Thomas McGuaneRecensioni

The usual from this author, extremely damaged characters behaving poorly and the author using a lot of unnecessary big words. There are moments of entertainment but for such a short book it takes forever to get through.½

No one writes about males self destructive behavior and then their attempts at redemption better than this author. The fact that he does it with a wonderful eye for detail and a healthy dose of humor is a bonus.

The least readable and coherent McGuane book I have read.
The story - not that there is much of one never really goes anywhere.
This may have seemed different or clever in 1970 when it came out but now it is just boring.
It screams from the author let me show you how smart I am.

Thomas McGuane's writing is always fantastic. As with all short story collections some stores are better than others, but nearly every story in this book was classic McGuane.

Stylized but too scatterbrained to make a poin

An extensive collection of stories, most familiar, a few new ones; all worth reading. Having this many in one place reinforces the power, skill and grace of McGuane’s writing.

His characters, and they are characters in both senses, often seemingly act against their own interest, often profoundly against their own interest, usually in service of not taking any shit. They lose love and opportunities, often in a harrowing and heart-breaking manner.

McGuane can characterize someone in a sentence: “The Mayor came to the table with the vibrant merry hustle with which he drew all attention to himself.”

“The Refugee” and “Papaya” are two linked stories, one familiar, the other new and welcome. Both feature Errol Healy. In the first he’s a citrus grove foreman with a drinking problem who sails to Key West to be saved by a “good witch” but ends up on a much longer voyage. The second continues his story (his name is pronounced air-roll in the Bahamas) and stretches it out further.

McGuane delves into ambiguous morality and gray areas of behavior. A worthy collection.

I read the Cowboy short story for a class and read the others for context. Definitely not my kind of writer, unfortunately.

The story of Skeleton (3 generations of men) and Dance, who run competing skiff operations in Key West. Skeleton's life was drug-hazed and he is murdered by Dance in the end, because Dance did not want the competition. Many have likened the author to Hemingway, and I would have to agree to some extent. Not my type of book. Very average 197 pages

In this volume of essays on fishing, and nature, Thomas McGuane writes about fishing in Rhode Island, Michigan, Ireland, Canada, Russia, Montana, Florida and a few other places. As he says: “I fish all the time when I’m at home, so when I get a chance to go on a vacation, I make sure to get in plenty of fishing.”

McGuane is an environmentalist and conservationist, without calling himself either of those things. What he describes when fishing is being totally in nature, analyzing and taking in what it offers in service of catching (and usually releasing) fish, but not only that. “Sallying forth with fly rod in hand to tune and sample the universe in the name of trout.”

He describes many fishing trips, from streams near his home to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond. When the fishing is good, it’s good: “To say that it was like taking candy from a baby would be to defame the baby.” On bad days it can be “a tackle-fueled pyramid scheme.” Being a book written by Thomas McGuane, there are any number of examples of purely great writing.

This book is as good a primer on fishing as any how-to volume. And like fishing, is best savored and thoroughly enjoyed.

Thomas McGuane is a very good writer, but I think he spends so much of his text making the story sound properly flowery and wonderful that it is really hard to keep up with what he is talking about. Eloquent and descriptive words and phrases are nice, and may appeal to fans of J.R.R. Tolkien, but I think he needs to go back and look at Rev. Maclean in The River Runs Through It, when he sends young Norman back to his writing and says "Half as long." McGuane needs to weed out some of the poetic attempts to make something sound wonderful, and emphasize the actual story he is trying to tell. You can tell that he really loves fly fishing, and has elevated it to the level of an art. It is important enough to put the extra effort into the writing. Unfortunately the fly fishing tends to get lost in the art that describes it.

Frank Copenhaver is not having a good season. His wife left him (for reasons that never really become clarified), his college-age daughter has taken up with a man more than twice her age, and Frank’s many business interests are falling apart in the face of his current indifference.

McGuane uses this setup to follow his character as he wanders through a lovingly-described Montana landscape, drinking, fornicating, fishing, stealing the occasional vehicle, and making several stabs at a reconciliation with his wife. Parts of this feckless hero’s physical and mental meanderings are amusing, but overall there’s not much plot, and some readers may find it a chore to get through it all.

By page 306, when Frank considers the idea that “nothing really was important”, those readers are apt to say to themselves – “You’re just now figuring that out?”

Thomas McGuane is one of my favorite short story writers, and favorite writers in general. His novels are superb, but in the confines of a story, he's at his best. This is a typically strong collection.

Aliens is the stunningly depressing tale of familial miscommunication and plain bad feelings. Miracle Boy is another dysfunctional family story, but funnier and easier to take. A couple of stories feature John Briggs, a Yale educated, world traveling "independent negotiator" in Montana who deals with an alcoholic girl and her father in one story and a white-collar fugitive friend from college in the other.

