MSU English Profs Release New Books

Local author and jack-of-all-trades Greg Keeler has been a busy man: in the past year, he’s published five books, among them his first novel and four volumes of poems, with four of the books featuring Keeler’s own artwork. His novel Painting Water is, like his popular Trash Fish, a memoir, but told instead from his narrator Clinton’s point of view. “It has a lot to do with my life outdoors, but not as an outdoorsman,” Keeler says. “Clinton likes to watch fish, but he doesn’t fish.” Like real reflections on water, the novel breaks apart in a linear way that “is confusing, yet—with luck—clear in its parts,” Keeler says. His books are available at the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman and Elk River Books in Livingston.

Retired MSU associate professor of English Paul Trout also published a new book during the last year: Deadly Powers: Animal Predators and the Mythic Imagination. In his book, Trout posits that the myths humans create over time are a reflection, not on the Freudian self-conscious or the Jungian collective unconscious, but rather on the fundamental need to survive. From ancient stories with animal predators to modern movies with alien predators, myths are a guide to survival—a reaction to the fact that we were once nothing more than food. A word of warning: this is not a book for the faint of heart. Deadly Powers is available at Country Bookshelf.