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8th out of 53 books
—
19 voters
Stories V!
Paperback, 140 pages
Published
March 29th 2011
by Holler Presents
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Apr 14, 2011
Jim
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Boy, put that liquor down and get me my gun
Shelves:
small-press
If you've read my review of Stories II, you know I'm a fan of Scott McClanahan, and his beautifully surreal reading at Vermin on the Mount at Mie N Yu in Washington, D.C. cemented my admiration.
Sean Carswell, my publisher at Gorsky Press, once told me that if he was in charge of an MFA program he'd gather all the applicants in a bar and admit the candidates who told the best stories. Or at least throw at the ones without stories to tell. McClanahan would thrive in Mr. Carswell's program.
McClan...more
Sean Carswell, my publisher at Gorsky Press, once told me that if he was in charge of an MFA program he'd gather all the applicants in a bar and admit the candidates who told the best stories. Or at least throw at the ones without stories to tell. McClanahan would thrive in Mr. Carswell's program.
McClan...more
Don't read this book. Scott rips through each page and pokes you in the chest with bully fingers while you read it. He also yells at you. WHILE YOU ARE READING IT. He challenges you in a not nice way. If you like Scott on a personal level, you might be okay with all of his shenanigans. Maybe you are used to them. Maybe he invited you to dinner once and belittled you into finishing the casserole you weren't too fond of because "Sarah worked all day making that fucking casserole!" And so you asked...more
hearing scott mclanahan read a story is probably going to make you cry. and i don't mean that in a bad way. what i mean is, he is probably going to have the story half-memorized and probably going to sing southern hymns and probably going to end by reminding you that you are not dead and then press play on a boom box and dance a very slow waltz with a woman in a way that will definitely make you cry and then you will sit up and write a review about his book while someone is asleep in your bed an...more
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I get to see Scott McClanahan read IN PERSON really soon. It's gonna be like seeing Nirvana or the Beatles or Willie Nelson, or maybe all of them combined in a great soup! After each of the first couple of stories, I though to myself: I hope he reads that one. And then after the next few: I hope he reads those too. After the next one... you get the picture.
I want to hear him read the whole damn book!
Scott's stories are great and weird and sweet and kinda disturbing and the way he puts them on...more
I want to hear him read the whole damn book!
Scott's stories are great and weird and sweet and kinda disturbing and the way he puts them on...more
this was a good book that does a nice job of having little bits that set up the other stories and also these weird parts after this perfectly good story is done that goes like ALSO MONTHS LATER THIS OTHER THING HAPPENED TO ALSO END THIS STORY so you can take them or leave them but why not take them? life isn't precious and neither are books or stories, they're parts of out lives and the shift and change whether we want them to or not, and then we have to deal with it, and that's amazing, that's...more
This past Saturday I managed to catch the Future Dead Friends tour when it stopped in Indianapolis. The last writer to read was some guy named Scott McClanahan. I didn't know who he was, and I was ready to start the long trip back home. The show had started late and I was getting tired. But then this Scott McClanahan guy started talking and just made me forget all of that. What a storyteller!
Afterwards I bought this book from a table at the back of the room. I just finished reading it this morn...more
these stories come from some pure voice of pain and transformation. i can hear them in scott's voice, his southern accent and lilting way of talking as he walks around the room, sometimes speeding through the dialogue and sometimes taking you s l o w s l o w through the words so that you feel them and you feel them.
i just wish this collection would have been longer so that it would go on and on....more
i just wish this collection would have been longer so that it would go on and on....more
I got this from Tim Jones-Yelvington in a cab during AWP because he had traded a copy of his chapbook to Scott for this, but he already had this. The first story is literally astounding, and the stories--and they are stories--that continue on maintain a casual narrative of telling in a really fantastic manner; like this is narrative that is heavy when it's even about simple things. Scott both as a reader and a writer really seems to show how much of an actual life he has lived, and his narrative...more
I am going to say this upfront: With Stories V! Scott McClanahan has officially wedged himself into the canon. But which canon. The American Southern oral canon? Yes. The small press indie fiction canon? Yes. The Appalachian hipster canon. That too. McClanahan has always delivered. His first collection, Stories, described the real down-and-out American south beautifully. Stories II, true to its sequential title, continued and strengthened McClanahan’s role as an official voice of the South. Then...more
With Scott the question isn't whether the work is good, it is, always, or even maybe whether he's one of our best short story writers, he is, but making sense of what he does, story after story, as they blend together into one long narrative about a guy named Scott, who we now think we know, and we might, because we know someone named Scott, and we know his stories, the ones he has shared anyway, and it's good, all of it.
