Book Description
Revised by celebrated novelist and short-fiction writer Richard Bausch, this edition continues to offer the most exciting blend of contemporary and classic short stories in a portable format. 135 stories—34 of them new to this edition—by 114 authors are lightly supplemented by a general introduction, biographical notes, and essays written for the benefit of beginning writers.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent.......2007-02-20
Product delivered on time and in good condition. Great seller, would buy again!
what i needed.......2007-02-19
i needed this book for a short fiction class. it cost over $60 in the school book store. this was just what i was looking for on my very small student budget.
Great Service.......2007-02-14
Book came very very quickly and in amazing condition. Although i returned the book because i no longer was taking the course that required this book they were very helpful with the whole returning process.
Awesome book full of classics.......2006-03-16
I bought this book for a class, but I will keep it and refer back to it everytime I need to read a classic.
A writer's anthology.......2006-02-21
Writers, especially beginning writers, interested in short stories should take a good glance at this anthology. The book draws from a wide selection of international literature leaning towards the contemporary (stories written within the last 20 - 30 years) rather than the modern or classics of the short story genre. The beginning briefly covers some common ideas about action, plot, complication, point of view, indirection, the part and the whole and coherence followed up by questions suitable for classroom discussions. The bulk of the book comes from stories chosen by the editors who wish to believe that even if you bother to read every selection in the book, you as a reader may finish reading the book but the book, the stories themselves may not be finished with you, their ideas staying with you long after the book has been sold back to a college usedbook store or disposed of in some other way. Finally, the last hundred pages deal with writing literature criticism as well as the act of writing itself in short, brief excerpts written by several of the writers who are included in the collection. Although it is on the pricey side, it is a good reference for those interested in short story writing. Another anthology to consider is The Art of the Story edited by Daniel Halpern which is much less expensive and more contemporary than the Norton Anthology.
Book Description
Wives & Lovers is a collection of three short novels from the author whom the Boston Globe calls "one of the most expert and substantial of our writers."
Requisite Kindness -- published here for the first time -- tells the story of a man who must come to terms with a life of treating women badly when he goes to live with his sister and dying mother. Rare & Endangered Species demonstrates how a wife and mother's suicide reverberates in the small community where she lived, and affects the lives of people who don't even know her. Finally, Spirits is about the pain that men and women can -- and do -- inflict upon each other. These three very different works illuminate the unadorned core of love -- not the showy, more celebrated sort but what remains when lust, jealousy, and passion have been stripped away.
Customer Reviews:
Remarkable.......2005-03-02
This was a truly remarkable group of three separate and unrelated, yet equally compelling stories. Each one touched on something magical about the human spirit, all while exposing some of our deepest emotional idiosyncrasies and disconnections. In each he captures something of the wonder of human relationships, particularly marriage, with its conflict of happiness and disappointments; expectations and resignation; resolute faithfulness versus emotional wanderings.
Where some might see the stories as melancholy or depressing, I saw a certain triumph in each one. All were written with a great sense of humanity and realism, highlighting ordinariness, even mundaneness, within multi-dimensional characters who are fully human yet beautiful in their failures and inconsistencies. A great collection and a very worthwhile read.
the many states of marriage.......2005-01-12
My experience is that even a very good marriage fluctuates through many states, some of them not very positive. In so far as the three different novellas which comprise "Wives & Lovers" are about any one thing, it is that experience. The longest of the 3 novellas, "Rare & Endangered Species", is by far the most satisfying. Bausch does not have anything novel or brilliant or terribly witty to say, and his characters are not novel or brilliant or terribly witty, but Bausch makes fine art out of the ordinary. In "Rare and Endangered Species", Bausch expands the cast of characters beyond the families of immediate interest. He achieves some of the effect of those novels which depict the intertwining lives of a small town, and it certainly makes for good reading, but it does not seem quite developed. In shorter works I sometimes am too aware of the author at work, the characters do not take over the writing, and I felt this way about the two other novellas. The construction of the first novella is interesting: it climaxes, quietly, with an event (the grandmother's death) that occurs in the middle of the few weeks depicted. In the third novella, the motel owner, a totally ordinary women whose ex-husband turns out to be a serial killer, is the one character who is sympathetic.
