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On display is a love of obsolete technologies, small-town whimsy, home movies of proms and birthday parties, steam engines and baseball games. If Italo Calvino lived in Indiana rather than Italy, these are the fictions he might have made.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49556465385745,"sku":"GOR013495251","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/157366068X.jpg?v=1750830698"},{"product_id":"complete-writings-of-art-smith-the-bird-boy-of-fort-wayne-edited-by-michael-mart-book-michael-martone-9781950774210","title":"The Complete Writings of Art Smith, the Bird Boy of Fort Wayne, Edited by Michael Martone","description":"Fictitious biographical snippets that celebrate the sky-written words of early aviation and the life of the man behind them.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49737430204689,"sku":"NGR9781950774210","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49796735074577,"sku":"CIN195077421XG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51055363883281,"sku":"NIN9781950774210","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52680314749201,"sku":"NLS9781950774210","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/195077421X.jpg?v=1750932119"},{"product_id":"plain-air-sketches-from-winesburg-indiana-book-michael-martone-9781936097425","title":"Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana","description":"A new story collection focused on the Heartland from Michael Martone, one of America's most prolific and important contemporary authors.    In Plain Air: Sketches from Winesburg, Indiana, Michael Martone places steady fingers on the arrhythmic pulse of the Flyover as he conjures Winesburg, Indiana, a fictional town and all of its inhabitants’ lyric philosophies, tales of the mundane, and the sensation of being “lost” in the heart of the heart of the country. But here, in over one-hundred and thirty short fictions, even as there is much sadness, the citizens continue to tinker and create, marvel and wonder in the midst of ruin and rust. These stories may capture lives of quiet desperation, but in so doing, they create a kind of hobbled poetry in the spontaneous sketches of the ordinary made extraordinary, the regular irregularities, the familiar knocked off-balance with a glancing blow. From the overly overworked City Manager, to Margaret Wigg’s obsessively collected collection of library stamps, to Blanche’s air-filled aluminum ice cube tray, the town is a community of everyday odd-balls rife with isolation and idiosyncrasy. They are people trying to get by; that question loss as well as passion, devotedness, childhood wonder, and kinship in their observations and daily routines. With undeniable humor, intelligent quirk, and earnest longing for a pastoral passing into the annals of deep Midwestern time, Michael Martone crafts an unforgettable panoply of characters whose perspectives invite us to alternatively interpret our own commonplaces.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49745534812433,"sku":"NGR9781936097425","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50402804138257,"sku":"CIN1936097427G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51054784151825,"sku":"NIN9781936097425","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51737865617681,"sku":"CIN1936097427VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52433960370449,"sku":"NLS9781936097425","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1936097427.jpg?v=1751156611"},{"product_id":"fort-wayne-is-seventh-on-hitler-s-list-enlarged-edition-book-michael-martone-9780253208514","title":"Fort Wayne Is Seventh on Hitler's List, Enlarged Edition","description":"Talking about Indiana, this book includes eleven stories and adds three, focusing on a character named Dan Quayle who happens to be Vice-President and another about a magical WOWO radio station in Fort Wayne.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49790835163409,"sku":"CIN0253208513VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50609567826193,"sku":"CIN0253208513A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000611569937,"sku":"NIN9780253208514","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0253208513.jpg?v=1763220576"},{"product_id":"rules-of-thumb-book-michael-martone-9781582973913","title":"Rules of Thumb","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49805449101585,"sku":"CIN1582973911G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51333060854033,"sku":"CIN1582973911VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":53027226321169,"sku":"CIN1582973911A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53377067712785,"sku":"GOR003444254","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1582973911.jpg?v=1751245559"},{"product_id":"alive-dead-in-indiana-book-michael-martone-9780394530215","title":"Alive\u0026dead in Indiana","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50353391010065,"sku":"CIN0394530217A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52104063713553,"sku":"CIN0394530217G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0394530217.jpg?v=1751134588"},{"product_id":"flatness-and-other-landscapes-book-michael-martone-9780820324791","title":"The Flatness and Other Landscapes","description":"Here, the flatness of the American Midwest becomes the author's canvas for a rendering of midwestern culture and history.