Product Description

Ron Carlson's stories come at us from all directions. Sometimes wicked or bittersweet, often zany, they are rich with a hard-earned hopefulness frequently absent in contemporary fiction. In this generous gathering from collections no longer available, longtime fans and new readers alike can savor the development of a master of idiosyncrasy.

In "Blazo" and other equally poignant tales, men and women are challenged when things don't work out as expected. Other stories deal with surprising transformations—for a baseball player turned killer-by-accident, for a nineteen-year-old who experiences an unsettling sexual awakening. Here is a man accusing Bigfoot of stealing his wife, followed by Bigfoot's incomparable response. Not least of the treasures is "The H Street Sledding Record," a story perfect for family holiday reading, in which a young father "creates" the magic of Santa by throwing manure on his roof on Christmas Eve.

Prepare to be amused, moved, and disturbed by stories that make a difference.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210296 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Comprising stories from three out-of-print collections (The News of the World; Plan B for the Middle Class; The Hotel Eden), this hefty compilation showcases Carson's chatty, often playful narrative style and his fascination with the tricky nature of male-female relationships. Most of the stories are written in the first person, and Carlson is a master at confessional narrators: men-husbands, fathers and boyfriends-befuddled by, but enchanted with, the women in their lives. "There's a lot inside a man that never gets out," notes the sheriff-narrator of "Phenomena," but the men hold little back in these pages. In the unforgettable "Bigfoot Stole My Wife," a man tries to convince himself that his wife didn't mean to leave him, but was instead kidnapped by the hairy beast. In "Milk," one of this anthology's finest stories, a father who refuses to let his infant twin sons be fingerprinted, thinking it smacks of paranoia, realizes that, because of his overwhelming love for them, "now I am afraid of everything." Carlson's offbeat, frequently hopeful stories stand out amid the starker work of contemporaries like Richard Ford and Tobias Wolff. He doesn't ignore life's rougher spots, though: in "The Hotel Eden" a na‹ve young meteorologist, in love with his girlfriend and thrilled with his new, enigmatic buddy, is forced by an act of betrayal to reconsider his optimism and trust. For fans of short fiction, this will prove a treat.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Carlson is a master of the short story. He runs the gamut of emotions and styles, from bittersweet to hysterically funny--from stories of sexual awakening and love gone wrong to zany tales and satires. Each of these 35 stories (from previous collections no longer available) is perfectly crafted and as involving as a novel. "The H Street Sledding Record" is a wonderful tale of a father's preservation of the magic of Christmas that ought to become a holiday classic. "The Chromium Hook" puts a riotous spin on the old urban legend. And, "Bigfoot Stole My Wife" and the answering "I Am Bigfoot" are as funny as they are charming. The collection is introduced by "Friends of My Youth," a story about the genesis and writing of the stories. These are stunningly artistic stories suitable for all fiction lovers. Elizabeth Dickie
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
These stories are full of surprises, jolts, and lightning strikes of recognition. Do yourself a favor and read Ron Carlson. -- Stephen King

Customer Reviews

Ron Carlson, My Hero
I've always loved endings. I'm fascinated by the way a story becomes itself, gathers force, and then, just as critical mass is reached, powers down. My favorite stories crimp like that, right as their full trajectories become visible; like being in a car that's just screeched to a halt, a good story leaves you rocking in your seat, armhairs on end from unrealized intertia. So, by mathematics alone, I'm a sucker for story collections: with a novel, you only get one ending; with a collection, you get the whole quiver. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the grand vision of the novel, and it's true that a story collection will never have the voltage of novels like Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy or Beloved by Toni Morrison. But remember: it's the amperage that kills. Pure electricity are stories like Stuart Dybek's "Paper Lantern," Lorrie Moore's "People Like That Are the Only People Here," Annie Proulx's "Brokeback Mountain," Robert Stone's "Helping," or Charles D'Ambrosio's "The Point." You could light the sky with the story-power of Robert Olen Butler or Alice Munroe, two of our best practitioners. And with Tobias Wolff's prose, you could weld. But the writer who first influenced me, and has continued to influence me most through my career is Ron Carlson, a true writer's writer. His first three short story collections-The News of the World, Plan B for the Middle Class and Hotel Eden-have recently been published in one volume, A Kind of Flying.