A wonderful study of human emotions..........2004-11-11
Rarely do I ever rate books 5 stars, but I simply had to in the case of this book. The novellas are wonderfully composed. Bausch manages to weave very detailed stories in what is seemingly a brief and fleeting moment in the characters lives. The expressive use of emotions was quite overpowering. For the most part these were real situations that people encounter: the death of a parent, the birth of a child, alcoholism, suicide, media frenzy, etc... Even if you yourself had not actually experienced these life events, chances are you know someone who has (except probably the serial killer situation but I found that to be more about society's fascination with the macabre). Artfully and intuitively written, this book is well worth the read.
Great Novellas Should Not be overlooked!.......2004-08-03
this book is wonderful. It was given to me for my birthday and i read it soon after. I was unable to put it down and deeply moved by it. People should read this book (and other books by this author)and then tell everyone they know about them. Subtle in it's drama and global in it's love and understanding of how people feel!
Good short novel collection with some reservations.......2004-07-28
I didn't like it as much as some of his previous work but it's still a good short novel collection. Spirits was especially entertaining with a serial killer, sex scandal and funny comments on academia. Rare and Endangered Species was marred by an episode where a character wants to leave a calf caught in a fence to get eaten alive by vultures while she whines about her own problems and the importance of kindness. Maybe it was supposed to be ironic but why doesn't anyone shoot the cow or at least call animal control?
Book Description
A 2004 PEN/Malamud Award winner, this collection celebrates the work of American artist Richard Bausch -- a writer the
New York Times calls "a master of the short story." By turns tender, raw, heartbreaking, and riotously funny, the many voices of this definitive forty-two-story collection (seven of which appear here for the first time) defy expectation, attest to Bausch's remarkable range and versatility, and affirm his place alongside such acclaimed story writers as John Cheever, Flannery O'Connor, Raymond Carver, and Grace Paley.
Customer Reviews:
Pain Soup.......2004-02-16
Say your goal is to locate a short story writer in relation to his peers. Start by imagining a map of a valley, with Mount Munro at one end and Mount Carver at the other. Mount Munro, after Alice, is the summit of capacious stories that range widely across time and space, containing fully laid out lives. Inner worlds are slowly peeled back and the reader is led, subtly and inexorably, to a shiver of revelation. At the other extreme, Raymond Carver's brief stories seem found rather than made. The insights come all at once and hit you so fast you feel defenseless, then dazed. The impact lingers long after you've put down the story.
The Stories of Richard Bausch lie in the Carver end of the valley, somewhere fairly high up on the flanks of Mount Carver. The guy can write, and, like Carver, he can crack open whole worlds in a few pages. Each story read separately is a gem. Read them in a batch, though, and you may feel that you're stuck in the same bleak place. Bausch writes mostly about men whose lives are spinning out of control. These men seem to lack the something - courage, self-awareness, time, money or energy - they need to step off the entropy express. Individually, the lives are poignant; collectively they're depressing.
Which isn't to say there aren't small masterpieces here. Like Valor, about a drunk who saves a busload of kids only to come home and find his wife is leaving him. Or Glass Meadow, a marvelous depiction of what it feels like to be a twelve year old boy, wrapped in a story that's funny and sad and tender and true. Or The Person I Have Mostly Become, about the futility of good intentions, one of the saddest stories you'll ever read. In addition to men, Bausch crafts the emotional worlds of young boys, perhaps an underserved population in current fiction, with a jeweler's precision.
