Walton, David 1942–

views updated

Walton, David 1942–

PERSONAL: Born 1942. Education: Bowling Green University, M.A.; University of California—Irvine, M.F.A., 1970.

ADDRESSES: Office—English Department, University of Pittsburgh, 526 Cathedral of Learning, 4200 5th Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15260. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Has taught fiction, writing, and literature at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh.

WRITINGS:

Waiting in Line (short stories), Ardis Publishers (Ann Arbor, MI), 1975.

Evening Out (short stories), University of Georgia Press (Athens, GA), 1983.

Ride (novel), Carnegie Mellon University Press (Pittsburgh, PA), 2002.

SIDELIGHTS: Literature professor David Walton's first novel, Ride, explores the ways in which a man with a somewhat limited existence perceives his own small world. Ray Maddas, a former college professor living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has lost both his job and his wife, and has reduced his concerns to a bare minimum in an attempt to shed the materialism of the modern world. He is currently serving a trial period as a case worker, leading a small group of four mentally impaired adults on a daily bus journey to their menial factory jobs across town. "His daily routine," related a Publishers Weekly contributor, "takes him through the seediest part of Pittsburgh observed with almost cinematic precision—and … into the marginal artistic community as well."

Through Ray's daily trips, and through the eyes of his four charges, Walton shows Pittsburgh as more than the gritty, ugly factory town perceived by most outsiders. The urban landscape comes alive in Walton's prose, according to critics, changed into a vivid panoply of people, figures, and buildings. Although constrained by his self-imposed limitations (including his four charges), Ray's world reveals itself as endlessly changing. "Walton," stated Booklist reviewer Carol Hagaas, "transforms a graceless metropolis into a tender microcosm of humanity, sensitively depicting the journeys we face."