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I Sailed with Magellan

4.09 of 5 stars 4.09 · rating details · 513 ratings · 67 reviews

Following his renowned The Coast of Chicago and Childhood, story writer Stuart Dybek returns with eleven masterful and masterfully linked stories about Chicago's fabled and harrowing South Side. United, they comprise the story of Perry Katzek and his widening, endearing clan. Through these streets walk butchers, hitmen, mothers and factory workers, boys turned men and men...more

Paperback, 320 pages

Published October 1st 2004 by Picador (first published November 15th 2003)

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Aug 22, 2011 Alison rated it 3 of 5 stars

I have to agree with what is printed on the back of this book, courtesy of the LA Times: "Dybek's gift - a considerable one - is a sorcerer's ability to comix the commonplace and the grotesque..." Dybek can very much do that. He takes a simple day, and mixes into it the mystical, imaginary, fantastical... the grotesque. Everything. And he still makes it tangible, real, accessible. Maybe even more so. His description is spot on, in the way that things so specific are.

My only trouble with the sto...more

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Mar 12, 2013 Keegan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

A few years back, I had the fortunate opportunity to have lunch with Stewart Dybek (though it's unlikely he'll remember it as much as I did). He was quite delightful during the meal as we talked about his work, my past delusions of being a creative writer, and my current studies at SIU-C.

So, flash-forward several years, and I finally get around to reading I Sailed with Magellan, his follow-up to Chicago Stories, with which I was more familiar. Regardless, my brief and pleasant encounter had not...more A few years back, I had the fortunate opportunity to have lunch with Stewart Dybek (though it's unlikely he'll remember it as much as I did). He was quite delightful during the meal as we talked about his work, my past delusions of being a creative writer, and my current studies at SIU-C.

So, flash-forward several years, and I finally get around to reading I Sailed with Magellan, his follow-up to Chicago Stories, with which I was more familiar. Regardless, my brief and pleasant encounter had not prepared me for the deep and profound sadness that threads through this collection of stories (a novel in stories, some would call it, but those people would be idiots).

This collection is more about a place than a person, though a young Polish Chicagoan, Perry, does tend to be in most of the stories, or one of his family members. What these stories really give the reader is a taste of Chicago at a certain point in history. More than other authors who use Chicago as the backdrop for their narratives (see: The Time Traveler's Wife, which was terrible), Dybek gets a sense of what Chicago looks like to a native. There was more than just a parade of tourist locations; this took place in a neighborhood which was at one point filled with various European immigrants, but now has shifted. This shift, this cultural and ethnic shift, is present in the narrative as much as the change that takes place in the characters.

Chicago, for Dybek, exists now only in memory. And that, really, is the central point of the book: an exploration of the role of memory in narrative. Most stories have very little present-day action. For example, in the final story, Perry's brother Mick stands outside his old house, is asked one question several times, and then runs away (that's not really a spoiler). The action that is in the present of the narrative is very, very limited. Most of the story takes place as the narrator seamless drifts from present day observation to long recollection. Connections are made between how the current situation and what past events lead to it.

It would be easy to label this stream-of-consciousness writing and lump it in with Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, but there is something more here. There is an overarching sadness at not only the events of the characters, but how the city remembers it's citizens. Throughout the course of the novel, the characters change quite a bit, both internally (their personalities and characterizations) as well as externally (where they live and what they do), but the city remains mostly static. Buildings seldom change purpose, and instead are left abandoned when emptied. Houses fall down and never reappear. It's a horribly sad reflection on how a city is merely a holding vessel for a constantly shifting mass of people who never stop to see it for what it is. In the same way that a glass will give shape to the water within, so to does Chicago give shape to the characters therein.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone. There is just one warning: don't approach it as if it were a short story collection. Approach it more like a novel about a city told in a varied, shifting perspective. But not, under any circumstance, a novel-in-stories. (less)

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Aug 26, 2011 David Gallin-Parisi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Dybek writes love stories about southside Chicago. He tells stories like snapping tons of quick photographs, rushing depictions images of Polish families shopping during Sunday mass, saxophone bleating uncles, war veterans drinking while bartending, and intense moments of fleeting love. These are beautiful stories, filled with sensual experiences, even when characters are riding in old cars or listening to El pass them by in tiny apartments. Or maybe even more sensual because of those sounds and...more

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May 17, 2013 Tuck rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories

alexsandar hemon name checked dybek as a great and influential writer to him in his recent occasional memoir The Book of My Lives and one can tell right off why. dybek is fantastic, and he conjures the old chicago neighborhoods of polish czech mexican black puerto rican russian packed in the strictly, though invisible (most everybody was terribly and equally poor, cept the rich banksters), demarcated territories. dybek uses smells and sounds as much as dialog and characterization and plot to bri...more

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Jan 25, 2012 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 4th-favorite

Sometimes you tear through a book in one day; other times, it takes years. Either way, it could end up as one of your favorites. I read the first four stories in I Sailed With Magellan several years ago. I got sidetracked, most likely by college, and never finished it--although I enjoyed it. At the time, I probably would've rated it like 3.5. More importantly, though, I just forgot about it; and when I saw it on my shelf, I didn't feel the slightest urge to pick it up and read it.

