Description
“Blaise is probably the greatest living Canadian writer most Canadians have never heard of.” —Quill & Quire
“If you want to understand something about what life was like in the restless, peripatetic, striving, anxiety-ridden, shimmer cultural soup of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries,” writes Margaret Atwood, “read the stories of Clark Blaise.” This Time, That Place draws together twenty-four stories that span the entirety of Blaise’s career, including one never previously published. Moving swiftly across place and time, through and between languages—from Florida’s Confederate swamps, to working-class Pittsburgh, to Montreal and abroad—they demonstrate Blaise’s profound mastery of the short story and reveal the range of his lifelong preoccupation with identity as fallacy, fable, and dream.
This Time, That Place: Selected Stories confirms Clark Blaise as one of the best and most enduring masters of the form—on either side of our shared borders.
Praise for This Time, That Place
“[Blaise] paints a restless, uneasy portrait of society at the turn of the 21st century.”—New York Times
“More people should read Blaise … Contemporary life is full of irreconcilable tensions. This Time, That Place captures a handful of them, simultaneously telling stories of three countries and a multitude of identities that cut across various social, culture, political and economic dimensions.”—Globe and Mail
“If the topic is longing, loneliness or the search for love in an untethered world, no one writes with more wisdom or more beautifully.”—Alexander MacLeod, for the Globe and Mail
“This Time, That Place is not only a stunning collection of fiction, it is one of considerable importance; most readers will not recognize how much they have been lacking in their reading lives until they experience the work of Clark Blaise first-hand.”—Toronto Star
“The adolescent yo-yo takes many forms in This Time, That Place (Biblioasis), which recalls an old cigar box filled with undated and often cryptic postcards. […] Individually or as a group, these loosely linked stories will reward multiple readings.”—Literary Review of Canada
“This Time, That Place demonstrates why Blaise is one of Canada’s greatest short story writers.”—CBC Books
“Blaise is … almost preternaturally adept at noticing things … sublime technique and linguistic finesse [are] showcased in these inestimable short works.”—Quill & Quire, starred review
“With the publication of This Time, That Place confirms, author Clark Blaise is clearly documented as being one of the best and most enduring masters of the short story literary form.”—Midwest Book Review
“[Blaise’s] readers don’t feel as though they’re merely a fly on the wall: They’re sitting in the back of a stolen car in the middle of the night, inheriting a new identity as they watch a past life fade in the rearview.”—The McGill Tribune
“The publication of This Time, That Place is a cause for celebration. Not only does This Time, That Place prove Blaise to be a master of the craft, it also holds a mirror up to the reader. It may answer the question ‘Who is Clark Blaise?’ but it raises the bigger, more important questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Where am I now?'”—PRISM International
“Clark Blaise might be North America’s Great Unclaimed Writer … These stories, like their author, embody and enact a continental sense and sensibility.”—The Bulwark
“This Time, That Place does a good job of establishing Blaise not only as one of the major voices in Canadian fiction in the last half-century, but as a deeply entertaining writer to boot. It’s one best enjoyed slowly, giving each of these stories time to settle and let them linger on.”—Live in Limbo
“These stories cover ground not only geographically. They are also crowded with character and incident, always fiercely and smartly observed … Blaise has gathered here a smart, sprawling collection of stories about family, rootlessness, and identity.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Blaise’s stories are shapely and full of keenly observed details that bring their often unglamorous settings to life. For those unfamiliar with his work, This Time, That Place will come as an especially pleasant discovery.”—Shelf Awareness
“This selection contains a life’s work from one of the most important short story writers to ever live in North America. No artist before Blaise, and nobody since, has moved through the continent with so much sensitivity, compassion, and intelligence. Most at home when they are lost, Blaise’s characters search hardest for belonging when the conditions are least hospitable. For fifty peripatetic years, his beautifully crafted stories have shown us a way though. In our desperation, whenever we ask: ‘Where am I now?’ Clark Blaise provides the honest answer we need: ‘Right here.'”—Alexander MacLeod, author of Animal Person
“A dazzling gallery of portraits of North American lives rendered in Blaise’s emotionally evocative style.”—Joyce Carol Oates
Praise for Clark Blaise
“If you want to understand something about what life was like in the restless, peripatetic, striving, anxiety-ridden simmering cultural soup of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, read the stories of Clark Blaise. He’s the recording angel and the accuser, rolled into one. He’s the eye at the keyhole. He’s the ear at the door.”—Margaret Atwood
“Blaise is probably the greatest living Canadian writer most Canadians have never heard of.”—Quill & Quire
“Clark Blaise’s brilliantly imagined The Meagre Tarmac is a novel in short-story form, warmly intimate, startling in its quick jumps and revelations … with the rich and compelling detail for which [his] fiction is renowned … Remarkable.”
—Joyce Carol Oates
