Synopses & Reviews
Jim Harrison is one of our finest writers, whose vivid, tender, and deeply felt fictions have won him acclaim as an American master, in particular as perhaps the finest practitioner of the novella form now writing. His latest highly acclaimed volume of novellas, The Summer He Didn't Die, is a sparkling and exuberant collection about love, the senses, and family, no matter how untraditional. Witty, ribald, and joyous, The Summer He Didn't Die is a sheer celebration of life and all its magic. In the title novella, The Summer He Didn't Die, Brown Dog, a hapless Michigan Indian loved by Harrison's readers, is trying to parent his two stepchildren and take care of his family's health on meager resources--it helps a bit that his charms are irresistible to the new dentist in town. Republican Wives is a wicked satire on the sexual neuroses of the right, the emptiness of a life lived for the status quo, and the irrational power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to murder. And Tracking is a gorgeous meditation on Harrison's fascination with place, telling his own familiar mythology through the places his life has seen and the intellectual loves he has known in a vivid stream of consciousness that transfigures how we look at our own surroundings. The Star Tribune (Minneapolis) has said that the book is an excellent trio of stories ... Jim Harrison cannot write too often ... vivid, deft, and poetic storytelling ... [and] a complex compound of earthiness and erudition. With wit as sharp and prose as lush as any Harrison has yet written, The Summer He Didn't Die is a resonant, warm, and joyful ode to our journey on this earth.
Review
"I haven't been hit so hard by a collection of stories in a long time. I put this book down feeling literally stunned. Think of great stories like Larry Brown's 'Facing the Music,' Frank O'Connor's 'Guests of the Nation,' Barry Hannah's 'Drummer Down,' Alice Walker's 'Strong Horse Tea.' Think of the stories that nearly tore your heart out when you read them. If you don't believe me, open this book right now and read, just to name one, 'The Only Good Thing I've Heard.' Then you will." --Brad Watson, author of The Heaven of Mercury "Story by story by story, Bruce Machart gets his guys right: the crosswise emotions, the briar patch of thoughts suffered by men who either think too much or too little--the misfires and self-deceptions and tall tales, the tragic goofiness of liking mistaken for loving, the need to hide under the covers until real life goes away, the belief that speed is the answer to every question, that more is better and more of more the best. Men in the Making can't possibly be Mr. Machart's debut collection of stories, for these are the yarns of a young master of the form."--Lee K. Abbott, author of All Things, All at Once "What I admire most about Bruce Machart's Men In The Making is everything. Filled with revelatory and often gritty truths about love and work and family and courage and also defeat, he has given the world one of the most powerful short story collections you will ever encounter. I'm not joking here, if you can read this book and not be moved, it's time to go have your head checked out."--Donald Ray Pollock, author of Knockemstiff and The Devil All The Time "Bruce Machart is one of our most ambitious and fearless young writers. With Men in the Making, he has composed a remarkable paean to the complex fragility of the American male. I read these stories in a state of tender amazement." --Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life
Synopsis
Jim Harrison's vivid, tender, and deeply felt fictions have won him acclaim as an American master of the novella. His latest highly acclaimed volume of novellas,
The Summer He Didn't Die, is a sparkling and exuberant collection about love, the senses, and family, no matter how untraditional. In the title novella, "The Summer He Didn't Die," Brown Dog, a hapless Michigan Indian, is trying to parent his two stepchildren and take care of his family's health on meager resources it helps a bit that his charms are irresistible to the new dentist in town. "Republican Wives" is a wicked satire on the sexual neuroses of the right, the emptiness of a life lived for the status quo, and the irrational power of love that, when thwarted, can turn so easily into an urge to murder. And "Tracking" is a meditation on Harrison's fascination with place, telling his own familiar mythology through the places his life has seen and the intellectual loves he has known.
With wit as sharp and prose as lush as any Harrison has yet written, The Summer He Didn't Die is a resonant, warm, and joyful ode to our journey on this earth.
Synopsis
From the author who penned
The Wake of Forgiveness, ten remarkable stories that tackle what it means to be a man.
Synopsis
From the critically acclaimed author of
The Wake of Forgiveness—“a mesmerizing, mythic saga,” as described by the
New York Times—come ten remarkable stories that uncover unexpected beauty in the struggles of the modern American male.
Like Richard Russo, Bruce Machart has a profound knowledge of the male psyche and a gift for conveying the absurdity and brutality of daily life with humor and compassion. Whether they find themselves walking the fertile farmland of south Texas, steering trucks through the suffocating sprawl of Houston, or turning logs into paper in the mills just west of the Sabine River, the men of these stories seek to prove themselves in a world that doesnt always welcome them. Here are men whose furrows are never quite straight and whose hearts are near to bursting with all the desires they have been told they arent supposed to heed.
“Bruce Machart is one of our most ambitious and fearless young writers. With Men in the Making, he has composed a remarkable paean to the complex fragility of the American male. I read these stories in a state of tender amazement.”—Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life
About the Author
BRUCE MACHART is the author of The Wake of Forgiveness. His fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, Story, One Story and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Stories of the American West. A graduate of the MFA program at Ohio State University, Machart is Assistant Professor of English at Bridgewater State University, and he lives in Hamilton, Massachusetts.