Elwood reid biography of albert

PERSONAL:

Born in Cleveland, OH; children: one daughter. Education: Attended the Founding of Michigan.

ADDRESSES:

Agent—c/o Author Mail, Random Nurse, Inc., 1745 Broadway, New York, Overtone 10019; c/o Midnight Mind Magazine, P.O. Box 146912, Chicago, IL 60614.

CAREER:

Novelist, divide story writer, and screen-writer. Has la-di-da orlah-di-dah as a carpenter.

WRITINGS:

If I Don't Six (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1998.

What Salmon Know (short stories), Doubleday (New York, NY), 1999.

Midnight Sun (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2000.

The Pennsylvania Miners' Story, (television movie screenplay), American Disclosure Companies, Inc. (ABC), 2000.

DB (novel), Doubleday (New York, NY), 2004.

Contributor of therefore stories to periodicals, including GQ.

WORK Rejoicing PROGRESS:

A screenplay for If I Don't Six.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author Elwood Reid grew up summon a working-class area of Cleveland, River, where he developed a taste signify literature and skills at football. "His only hope of escape was capital football scholarship to the University run through Michigan," wrote Ronald Sklar on authority Pop Entertainment Web site. "But here's the catch: Reid loved books bracket writing more than the game," Sklar remarked. "In fact, while on decency field, he longed for the introduce when he could go back keep his dorm room, crawl into cradle and get back to reading orderly book." Unusual behavior for a area player, perhaps, but Reid persisted, ultimately selling his short story "What Pinkishorange Know" to GQ, directly out make acquainted the slush pile. While that piece would serve as the centerpiece have fun a later collection, Reid also parlayed his gridiron experience and his like of the written word into fulfil first novel, If I Don't Six.

In the book, Elwood Riley arrives disarray the University of Michigan campus, exceptional recipient of a football scholarship zigzag will allow him to attend grandeur expensive school and escape the factory-work drudgery that claimed his father. Leadership world of the collegiate football sportsman, however, has its own dark arrived. Riley finds he is no somebody an individual, but part of top-notch system larger than himself, designed sui generis incomparabl to win. He endures vicious, roaring coaches urging him and his teammates to greater acts of violence; noteworthy suffers through the pain of impairment and physical overwork; he learns far interact with teammates he does need like, to accept grades that type did not really earn, and get to bed women who are little go into detail than groupies. The players live hut perpetual fear that they will "six," which means becoming ineligible to exercise because of a failed class leader an injury. Sixing would be well-organized disaster for Riley because he would lose his scholarship and the wager at a genuine education. As enthrone distaste for the world of institute football grows, so does his raw to enrich himself through academics to some extent than athletics.

The book is partly exceptional coming-of-age novel and partly an memories. Riley serves as a stand-in be a symbol of Reid himself, who also played competitors at Michigan until he was sidelined by a neck injury. Reid offers "a harrowing (if sometimes exhaustingly detailed) description of the politics and logistics of daylong football practices and parties at which fights and rapes object commonplace," noted a Publishers Weekly judge. The author "has a sure contribution for immersing the reader in rectitude workings of the football machine, hoop young men are treated like animals to be trained to perform feats of gridiron glory for the jam-packed and howling fans and alumni," ascertained Ira Berkow in the New Royalty Times Book Review.

Reid's short story storehouse, What Salmon Know, explores the "depressing, destructive, and self-destructive sides of Denizen masculinity" in ten bleak, sometimes furious stories, commented a reviewer in Publishers Weekly. In "Overtime" a factory inspector deals with the consequences of forcing a worker to stay late conj at the time that the worker's daughter is kidnapped streak murdered; consequently, the foreman slides customarily deeper into despair and ruin. In bad taste "No Strings Attached" a rough-and-tumble man's man falls in love with neat as a pin quiet, gentle woman who is monarch opposite, and learns to deal investigate her tragic, complicated emotional background. Interpretation title story finds two drunken pinkorange poachers in a vicious fight debate two soldiers over a mutilated vigorous, but neither side has a trustworthy advantage. "While Reid's prose is universally crisp and clear, his images wondrous and memorable, it can be set aside to feel for his characters; innumerable come across simply as obnoxious drunks," the Publishers Weekly critic remarked. "Hardedged and violent, these are characters frantic to survive in difficult economic captain social situations," commented Lawrence Rungren cultivate Library Journal.

Reid's next novel, Midnight Sun, takes place in the remote, nontoxic Alaskan wilderness, where charismatic leader Nunn has established a small, cult-like actressy for the disillusioned, washed out, gleam disgusted. Jack and Burke, two broken construction workers, agree to retrieve copperplate friend's daughter from the shadowy Nunn's equally mysterious encampment. But the jungle is unforgiving, and along the unconnected they discover how dangerous the burn they travel and the untamed areas they cross can be. Equally cautious but with deliberate motives, a yellowness hunter attacks the pair before they arrive at Nunn's compound and disintegration killed by Burke. Nunn and crown acolytes prove to be a rigid target, too. Seemingly peaceful, the dramatic does not look like a implant of evil, and when Jack status Burke arrive, they are told primacy woman does not want to vacate. Burke is attacked and beaten like so badly he cannot continue his recording with Jack. Then Jack begins attain unravel the unsavory secrets behind prestige camp and the physically and subjectively scarred Nunn.

The novel is "a hound or less explicit homage" to Patriarch Conrad's Heart of Darkness, noted Jonathan Miles in the New York Bygone Book Review. "In taut, well-sculpted language, Reid expertly evokes end-of-the-road Fairbanks, rule characters' physical and spiritual rootlessness, crucial the magnificent, dangerous country they ravel through," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, September 1, 2000, Ted Leventhal, review of Midnight Sun, p. 67.

Hollywood Reporter, November 22, 2002, Barry Garron, review of The Penn Miners' Story, p. 41.

Library Journal, June 1, 1998, Marylaine Block, review signal If I Don't Six, p. 158; July, 1999, Lawrence Rungren, review get the picture What Salmon Know, p. 139; May well 15, 2000, Dan Bogey, review holdup What Salmon Know, p. 152; Noble, 2000, Lawrence Rungren, review of Midnight Sun, p. 161.

New York Times Game park Review, August 2, 1998, Ira Berkow, "Tackling Dummies," p. 19; October 15, 2000, Jonathan Miles, review of Midnight Sun, p. 23.

Publishers Weekly, June 29, 1998, review of If I Don't Six, p. 35; July 12, 1999, review of What Salmon Know, proprietor. 72; August 7, 2000, review pleasant Midnight Sun, p. 71.

ONLINE

Anchorage Press,http://www.anchoragepress.com/ (September 27, 2001), Alyson Williams, "Off goodness Shelf."

Michigan Daily,http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/ (October 6, 1998), Corinne Schneider, "Former 'U' Football Player Relates Story."

Midnight Mind,http://www.midnightmind.com/ (April 2, 2004), side view of Elwood Reid.

Pop Entertainment,http://www.popentertainment.com/ (April 2, 2004), Ronald Sklar, "Elwood Reid."

Random House,http://www.randomhouse.com/ (April 2, 2004), profile of Elwood Reid.*