I'd read and rather enjoyed a couple of O'Neill's novels so didn't hesitate to buy this book for a couple of euro. Those novels were written before he moved to the US. These stories seem to have all been written after he did and to all appearances O'Neill's gone native.

iirc (I read it only a couple of weeks ago so that 'iirc' is teling) they're most of them aboiut men past first youth who are of the sort you might very well enjoy casually conversing with but wouldn't particularly want to know better and who, I guess, are meant to be feeling unfulfilled hope, regret, vague yearning, unexpressed despair over time's passing etc. The standard American literary short story, in other words.

In fairness. the first story has a gppd pastiche of a form peculiar I think to Continental writing--O'Neill obviously has a good ear--and is funny albeit in a rather heavy-handed way.

If you're taken with fiction depicting slices of half-lived lives of middle-class American men too constrained to acknowledge outright their yearning, unhappiness and the like then you oughtn't hesitate to read this because it's more of the same.

I reckon O'Neill really makes the most of the short story genre. I think I 'll try one of his novels. ( )

The protagonists of Joseph O’Neill stories are typically anxious. Anxious about themselves, the world, their place in the world, and usually about at least one other person. They have a tendency to be self-sabotaging and then inordinately surprised by the world’s reaction to them. They tend to be approaching or at a perceived turning point, for them, in their lives, though they are just as often mistaken about this. Communication is difficult, and action even moreso. And though few of the stories resolve themselves in any obvious way, sometimes the curious turns they take before the end are, so to speak, dissatisfyingly satisfying, if that makes sense.

I was impressed by each of the eleven stories in this collection, but naturally some stood out for me. I really liked the opening story, “Pardon Edward Snowden,” and the guilt-ridden turn in “The World of Cheese.” But I also very much liked the ennui of “The Death of Billy Joel.” Both “The Poltroon Husband,” and, “The Sinking of the Houston,” involve ineffectual husbands or fathers, typically without cause, and that struck me as hitting close to home. But more than any one story, I think the overall impression is of a writer constantly challenging himself and, more important, challenging the form of the short story. Reading these Joseph O’Neill short stories just made me want to read more Joseph O’Neill.

Recommended. ( )

Joseph O’Neill has put together a slim collection of short stories which can easily occupy an afternoon or two. He won the PEN/Faulkner award for fiction in 2009. He was born in Ireland of Irish/Turkish ancestry. He preferred English, because, as he wrote "literature was too precious" and he wanted it to remain a hobby. He began writing poetry, and Good Trouble is his fifth novel.

In “Pardon Edward Snowden,” he shares some cogent observations. He receives a poem from a fellow poet, Jarvis, which he shares with his friend, Liz. “She wrote back: ‘So great that you’re writing again! This is good—best thing you.ve done in a while. So effortless “Physics” and “fizz” is a pleasure. And don’t think I haven’t noticed that the English-language contractions erase “I” and “u.” In a poem drowning in materialism, that’s just such a smart, playful way to raise the issue of subjectivity.’ // Mark did not get back to Liz. Or to Jarvis. // Re the Dylan Nobel, Liz said, ‘It’s depressing. I can’t separate it from the Trump phenomenon.’ // The election was a week away. // ‘Yes,” Mark said. ‘And hypercapitalism, too. The reader as consumer. It’s an interesting question.’ // He kept secret, even from Liz, the fact that he’d already written on this question” (9). This passage encapsulates this story.

In “The World of Cheese,” O’Neill wrote, “It had never occurred to Breda Morrissey that things might go seriously wrong between herself and her son, Patrick. But back in the fall he had declared her ‘persona non grata’—his actual expression—and pronounced that she was no longer permitted to have contact with her grandson, Joshua, on the grounds that she would be ‘an evil influence.’ It was a crazy, almost unbelievable turn of events, and all about such a strange matter—a scrap of skin” (31).

“The Death of Billy Joel” has a somewhat disturbing title. O’Neill writes, “For his fortieth birthday Tom Rourk organizes a golf trip to Florida. He e-mails (sic) a total of ten men, but only three say yes. A few, including some of his oldest and, historically and theoretically, best friends, do not even summon the energy to reply. Two of the three who agree to join him, Aaron and Mick, are his regular golfing partners in New York and friends of only a few years’ vintage. Only the final member of the quartet, David was at college with Tom back in the eighties. David now lives in Chicago. Tom hasn’t seen David in a long time, and hanging out with him is one of the things he’s most looking forward to” (68). Another teaser, as to whether this will be fun outing or a disaster.

Lastly, we have “Goose.” “In late September, Robert Daly flies New York-Milan. He travels alone: his wife, Martha, six months pregnant with their first child, is holed up at her mother’s place upstate, in Columbia County. Robert is going to the wedding of Mark Walters, a Dartmouth roommate who for years has lived in London and is marrying an English girl with a thrilling name—Electra. Electra’s mother is Italian, hence the Italian wedding. […] Italy, New York friends tell him, is the most beautiful country in the world” (118).

Bravo if you can figure out the connection of these and the other seven stories. Good Trouble by Joseph O’Neill is a story which will have you puzzled through to the end. 5 Stars

Chiron, 8/25/18 ( )