Too Much Flesh and Jabez

Coleman Dowell's "Southern Gothic" is a novel about sexual repression. Miss Ethel, a spinster school teacher, decides to write what she calls a "perverse tale" about one of her former students, a Kentucky farmer named Jim Cummins. Endowing him with unnaturally large genitals, she spins a tawdry tale of his frustrated relationship with his petite wife. Expressing all the bitterness of "an old woman's revenge," Miss Ethel's tale is nonetheless a sensitive depiction of rural life in the early years of World War II.

Dowell's masterful use of the tale-within-a-tale to explore psychological states makes "Too Much Flesh and Jabez" a memorable achievement.

Author: Coleman Dowell
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 04/01/1987
Pages: 151
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.47lbs
Size: 8.60h x 5.48w x 0.49d
ISBN: 9780916583217