Product Description

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

This P.S. edition features an extra 16 pages of insights into the book, including author interviews, recommended reading, and more.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #139059 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Released on: 2005-08-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Chabon, acclaimed author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh , offers a collection of understated, ironic tales about people seeking acceptance. Nine of the stories first appeared in the New Yorker.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
YA-- Originally published in The New Yorker and other magazines, these short stories are delightful in their portrayal of characters, the light irony of the situations, and the flow of the sentences. Chabon deftly paints humorously odd people floundering for fulfillment. In the first part, readers glide into a kaleidoscope of worlds--a Jewish wedding in Los Angeles; Laguna Beach with an estranged couple; Paris with an American do-gooder; Pittsburgh with a down-and-out baseball catcher, a disc jockey, and a blundering toy maker; and finally duplicity in academe. Chabon's stories will captivate creative writing students, students of literature, and casual readers alike. --Susan Callahan, R. E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This collection of 11 stories by the author of the well-received Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Morrow, 1988) should help cement Chabon's status as one of the best of America's young fiction writers. Each of the stories concerns an individual's adaptation to a changed relationship, be it with wife (or ex-wife), friend, lover, or parent. Particularly evocative are the five final stories which fall under the rubric "The Lost World." They deal with a boy's response to his parents' divorce and their subsequent attempts to establish new partnerships. Chabon writes with intelligence, humor, and an obvious love of language. In the first story's marvelous opening paragraph, the protagonist goes from performing his toilet "with patience, hope, and a ruthless punctilic" to sitting in the back at his cousin's wedding "awash in a nostalgic tedium . . . wishing for irretrievable things." It leaves one hoping that, like Dr. Shapiro in "More Than Human," Chabon never surrenders his love for "the soothing foolishness of words." If he keeps developing, he will become a major force in American fiction. Essential for all public and academic libraries. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/90.
- David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Customer Reviews

Creative and exciting short fiction...
When I first came across this book in it's initial paperback printing, I was excited by his blend of outrageous humor and insightful prose. Especially hilarious is the story about two friends, one of whom plays with things for a living. He looks for the "intrinsic ludic value" of ordinary household items, or rather, would they make good toys. He had one relationship end because of the natural similarities between the shape of a flying saucer and the shape of a birth control pill dispenser. On a whole, it reminded me of Raymond Carver but without the suicidal tendencies. More mature (but not as funny) as his wonderful first novel _The Mysteries of Pittsburgh_, I am looking forward to his next volume of short fiction as it seems to me that the short story is his true gift.

Follows Me
Sometimes I read reviews of records, etc. where the reviewer states, before anything else, that they shouldn't be reviewing the record, etc. because they're too close to it. I try to avoid writing anything about the records, books, etc. that I really love, since I can't be objective.

This is probably my favorite collection of short stories. My copy has been following me around since it came out and I have read and re-read every line of this thing many, many times. The Nathan Shapiro stories are so carefully written; each sentence seems constructed, each word perfectly placed. These stories are too accurate, too true to be sentimental. Art. This stuff is art.

I have a difficult time believing that everyone doesn't already have a copy of this. I'd recommend this collection to anyone, escpecially those who are familiar with Ethan Canin, Thom Jones (although Jones may seem a little "tougher"), and (maybe) late Richard Ford.

The modern sentence as art.

Objective? No. Not at all.

One of the best collections of the last 50 years
I was shocked that some reviewers do not idolize this collection but then Melville and James are always hated by the majority of readers who are honest. Here I find the rejection even harder to bear since Chabon's prose is so intent on being joyful at the semantic and syntactic levels. He is a word dandy (like Stevens) who enjoys not just the mot juste, but the play and excitement of expression. These qualities alone would make him exceptional in world where the minimalism of paucity is mistaken for existential restraint. However he has as great a grasp of the lexicon of social expression as he does of word wealth. He is a fabulous observer and is able to register and decode more nuance in a paragraph than most in a book. The "action" then is not in the physical space but in the constant adjustments and misdirections of inter-personal association. At this, Chabon is more talented than any and all.