What gives these stories their power is, paradoxically, what is also unsatisfying about them: the absence of the implied author. The implied author is the shaping force that sits between the people on the page and the actual person who writes the story. The implied author presents a stance toward the work, which helps the reader to shape their own response. The implied author Alice Munro says to us, "We're going to look at some painful things, but we're going to go about it with dignity and fortitude, and no matter how sad or trapped these people are, neither we nor they will miss the grace notes or succumb to despair." The implied Raymond Carver is a Bogart-like figure, who says, "This is what life is like, my friend, funny and sad all at once, and we have no choice but to stay on stage and play out our part. Let's lift a glass for all the acts of fecklessness and false bravado, toast those ineffectual fists raised against fate."
I can't find the implied Richard Bausch, and I can't figure out how he feels about all this despair he's serving up. He seems to be saying, "Here's a bowl of pain soup. I'll step aside and let you eat it. When you're done with this one, I'll serve you another."
How you respond to this collection depends upon how many bowls of pain soup you can stand to eat in one sitting.
A treat for short story readers!.......2003-12-03
Richard Bausch has always been better known for his short fiction than for his novels, and this hefty compilation of his stories demonstrates why. Bausch is a master at showing vulnerable moments, the points at which marriages, familial relationships, and psyches break down. He condenses entire lives into a few telling scenes. The awkwardness with which his protagonists approach relationships makes them endearingly fallible, with their missteps costing them in ways they never anticipate. Bausch is so skilled at evoking the reality of interpersonal encounters that one always gets the feeling that these solidly believable characters survive beyond the last line of their individual tales.
These forty-two stories are not meant to be read as a marathon, for to do so would be overwhelming. The recurrent motifs of personal blunders, regrets, and foundering relationships can wear on a reader if taken all at once. This collection is best read in chunks separated by other works - a novel, maybe, or stories by other authors. With this kind of space between readings, almost every story is a gem. "Nobody in Hollywood" tells of the ruined loves of two brothers and the ironic twist that unites them. "Someone to Watch Over Me" details what is perhaps the final night of a marriage, at an outrageously expensive restaurant that reveals the unbridgeable rift between Ted and Marlee. "Ancient History" subtly exposes the depth of emotion a teenage boy feels as he, his mother, and his aunt celebrate their first Christmas without his father. "Contrition" tells of the obsession an ex-con has with an old photograph of his father and the idyllic moment it captured. In one of the rare stories from a female point-of-view, "Guatemala," Bausch excels at exposing the raw undercurrents that run in a family of women. Bausch is at his best when he delves deeply into family dynamics, especially between protagonists and their parents.
This collection is truly a treat for Bausch fans. It makes a great gift for readers of contemporary literature.
Stories of the outsider.......2003-11-18
No doubt about it, Richard Bausch can write a piquant short story. In the preface, he comments that while you'd think that novel writing and short story writing could be similar activities, the short story has a life and rhythm all its own, while the novel requires months or years of polishing and extension. So here are short stories that seem to relate to one another thematically.
The stories are uniformly about "the outsider" or the guy who just doesn't fit in. His parents may be mildly eccentric, he may have married badly, or be living in the wrong place, say, Montana. How he got there was a throw of the dice or by letting life slap him around aimlessly. In "Glass Meadow", the story is told by a man whose parents, ever on the run from creditors and disasters, are cheerfully taking them to "vacation" in a wooded cabin, which is their way of telling the kids they're taking up residence in a place where they can't be served with papers or evicted for lack of rent. Another story tells of a man who meets the girlfriend of his brother, a woman who is not only ugly, but a stone-cold liar. He has his own troubles with his soon-to-be-ex-wife. The end of the story is absolutely hysterical, and absolutely logical. I must have laughed for a solid minute.
In a way, these stories remind me of the hapless folk in Garrison Keillor's "Lake Wobegon" but there is something darker and more hopeless here. The only flaw of the collection is the lack of variance; every story, though well-written, is on the same theme. As a thick volume, it should perhaps be savored quite slowly, whenever one has a taste for something dark.
