Man Martin

Man Martin is a writer, teacher, and founding member of the Perambulators living in Atlanta, Georgia. His debut novel, Days of the Endless Corvette, made him Georgia Author of the Year in 2008.

His new novel is Paradise Dogs.

Recently I asked Martin what he was reading. His reply:

Right now I’m reading Lauren Groff’s magical-realist novel, The Monsters of Templeton. Told from multiple points of view and across hundreds of years of history incorporating photos as well as text, it reminds me of Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude and also “The Most Beautiful Dead Giant in the World.” Nevertheless, this is a distinctly American book – yes, I know Colombia is also part of America, but you know what I mean – and Groff has a very personal and honest vision. It really is a story of archeology and paleontology; it opens with the discovery of a beautiful but dead sea-monster in Lake Glimmerglass but is chiefly concerned with the protagonist’s struggle to find her place in a small town in which she is simultaneously an outcast and integral part. You’d have to be from a small town yourself to know how that’s possible.

Before that I read Doug Crandell’s hilarious Peculiar Boars of Malloy; a story of the uproar when the biggest loser in the county acquires two gay boars. Hilarious, but not for the faint of heart. Crandell has an eye for the cruelty of human nature and prefers to laugh at it rather than cry over it, but he never flinches from portraying it. When one of the boars is blinded in an act of self-righteous vandalism, it deeply upset me. But that, of course, is Crandell’s intent. Like a lot of humorists, with Crandell you don’t know when to smile and when to grimace. It reminds me of an O’Connor quote – “It’s funny because it’s terrible and terrible because it’s funny.”

Before that, I re-read Walker Percy’s Lancelot. OMG. OMFG. PDQ. LSMFT. QWERTY. And any other text acronymn you want. I had forgotten what an absolutely amazing book that is. If you haven’t read Percy, or if you haven’t re-read him recently, go out and get you some. He is incredible.

Visit Man Martin's website and blog.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Man Martin and Zoe.

--Marshal Zeringue