Phenomenal Farewell (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781722847630)

Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1925, Jesse Bier served as an infantryman during WWII in Belgium, France and Germany. After the war, Bier returned stateside to study literature at Bucknell University, receiving his PhD from Princeton. While studying, he began to write about his experiences in the war. During graduate school, he married Laure Victoria Darsa, a French woman he had met after the American liberation of France. Once Bier completed his graduate work, the couple moved to Boulder, Colorado, where he taught English at the University of Colorado. A few years later, they moved to Missoula, Montana, where Bier taught English at the University of Montana until his retirement. Montana became their adopted home, punctuated by teaching sojourns in various locations, including France and Switzerland, where he was appointed Professeur Extraordinaire in 1991 and held the chair of American literature at the University of Lausanne. Alongside teaching, Bier wrote the novels Trial at Bannock (1963) and A Hole in the Lead Apron and Six Other Stories (1964); the re-issued non-fiction book, The Rise and Fall of American Humor (1968); the novel, Year of the Cougar (1976); Resistant Essays (1994), a scholarly work on literary criticism; and Don't Tell Me Trees Don't Talk (1996), his first poetry collection. His short stories were published in journals like Esquire and Virginia Quarterly Review, and Trial at Bannock and Year of the Cougar garnered reviews in the New York Times. In retirement, Bier, who had had his fill of traditional publishing, began writing and publishing anew, including the literary memoir Transatlantic Lives (2012) in semi-poetic form, tracing both his life growing up in Hoboken and that of his wife Laure, in France, before and after WWII. Later that same year, he published The Cannibal (2012), a noire who-dun-it based on a true-life story and punctuated by rapid-fire repartee; followed by the novella Ocho Rios (2014), a tense, moody thriller; the children's book, The Silly People's Orchestra (2015); and After Dying (2016), a humorous look at purgatory. Additionally, he penned several plays, including the comedies After the Khazars, Nothing in Common, and Four of a Kind, another comedy. A sporadic poet by his own admission, Bier wrote poems throughout this period of renewed literary activity, ultimately publishing this second poetry collection, Phenomenal Farewell, in his 93rd year.