nice stories :) "The Paperhanger" and "Gentleman's Agreement" are possibly my favorite. ( )

Marcus’s enthusiasm for the tradition of storytelling particularly in its less popular shorter form, is intoxicating. Here he assembles a significant collection of stories all working with different materials within varied frameworks of style and themes culminating in conclusions that are, one might say bleak, but also simultaneously a joyful celebration of that bleakness. If the stories share anything in common, then it is a suggestion of possibilities for the human condition that are manifold even when hyper-intimate in scope. And their arrangement, far from being scattershot, has an abstract sense that manages to add up to a beautiful whole. This is what the anthology format was designed for. ( )

Marcus’s enthusiasm for the tradition of storytelling particularly in its less popular shorter form, is intoxicating. Here he assembles a significant collection of stories all working with different materials within varied frameworks of style and themes culminating in conclusions that are, one might say bleak, but also simultaneously a joyful celebration of that bleakness. If the stories share anything in common, then it is a suggestion of possibilities for the human condition that are manifold even when hyper-intimate in scope. And their arrangement, far from being scattershot, has an abstract sense that manages to add up to a beautiful whole. This is what the anthology format was designed for. ( )

Like a lot of collections of varying emotional platitudes and experience, this is no different, and is always hit or miss, and rarely consistently great.

With the exception of an abysmal middle section that spans a couple hundred pages or so, the real meat of this book occurs somewhere at the beginning and the end.

What follows are little synopses of my top 5 stories. So, if by chance, you happen to have this book in your hands or are able to procure it for cheap, I recommend directing your attention to these five, you know, if chronological reading doesn't work out for you.

1) "The Caretaker," Anthony Doerr (This guy's name keeps on popping up in collections everywhere, his stories usually ahead of the pack; that must mean something. Anyway, a Liberian escapes the civil war in the late 1980s and somehow finds himself ocean-wise, in Oregon.)
2) "Field Events," Rick Bass (A.C., a super massive gargantuan of a person meets a family of "misfits," who attempt to harness his strength in the great American pastime of discus throwing. Touching and among the most honest and realistic stories in the collection.
3) "Sea Oak," George Saunders (A tight-nit family not necessarily tight-nit by choice, struggles through financial ineptitude, as one son dances the night away, and his grandma continues to push him on for the sake of the family, telling him, "Go show your cock!" Dialogue is error-filled, and absolutely perfect.)
4) "Do Not Disturb," A.M. Humes (Woman who is herself a doctor, gets diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Her emotionally wayward husband attempts to stick by her side through it all.)
5) "Scarliotti and the Sinkhole," Padgett Powell (Just read it. All attempts at classifying this story or even explaining it will sound like mush. Powell's sense of character and dialogue is uncanny and amazingly frazzled at times, bringing life to every instant.) ( )

Not all of the stories were nearly worth four stars, but as a whole the anthology deserves its stars. In fact, only couple of the stories got me to look for more from the authors: Short Talks by Anne Carson and The Old Dictionary by Lydia Davis. Also Do Not Disturb by A.M. Homes is worth mentioning. But what impressed me in this anthology was the various methods through which all of the stories deal with the anxiety of post modern human - no matter if the method works or not, it's worth exploring the possibilities of language and literature. ( )