Here is a new collection of stories, anecdotes, and personal essays, with a few poems added for good measure, by a writer whose first collection of short fiction was published to high praise some forty years ago. The rich diversity of voices and forms gives the reader a peek into the room where Garrett writes. As the reader progresses through the collection, Garrett's inventive and engaging sensibility emerges in all its many facets. The brief fiction section covers Garrett's extraordinary range: as a writer of Elizabethan-era historical fiction (for which he is perhaps best known), as a Southern regionalist/humorist, as a satirist, and as a technical innovator. The second section derives from Garrett's inexhaustible store of humorous anecdotes. Darkly and wickedly comic, these glimpses into the absurdity of life in the hallowed halls of the academy approach wisdom in their use of the unexpected, the inevitable yet unpredictable misadventures of life. The final section contains serious and reflective personal essays, mostly having to do with Garrett's family, and particularly with his father. These pieces are thoughtful, moving, and wise. With the anecdotes, they constitute a sort of camouflaged autobiography. Bad Man Blues provides a rare opportunity to spend time in George Garrett's company, savoring his immediately accessible prose, and, at another level, indulging in the more arcane pleasure of tracing some of the mysterious sources of storytelling itself.