Awesome collection of stories. Great with endings, especially the double-endings that change the dynamic of the collection pretty well (creating uncertainty: first, "Is that really the ending?" and then, later: "Well, this must have a second ending...." Also has great and surprising shifts that suddenly make the stories much more significant. My only criticism is that their shortness does suggest a lack of something: the stories don't go quite far enough. The stories do go through an arc, but I'...more
You might think you understand linked short-story collections and metafiction, but you don't--not until you've read Stories V!
These stories--by turns honest, surprising, cunning, restrained, magical, and gritty--unflinchingly blur the lines between genre thanks to McClanahan's strong, persuasive narrative voice.
Stories V! might not change your life, but it will certainly change your perspective on literature in the 21st century.
These stories--by turns honest, surprising, cunning, restrained, magical, and gritty--unflinchingly blur the lines between genre thanks to McClanahan's strong, persuasive narrative voice.
Stories V! might not change your life, but it will certainly change your perspective on literature in the 21st century.
McClanahan is a master of the short story. A bit more raw than Stories I & II at times, but with a soft side as well. Razy is the closest thing to a suburban tall tale that I've ever read. Scott is quickly becoming one of my favorite writers, and is easily my favorite to read out loud.
The saga continues and then it ends. There's a boom, there's a sex tape, and there is lots of regret to see in between the pages. A performance of on old way to tell stories put to paper. It must be consumed as if air is slowly waving goodbye.
I really, really liked this collection. I think McClanahan is what I've been looking for for a long time. I was turning the pages like a maniac, but didn't want to the stories to end. Can't wait to see more from him.
there was a part in 'mary the cleaning lady' that made me cry:
"There would only be the two of us licking our ice cream cones and knowing there were good things in this world too. It was hard to believe, but there were."
it made me cry because earlier in the story it showed Mary's dad and how he was dying and he was being horrible to her because he had forgotten who he was. it made me think that whatever shitty things there are in this world, the capacity for humans to be positive, to recognize th...more
"There would only be the two of us licking our ice cream cones and knowing there were good things in this world too. It was hard to believe, but there were."
it made me cry because earlier in the story it showed Mary's dad and how he was dying and he was being horrible to her because he had forgotten who he was. it made me think that whatever shitty things there are in this world, the capacity for humans to be positive, to recognize th...more
Review here
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http://smallpressreviews.wordpress.co...
he's the best guy writing today. his stories do whatever great thing it is that nobody else does.
god i want to lift scott macclanahan into the passenger's side of a chariot and drive him to heaven
This is fantastic. The run of STORIES 1, STORIES 2 and this final STORIES V! is a damn delight.
Seemed to fizzle out in the end, but LOVED some other of the stories.
I read the ebook version; not yet added to Goodreads, but don't look at me.
Another fine, fine offering. Run, don't walk to your nearest local internet...
This is wonderful and builds on the excellence of its predecessors. Scott does not disappoint with his insightful stories told in a unique, authentic voice. Each story blends humor and wisdom and chronicles the often difficult, awkward process of becoming a good man. I did not want this book to end.
Pretty terrific all around.
Felt honest
9/10
here is a 'review' of this book: http://www.redfez.net/nonfiction/311
This went through me about as fast and as sharp as Stories II did. I feel like I've had more beers with Scott than most of my own friends. I love him, I love this, I love life via Scott.
These stories are funny and felt. If you've ever heard Scott McClanahan read, you cannot read these stories yourself without hearing his voice and that makes them better in unexplainable ways.
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