Jewel Cut.......2003-11-13
A Comparative Feel -Good Book
Say you had a bad day, lost a pet, found out a friend has cancer, and you needed to forget your sorrows, so you go to the local soup kitchen and volunteer for an evening. After four hours of serving food to luckless people on the hind end of life or drugs or circumstance, you feel better, in comparison.
This is the dubious charm of Richard Bausch's anthology, The Stories of Richard Bausch.
He has been called "a master of the short story" in the New York Times Book Review, and this anthology underscores the truth of that. It includes 42 jewel cut stories that could make most writers cry with envy of Bausch's craft. Character development is the core strength of the stories, his simple clear piling on of spare words that imprint a character's appearance, morality, intellect and even smell into the reader's brain. It is a most intimate experience to meet a Richard Bausch character, because you are not reading at arm's length. Rather, his talent for character realization is so great that the hopeless, untalented, unlucky brutes are sitting in your lap, lying by your side, holding your hand as you read.
Yet, who wants to hold hands with these characters? Even the so-called "happy" stories are grounded in characters so flawed or damaged, that you want to give them a bottle of Prozac and run away. In fact, though the stories are told in the first person, the characters' lack of self-awareness is appalling. This is true of all the characters, from two boys being dragged around the country by self-absorbed amoral parents, to an upper middle class oaf who strives to be a good golfer and takes his obsession to a painful end, that somehow charms an abused woman into a relationship with him. This is the closest Bausch comes to a happy ending. Perhaps the central theme is that while most of us try to live our lives in a state of improving enjoyment and performance and understanding, there are these wretches at large who simply grind their lives to powder within a single narrow rut of incomprehension. Bausch's characters are so devoid of humor or even natural affection - the reader may laugh at them, a guffaw of pity and disgust, but they almost never laugh at themselves - that it is hard to believe in their desperate bland and boring lack of self awareness. Have they never had a spark of insight? Even a night at a soup kitchen can be uplifting - meeting the mother whose taken her children out of an abusive situation, or the man who has stopped cranking and gotten a job.
While reading the Bausch anthology, I fantasized about what he might do with a few heroes, because by the end I'd had enough of losers. I'd begun to wonder if I wasn't self-deluded myself, believing that we all have hidden talents and aspirations , when Bausch has found so many glumps to write about, and done it so convincingly. Perhaps this is the brilliance of the book that, like an evening at a soup kitchen, I ended it with that comparatively good feeling, and will probably go back to re-read some of the stories. The writing redeems the collection from its loser characters. It propels and uplifts the experience. So read The Stories of Richard Bausch, then move on to "The Ponder Heart" or an evening at a community soup kitchen, and cheer up.
Average customer rating:
- A mixed box of chocolates
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The Cry of an Occasion: Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers
Manufacturer: Louisiana State University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0807126357 |
Customer Reviews:
A mixed box of chocolates.......2001-12-08
Anthologies are like boxes of chocolates: some pieces are good, some are excellent, some you might bite and put back, and some just do not interest you. Some pieces appeal to everyone, some do not. The piece that one person rejects may be another's favorite. However, if you are going to find those pieces that suit your taste just right, you must buy the whole box. "The Cry of an Occasion" is just such an assortment, containing work by nineteen writers, all southern. Not every piece will interest every reader equally, but there will probably be a delicious handful for each.
As might be expected of a "southern" anthology, religion, family, sense of place and race are themes that weave through the various stories; however, while some themes may be regional, the scope and treatment of these themes are universal.
"The Encyclopedia Daniel" by Fred Chappell is an odd little story with an Edgar Allen Poe twist. "Feeling Good, Feeling Fine" is a by George Garrett is a quick, broad-stroked vignette of a southern institution - the family relation who isn't quite right. "Sim Denny" is a painful story about an elderly black man who first attempts, unsuccessfully, to ignore the civil rights movement, and then attempts, equally unsuccessfully, to join it. My personal favorite is William Hoffman's examination of family dysfunction, "The Secret Garden" - a tale whose several narrators offer their observations about the central character, while revealing their own roles as enablers.
