Spikes by Michael Griffith eBook

PRAISE

Griffith's writing crackles with a lacerating humor from which nothing and no one is spared.... [He] concocts a truly Nabokovian entertainment, which probes the twinned nature of winners and losers, the lore of the game, and the eccentric subculture it spawns--though one needn't have the slightest interest in golf to be won over.—Publishers Weekly

Spikes is a wicked and smart indictment of American absurdity, thinly disguised as a novel about golf. Griffith is a writer of inestimable intelligence and this book is a multi-layered surprise.—Elizabeth Gilbert

Spikes is a devilish book, by turns gut-wrenching, philosophical, dazzlingly beautiful and as hilarious as anything recently published. . . . [It] is a comic look at our follies and foibles, a brilliantly written examination of how we generate and cope with our personal miseries. With a prose style that is uniquely his own, Griffith's writting is as lush as Nabokov's, as intelligent as Saul Bellow's and as vivid as the best work of E.L. Doctorow. Spikesheralds the arrival of one of the finest young writers in America, and we can only hope Michael Griffith will write many, many novels.—Houston Chronicle

This is the rarest of breeds, the literary golf novel . . .Griffith satirizes the minitours with Jenkins-like brio; he celebrates the wonder of golf with the intensity of Michael Murphy; and he delivers a series of rambling, allusive monologues that recall Saul Bellow’s Herzog in full cry . . . Enough superb moments to keep us wanting more.--Booklist

Griffith, with many essays and shorter works of fiction to his credit, knows golf well. More important, his writing is so vivid that even a nongolfer will be swept up for this breathless ride through the strip malls, night life and sleazy resorts of American schlock culture run amok. . . . Griffith succeeds in portraying a life spent clawing at the edge of glory.—New York Times Book Review

As with any fine novel, the ending depends on the rich journey one takes to get there--a journey in this case supremely worth taking. But it is again the mark of a talented writer to be able to balance the comic elements of this novel (and there are many; this is a funny book too) with their more grounded, human dimensions. So yes, it's a golf novel; and yes, it's a fine piece of writing. . . . This is also the debut of a compelling voice whose work will only gather more admirers as time progresses—Spikes is clearly just the beginning of Michael Griffith's flight.—New Delta Review

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Griffith’s most recent novel, Trophy (Triquarterly), was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best 25 Books of Fiction for 2011. His previous books are Bibliophilia (2003) and Spikes (2001), both from Arcade. Griffith’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Ninth Letter, Salmagundi, Oxford American, New England Review, Shenandoah, Ninth Letter, Southwest Review, Five Points, Blackbird, The Washington Post, Chicago Quarterly Review, and other periodicals, and he is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, among others. He is a former winner of the Cleanth Brooks Prize for Nonfiction (judged by Patricia Hampl).

A native of Orangeburg , SC , Griffith earned an AB in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton (summa cum laude) in 1987 and an MFA in Creative Writing from LSU (1992). From 1992 to 2002 he served as the Associate Editor of The Southern Review. He is now Professor of English and Director of Graduate Studies in English at the University of Cincinnati, and he teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters as well. In 2004 he became founding editor of Yellow Shoe Fiction, an original-fiction series from LSU Press, and he is Fiction Editor at Cincinnati Review.

Griffith has been at UC since 2002. A recipient of the English department’s Boyce Award for Teaching and of the university’s Outstanding Doctoral Mentoring Award, he was named a Fellow of the Graduate School in 2013.