece, "Pool Man", Puckett lets rip an ecstatic freebase of an odyssey with twist after twist through an absurdist but eminently logical landscape that folds one moment upon the next. All the while, Puckett manages to maintain a sweet regard for his "reclusives", allowing each character the opportunity within their story to achieve a certain uneasy peace with themselves, their positions in this whacked out world, and move on into whatever awaits them beyond. The results are frequently curious, never quite what is expected and always very smart. I can heartily recommend his work to those for whom the status quo feels a bit more like a straitjacket. This is a good book and one worth taking for a swim. 

Copyright © 2018 Mark Damon Puckett, BA, MA, MFA, MLitt, MLitt - All Rights Reserved.

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