Jim Krusoe is a lesser known author that has a short list of novels that are fun, interesting, a little tweaked, but ultimately dealing with the episodes and difficulties we all have in life. I like to read Krusoe and I’ll wager you would too.
Krusoe teaches in Los Angeles and looks as if he has had his share of life’s experiences. His bibliography is short but worth looking up, especially in the library since his novels are quickly read. His last four novels have been published by Tin House Press (see).
- Blood Lake and Other Stories
- Iceland
- Girl Factory
- Erased
- Toward You
- Parsifal
A good article was published in the LARB: Mythbusting: An Interview with Jim Krusoe. The interviewer starts with this preface:
IT WOULD BE A LIE to suggest that a story’s premise is paramount to longtime Los Angeles-based writer Jim Krusoe, that his stories pivot around mere ideas or narrative hooks. Evidence gathered in this interview rejects such an idea. That said, Krusoe’s novels lend themselves well to capsule summation. In Iceland, a typewriter repairman picks out a new organ from a nutrient-rich swimming pool and falls in love with the attendant working there. In Girl Factory, a frozen yogurt vendor discovers, in the basement below his store, tanks of women floating in acidophilus-enhanced dormancy, one of whom may be his ex-girlfriend. In Erased, a garden-tool salesman receives a series of postcards from his deceased mother and journeys to Cleveland to find her. In Toward You, an upholsterer labors to build a machine that will communicate with the dead.
Those are good summations of several of Krusoe’s novels including the Resurrection Trilogy, but they don’t tell the whole story nor do they expose the fun and imagination that the author packs into his work. Krusoe is a good author to read alongside your dedication to finishing the Works of Robert Burton.
A Celebration of Reading 