- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Open City; 1 edition (July 10 2007)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1890447455
- ISBN-13: 978-1890447458
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 14.2 x 1.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 204 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #853,829 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Stahl's 1995 memoir, Permanent Midnight (detailing his life as a drug-addicted TV writer), and three novels (I, Fatty the most recent), have won him a fan base that shares his glee for the comically deviant, but even his most ardent supporters will be disappointed with this hodgepodge of thin sketches and riffs. Several pieces trade in little more than shock value. Bunker Buster, for instance, details a homosexual tryst with Dick Cheney in the backroom of a Wyoming gun shop. Readers will also meet a hirsute midget with a vegetable fetish, a religiously devout hooker whose creative interpretation of her virginity pledge allows her to work as a prostitute, and a woman who takes her cocaine in an unorthodox manner. These characteristically perverse entries are incongruously offset with more conventional but promising fare: an account of a straitlaced dentist spontaneously running off with a teenaged girl hints at a desire to go beyond the merely eccentric, while the handful of pieces about boyhood are deeply felt, if too slight to satisfy. The book is less a collection of fully conceived stories than a repository for half-baked ideas. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Stahl has earned the blurbs he's picked up along the way from James Ellroy, Hubert Selby, Jr., and Jim Carroll, and has the right to be counted in their skanky, stylish company....A better-than-Burroughs virtuoso."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Outrageous!, Sep 30 2007
By Grady Harp - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Love Without: Stories (Paperback)
Jerry Stahl is a unique writer, one that will shock your socks off, make you feel as though you should put brown paper over the cover of the book so that no one will know you're reading it, and definitely reserve participating in his stories in secret private places. BUT, the man can write short stories more original in content and craftsmanship than most anyone around. This collection of eleven stories covers a large span of his career and when grouped together in the manner in which his publisher has placed them, they shock, entertain, tickle, horrify, and in general provide come of the strangest exploration of human borderline behavior ever written!Meet Miss Chatty Cheeks, a woman of advanced years who abuses cocaine through an 'original' portal; Doris (an older woman) and early teen virgin Bob and the physical encounter they share in their assigned seats while flying across America; Puray, a chubby blond small person (AKA midget) who has a flair for using braised carrots in a most bizarre fashion; Lorraine and Mr. Carrigan who share an apartment wall with surprises; Vice President Dick Cheney in a sadomasochistic encounter with a fellow gun aficianado in the back room of a guns and ammo shop; and a religiously challenged prostitute convinced her services are acts of charity.
Some would call these stories smarmy at best, but that would be ignoring the superb writing of this fine author. He knows what he is about, loves to tantalize the reader with tales that border on hallucinations, and yet he rounds up these stories with such skill and craftsmanship that they hold the readers blushing attention. He may not be the first author to enter the realm of the bawdy, but he is the equal of many of the greats who have lasted through time with their naughty little tales. He is outrageous AND he is gifted! Grady Harp, September 07
6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Quick Read, I enjoyed it, Sep 7 2007
By Jocelyn Bocking - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Love Without: Stories (Paperback)
This is the first book I have read By Jerry Stahl, and I enjoyed it. It was a quick read, and good for someone like me who has a short attention span. I love Bizarre Americana, and these short stories really highlight the hidden Middle Class skeletons in closets. I do want to read his other titles now, I like Stahl's style.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible, Sep 16 2011
By East Cobber - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Love Without: Stories (Paperback)
Do not waste your time attempting to read this book. It's a series of short stories. I could only read two from beginning to end. The rest of the stories were so uninteresting that you couldn't continue reading them. Boring, boring!
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