Tidbits
- Video on YouTube of Don talking about Wrack and Ruin on the TV show "CityLine," ABC Boston.
- Wrack and Ruin was a finalist for the James Thurber Prize for American Humor and for the Grub Street National Book Prize in Fiction.
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Wrack and Ruin revisits the town of Rosarita Bay, California, that was portrayed in Yellow. An excerpt of the first chapter appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of American Short Fiction.
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Wrack and Ruin is designed to be a literary farce, which is defined as:
From Latin: farcire, “to stuff”; any work which evokes laughter by such devices of low comedy as physical buffoonery, rough wit, or the creation of ridiculous situations, and which is little concerned with subtlety of characterization or probability of plot, e.g., Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors. —Literary Terms
Farce is usually considered to be a boisterous comedy involving ludicrous action and dialogue which is intended to excite laughter through exaggeration and extravagance rather than by a realistic imitation of life. It contains exaggerated physical action which is often repeated, exaggeration of character and situation, absurd situations, and surprises in the form of unexpected appearances and disclosures. The characters and dialogue are almost always subservient to the plot and situation which are so complex that the events happen with bewildering rapidity. —Glossary of Literary Terms