By Stuart Ross
Stuart Ross’s sometimes poignant, sometimes outrageous third story collection deepens his exploration of the possibilities of the short story and narrative. A trio of tales probe fame through the lens of 1960s-70s French pop and disco icon Claude François; legendary Hollywood actor Lee Marvin saves the day, again and again; the citizens of a small town worship an all-knowing potato; a man dons a bib to devour his neighbour’s house; a tourist finds both love and a dead frog in Nicaragua; and, in one particularly educational anti-story, the author instructs readers in the art of writing the short story. In I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub, Ross, a veteran of the Canadian literary underground, unleashes his arsenal of pathos, absurdism, humour, and cantankerousness.
PRAISE FOR ROSS’S PREVIOUS SHORT FICTION:
“The power of each one of those tiny little chapters [in Pockets] just sneaks up and knocks the wind out of you. I’ve never read anything like it.”
—Michelle Winters, author of I Am a Truck (CBC News)
“These untitled micro-chapters [in Pockets] fit together like Lego blocks built by William S. Bourroughs and his wild friend Brion Gysin. Stuart Ross simply never fails to delight, surprise and inform as he entertains.… Ross is most likely going to take you out of your range of reason and then back in before you can blink.”
—Michael Dennis, author of Bad Engine (Today’s Book of Poetry)
“Stuart Ross’s writing is a life raft with a clown on it.”
—Domina Eliahou-Cyrus, bassist for Bitch Stick
“Ross doesn’t waste a word, and the impact is often breathtaking. He knows how to extend a metaphor so that even the most absurd or hallucinatory episodes—and there are many of these—convey deep meaning.” —Susan G. Cole, NOW
“i like it when stuart ross writes words.”
—Karen Brissette, Goodreads #1 Best Reviewer
Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and small press guerrilla living in Cobourg, Ontario. The recipient of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize and the 2010 Relit Prize for Short Fiction, among others, Stuart is the author of over twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, most recently The Book of Grief and Hamburgers (ECW Press, 2022) and 70 Kippers: The Dagmar Poems (with Michael Dennis; Proper Tales Press, 2020). Stuart has taught workshops in schools across the country and was Writer-in-Residence at Queen’s University and the University of Ottawa. His work has been translated into French, Norwegian, Slovene, Russian, Spanish, and Estonian. I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub is his third collection of short fiction.
