Bøker av John Kearns

"Worlds" depicts four generations of the Logan family from Ireland in 1870 to New York City in 1998. In a mosaic of episodes arranged by theme, "Worlds" portrays a family through poetic shards of narrative. ***Through the lens of the Seven Deadly Sins/Lively Virtues, "Worlds" examines these representatives of four generations of Logans. ***1) Seamus Logan: a broken-hearted lover who flees his home in 1870 County Mayo, Ireland for Connemara and New York. Seamus eventually makes his way to Philadelphia where he founds a new family and a construction dynasty. ***2) Reverend Sarsfield Logan, S.J.: a Jesuit priest who teaches French at Xavier High School in Manhattan's Chelsea section. In 1910, Esther, a firebrand striker from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, raises Sarsfield's consciousness and tempts his heart. ***3) Janey Logan (nee Dougherty): a sensitive introvert who falls in love with her engaged boss, James Logan, at his family company. After Janey wins James over and marries him, she struggles to be happy as a housewife and mother in the 1970s Philadelphia suburbs. ***4) Paul Logan: a former South Bronx teacher and would-be poet/musician, Paul competes with the young Englishman, Charles, for the affections of Laura, a beautiful barmaid, on a wild late-night car trip from the World Trade Center to Times Square as the 1998 Good Friday Agreement is signed in Northern Ireland. ***"Worlds" was a finalist in the 2018 William Wisdom - William Faulkner Creative Writing Competition in New Orleans. An early excerpt from "Worlds" was a finalist for the 2002 New Century Writers' Award. Another excerpt was named a finalist for the 2012 James Hearst Poetry Prize and published in the "North American Review." The "Danse Macabre" online literary magazine has published four additional excerpts from "Worlds."***

"Why didn't they know? ... He could see the darkness of their souls, the void that drove them to huddle together at all times ... He saw the souls, too, of all the other swim clubs that he had joined or visited over the years, clubs filled with equal measures of hypocrisy, deceit, and meanness, each one seeming to its members, as primitive societies did to theirs, to be all that there is, the whole world."Saturated with what he has learned of Classics and history, a 16-year-old boy reflects upon the flow of recent events in his own history: his discovering his Irish heritage, his loss of a job, his receiving an Artistic vocation, his traumatic experiences of unrequited love. These events become psychic cataclysms that destroy his traditional worldview and force him to create a new one. They also teach him what it means to become an Artist and a man. Exploiting imagery ranging from Greek mythology to video games and employing conventional and experimental techniques, The World is a passionate, multi-layered, poetic depiction of an artistic soul's maturation. Twenty years in the writing, The World is a work that should be read again and again.