Such is the variety of this sampler, there should not be any reader who does not find at least several pieces to satisfy his interests.
Average customer rating:
- Rich Slices of Modern Life
- A Master Storyteller
- Grief that makes you happy?
- Average
- Chaotic relations
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Someone to Watch Over Me: Stories
Richard Bausch
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Similar Items:
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The Stories of Richard Bausch
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The Selected Stories of Richard Bausch
ASIN: 0060930705
Release Date: 2000-05-02 |
Book Description
Richard Bausch is a master of the intimate moment, of the ways we seek to make lasting connections to one another and to the world. Gew writers evoke the complexities of love as subtly, and few capture the poignancy of the sudden insight or the rhythms of ordinary conversation with such delicacy and humor. To read these twelve stories--of love and loss, of families and strangers, of small moments and enormous epiphanies--is to be reminded again of the power of short fiction to thrill and move us, to make us laugh, or cry. In these profound glimpses into the private fears, joys, and sorrows of people we know, we find revealed a whole range of human experience, told with extraordinary force, clarity, and compassion.
Customer Reviews:
Rich Slices of Modern Life.......2003-02-19
Richard Bausch in these stories--of an older men with younger women, of a woman recovering from a dysfunctional relationship who hooks up with a horrible golfer who persuades himself he is good, of a man with low self-esteem who stumbles out of a bar drunk one morning to save a busload of children, of a man who wins the lottery only to face the final anomie of life as loss--takes somewhat downtrodden and mundane middle-to-lower class characters and reveals them in their secret glory. He has a way of fully seizing an everyday situation and revealing to us its depths, sometimes switching character point of view within the same story. The stories have the opposite effect of Chinese food according to the culinary cliche: they may seem on the light side while being mentally digested, but in retrospect they confer literary nutrition--staying, like the best fiction, with you long after the book is closed; these then are stories whose characters, if not the most memorable, are so real, so deeply sliced from the pie of modern American life, that their quandries and partial resolutions, their fictional or fictionalized lives, tend to merge with one's own memories.
A Master Storyteller.......2002-01-27
I first heard of Richard Bausch when he praised some work of Janis Ian's. I went to see what kind of writer he was, and was pleasantly informed. He really develops his characters. They are real to the reader, and you can be sympathetic toward them even as they bumble and stumble through life ... just like we all do. Not alot of fun & happy endings here, but the stories will touch your heart in a good way.
Grief that makes you happy?.......2000-08-29
Seems an oxymoron, but anyone who's read other books by Bausch knows it isn't. Bausch portrays deeply painful situations with humor and a sense of abiding compassion for his characters. You will put this book down in pain, both in empathy for its characters and in sorrow that it's over. A wonderful read.
Average.......2000-07-10
The high points in this book of stories were attained with some perceptive insights about human relations and the human condition. However, they were not sufficient to overcome an average book.
Chaotic relations.......2000-06-03
Bausch's stories provide the certainty that you can eavesdrop on any life and find something worth hearing. The stories may not cheer you up, but they'll make you glad you read them.
Average customer rating:
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Spirits and Other Stories (Contemporary American Fiction)
Richard Bausch
Manufacturer: Penguin (Non-Classics)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
United States
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ASIN: 0140109633 |
Book Description
These three-CD collections feature audiences' best-loved selections from National Public Radio's Selected Shorts, an award-winning series of classic and contemporary short fiction read by acclaimed actors and recorded live at Peter Norton Symphony Space in New York City. More than three hours of recordings in each collection capture the intimacy of live performance. Stories are alternately funny, sad, moving, and exciting and make a perfect accompaniment to daily activities such as driving, cooking, exercising, and relaxing.
Fictions for our Times: Listener Favorites Old and New includes, among others, Thomas Meehan's "Yma Dream," read by Christine Baranski; Toni Cade Bambara's "Gorilla, My Love," read by Hattie Winston; Percival Everett's "The Fix," read by Isaiah Sheffer; Richard Bausch's "Valor," read by William Hurt; and Alice McDermott's "Enough," read by Kathleen Chalfant.
