Griner, Paul

PERSONAL:

Male.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Humanities, University of Louisville, 319C Bingham Humanities, 2211 South Brook, Louisville, KY 40292. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, associate professor and director of creative writing program.

WRITINGS:

Follow Me (short stories), Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

Collectors (novel), Random House (New York, NY), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS:

Paul Griner has impressed critics with both his short stories and his debut novel, Collectors. Ten of Griner's stories made up the collection Follow Me, published in 1996. James McManus, a contributor to the New York Times Book Review, praised Follow Me as the work of a talented writer, though he did find the quality uneven. The first and last stories, "Follow Me" and "Grass," showcase the author's strengths, according to McManus: "Metaphorically intricate and suspensefully told, they are populated with the sort of characters few readers will have come across before. They also could not be more different." "Follow Me" tells of a young performance artist who seduces men, then secretly photographs them while they are waiting for her at a prearranged place. "Grass" is narrated by Francis, a bachelor in his eighties, who spends most of his time tending the graves of his family members. These stories are "splendid," in McManus's view, although the other eight in the collection are judged less successful. A Kirkus Reviews writer rated Griner "a formidable talent, sure to be heard from again," and commented that the writer is most at home with "spare-blue-collar narratives, with their darker view of human nature."

Collectors, published in 1999, features Jean Duprez, an art director for a Boston advertising agency. Each weekend she visits flea markets looking for antique fountain pens, which she collects. At a cousin's wedding, she meets Steven, an attractive widower who collects binoculars. Steven seems to have many accidents, and perhaps even contributed to his wife's death; the aura of danger around him may be part of Jean's attraction to him. As the story unfolds, it provides "a good survey of the borderlands between love and perversity," according to a Kirkus Reviews contributor. Collectors was recommended in Publishers Weekly as a "mysterious, mesmerizing story of psychological suspense," and Bruce Allen in the New York Times Book Review called it "a first novel whose deftly sketched characters and frissons of surprise and menace elevate it beyond simple imitation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, April 15, 1996, George Needham, review of Follow Me, p. 1421; September 1, 1999, Donna Seaman, review of Collectors, p. 67.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1996, review of Follow Me, p. 394; June 15, 1999, review of Collectors, p. 903.

Library Journal, April 15, 1996, p. 124; July, 1999, Marc A. Kloszewski, review of Collectors, p. 131.

New York Times Book Review, James McManus, review of Follow Me, September 8, 1996, p. 21; September 9, 1999, Bruce Allen, review of Collectors, p. 21.

Publishers Weekly, April 22, 1996, review of Follow Me, p. 59; July 5, 1999, review of Collectors, p. 55.