This image is the cover for the book Cardinal Numbers

Cardinal Numbers

From the author of Inner Tube and Odditorium, a book of strikingly original, convention-defying short stories
Cardinal Numbers is a posthumous collection of brilliantly enigmatic short fiction by Hob Broun, written with the aid of a respirator when the author was paralyzed from the neck down. Witty and full of minimalist surprise, these stories flirt with fragment, fabulism, and collage. In “Rosella, in Stages,” an old woman’s experience is movingly charted through the voice of her writing in six different life stages—and in six pages, no less. “Highspeed Linear Main Street,” a standout tale and an artistic credo of sorts, centers on a photographer’s fixation on highway life, while the surreal “Finding Florida” features a Che Guevara who becomes struck with longing for a librarian and receives some unwelcome news from a fortune teller.
Powerfully felt as well as mordantly funny, Cardinal Numbers is a freshly singular contribution to the American short story.

Hob Broun

Hob Broun was the son of Heywood Hale Broun and the grandson of Heywood Broun, the newspaper columnist. After publishing his first novel, Odditorium, Broun underwent a spinal surgery that saved his life but left him permanently paralyzed from the neck down. By blowing through a tube connected to a specially outfitted keyboard, Broun was able to complete his second novel, Inner Tube, and write the short stories of Cardinal Numbers. He was at work on a third novel when he died at age thirty-seven in 1987.

Open Road Integrated Media