Average customer rating:
- Pictures painted in subtle brush strokes
- Bausch does an excellent job of pulling you into his stories
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The Fireman's Wife and Other Stories (Norton Paperback Fiction)
Richard Bausch
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
United States
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ASIN: 0393307905 |
Customer Reviews:
Pictures painted in subtle brush strokes.......2001-06-19
As I read these stories I had to constantly remind myself that the author was a man. This is because, not only are most of the stories written from a woman's viewpoint, but it is done so convincingly. I often found myself nodding in the way you do, when someone has gotten it "so right."
I have read women writers who don't do this nearly so well. That is because they insist on painting their pictures with the broad brush strokes of major events--the death of a parent; the breakup of a relationship; recovered memory of past abuse; and, often times, all three at once. But Bausch relies on subtle brush strokes. The only death that occurs is related second-hand, and plays only a supporting roll in the story of the pending break-up of a marriage. Mostly, he writes about the every day things, visits with in-laws, the weekly gathering of friends, things that would not cause the outsider to see anything abnormal. Yet, through subtle clues, like one wife choosing to leave !the group and go to bed, we learn, that everything is not fine. Indeed, there is trouble on the horizon.
If you require major plot lines,and exciting endings, you'll want to pass on this one. But if you are someone who enjoys the true art of short stories, you need to read this. Indeed, Bausch's work could serve as an example of what short story writing should be.
Bausch does an excellent job of pulling you into his stories.......1999-10-15
Richard Bausch's collection of short stories are really great to read as in-betweens. My required reading for classes keeps me busy, but I can hardly wait to grab a minute to read another. "Missy"(which is not included in this collection) is great for the short story lover.
Amazon.com
There's a great tradition of golf fiction, stretching from P.G. Wodehouse's Edwardian follies to John Updike's narrative birdies and chip shots. The Putt at the End of the World is a worthy addition to the canon, in spite of the fact (or because of the fact) that it's a team effort. Nine authors, including such worthies as Dave Barry, Tami Hoag, Tim O'Brien, Lee K. Abbott, and Les Standiford, have contributed chapters to this farcical thriller. The premise, which is less wacky than it initially seems, involves a software tycoon named Phillip Bates, who's built a deluxe golf course north of Edinburgh. To kick things off he convenes a celebrity invitational, and draws not only a clutch of world-class hackers but several terrorists, counterterrorists, and what appear to be counter-counterterrorists. Clearly there's more at stake here than a mere 18 holes.
Slapped together by one author after another, the crazy plot is surprisingly consistent. Yet the contributors have made no effort to disguise their individual styles, which range from Barry's potty-mouthed slapstick to Richard Bausch's tonier stuff to James Crumley's pulp fiction. Indeed, this shift in tone is one of the book's great pleasures. So is the sex and satire, if not necessarily in that order. Still, the ultimate reason to read The Putt at the End of the World is for its strange-but-true evocation of the game itself. Here's Tim O'Brien's take on a ball with a mind of its own:
For the first thirty feet, the old Titlist did not touch the earth, heading for orbit, engines roaring, but then suddenly the rain and wind and fog forced a scrubbed mission. Gravity reasserted itself. By pure chance--a miracle, some would call it--the ball dropped heavily onto the green, not five feet from the cup.... It caught a sidehill slope. It wobbled off line for a second, then straightened out and continued its erratic pilgrimage toward destiny.