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50362940621073,"sku":"CIN0820324795G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51008368083217,"sku":"NIN9780820324791","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820324795.jpg?v=1751169954"},{"product_id":"unconventions-book-michael-martone-9780820327792","title":"Unconventions","description":"\u003cp\u003eUnconventions is a quirky and provocative miscellany that reveals Michael Martone s protean interests as a writer and a writing teacher. Martone has, shall we say, a problem with authority. His chief pleasure in knowing the rules of his vocation comes from trying out new ways to bend, blend, or otherwise defy them. The pieces gathered in Unconventions are drawn from a long career spent loosening the creative strictures on writing. Including articles, public addresses, essays, interviews, and even a eulogy, these writings vary greatly in form but are unified in addressing the many technical and artistic issues that face all writers, particularly those interested in experimental and nontraditional modes and forms.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMartone s approach has always been to synthesize, to understand and use any technique, formula, or style available. I find myself, then, he writes, self-identifying as a formalist, both and neither an experimenter and\/or a traditionalist. In I Love a Parade: An Afterword, Martone writes about not fitting in--and loving it--as he recalls the time he marched alone in a local Labor Day parade, as a one-person delegation from the National Writers Union. Elsewhere, in writings formally, stylistically, purposely at odds with themselves, Martone s expansive curiosity is on full display. We learn about camouflage techniques, how a baby acquires language, how to read a WPA-era post office mural, and why Martone sold his stock in the New Yorker and reinvested his money in the company that makes Etch A Sketch(r).\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eUnconventions, then, is Martone s Frankensteinian monster, a kind of unruly, hybrid spawn of the mainstream writing enterprise. Writing seems to me an intrinsic pleasure, an end in itself first, says Martone. The question for me is not whether my writing, or any piece of writing, is good or bad but what the writing is and what it is doing and how finally it is used or can be used by others.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50363017363729,"sku":"CIN0820327794G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371220078865,"sku":"CIN0820327794A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820327794.jpg?v=1751139326"},{"product_id":"townships-book-michael-martone-9780877453550","title":"Townships","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50366294327569,"sku":"CIN0877453551G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0877453551.jpg?v=1751298191"},{"product_id":"racing-in-place-book-michael-martone-9780820330396","title":"Racing in Place","description":"\u003cp\u003eIs it truth or fiction? Memoir or essay? Narrative or associative? To a writer like Michael Martone, questions like these are high praise. Martone's studied disregard of form and his unruffled embrace of the prospect that nothing--no story, no life--is ever quite finished have yielded some of today's most splendidly unconventional writing. Add to that an utter weakness for pop Americana and what Louise Erdrich has called a deep affection for the ordinary, and you have one of the few writers who could pull off something like \u003ci\u003eRacing in Place\u003c\/i\u003e. Up the steps of the Washington Monument, down the home stretch at the Indy Speedway, and across the parking lot of the Moon Winx Lodge in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Martone chases, and is chased by, memories--and memories of memories. He writes about his grandfather's job as a meter reader, those seventies-era hotels with atrium lobbies and open glass elevators, and the legendary temper of basketball coach Bob Knight. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eMartone, as Peter Turchi has said, looks under stones the rest of us leave unturned. So, what is he really up to when he dwells on the make of Malcolm X's eyeglasses or the runner-up names for Snow White's seven dwarfs? In My Mother Invents a Tradition, Martone tells how his mom, as the dean of girls at a brand-new high school in Fort Wayne, Indiana, constructed a nostalgic past out of nothing. Sitting at their dining room table, she came up with everything from the school colors (orange and brown) to the yearbook title (Bear Tracks). Look, and then look again, Martone is saying. You never know. I never know.