That’s True of Everybody – Mark Winegardner
I rarely read short stories; they seem to require a curious mindset, in which one feels intelligent but mildly ADD. Generally, I feel one or the other. That start and stop, start and stop puts me off, before I even begin. And it’s a shame, because my bookshelves are teeming with shorts. Like Mark Winegarder’s That’s True of Everybody. It was one of my Edward R. Hamilton purchases at least a year ago. I had read Winegardner’s novel Crooked River Burning, and liked it. So what the heck, I thought. The book has been moldering away since.
Well, I’m down with the flu–recovering nicely now, thank you–and spent all of Sunday lying in bed reading. One of my informal resolutions for the year is to catch up on the many titles I’ve bought but haven’t read. This was one. And it was a strange one.
Oh, not in a bad way. It’s just that I recently finished this book, and I can barely remember any of the individual shorts–but am still left with a general impression of everything being off somehow, that the strangeness of all the characters is somehow illuminated but universal. It was good.
Comments
Glad to hear you’re a bit better. I agree about short stories. I hate saying goodbye to characters having just got to know them. I like a big fat novel that I can settle into (Anna Karenina is doing the trick at the moment).
Charlotte, that’s so funny that you’re reading AK right now. I read it when I was 17 and too young to read it, and decided I should reread it. I remember NOTHING. Pulled it off the shelf on to my desk, where Steve promptly co-opted it. Had to console myself with a TC Boyle novel instead.