Fictionally speaking, at least, that's what we call a hole in one. --William Davies
Book Description
There's a great tradition of golf fiction, stretching from P.G.Wodehouse's Edwardian follies toJohn Updike's narrative birdiesand chip shots. The Putt at the End of the World is a worthy addition to the canon, in spite of the fact (or because of the fact)that it's a team effort. Nine authors, including such worthies as DaveBarry, Tami Hoag, Tim O'Brien, Lee K. Abbott, and Les Standiford, havecontributed chapters to this farcical thriller. The premise, which is less wackythan it initially seems, involves a software tycoon named Phillip Bates,who's built a deluxe golf course north of Edinburgh. To kick things off he convenes a celebrity invitational, and draws not only a clutch of world-class hackers but several terrorists, counterterrorists, and what appear to be counter-counterterrorists. Clearly there's more at stakehere than a mere 18 holes.Slapped together by one author after another, the crazy plot is surprisingly consistent. Yet the contributors have made no effort to disguise their individual styles, which range from Barry'spotty-mouthed slapstick to Richard Bausch's tonier stuff to James Crumley's pulpfiction. Indeed, this shift in tone is one of the book's great pleasures. So isthe sex and satire, if not necessarily in that order. Still, the ultimate reason to read The Putt at the End of the World is for its strange-but-true evocation of the game itself. Here's Tim O'Brien'stake on a ball with a mind of its own:For the first thirty feet, the old Titlist did not touch the earth, heading for orbit, engines roaring, but then suddenly the rain and windand fog forced a scrubbed mission. Gravity reasserted itself. By purechance--a miracle, some would call it--the ball dropped heavily onto the green,not five feet from the cup.... It caught a sidehill slope. It wobbled offline for a second, then straightened out and continued its erraticpilgrimage toward destiny.Fictionally speaking, at least, that's what we call a hole in one. --William Davies
Download Description
Can golf save the world? An all-star line-up of acclaimed authors answers this question and more in this wickedly funny and entertaining novel. Contributors include Lee K. Abbott, Dave Barry, Richard Bausch, James Crumley, James W. Hall, Tami Hoag, Tim O'Brien, Ridley Pearson, and Les Standiford, with each contributing a chapter and passing it along to the next.
Customer Reviews:
Wha?.......2005-12-31
This group-written book has two things going for it: Colorful characters and a promising plot. But that's about it. Wading through several chapters to get to Dave Barry's part in this fiasco was a waste of time otherwise. While the characters are certainly vivid, NONE of them are likeable. At all. ZERO. To top it off there are more F-bombs here than a def jam hosted by Chris Rock, and not nearly as many laughs. The handoff from one writer to the next is sometimes fairly smooth, but the writing styles sometimes vary so wildly that one wonders if one is still reading the same book from one chapter to the next, and it's intended to tell one cohesive story, not be a collection of shorts. Pass on this.
A Fictitious Golf Classic Par Excellence........2005-11-22
Golf is not a team sport, but this book used ten different writers to come up with a murder mystery on a golf course full of celebrities. Each wrote a different segment, and sometimes the story line does not jell, but I'd say they had fun working on this silliness.
Golf used to be a man's game, and used to be called the "good walk" when the men used that means to exercise their bodies as much as their golf swings. Nowadays, they ride the golf carts and play at the game. They've actually started teaching golf in schools, and nine great values the game teaches for youth (sportsmanship, confidence, integrity, perseverance, respect, responsibility, judgment, courtesy, and honesty) ensures a future for the continuation of the game of golf.
Only one of the nine contributors was female who used such off-hand characters to pepper her chapter: Mr. Potato Head, Sensible Shoes, Book Bag Woman, 'Star Wars' star pilot, MacLout, and Cameron who directed the movei 'Titanic.' She laid out the sexual hijinks of the golfers at the castle in Scotland. Dave Barry had the middle to fill in so he used his usually raucous vocabulary as he led into an explouding golf ball made out of enough plastique to end the world as we know it.
Tim O'Brien, whose book IN THE LAKE OF THE WOODS I enjoyed, wrote "On an adjacent putting green, also under umbrellas, mingled such notables as Tony Blair and Al Gore, both decked out in tweeds and starched golf shirts. Nearby, Mu'ammar Qaddafi was giving a now-or-never, sink-it-before-you-die putting lesson to Jack Lemmon, while only a few feet away Chi Chi Rodriguez did his best to adjust the clumsy, rather primitive one-handed putting stroke of former senator Robert Dole." These are just a few of the names; Fidel Castro was present as was Dan Rather and other important people.
