David Rhodes
As a young man, David Rhodes worked in fields, hospitals, and factories across Iowa. After receiving an MFA in Writing from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1971, he published three acclaimed novels: The Last Fair Deal Going Down (1972), The Easter House (1974), and Rock Island Line (1975). In 1976, a motorcycle accident left him partially paralyzed. In 2008, Rhodes returned to the literary scene with Driftless, a novel that was hailed as "the best work of fiction to come out of the Midwest in many years" (Alan Cheuse). Following the publication of Driftless, Rhodes was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2010, to support the writing of Jewelweed, his newest novel. He lives with his wife, Edna, in Wisconsin.
“Rhodes proves that there is still vigorous life in the dark Gothic roots of great American novels.”
—Peter W. Jordan, The Tennessean
“He was inefficient in the old sense of the word; not incapable, but unwilling to be seduced by work--unwilling to be singleminded. Those things that needed to be done were constantly put off for those things that needed to be thought about. And unfinished projects did not pester him to be completed, but represented, in themselves, thoughts he had not finished thinking....”
“We are all connected in ways we cannot even begin to fathom. Our lives unfold through each other and within each other. What one suffers, we all feel. What one does changes others forever.”
“Telling the truth is always wrong if it threatens those for whom being wrong can never be true.”
“We are not separate, and I want you to know that. We are all part of one thing, and nothing good has ever passed or ever can pass away. There is no way out, but there is a way in, and when one person feels lonely like a ghost it touches us all.”
“[He] accepted me for what I was and it wasn't fair of him not to give me the same chance to accept him in the same way.”