Then, last mont...more Sometimes you tear through a book in one day; other times, it takes years. Either way, it could end up as one of your favorites. I read the first four stories in I Sailed With Magellan several years ago. I got sidetracked, most likely by college, and never finished it--although I enjoyed it. At the time, I probably would've rated it like 3.5. More importantly, though, I just forgot about it; and when I saw it on my shelf, I didn't feel the slightest urge to pick it up and read it.

Then, last month, I specifically wanted to finish one of the many books on my shelf that I'd abandoned. I tried to pick up Magellan right where I left off. I read about one page of "Wild Orchids" before I was intrigued enough that I knew I had to start over. By the time I was halfway through "Breasts", I already considered Magellan among my favorite books ever.

By stringing together twenty years of the life of a character who is obviously deeply personal to him, Dybek lays himself bare through Perry Katzek. Dybek lets us dream alongside Perry in the early years of life where anything is possible; and then thrusts him into the vastly eventful years of high school with its adventures and ambition, yet constant sexual frustration; and then beyond, to the acceptance of a disappointing "real" world.

Dybek's Polish ancestry and the city of Chicago are central to I Sailed With Magellan. Not only am I not familiar with Polish culture, but I haven't even been to Chicago. There were a TON of references to these two things that probably would have made the book even better for me. However, this never got in the way of understanding Magellan. Dybek is interested not in telling his life story through fiction, but in using his experiences and background to write about imagination at its most glorious, and disappointment at its most heartbreaking.

I'm tempted to write a review for each story in this book. "Breasts" is epic; I'd call it literary magic. It's that kind of story that is just as likely to annoy a reader as it is to blow them away. I would say the same about the whole book, but two other stories in particular were amazing to me. Dybek's wandering style is already a huge influence to me. When I start to daydream and wish I was a writer or film director (which is often), I think of creating something similar to what Dybek did with this book.

There are no bad stories in this collection. Great literature is subjective, of course, but I feel lucky to have found a book that I love so much; and I also feel kind of silly for not realizing it when I tried reading it before. I'd recommend I Sailed With Magellan to anybody who likes to read. And if they read it and don't like it, I will never speak to them again. Well, I guess that's a little severe. But I will seriously be really really mad at them and possibly never forgive them.(less)

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May 29, 2008 Felicity rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: grad-school, short-stories, fiction, shnovel, novel, literary-is-a-genre

I wonder if the dominance of bildungsroman narratives in the shnovels (linked books of short stories) I've surveyed indicates a modern realization about the nature of growing up. It isn't linear or clean, a smooth line of story unspooling over years, and the collage approach of books like Local Girls and this one seems a better fit for our current understanding of memory and childhood.

At any rate, a bildungs-shnovel is more or less what this is; along the way, a portrait of place and yet another...more

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Sep 22, 2007 Garth rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Chicagoans

"Like the Joyce of Dubliners, Stuart Dybek writes with an exquisite sense of place and an amazing sensitivity to the dreams and dislocations one encounters in the borderland between childhood and adulthood. His last work of fiction, The Coast of Chicago, is one of my favorite books, and I approached I Sailed With Magellan with high expectations. If The Coast of Chicago, with its unified setting, its young-to-old chronology, and its careful patterning (alternating short stories with lyrical “shor...more "Like the Joyce of Dubliners, Stuart Dybek writes with an exquisite sense of place and an amazing sensitivity to the dreams and dislocations one encounters in the borderland between childhood and adulthood. His last work of fiction, The Coast of Chicago, is one of my favorite books, and I approached I Sailed With Magellan with high expectations. If The Coast of Chicago, with its unified setting, its young-to-old chronology, and its careful patterning (alternating short stories with lyrical “short shorts”), seemed more like a latter-day Winesburg, Ohio than a mere collection of stories, I Sailed With Magellan feels more like a group of very good stories than the “Novel-in-Verse” its title page insists it is. Here, Dybek preserves the setting and tone of his earlier work, but organizes his stories loosely around a central character: Perry Katzek. Like Kerouac’s Jack Duluoz, Perry seems pretty clearly to be a stand-in for his author, and the richness of lived experience fills to bursting the strongest stories here—“Song,” “Undertow,” “Blue Boy,” and “Je Reviens.” All four offer glimpses of Perry’s childhood in the Bronzeville section of Chicago. Another excellent quartet of stories—“Lunch at the Loyola Arms,” “Orchids,” “We Didn’t,” and “Que Quieres”—show Perry in various stages of a deferred maturity, and although they seem slightly less finished…well, so does adulthood; I’ll call it “evocative disarray” and chalk it up to authorial intent. Throughout, images and characters recur in the background. We see again and again morning glories and the spray of fire hydrants in summer and Perry’s uncle Lefty. These devices may justify the inclusion of “Breasts,” a novella largely unrelated to Dybek’s attempt at bildungsroman, but here, Dybek indulges his weaknesses—stagy dialogue, purple eroticism, and scenes and characters seemingly lifted from TV.