The ending was written by the editor whoever he is, preferred to stay anonymous. The ending was explosive, to match the varied styles of writing the international language of golf. Other writers taking part in this project are Lee K. Abbott, Richard Bausch, James Crumley, James W. Hall, Ridley Pearson, Les Standiford, and Tami Hoag. How many are golfers, I wonder?
Know What You're Getting Into.......2005-02-01
I haven't read this book in a long time, but I thought it was great. I don't know why other readers gave it such a low score. I can only think that they didn't know what type of book they were getting into. If you want to laugh out loud, get this book!
The putt at the End of the World.......2002-10-27
This was a terrible book. Multiple authors were not able to successfully make the book flow from chapter to chapter. Character development was disjointed to say the least. Way tooooo much celebrity name dropping...it almost read like People Mag. Buy "The Greatest Player Who Never Lived" instead.
Bagger Vance Meets Monty Python.......2002-06-04
It is said that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Since a camel is very efficient doing what camels are intended to do, then the remark must mean that a camel is a very funny looking horse. Well, in The Putt at the End of the World, a committee of nine individually popular writers has turned out a very funny golf story.
The Putt at the End of the World is apparently the brainchild of last-listed author Les Standiford, shown as editor and compiler. It also seems to be a salute, at least in part, to recently deceased British writer Douglas Adams, author of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series which includes The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It is certainly reminiscent of Adam's work, with zany characters interacting amidst nefarious schemes, all centered around a golf tournament. But not just any golf tournament. Computer zillionaire Philip Bates has bought a Scottish castle and cleared original growth timber to construct the ultimate golf course-as well as rehabbing the castle into an exotic hideaway retreat. This infuriates both environmental terrorists and the last of the MacLout clan, who claims that the MacGregor sellers usurped his family's claim to the property and he should have gotten the money. Then Bates (no relation to this reviewer) scheduled a conference and golf tournament inviting all of the world's political leaders and top golf players.
One of the invitees is Billy Sprague, club pro from Squat Possum Golf Club in rural Ohio. Billy is a magnificent golfer, unless there is money involved in which case he can't even get the ball of the tee. Billy's mentor is the old retired family doctor whose life is golf, who build the Squat Possum Club and who dies immediately after giving Billy his invitation and telling him that he has to go to Scotland and play in order to lift the curse and "...save the world as we know it..." Then FBI and British Secret Service refugees from the Keystone Kops get involved because of the terrorist threat, and the rest is-not history, but hilarious.
Each of the nine authors wrote one of the chapters. They did a good job matching styles, and/or Standiford did a great job of editing, because the novel is seamless. It is a farce, but at the same time has a "Bagger Vance" note of paean to the wonder of golf. It reads fast, and it reads great.
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Arent You Happy for Me (Macmillan Paperback First)
Richard Bausch
Manufacturer: Humanity Press/prometheus Bk
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
Contemporary
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General
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Ford, Richard
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ASIN: 0333640284 |
Books:
- The Perfect Shoe (Urban Soul) (Urban Soul Presents)
- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
- The Raj Quartet: The Jewel in the Crown/the Day of the Scorpion/the Towers of Silence/a Division of the Spoils
- The Secret
- The Secret Garden (HarperClassics)
- The Short Stories Volume III
- The Single Girl's Guide to Marrying a Man, His Kids, and His Ex-Wife: Becoming A Stepmother With Humor And Grace
- The TCP/IP Guide: A Comprehensive, Illustrated Internet Protocols Reference
- The Young Wan
- Therascribe Essential 1.0 for Solo Practitioners: The Treatment Planning and Clinical Record Management System + The Complete Adult Psychotherapy Treatment Planner Module (Practice Planners)
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