Ryan Ridge - A sham pastor hires a cocaine-sniffing centaur to act as mascot for an Evangelical mega-church’s arena football team; Paul Revere flashes across a revolutionary sky on the back of a sunbird

Ryan Ridge, Hunters & Gamblers, Dark Sky Books, 2011.




"A sham pastor hires a cocaine-sniffing centaur to act as mascot for an Evangelical mega-church’s arena football team; Paul Revere flashes across a revolutionary sky on the back of a sunbird; an ammo-less infantry drummer and a bleeding medic are beat back to a Best Western parking lot in the Battle of Sacramento — such are the situations contained in Ryan Ridge’s Hunters & Gamblers. Winners of the negative lottery, these characters have learned to love to lose everything until there’s nothing left to lose. And the end is desperate, black, drenched in whiskey, but punctuated by poignancy and revelry and revelation. The tales in this lurid, edgy debut illuminate blackness with even blacker humor and a sense of outlandish beauty."

"Reading Ryan Ridge’s wild wheel of stories, large and small, is like crossing the street in London: you look one way but the surprise is coming from the other. The most accurate blurb for this lyrical and boisterous collection would be “Oh oh,” but that would rob the reader of a first reaction. This is a terrific debut of a welcome new talent." – Ron Carlson

"Ryan Ridge’s stories are lacerating cuts that expose the gray matter and turbulence of a nation. Beneath the “NASDAQ sky” live crackpots and shack wives, day traders, sham pastors, and artists. What’s comical is ominous and what’s ominous is hilarious in a sad, heart-scalding way like a trick birthday candle that just won’t go out no matter how hard you blow. Ridge’s inventiveness is unlimited, a panoptical lens that lets us see what is part myth and part video and part tazered dream. It’s a compelling collection that leaves you shivering from the strange-in-the-familiar sensation of a wonky moral universe." — Bruce Smith

"Ryan Ridge’s brilliant Hunters & Gamblers reads more like a library than a collection of stories. It takes on a much broader swath of history and eternity (sometimes in the same piece) than most fiction ever does, and the contemporary world (extravagant preachers, feckless dreamers, therapists and astrologers, puzzled spouses, sons, and lovers) snaps across its pages. It’s filled with humor, anger, joy (in language, in existence) bafflement and outrage at the state we’ve brought ourselves to, and its dark vision — accomplished in stories both exquisitely experimental and edgily mainstream — will stay with you long after the book is done." — Paul Griner


Excerpt:

This Will Be the Prime of You Unless You Round Up

And what of the abstract fairy in charge of costumes? From which plane is it that you impart your wisdom and usher us into this realm looking like we just stepped from television?
“Come here,” she said. “We have light in our lungs. We speak into each other’s cheeks. Would you like to buy a puppy?”
“You’re the only one who understands how much it hurts,” I said and hit her.
The street sewn with Christmas lights, carolers serenading parking meters. Runoff from the slaughterhouse drips into the sewer. There is blood in every brain. “Teach me the meaning of the meaning,” she said, but I could not.
There is strangeness in the past months. I get my haircut daily because it grows that fast. The barber is not afraid. I go to his shop. I sit in his chair. I say: “Are you afraid?”
“No,” he says, sharpening his scissors. “Unless by afraid you mean lonely.”
More days come. Not everyone can have a white coat and a gospel. I stay indoors. Winds punish the trees. My neighbor preaches string theory, but I don’t understand.
“Get it?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
He says: “This will be the prime of you unless you round up.”
“Touché,” I say and hit him hard in the stomach.
He doubles over.
I take a vacation.
I wait and wait at the lip of a volcano. Nothing. For lack of a better world, I go home. Now I’m dressed in a Bermuda shirt. My skin looks two-thirds cooked. I’m far from television.


Ryan Ridge: After Fall


Ryan Ridge: Something Nice, Something Gleaming


Ryan Ridge: Davey Jones, Infantry Drummer








Ryan Ridge, Ox, BatCat Press, 2010.


"We call Ryan Ridge’s Ox a collection of poetry, but it’s probably unlike any book of poetry you’ve read before. The poems contained within are often clever and lighthearted, but when taken in congress, something begins to emerge: a character and a life – the life of Ox, a life that must be experienced."

Ox Joins the Herd
OxOxOxOxOxOx
OxOxOxOxOxOx
OxOxOxOxOxOx

Ox Says Fuck It, Quits
OxOxOxOxOxOx
OxOxOxOxOxOx
OxOxOxOxOx
Ox

Ox Gets Hooked on Prescription Drugs
OxRx

Ox Transcends the Sorrows of This World
O

Excerpt 1






Anatomy of American Homes: Doorographical Divisions


Anatomy of American Homes: Porch Platitudes


Ryan Ridge: STAIRWAYS––STAIRMASTERS––BANISTERS––TWELVE STEPS––LANDINGS


Ryan Ridge: Our Lady


Ryan Ridge. A Place Beyond That Place


Ryan Ridge: The Plagiarist Checks Out


from Cantos for David Berman to Sing: Part II


Interview at SmokeLong Quarterly


Ryan Ridge's web page