The Dirty Blue Car features thirteen stories (twelve new, one old-but-new) and five collages by Fielding Dawson.

Working with Susan Maldovan to bring this first posthumous collection of Fielding's stories to life, I found myself completely engaged by her ideas and well supported by her sharp eye and editing skill. She sent me Dialogue, Dialogue, Monologue, Log late in the process, but then again, just in time for it to make sense as the opener. Following, as it does, her Introduction, this 1975 story sets up the more recent ones that follow, giving us a clear read on what Fielding was trying to do, what he was doing and, why. And how, one can almost hear him saying. The writer's writer, he knew from where he came. At Black Mountain, in New York and elsewhere, he found the bright lights and knew what to make of them.

Working with Fielding on his last collection, The Land of Milk & Honey, which XOXOX published in 2001, was a real treat. I say that because he'd been a hero figure in my youth—one of the legends of the time for young would-be/wanna-be writers like me and my young friends: Patrick Meanor, Mike Newell, Peter Stokolosa, other kindred sorts. We were trying to imagine what it might be like to be read—to have people like us hanging on your words and work. Fielding gave us an image of that. Rakish, sly, and very funny, he could also be vain and mischievous; he could fill a room with oxygen and empty it just as fast. What we saw, at the time, were his antics. But, thanks to some very good teachers and guides (like Patrick), we also saw past that to the work. He got a lot done, as Robert Creeley has noted, and we discovered the context for the work, a larger web of meanings spun with other writers and artists of his scene. We sensed value, and the value remains. We have his work, and now our own, into that same web we go. None first, none last, but each with something to bring, something to carry, and something to leave behind.

I'll not get maudlin here about missing Fielding, the rascal. But I do miss his phone calls, his urgent notes on the outsides of the envelope, and his instructive focus in getting the work done. By staying with it, he did a lot. Twenty-four books, now, and the writing as keen as ever. What more useful lesson could one need?

The cover design is by Rebecca Taylor, with a collage by Fielding Dawson.