For a book to take up residence inside of you, so that it influences you from within, it's either got to hit you at the right time in your life or be rich enough that future readings reveal new, deeper meanings. For me, Ron Carlson's stories did both-his work became that length of rope you tie around your waist before entering a cave: no matter what adventures or perils awaited, everything would lead back through that safety line to the place you started and the sense of security that allowed you to take a risk. Carlson's stories were my permission, my proof of possibility and my way back when I got lost.

I first came across Carlson's stories in the late 80s. I'd been playing hooky from life-working construction, hanging out with people who took Jimmy Buffet literally-so when I finally decided to grow up and go to college, I had to face some of the reasons it had been appealing to lead an incurious life of worktrucks and weekends in Mexico. This is when I came across Carlson's story "The Governor's Ball," about a man who voluntarily does dirty work so he can avoid the emotional work of connecting to his wife. Instead of joining her for an important function, the narrator spends the evening taking a mattress to the dump, and the whole time he drove around his fictional town, I was thinking, I know what's eating at that guy, I know what he's not talking about! Then I stumbled upon "DeRay" in GQ. Here the narrator covets the life of his neighbor DeRay, a man the narrator perceives to possess far greater abilities than himself. I looked up from my magazine in quad of Arizona State and studied all the students who had been intimidating me. I said to the narrator, Man, why can't you see all the good things you've got going on. Perhaps these sound like naïve reading experiences, but a good story, one that points out personal truths, always makes a child out of me.

I suddenly wanted to write a story, too, one in which the character doesn't have to say what he's feeling because it's obvious in his decisions, observations, descriptions. If only everyone could be read that way, I thought. If only I could read myself so easily. So I took a fiction workshop (I also needed an easy "A") and I had a surprising experience: all of my supposed flaws-daydreaming, rubbernecking, pointless lying, compulsive exaggeration-combined to make something good: storytelling. It was one of those rare moments in which I knew what I wanted my destiny to be. I wanted what Ron Carlson had: the ability to tell a story deeply enough that every reading yielded something new. That kind of story didn't have a single ending, but many of them. The secret ingredient, I think I've figured out, is wisdom. I don't think I have that kind of large understanding of human behavior yet, but it's a pretty good destiny to aim for.

I recently picked up a book that had spoken to me as a teenager. But perusing its pages again, I was left flat. The young man who'd loved that book was no more, and the book had little to offer the person I'd become. It's true that I couldn't have encountered Carlson's stories at a better time-I soon tore through everything he'd written, relishing other stories like "Blazo," "Nightcap" and "Oxygen"-and I realized that his work has such a scope that there couldn't be a better time for anybody to encounter his work. His stories are so agile of voice, broad of heart, and deeply layered, that there's something in them for everyone. You couldn't bearhug stories like "The Hotel Eden" and "Dr. Slime" into the same pages of another author's book, but Carlson does it again and again. The deluded whimsy of a story like "Bigfoot Stole My Wife" somehow fits next to the deflected seriousness of "Life Before Science."

Carlson's stories are famous among writers for their humor, warmth and relentless attention to the human heart. In his narrator's voices, you can hear exactly what they wish they could tell you. In their actions you can see what they truly yearn for. Carlson just seems to know about people, real and invented. He knew me as a lost construction worker, though he'd never met me. And he knew me as a college student, a struggling writer, and now he knows what I'm experiencing as a full-fledged grown up. It turns out the first story I read by Carlson was "Milk," in which a new father must confront the vulnerabilities of becoming a parent in a dangerous world. I reread that story when my son was born and again this summer when my daughter arrived. Like all of Carlson's work, when I read it at different points in my life, it had a different ending: mine.

Reasonable Hope - the kind that we try to live by
Ron Carlson writes wonderful stories, a celebrated master of the short story form because he peoples his work with characters who dare not only to love, be hurt, feel betrayal and anger - but to stick by their hopes stubbornly (sometimes too stubbornly). The stories are tough and realistic and will tell you things about your life and the lives around you that you may not want to consider, but they are also hopeful and they remind us of the better things in our hearts, too. This is a lovely collection - buy it!

The Master at Work
Ron Carson is the hands-down Grand Master of the short story. Every single piece in this collecton is a jewel. If you love the short story form, you MUST have this book.