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FeedMinute Critic
By CAROL RATELLE LEACH
Horse of a Different Color
Tired of losing authors to richer publishers in New York City, Graywolf Press recently completed a groundbreaking $1 million fundraising drive. As a result, the Minneapolis-based nonprofit is publishing such top-tier work as Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses ($22), translated from the Norwegian by Anne Born. This starkly beautiful novel (Petterson’s fifth) tells of a 67-year-old who retreats to eastern Norway to come to terms with the misadventure that ended his childhood innocence. “I recall running from the bedroom with my clothes in my hand that summer night in 1948,” he writes, “realizing in a sudden panic that what my father said and how things really were, were not necessarily the same, and that made the world liquid and hard to hold on to.” Petterson will visit for events at St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota later this year.People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know about you…. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No one can touch you unless you yourself want them to.” —Per Petterson
Lolly Pop
Lolly Pop
—JIM MEYER