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371297214737,"sku":"CIN0820330396A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51330903769361,"sku":"CIN0820330396G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820330396.jpg?v=1750849903"},{"product_id":"brooding-book-michael-martone-9780820353074","title":"Brooding","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis collection of more than twenty-five essays, both meditative and formally inventive, considers all kinds of subjects: everyday objects such as keys and hats, plus concepts of time and place; the memoir; writing; the essay itself; and Michael Martone's friendship with the writers David Foster Wallace, Jonathan Franzen, and Kurt Vonnegut. Throughout the essays, Martone's style expands with the incorporation of new technological platforms. Several of the pieces were written specifically for online venues, while the essays on the death of Martone's mother and father were written on Facebook while the events happened. One essay about using new technologies in the classroom was written solely in tweets. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ci\u003eBrooding\u003c\/i\u003e--the book's title and the title of an essay--draws a parallel between the disappearance of early browsers and the emergence, after seventeen years, of a brood of cicadas. Throughout these essays Martone's words inhabit spaces where the reconnection to people in the past and the metaphors of electronic memory converge.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50371932586257,"sku":"CIN0820353078VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51423961907473,"sku":"CIN0820353078G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0820353078.jpg?v=1750914690"},{"product_id":"seeing-eye-book-michael-martone-9780944072516","title":"Seeing Eye","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50372722065681,"sku":"CIN0944072518G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0944072518.jpg?v=1750883806"},{"product_id":"indiana-book-michael-martone-9781573660952","title":"The Indiana","description":"A master of the nearly true presents an ersatz travel book for the Hoosier State. 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Michael Martone's self-inventions include the multiple deaths of himself and all his family members, his Kafkaesque rebirth as a giant insect, and his stints as circus performer, assembly-line worker, photographer, and movie extra. Expect no autobiographical consistency here. A note revealing Martone's mother as the ghost-writer of all his books precedes the note beginning, \"\"Michael Martone, an orphan...\"\" We learn of Martone's university career and sketchy formal education, his misguided caretaking of his teacher John Barth's lawn, and his impersonation of a poor African republic in political science class, where Martone's population is allowed to starve as his more fortunate fellow republics fight over development and natural resource trading-cards. The author of \"\"Michael Martone\"\", whose other names include Missy, Dolly, Peanut, Bug, Gigi-tone, Tony's boy, Patty's boy, Junior's, Mickey, Monk, Mr Martone, and \"\"the contributor named in this note,\"\" proves as Protean as fiction itself, continuously transforming the past with every new attribution but never identifying himself by name. It is this missing personage who, from first note to last, constitutes the unformed subject of \"\"Michael Martone\"\".","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51424485769489,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51424486359313,"sku":"CIN1573661260G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52848950214929,"sku":"CIN1573661260VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1573661260.jpg?v=1751023162"},{"product_id":"place-of-sense-book-michael-martone-9780877452171","title":"A Place of Sense","description":null,"brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51461441683729,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51461442273553,"sku":"CIN0877452172G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0877452172.jpg?v=1750787469"},{"product_id":"table-talk-second-thoughts-book-michael-martone-9781960329776","title":"Table Talk \u0026 Second Thoughts","description":"\u003cp\u003eWith wit and humor, Michael Martone writes his life as one of brief bites, effervescent episodes, and meaningful meals illuminated by the luminaries on the other side of the table. 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Virtually all of the stories in this \"double-wide\" collection speak to the Hoosier experience and imagination. Places like Martone's hometown of Fort Wayne, as well as Peru, Elkhart, and Indianapolis, and narrators such as Colonel Sanders, Alfred Kinsey, and James Dean's high school English teacher all come to life with the author's trademark blend of irreverent humor and incisive reality.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52734829887761,"sku":"NIN9780253218902","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780253218902.jpg?v=1763397440"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-michael-martone.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}