{"id":695,"date":"2013-04-13T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-01-09T21:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/?p=695"},"modified":"2025-01-01T13:04:28","modified_gmt":"2025-01-01T00:04:28","slug":"nothing-gold-can-stay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/2013\/04\/13\/nothing-gold-can-stay\/","title":{"rendered":"Nothing Gold Can Stay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><strong>Ron Rash<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-large-font-size\"><em>Text<\/em> <em>Publishing<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size\">Otago Daily Times, April 13th 2013<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Ron Rash has made a name for himself as something of a modern Steinbeck, with his bleak and brutal depictions of life among the small, struggling communities of West Virginia. His latest short story collection, <em>Nothing Gold Can Stay<\/em>, is as good as anything he has written.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">Ranging in time from the War of Independence to the present day, each is unique and haunting, tied together by place and sensibility.\u00a0 All the characters seek to escape their circumstances, but those that do pay a high price, and what redemption they do find is meagre at best. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">There are few, if any, quiet epiphanies, and many of the tales are shockingly violent.\u00a0 In one a father demands a hand for a hand in exchange from allowing his daughter to wed, in another a linguistics student\u2019s quest for lost oral traditional leaves him literally speechless, but far from being gratuitous, there is an inevitability to events that mean they could not end any other way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\">That there is not a word wasted in any of them \u2013 in both style and form Rash is far more Hemingway that Joyce), which only serves to heighten their impact. If this sounds off-putting, it is not meant to be; the art and the beauty of short stories come from their concentration of emotion, and despite the collection\u2019s darkness, the final tale holds out a quiet suggestion of hope.\u00a0 Those who are already Ron Rash fans will love it, and for those unfamiliar with his writing, it would be an excellent introduction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/concentrations-emotion-master\">https:\/\/www.odt.co.nz\/entertainment\/books\/concentrations-emotion-master<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ron Rash<br \/>\n<br \/>\nOtago Daily Times review April 13th 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[180,370,18,117,375],"class_list":["post-695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-180","tag-fiction","tag-odt","tag-ron-rash","tag-short-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=695"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1680,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/695\/revisions\/1680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cushla.spooky-possum.org\/wordpress\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}