Even sans “Breasts,” I Sailed With Magellan doesn’t succeed as a novel. Broken into discrete chunks, Perry’s journey seems stripped of causality. For example, his mother’s madness—alluded to in several stories—can remain, in a story collection, undramatized. In a novel, however, such a powerful influence on the protagonist wouldn’t remain merely implicit. Other experiences that seem to lie at the heart of Perry’s (and perhaps Dybek’s) character stay in the background, as well, and while Dybek gestures in a few stories toward focusing this book on the relationship between Perry and his Uncle Lefty, the uncle disappears for long stretches. It is always a pleasure to read Dybek, and some of his best work is here, but I Sailed for Magellan argues less for a reenvisioning of the novel’s possibilities than the creation of some genre between collection and novel that might serve Dybek’s intentions better than the "Novel in Stories" seems to."

from hace.blogspot.com(less)

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Jul 11, 2011 Manda rated it 5 of 5 stars

with expectations so high after Coast of Chicago-I couldn't believe that Magellan surpassed it. I truly enjoed Perry's threading through the narrative. It was like listening to stories of extended families and communities where I have to pause to remember the relationship of my Mother's cousin's husband's best pal that ended up falling into a dumpster after golfing all day and drinking through the night-only to stumble off the path back to the Chrystler into the dumpster. I am incrediby biased t...more

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Oct 19, 2012 Maple Street rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: michael-g-recommends

Dybek's been called Chicago's James Joyce over and over again, and every collection he puts out gets hailed as his Dubliners. Unlike most of my favorite writers, dude does not shy away from love stories. This book made me knee-bucklingly nostalgic for stuff I never came remotely close to experiencing.

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Nov 16, 2011 Gerry LaFemina rated it 5 of 5 stars

Stu Dybek is one of the best writers in America today--he's a writer's writer, but he's also a reader's writer. he writes with the cadence, phrasing and eye of a poet. But his characters are real, their dramas unique and poignant, the plots engaging and interesting, and the prose is all together lovely.

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Mar 21, 2013 Chilly SavageMelon rated it 3 of 5 stars

I was turned on to Dybek through a reading of one of his stories on Selected Shorts. This collection didn't disappoint. The strongest story is most likely Breasts, though Que Quieres left me with a longing to meet a character like the brother, and Orchids is really good as well. And the first one, Song, has to make you smile.

Stylistically, he reminds me a bit of Thom Jones, but that might actually be more a matter of theme. He is very much "his own" writer, carrying in the tradition of loner mal...more

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Sep 18, 2011 April rated it 3 of 5 stars

Some of the stories interested me and others did not and felt excessively prolonged. My favorite was "A Minor Mood" as it perfectly described the nuances I remember when I was once a member of the marching band surrounded by the scents, sights, and sounds of the university band room. Some of the stories read a little crass, but that is due to the perspective of the character telling the story and only reflects the author's ability to spin a story well. While I do appreciate the author's vocabula...more

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Mar 30, 2008 kasia rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to kasia by: John

While there was no single story in this collection that I loved as much as my favorites from Coast of Chicago, I think that overall, this is probably the better book. The echoes between the stories, for some reason, really distracted me, although they probably would be more appropriately seen as a masterful interweaving of stories. I read the book over the course of several months, which I think was wise, because when I read the last 100 pages in one big push, I found myself rolling my eyes a bi...more

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Dec 12, 2011 Steve rated it 5 of 5 stars

Chicago's literary tradition is honorably upheld. This is some of the best fiction I read all year. (Honestly, not a lot; but still...)
Any of my friends or neighbors who might wish to borrow my copy are welcome to it.

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Jan 22, 2009 Amber rated it 1 of 5 stars

I couldn't get into this book. I tried twice and then took a trip to the bookstore to buy a different book to read. It shall sit on my shelf and possibly get read one rainy afternoon when I am dead bored and there is nothing else to do.

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Oct 25, 2010 Lucio rated it 5 of 5 stars

My friend Brian turned me on to Dybek with story "PET Milk." It stuck with me, as do the stories in this collection.
Dybek has a gentleness, a backdoor entrance to the rapture room. Man, I'm flamin' away here...

