- Paperback: 704 pages
- Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (Nov 11 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 014028091X
- ISBN-13: 978-0140280913
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.2 x 3.9 cm
- Shipping Weight: 726 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #211,570 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Skinny, earringed, satanically goateed, T. Coraghessan Boyle is the trickster figure of American letters. Part court jester, part holy fool, he slips in and out of various narrative disguises as it suits him. Nowhere is this more evident than in his short fiction, in which he bounces from psychological naturalism to giddy slapstick, dreamy surrealism to biting satire--sometimes within the space of a single tale. The sprawling and idiosyncratic T.C. Boyle Stories brings together his four previous volumes of short fiction, Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994), as well as seven previously uncollected stories, two of which have never before seen print. In both range and sheer heft, it's a remarkable collection, the more so since it represents an artist only midway through his career.
These stories find Boyle partying like it's 1999. He zeroes in on our age's most uncomfortable obsessions, its late-capitalist fetishes and millenarian fears: nervous Los Angelenos suckered into buying a Montana survivalist's retreat ("On for the Long Haul"); a hygienically obsessed girlfriend who insists on wearing a full-body condom ("Modern Love"); a rich, guilty couple suffocating under the weight of a lifetime's possessions ("Filthy with Things"). Elsewhere, he updates Gogol for late Soviet times ("The Overcoat II"), retells the death of blues god Robert Johnson ("Hellhound on My Trail"), even goes clubbing with that hot '90s property, the author of Mansfield Park ("I Dated Jane Austen"). Boyle's comic range is unparalleled, his timing razor-sharp as he skewers everyone from burglar alarm salesmen to the Beats. Like all tricksters, the author uses our own vanity and hypocrisy against us--but with barbs as witty as those found in T.C. Boyle Stories, not even his victims will mind. --Mary Park --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
A premier practitioner of short fiction, Boyle (Water Music) gathers two decades worth of work in one volume of almost 70 stories, adding seven pieces (three previously unpublished) to the contents of his previous four collections. The entries are organized thematically, evenly divided among "Love," "Death" and "And Everything In Between"; thus chronology is jumbled and early pieces flank more recent ones. The "Love" stories are so polished and sophisticated they all but glitter. In them, very often a hapless male, modestly hoping merely to get laid, encounters an obsessed woman and finds himself eventually undone. Sex itself is not especially important to Boyle, but obsession is. Obsessions of one sort or another (animal activism, germophobia, Elvis, frogs, squirrels, whales) inform these stories, which sparkle with wicked wit and exuberant prose. The last "Love" story serves as a sad transition to the tales of "Death." "Juliana Cloth" chronicles the way a sexually transmitted virus decimates an African town, and a girl goesAknowinglyAto an embrace that will kill her. The cumulative effect of the "Death" section, though, is numbing, repetitiously grotesque and finally gratuitous. However, the collection's texture quickens in the last section, "And Everything In Between," a potpourri of chilling fables. Throughout Boyle's work, real people (Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Carry Nation, Robert Johnson, Mao, Jack Kerouac, Jacques Cousteau) appear in narrative out-takes that are invariably amusing and, like Boyle's more serious work, mordant, worldly and irreverent. Author tour.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
T.C.Boyle, Stories,
This review is from: T.C. Boyle Stories (Paperback)
I borrowed this book from the library and due to its length had to keep it as long as the library would let me. There are 75 stories and of those there were only 3 that I couldn`t call my favorites. I loved each and every one of all the rest, in fact I enjoyed them SO much that I bought the book and am now reading them again. I think that I shall re-read this book many times. All of the stories are unique and stick with you. It is a beautifully written and constructed book and there were no errors. (a pet peeve of mine in books) I recomend this book to anyone with a sense of humor that slips towards the `non norm` and have recommended it to everyone I know. T.C. Boyle is inventive and new and just plain amazing. It is a book you will want to own. I have no doubt of this.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent flow and playful with words,
This review is from: T.C. Boyle Stories (Paperback)
This is an excellent collection of varied stories. All come at some different direction like dreams and continue in a fast pace. The unexpected will arrive and thrill you, knock you over and make you think of endless possibilities. His descriptions are as good as anyone who has held a pen. Read these stories for the authors play with words and often thrilling movement.
5.0 out of 5 stars
I inhaled this one,
By
This review is from: T.C. Boyle Stories (Paperback)
T. C. Boyle is a master of short stories. In this 700 page tome, Boyle covers the gamut of subjects in a funny, witty, and satirical way. His writing style offers an amusing, introspective, and memorable view of American culture. This one is as entertaining as any book I have read.
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