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Assorted Fire Events: Stories, by David Means
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Upon its publication, Assorted Fire Events won a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, and received tremendous critical praise. Ranging across America, taking in a breathtaking array of voices and experiences, this story collection now stands as one of the finest of our time.
- Sales Rank: #537362 in eBooks
- Published on: 2012-10-02
- Released on: 2012-10-02
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
A bleak inevitability pervades David Means's splendid collection of stories. If the weather's not cold in Assorted Fire Events--which it usually is--then there's an icy fist squeezing someone's heart. In the melancholy "Coitus," for instance, the protagonist, while making illicit afternoon love with a woman who is not his wife, relives the circumstances of his brother's death by drowning in a frigid Michigan river. In "Tahorah," a ravaged old trucker with a balloon pump nestled next to his heart lies helpless in the CCU as his fury mounts at the noisy, foreign-language laments going on out in the hallway. But one of the pleasures of these tough stories comes in unexpected flashes of tenderness or redemption. Sitting shiva for his daughter, a man sees his estranged brother laughing--and rather than erupting into predictable indignation, he is reminded of a treasured shared childhood.
Means explores the fateful intersection where disparate lives touch and thereafter are never the same. In admirably efficient and elegant prose, he weaves a story of an angry, failing pipe supplier celebrating the second marriage of his wife's best friend to a business rival. Sucking down scotches, he thinks the groom needs "breaking in, like a new baseball glove. Someone should pour neat's-foot oil onto it and mash a fist around, grind it right in--get the rich freshness, that silver-spoon suck, out of those cheeks." Into this bitter musing stumbles a homeless man in search of a handout, and then the story ricochets forward in time to the aftermath of the encounter, a ruptured spleen, and inevitable divorce. In the space of a few pages entire lives are revealed.
Railroads figure in several tales--a mournful distant whistle, a bygone hobo culture, and the modern equivalent where the rail-beds and switching yards on the fringes of towns attract the homeless and the hapless. In the title piece, annotated incidents of arson and immolation, some real, some fiction, are strung together into a compelling album of calamity. Fierce and complex, illuminated by compassion, these are stories from the bitter edges of experience. --Victoria Jenkins
From Publishers Weekly
Driven by long, majestic sentences, Means's second story collection (after A Quick Kiss of Redemption) explores the oft-misguided ways in which desperate people make contact with each other or with themselves, giving shape to primal desires in a perpetually surprising manner. A young transient in "The Grip" jumps a train, but he's stuck between cars and his only handhold is a small piece of metal. So he braces himself there for an entire, freezing night, hallucinating that his dead mother helps him to maintain his grip. The vagrant semihero of "The Interruption" wanders into a straightlaced wedding reception, willing to make a spectacle in order to get some food. The moving title story veers between autobiography and fiction as it informally catalogues fire-related disasters: an adolescent thug burns a dog alive, a pyromaniac torches houses for sheer pleasure. The narrative offers a sensory and mesmerizing experience of fire, expounding on the sound of crackling flames, the look of WWII flamethrowers on film or the "plot" of a fire's blaze. Means footnotes this story with coy asides that can be mawkish and semiconfessional: "This is horrible, tragic fact. It made the Times," he says about his aunt who set herself on fire. There are a few more reflective short pieces, such as "The Woodcutter," a portrait of a Vietnam vet whose frustrated desire for territorial conquest drives him to chop wood frantically and then eventually to commit suicide. "What I Hope For" is a mood piece in which a couple on vacation eavesdrop on a neighbor. In the assured manner of such unsettling storytellers as Banks or Wolff, Means ushers us toward knowledge with command and verve. 18,000 first printing; 5-city author tour. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
“Assorted Fire Events is one of the best American collections of the last ten years. Means's stories are harrowing and funny and full-blooded, consistently satisfying in their narrative twists, and lyrical in a way that makes most contemporary literary ‘lyricism' sound like greeting cards. This is food for the hungry.” ―Jonathan Franzen, author of Freedom
“The roll-call of honor, from Eudora Welty to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Annie Proulx, is long and rich. Just when it seems that things could get no better, along comes David Means.” ―Eileen Batersby, The Irish Times
“It is Means's signature talent to view the lives of his characters, and life itself, from somewhere just beyond, in a position of maximum understanding and honorable detachment: a semidivine vantage point for the examination of hopelessly human affairs.” ―Jeffrey Eugenides, author of The Marriage Plot
“Achingly intelligent . . . With his jump-cut shifts, startling connections and breathtaking disconnections, the author stands among our most gifted younger writers. Distinctively, though, he anneals his cutting-edge irony into a compassionate anger that goes beyond the literary times. In a word he might disdain to use, it is timeless.” ―Richard Eder, The New York Times
Most helpful customer reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful.
A Truly Great Collection
By A Customer
These are beautiful and original stories. They show philosophical and religious depth--so are not to be read lightly. They lead the reader to personal reflections on the meaning of life. At points Means made me think of Thomas Wolfe--then I thought they really are the work of an American original Franz Kafka. It's about time! Is that possible in this culture?
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful.
A very exciting collection
By A Customer
David Means's work first came to my attention in Harpers Magazine. It was clear from the work I saw there that he was a force to be reckoned with, but I had no idea what proportions this impression would take on! I didn't know about the rest of his stories, the best of them having appeared elsewhere. I was very impressed, especially by the title story. An amazing achievement in belle lettres. If you consider yourself a reader of literature, David Means is a must. He is a master of the short story, the likes of which having not appeared in a long, long time; maybe not since Faulkner.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
An Excellent Read for Fans of the Genre
By mike p.
A very good compilation of stories. Mr. Means seems to have a particularly acute perception of the downtrodden and the seamier episodes of life. The author seems to be at his best--when he describes (in graphically illustrative language) the most despicable of scenarios. I like this book--because I like the grittier side of life. This author is very adept at capturing these dark moments.
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