Winged Shoes and a Shield: Collected Stories

by Don Bajema

Overview

Hallucinating between childhood and manhood, Eddie Burnett is both hero and anti-hero in this hard-hitting collection of linked stories. Coming of age in California's post-war suburbs and freefalling through the turbulence of the sixties and early seventies, Eddie's transformation from a boy's innocence to a man's hardened wariness is captured in lyrical, emotionally raw episodes. He navigates the minefields of American masculinity in a series of disturbing, yet strangely uplifting odysseys, from hope to despair and back again.

"A walking badass of a book."—Rolling Stone

"Don is a great writer. His work is worth reading."—Henry Rollins

Author, screenwriter, actor and performer, Don Bajema lives in New York City.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780872865884
Publisher:	City Lights Books
Publication date:	10/23/2012
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Novelist, screenwriter, actor and performer Don Bajema was born in St. John’s, New Foundland, Canada in 1949. He is the author of two highly acclaimed collections of short stories, Boy In The Air and Reach. As an actor, Bajema first appeared on stage in the west coast premiere of Sam Shepard’s “Curse of the Starving Class”. With a lead role in the 1983 film Signal Seven, Bajema began a long-time collaboration with groundbreaking independent film director Rob Nilsson. He had a lead role in Nilsson’s 1988 Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize winner Heat and Sunlight and he wrote and starred in the 1996 film Chalk which Nilsson directed. He has appeared in more than a dozen feature films, most recently Carl Franklin’s 2002 film High Crimes. A favorite on the "spoken word circuit", Bajema has toured extensively in the US, Canada and Europe, performing at hundreds of clubs, theaters and universities. He has shared the spoken word stage with the likes of Hubert Selby, Henry Rollins and Jim Carroll. He is a former world-class track and field athlete who competed in the 1972 US Olympic trials and played football for legendary coach Don Coryell at San Diego State University. He currently lives in New York City with his family.

Editorial Reviews

Canadian actor and novelist Bajema’s astute and unconventional collection of interconnected stories follows Eddie Burnett, a “goony” 13-year-old boy eager for a girl’s attention; driving the narrative, his coming-of-age trials take place amid the parched canyons of Southern California. Told in vignettes (published in the books Reach and Boy in the Air in 1996 by Henry Rollins’s imprint, 2.13.61), these lyrical stories treat a range of topics, from schoolboy football stardom and infatuation with a local beauty to Eddie’s encounters with his emotionally battered father, described as a “dog of war” with a “soul in pieces.” Decades flow by, as the author reveals Barnett’s life as a trailer-park boy during the ’60s and ’70s and later as an unhappily married man. Memorable boyhood shenanigans (some with tragic endings) precede accounts of other characters consumed by their own predicaments. Bajema’s prose combines the precision of pop-song lyrics with the surreal haziness of a fever-dream. A raw and direct pathway into the mind of an independent youth “trapped in the culture of Southern California.” (Oct. 15)

Publishers Weekly

"Bajema's prose combines the precision of pop-song lyrics with the surreal haziness of a fever-dream. . . . these lyrical stories treat a range of topics, from schoolboy football stardom and infatuation with a local beauty to Eddie’s encounters with his emotionally battered father, described as a 'dog of war' with a 'soul in pieces.' A raw and direct pathway into the mind of an independent youth 'trapped in the culture of Southern California.'"—Publishers Weekly

"Bajema's prose is surly and mesmerizing, snakes down your throat like a pickup's exhaust. Fans of Sam Shepard will dig these desperate and beautiful tales."—Joshua Mohr, author of Damascus

"Don Bajema is one of my favorite writers. His stories are tough, honest and sometimes brutal yet they're also merciful, wise and transcendent. Reading Bajema's work is like hearing an ancient, mysterious folk song played by a great rock and roll band in a dark bar somewhere in the Mojave Desert on a hot night. Don Bajema's stories makes me want to go write songs and play guitar too loud."—Dave Alvin, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter

"Don gives an articulate voice to the outsider. He captures the fragility of adolescence and the awkwardness; how the random collection of our childhood experiences shape us into the person we are reacting against, coming to terms with and always becoming."—Dred Scott, Musician

"A smidgeon of Shepard, a bit of Boyle, a cry of Kerouac and maybe a taste of Morrison flavor these original stories of a California life."—Robert Englund, Actor

"Discovering Don Bajema’s literary genius before the rest of the world has caught on is akin to stepping into Gerde’s Folk City in '61 and catching a young kid from Minnesota fixing his harmonica in place and launching into a song about 'Hard Rain' or finding yourself at London’s Marquee Club in '63 when a group of scruffy hooligans are reverently and rebelliously inventing a groundbreaking, world splitting, stone rolling, blues rock 'n roll. Bajema's writing ignites agonizing heartache, prophetic insight, immortal swagger, and a redemptive, triumphant love of life. You will beg him to keep on singing."—Pete Sinjin, Musician

"Winged Shoes and a Shield by Don Bajema is one of those books that I'm excited about reading every day and already sad about finishing. I know that once I've finished the last chapter, I'll be jonesing for more so I've found that I've been dragging out those last few pages. This is an example of what I think great writing is all about. There's sure to be at least one, if not many, of the stories in this book that will stay with you for a while after reading. I would list this as my most exciting read of the year."—Afropunk

From the Publisher