In The Refugee, a former smuggler of Cuban refugees in the midst of an existential crisis leaves his job managing citrus groves, "a working alcoholic," and sails to Key West to consult a now old woman who used to mentor him and other young Key West seeker/vagrants in years past. It doesn't pan out and he sets off on a sailing cure, which also doesn't really work out.½

My first experience reading McGuane and I'm a new fan! The collection is dark, cynical, and really funny at times. I enjoyed the Montana backdrop, but the observations about our frailty, psychology, and relationships could have worked anywhere. Some stories are stronger than others. The strongest ones are truly excellent.½

I read McGuane's first three novels back in the seventies, then nothing for years, until I ran across his essay collection, SOME HORSES, several years back, which I enjoyed tremendously. His GALLATIN CANYON stories were a pleasant diversion and went down easy for the most part, although "Refugee" got tedious, so I didn't finish that one. My personal favorite was "Cowboy," about an ex-con who finds a kind of home on a ranch run by two old siblings, a crusty old bachelor and his even crustier sister. It contained some of the same charm and humor I'd enjoyed in his essays of ranch life. If you're a McGuane fan, you'll like these stories. I did. Very highly recommended.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER

To be honest with you, I'm not really sure what this book was trying to say. I could spout off about a general plot, the characters and the like, but really I don't know if I landed on the reality what I read.
You have Vernon Stanton and James Quinn for main characters. All Quinn wants to do is be a gentleman and have gentlemanly sex with Janey or anyone who will have him, but unfortunately he keeps running into trouble with loose cannon Stanton; constantly getting caught up in the childish antics of his childhood chum. Stanton is a millionaire with a nasty habit of picking up dueling pistols at the slightest provocation. His behavior is often times outrageous and crass. I couldn't land on a solid plot that made sense and I couldn't find any redeeming qualities in the characters I met. There was an abundance of posturing, butt sniffing, and pardon my language, dick measuring. Luckily, it was a short read.½

A short story collection of slightly off-kilter slices of life, many in Montana. A man going through a bit of a troubled spell steals and collects people's dogs in town. A man whose wife dies hooks up with a "little homewrecker." A couple deals with their teenage daughter's pregnancy. The title story is the sordid tale of Bobby Decatur, a rich young man whose ambition is to be a pimp in San Francisco. It turns out badly for Bobby and his girlfriend, who he turns into his first prostitute.

The people are odd, the sex is odd - prison yard sex, sex with a CPR dummy, an obsession with prostitution. The stories are simultaneously disturbing and amusing.

Really wanted to like this one, but I have to be honest. I found it a chore to slog through. The prose was dense and wordy and I didn't get a strong feel for any of the characters.
McGuane obviously has talent, and I'll probably give him another try, someday.

There are a few excellent stories in this collection; Hubcaps, Prairie Girl and Shaman are all stories where McGuane gives us more than what I gather must be his trademark cynicism. For the most part, though, I found the stories seemed to feature one character: the dejected loser who has nothing to offer but a jaded, rather cynical view of others. There is so little variety among his male characters that they seem to simply change names, occupations and locations. His writing style is as sparse as the characters and I think that, and the occasional surprise plot twist, give the illusion that there is more here than there really is. I had heard a lot about this author and was disappointed when I finally read him. Maybe his novels are better, but I found this collection of stories so depressing I am afraid to try him in the longer form. .

PERFECT ENDING IS PERFECT.

Reading this book I felt like I had a fever dream while riding a roller coaster. Chet, the most unreliable of narrators won me over, and in his incessant lies and flawed memories I found incredibly resonant truths. It's a fine, fine ache.

Patrick Fitzpatrick is a former army Captain, a tank commander, recently returned to the family farm. He gets tossed in jail a bit for fighting when he’s not breaking horses. It’s not certain which he’s talking about when he thinks “By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.” Perhaps life itself.

Patrick’s pessimism is confirmed by his sister’s suicide on the day their estranged mother visits with her new family. He falls into a tragic relationship with the wife of a blustery Oklahoma oil tycoon who is actually financed by her. It ends badly.

I’ve never sensed nihilism in McGuane’s writing but it’s here, along with a touch of pessimism. It’s still a great novel.

“Everyone told me you’re slipping, Quinn, and I’m beginning to believe it…You look chastened. The fire is out in your great bunny eyes.”

With that observation Quinn’s buddy, Vernor Stanton, intensifies the challenges and orchestrations for asserting an edge that drive Thomas McGuane’s novel, The Sporting Club. Even Vernor’s initials, VS, call out his contentious nature. He is provocateur. He looms large. He wishes to recruit Quinn again to the cause: “Join me in making the world tense. We’ll foment discord.” Why tense? Why discord? It’s just what some men do.