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Mar 08, 2013 Paige rated it 4 of 5 stars

The blue boy story captivated me completely. Others were good, minus Breasts. Dybek entranced me for the first time when I read Chopin in Winter from his other collection, The Coast of Chicago. Hot damn, I read that story in 2000 and it still rattles me when I think about it 13 years later.

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Jan 16, 2009 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Approaches Steinbeck's "A&P" or King's "The Body," or something like a book version of Woody Allen's "Radio Days." Except about a Polish family on the South Side of Chicago. Excellent.

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Dec 19, 2009 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Stuart Dybek is awesome. His surreal depiction of a childhood Chicago inhabited by ghosts and gypsies is conveyed in a gritty, unsentimental tone. Comparisons to Nelsen Algren abound.

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Jul 08, 2012 Charlie rated it 3 of 5 stars

A collage of different people and places depicting the Chicago area in decades past. Stories range from humorous to heart wrenching and everyone we meet carries some sort of vaudevillian tragic quality.

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Feb 24, 2011 RUSA CODES rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: notable-books-2005

This was one of the 2005 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...

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Feb 05, 2010 Ginger B. added it

Not only does this book show the close relationship between brothers, it shows the urban neighborhood as a small town that is both restrictive and protective.

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Mar 22, 2012 Abby rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, american-lit, francine-prose

This is a book for boys. I'm sorry to dismiss it in that way, but it was written by, for, and about boys. Women (or girls) only ever appear in its pages as sex objects. (There's a whole short story just called "Breasts," about men/boys' amazing experiences with them. Grrreat.) I guess that's fine if those are the stories you need to tell, but I'd rather not waste my time reading them. (*The only reason I picked up this collection is because it appeared on Francine Prose's list of Books to be Rea...more

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Jan 11, 2013 Charles Barone rated it 2 of 5 stars

If you are a fourteen year old boy this is for you. If you are an adult, try something more mature.

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Nov 05, 2007 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is somewhere between a 3 and 4 star read.

Structurally, this is a really fascinating book. It's a novel in stories, which functions on two levels: each chapter is a short story and the stories work together to form a larger image--which I believe is tremendously hard to pull off. The downside is that there were stories or places within stories that lost my interest, which probably speaks more to taste than literary ability. Dybek is no doubt a gifted writer. The structure and style of this...more

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Jul 27, 2009 Lisbeth Solberg rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Reminded me of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep with a little Sopranos thrown in. One jacket note characterizes Dybek's prose as "spare." I would not say so.

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Sep 10, 2008 Patty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008, american-literature, fiction, short-stories, contemporary-fiction

Interconnected stories about Chicago. sometimes I didn't totally understand how the stories connected. All in one neighborhood or one family in the neighborhood - I guess.

I think I heard Dybek speak at a ALA program in Chicago which would have been appropriate and also would explain why one story seemed very familiar.

My favorite story was "We Didn't" which may be the one that was read to us.

Worth reading if you like short stories - much of it was serious, but there were definitely some funny bit...more

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Dec 11, 2007 Rebecca rated it 2 of 5 stars

I think Dybek is, sometimes, brilliant. There are few short story writers that I am interested in, and I'm always interested in his work. "If I Vanished," which was published in The New Yorker this past summer, was a gorgeous and haunting piece of fiction. Lovely and thoughtful and strange.

However, this collection is like a warm-up--it's not his real work, not his real triumph. It's valuable to see it, to witness him learning and making his way though stories. But I anticipate much greater thin...more

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Mar 13, 2010 Kam rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great stories! I loved reading them.

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Oct 10, 2007 Therese rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Short story readers and Chicagoans

I loved this book from the beginning. I identified with each passage of his youth having grown up in Chicago, with the exception that he was a male. He has the ability to clearly describe images and even smells that were indigenous to Chicago city neighborhoods in the 60's and 70's. From the well know "street people" to first loves. It was about "coming home", growth, hard-working middle class people and life in the big city. He quietly reminded us that Chicago is the "heartbeat" of the midwest.

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About Stuart Dybek

Stuart Dybek has published three short story collections: Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, The Coast of Chicago, and I Sailed With Magellan; and two volumes of poetry: Brass Knuckles and Streets in Their Own Ink. He has been anthologized frequently and regularly appears in magazines such as the New Yorker, the Atlantic, Harper’s Magazine and the Paris Review.

He has received numerous awards, incl...more

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Childhood and Other Neighborhoods: Stories

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Quotes from I Sailed with Magellan

“I recalled the afternoon when the two of us stood beating erasers, and Camille confided that she'd done penance for stories - stories that I'll never know if she wrote or only imagined writing. She'd wanted me to tell her a secret from my dreams, a secret from my dreams I hadn't had as yet, and so I didn't quite understand what she was after.
"It's about feeling," Camille had insisted.
I didn't understand then that she was talking about risk.” — 2 people liked it

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