A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane: Stories — Barry Yourgrau

Ever dreamed of strolling through a Dali print? Or stepping into a fairy tale? Open "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane" and experience the rush of having reality yanked from underfoot.

This is the book that put Barry Yourgrau on the literary map, where he remains as an icon of imaginative prowess. In "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane," Yourgrau focuses his wide-awake subconscious mind on well-trodden themes -- fathers, mothers, lovers, sex, the imagination itself -- and recasts them into madcap parables, surrealistic fables, and grotesque fantasies. Here are dreamscapes compressed into razor-sharp prose, where a twelve-inch girl lolls in her date's spaghetti, where a warrior steps out of the Iliad as an intruder in a backyard swimming pool, where a man climbs inside a cow on a bet. Hilarious, subversive, and uniquely entertaining, Yourgrau treats readers to a circus of surreal, impish beauty, poignant flashes of tragedy, and a headstand of everyday reality.