Book Spotlight: The Night Action by Bruce Reeves

The Night Action by Bruce Reeves was the last great novel in the canon of Beat literature, published in 1966 just six months after Richard Fariña’s Been Down So Long So Long it Looks Up to Me. Like Fariña’s novel it can be seen as the link between Beat culture and the more politically-conscious hippie culture of the late-60s and early-70s. The novel careens around the night spots of San Francisco’s North Beach and the words seem to fly off the page in the style of Tom Wolfe or the lyrics of Tom Waits. You can almost hear the crack of the pool balls, the neon buzzing, almost smell the cigarette smoke and taste the whisky. Not only was it the last novel of an era, The Night Action serves as an epitaph of the Beat Generation in the same way The Great Gatsby was of the Jazz Era.






About the Author:
Bruce Douglas Reeves wrote his first novel The Night Action when he was twenty-four-years old. He was born in Salt Lake City and educated at San Jose State and the University of California. At the time of its publication he was working at the San Jose Public Library, where he met his wife, Sherrill, to whom he was married for over 50 years. Mr. Reeves went on to publish three more novels, over fifty short stories and has just recently finished a new novel.

His novella, Delphine, published by Texas Review Press, won the Clay Reynolds Novella Competition. He has published short fiction in many magazines and literary journals, including The High Plains Literary Review, Runner’s World Annual, Hawaii Review,The Long Story, Eclipse, The Drill Press, The Main Street Rag, Clapboard House, South Carolina Review, The Blue Lake Review,Danse Macabre and The New Renaissance.

His was a finalist for the 2011 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Novella Competition and received Honorable Mention in the 2006 Dana Awards for short fiction as well as second place in the fourth Louise E. Reynolds Memorial Fiction Awards.

He and his wife have traveled to over 60 countries. He has become especially fascinated with the Middle East, where his novel Delphine is set and where several of his short stories take place. He has also found Southeast Asia both beautiful and intriguing.

Purchase The Night Action, here