Background
Wilcox, James Peter was born on April 4, 1949 in Hammond, Louisiana, United States. Son of James Henry and Marie Agnes Wilcox.
( Universally and repeatedly praised ever since it first ...)
Universally and repeatedly praised ever since it first appeared in 1983, Modern Baptists is the book that launched novelist James Wilcox's career and debuted the endearingly daft community of Tula Springs, Louisiana. It's the tale of Bobby Pickens, assistant manager of Sonny Boy Bargain Store, who gains a new lease on life, though he almost comes to regret it. Bobby's handsome half brother F.X. -- ex-con, ex-actor, and ex-husband three times over -- moves in, and things go awry all over town. Mistaken identities; entangled romances with Burma, Toinette, and Donna Lee; assault and battery; charges of degeneracy; a nervous breakdown -- it all comes to a head at a Christmas Eve party in a cabin on a poisoned swamp. This is sly, madcap romp that offers readers the gift of abundant laughter. Modern Baptists was included in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon, in GQ magazine's forty-fifth anniversary issue as one of the best works of fiction in the past forty-five years, and among Toni Morrison's "favorite works by unsung writers" in U.S. News and World Report.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807131660/?tag=2022091-20
(A brilliantly observed, hilarious and poignant social sat...)
A brilliantly observed, hilarious and poignant social satire. Wilcox's novels (there are six and characters overlap) have the narrative litheness of Armistead Maupin and the piercing tragi-comic insights of Edith Wharton. When Emily Brix and Clara Edward Tilman, two young women from Tula Springs, Louisiana, arrive in New York City in 1971, they carry with them all the youthful expectancy of a bright future filled with passion and accomplishment. Emily, fresh out of Smith and eager to begin an acting career, takes a middling job in a film production company - the first in a series of compromises that presage her yielding to a passionless marriage , negotiated as coolly as a contract. Clara, more impulsive, with vague aspirations to a career in modelling, finds herself embroiled in a reckless affair with a much older man, and even more surprisingly, stumbles into unexpected and sudden celebrity. As the years pass by, both Emily and Clara realise that growing older often involves costly concessions that lead to dead ends, and that concessions in love are the most damaging of all. Polite Sex follows the progress of these women in this strangest of cities, and observes with acuity, wit and great compassion the poignant and circuitous path toward adult happiness.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060163569/?tag=2022091-20
("Fate-a chance meeting in a New Orleans souvenir shop-has...)
"Fate-a chance meeting in a New Orleans souvenir shop-has propelled Gretchen Peabody, former Manhattanite, into a new life as the wife of a fetching former widower in Tula Springs, Louisiana. Gretchen's culture shock, as she acquaints herself with her husband's bizarre household, whose denizens include a handyman/mystic and a stolidly Teutonic housekeeper, is but a prelude to the richly moving and comic story that begins to unfold when fate intrudes once again."
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0316940445/?tag=2022091-20
(The witty sixth novel by the author of Polite Sex follows...)
The witty sixth novel by the author of Polite Sex follows a group of New Yorkers who, on the verge of middle age, are struggling with the apparent emptiness of their lives. By the author of Sort of Rich. National ad/promo.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060168757/?tag=2022091-20
( Ethyl Mae Coco's rambling Victorian home on North Gladi...)
Ethyl Mae Coco's rambling Victorian home on North Gladiola -- the Main Street of Tula Springs, Louisiana -- is the only residence left at the business end of town, but it's a hotbed for chaotic comedy. Mrs. Coco, aged fifty-seven and feeling somewhat left behind herself, directs her considerable energy into keeping those around her in line -- her remote, obsessively bargain-hunting husband; members of the Pro Arts Quartet chamber music group, which Ethyl Mae aspires to turn into an accomplished cultural jewel; her six unruly grown children, none of whom keeps the Catholic faith to their staunch convert mother's satisfaction; and the other assorted, eccentric, and endearing people of Tula Springs. Nothing is simple -- or quite as gossip portrays it -- in Tula Springs, but after all upheavals and sunders pass, this wired family and community remain strongly connected.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0807125652/?tag=2022091-20
Wilcox, James Peter was born on April 4, 1949 in Hammond, Louisiana, United States. Son of James Henry and Marie Agnes Wilcox.
Bachelor, Yale University, 1971.
Editorial assistant, assistant editor, associate editor Random House, New York City, 1971-1977. Freelance writer, 1978-1998. Speaker writing resource Radcliffe Public Course, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1989-2000.
Visiting professor English department Mississippi State University, 1998-2001. Assistant professor department English Louisiana State University, since 2001. Associate editor Doubleday & Company, New York City, 1977-1978.
Writer in residence Writers Community, New York City, 1991. Faculty Master of Fine Arts program for writers Warren Wilson College, 1992. Adjunct teacher Rutgers University, Camden, New Jersey, 1996.
( Universally and repeatedly praised ever since it first ...)
( Ethyl Mae Coco's rambling Victorian home on North Gladi...)
("Fate-a chance meeting in a New Orleans souvenir shop-has...)
(The witty sixth novel by the author of Polite Sex follows...)
(A brilliantly observed, hilarious and poignant social sat...)