James Quinn has come out from Detroit to vacation at the Centennial Club, a large private fishing and hunting preserve in Michigan at which he and Stanton are members. There, Stanton proves skilled at fomenting his desired discord and enlarging it. Among those discords we find, in the reckoning to be had with Earl Olive, the impetus for much of the climactic action. Olive is a curiosity of ignoble appetites and ill-disciplined judgment who’s been enlisted by the club as manager. That hire proves a decision with dismantling consequences.

McGuane’s imagination strains against constraint yet is grounded by an evident love for woods and for rivers. His language is rich. He’s literary. An example: Quinn intentionally shovels earth into the face of an annoying fellow club member and whilst they grapple Quinn quotes Hamlet, “I prithee, take thy fingers from my throat for, though I am not splenetive and rash yet have I in me something dangerous!” If not quite madness in Quinn (and it’s not quite not), it is observant, for the Club members and especially Vernor court spleen and rashness with ardor and even hazard to the soul.

While The Sporting Club seems built on individual conflict, it’s not limited to that. The Centennial Club members who are most aggressive in desiring retributive combat with Earl Olive remind one of the way countries get into wars. Not that Olive isn’t the sort to inspire fantasies of retribution but one can’t escape the notion that all these uncivil struggles have been manufactured so unnecessarily. We can see in the novel’s comedy a satire of the ruling class no matter how local it be. It’s also a burlesque of the outrageous myths some men fondly build round themselves, the errancies of which can take a centenary to unearth. See the novel for the colorful details.½

Believe it or not, even having been a McGuane fan for decades, I don't think I had ever read more than a couple of his short stories in magazines. This book collects most of his published stories, and the writing is consistently good and will be familiar to any McGuane reader. Of course, some are not as strong as others, and anyone reading this book in one shot like I did might get a bit numb from repeated themes. Nonetheless, this is a great collection and might win McGuane more readers and attention from literary critics, most of whom abandoned him following the publication of "Panama", which was such a departure from his somewhat kooky first three novels.

Most of McGuane's stories take place in Montana, where he lives. Although you might think that his characters might be the typical suspects, i.e. ranchers and small town dwellers in picaresque tales full of Big Sky wonders, in fact they represent a wide range of professions. But there is something indefinable about their "Westernness" and how it informs their reactions to the sorts of problems you might face in life. There's plenty of damaged people here; sometimes it's because of bad parenting, unfortunate incidents, poor choices; but often it's just their own fault, missing the warning signs. And that can result in disastrous outcomes for the protagonists.

The story "Tango" was later expanded upon in the novel "Driving on the Rim". "The Casserole" is brief but effective. One of my favorites is "A Man in Louisiana", where a guy learns a lesson when being sent to go buy a dog. "Motherlode" is a grim tale of what can happen to you if you go along with things you don't or won't understand. In "Crow Fair", two brothers find out something about their mother that one of them didn't want to know, and how that affects their relationship. "Zombie" might be considered an homage to Flannery O'Connor; yep, that grim. But not all the stories are like that. McGuane has always had a knack for dialogue, and his women characters are believable, which I find rare in contemporary American fiction written by men. Why is that, I wonder?

This book is best taken in small doses. That way the stories will stay with you for a while. But be warned: contemplating their messages might make you a bit uneasy.½

Chet Pomeroy, former bombastic rock star, current disturbed and sometimes manic resident of Key West, self-described “angler on the sea of God’s mysteries” is dealing with failure, substance issues, his aunt/stepmother’s impending marriage to a gold-digger, police harassment, memory problems, and trying to regain the love of Catherine, who he apparently married some time back in Panama. Also, his father - “everything I say about my father is disputed by everyone” is apparently alive and trying to contact Chet, although Chet firmly believes he’s dead, but Jesses James is alive.

Chet is recognized early on as an unreliable but basically truthful narrator. “I am considered a tribute to evil living.” But he’s likeable in a highly intelligent, highly flawed manner. McGuane’s language is lyrical, poetic at times, very clever, and humorous. He bends sentences in beautifully disturbing ways.½

Insightful, funny, smart, touching -- a beautiful collection of essays about the author's experiences with horses, specifically competitive cutting horses. It will strike a chord with anyone who knows horses, and dressage riders may be surprised at the many similarities between the two disciplines.

A fine collection of stories, many featuring men that are found wanting, both in their eyes and in the eyes of others. In the title story, two brothers find their own ways to deal with the revelation that their mother had an extramarital fling with an Indian. In “Hubcaps” a young boy encounters cruelty while navigating his parent’s broken marriage. In “Prairie Girl” a former prostitute marries into a banking family and schemes her way to respectability. In “On a Dirt Road” and “The Casserole” wives find sneaky ways to humiliate their husbands. There’s a lot of distrust, befuddlement and harshness in these extremely well-written stories. Despite these depictions of the messy ugliness that can characterize relationships, the stories never let us lose hope.