Twilight Innings: A West Texan on Grace and Survival
With an artful selection of carefully crafted essays, Dr. Robert Fink’s latest offering of prose is already creating a buzz in the literary community. Much of the content comes from his own life experiences in West Texas, and it comes with humorous, sorrowful, nostalgic, and slightly sardonic candor. Although many of the essays were previously published, this is the first time they’ve been brought together in one work.
Authors have high praise for the collection. “In these essays Fink puts himself in the middle of the diamond as in the middle of things American, and readers are grateful to be witnesses to the informed heart, the discriminate sympathy, the keen yet modest intelligence, the deftness of his prose strokes,� says Bruce Smith. Alison Hawthorne Deming adds, “Fink is an amiable witness of what it means to live and teach with faith and compassion.�
It is easy to see why this book is received with such enthusiasm. I leafed through it looking for an example to cite and was unconsciously pulled into a life of experiences that was at times remarkable, always approachable, and somehow familiar. There was always an echo of life itself in every passage, thoughts we’ve all had, but went unvoiced. Fink captures them for our pleasure, so we can affirm our own humanity.
A finalist in the 2005 Violet Crown Book Awards for his collection of poems Tracking the Morning, Dr. Robert Fink is the W.D. and Hollis R. Bond Professor of English and director of creative writing at Hardin-Simmons University. Book signings are scheduled for Dr. Fink at Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Star, Sep 14 during Artwalk, The West Texas Book and Music Festival Sep 22 – 23, and at Books-A-Million Sep 30, 10:00 a.m. – 1:00 p.m.
Author Steve Weathers captures the beauty of the work most succinctly, “In the interstices of silence, a spoken word is – paradoxically – dangerously inappropriate and yet desperately desired. Any word uttered must be sure, apt, and above all, honest. Bob Fink speaks into the void with just such infallible assurance and disarming candor.�
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