Celebrating Fifty Years of Picador Books The world just goes along. Nothing much matters, you know? I mean really matters. but then sometimes, just for a second, you get this grace, this belief that it does matter, a whole lot. With an introduction from Lydia Davis Lucia Berlin's stories in A Manual for Cleaning Women make for one of the most remarkable unsung collections in twentieth-century American fiction. With extraordinary honesty and magnetism, Lucia Berlin invites us into her rich, itinerant life: the drink and the mess and the pain and the beauty and the moments of surprise and of grace, with a voice is witty, anarchic, compassionate, and completely unique. Part of the Picador Collection, a series showcasing the best of modern literature.
About the Author
Berlin began publishing relatively late in life, under the encouragement and sometimes tutelage of poet Ed Dorn. Her first small collection,Angels Laundromatwas published in 1981, but her published stories were written as early as 1960. Several of her stories appeared in magazines such asThe Atlanticand Saul Bellow’s little magazineThe Noble Savage.Berlin published six collections of short stories, but most of her work can be found in three later volumes from Black Sparrow Books:Homesick: New and Selected Stories, So Long: Stories 1987-92andWhere I Live Now: Stories 1993-98.Berlin was never a bestseller, but was widely influential within the literary community. She aspired to Chekhov's objectivity and refusal to judge. She has also been widely compared to Raymond Carver and Richard Yates. One of her most memorable achievements was the stunning one-page story "My Jockey," which captured a world, a moment and a panoramic movement in five quick paragraphs. It won the Jack London Short Prize for 1985. Berlin also won an American Book Award in 1991 forHomesick, and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.
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