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239th out of 598 books
—
1,400 voters
I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down: Collected Stories
by
William Gay
William Gay established himself as "the big new name to include in the storied annals of Southern Lit" (Esquire) with his debut novel, The Long Home, and his highly acclaimed follow-up, Provinces of Night. Like Faulkner's Mississippi and Cormac McCarthy's American West, Gay's Tennessee is redolent of broken souls. Mining that same fertile soil, his debut collection, I Hate...more
Paperback, 320 pages
Published
September 23rd 2003
by Free Press
(first published 1988)
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Feb 01, 2008
Elizabeth Michael
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
People who don't mind dark stories and violence, emotional, physical, and otherwise
Gay's prose is both electric and unplugged, to be quite cliche about it. Seriously, though, this is like listening to a scratchy old recording of a great blues singer and feeling as though they are there in the room with you, and that everything they are saying about life and love and regret and the amazing brutality humans are capable of enacting against one other and themselves is a universal chain of language stretching from one social class, gender, and era to the next, unending and unbreaka...more
I learned that you need to do yourself a favor and start reading William Gay. Why isn't this guy a household name? OK- he's treading on Flannery's turf, I get it. It is often dark and almost always Southern. Get over your reservations and read him. There will be something in here that will make your jaw drop in astonishment - the prose is often simply that amazing. But forget all the craft considerations... do you remember reading stories that sucked you in completely - stories that you didn't w...more
There's a quote from the Minneapolis Star Tribune's review of this collection of short stories on the fly leaf: "Writers like Flannery O'Connor or William Faulkner would welcome Gay as their peer for getting characters to entangled in the roots of a family tree.". That is a dead on description and praise for the stories Gay tells. Not one of these stories is an easy passage, not for the characters and not for the readers. Even in the few where it seems that everyone has the best intentions somet...more
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One of the most enduring and endearing lyrics in music is the opening line from “The St. Louis Blues.” William Gay chose well for the title of the title story of his collection: I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down. It’s a story about alzheimer’s. Dementia. Told from the point of view of the victim. There’s another in this volume. “Those Deep Elm Brown’s Ferry Blues.” There are a couple of more about getting-older-end-of-life matters as well. Not that Gay is obsessed with the subject any more...more
After reading Twilight, I'd say the short story is Gay's strength. Each of the stories in I Hate To See That Evening Sun Go Down holds up very well in its own right; each a nicely spun yarn. But I can't help feel like together they detract somewhat from one another. Too many common elements, and phrases, and the style of writing almost makes you feel like each successive story has the characters of the last, just living out slightly different realities (which may be intentional, actually), culmi...more
I generally don't like plot-heavy stories or stories where really dramatic things happen, but I make a complete exception for these stories. Lord are they good!
The story about Quincy Nell and Bonedaddy and the air conditioner (sorry I don't have a copy and can't remember the whole name -- I know it's long, though) is one of the best stories ever about jealously(along with Chekhov's "The Fidget). "Sugarbaby" is also wonderful. "The Paperhanger" is one of the scariest stories I've ever read. I ha...more
The story about Quincy Nell and Bonedaddy and the air conditioner (sorry I don't have a copy and can't remember the whole name -- I know it's long, though) is one of the best stories ever about jealously(along with Chekhov's "The Fidget). "Sugarbaby" is also wonderful. "The Paperhanger" is one of the scariest stories I've ever read. I ha...more
I read this every morning on the BART on my way to work at On Lok during the summer of 2006. I adore short stories and these are as high a quality an any I've read. All a bit melancholy...but tasty.
William Gay is a fantastic writer. How I hadn't heard of him before is baffling, but I'm glad I know of him now & can read more of his work. Hopefully it'll be just as good as this because this was one of the best short story collections I've ever read. That the writing is so amazing & the stories so riveting & pretty much flawless is what enabled me to ignore that they all shared something else in common: they were really dark, sometimes twisted, often bordering on creepy and always...more
Gay has a way of mixing the most unlikely of elements together in a way that provides genuine realism to each of these twisted, quick plots. Each of these tales could have easily been developed into full blown novels, but yet, they are in no way incomplete in the presented format. Who would think a teenage mutant ninja turtle backpack would have a non-cheesy place in a short about a love gone wrong, failed suicide attempt? Yet, these little quirks are blended into the story in a way that without...more
Received this book on the day Mr. Gay died, but did not find this out until several days into reading it when I referenced his wikipedia page and found the sad news. Before reading a word of his writing, I had already developed some appreciation for Mr. Gay. By his own accounts, he was a guy who loved writing since he was a kid, but didn't always have the time and backing to commit fully. He finally got published later in life and then fairly quickly became a publisher's darling. By then he was...more
I absolutely loved this collection of short stories set in Tennessee. The characters were all vivid and surprising. Though I thought I could see where Gay's stories were leading, I was always pleasantly surprised by the character's decisions. This is not to say that those decisions felt unnatural either. I felt I was always in the company of real people making complex decisions and reacting to life. Much of the description was beautiful and weighty in just the right way. Gay's wry humor will st...more
I read this one very slowly because, one, it demands it, and two, I never wanted it to end — much like the rural Tennesseean characters themselves in the collection. Most of them are faced with some inevitable life change, some "setting sun," and they rage against this dying of the light in their own ways, whether it's adultery or murder or . . . okay, so mostly adultery or murder. These are prideful, stubborn folk.
Here in short form, Gay really shines, because it better focuses and balances the...more
Here in short form, Gay really shines, because it better focuses and balances the...more
I had not heard of William Gay until I read an article about him in Oxford American after his death. What a great collection of stories. Some are dark, as in The Paperhanger, but the writing is just beautiful as he gets into the heart of his rural Southern characters. Gay's early influences were Thomas Wolfe and Flannery O'Connor and it not hard to see William Faulkner Yoknapatawpha County represented in his Ackerman’s Field.
Absolutely wonderful. The stories within touch upon the sort of issues that Southern literature was born on, and Gay never strikes a dull chord or misfires. Gay certainly knows how to spin an engaging tale, but he also fills his stories with intriguing characters. The old man, Meecham, in the title story, the middle-aged lothario Bonedaddy in “Bonedaddy, Quincy Nell, and the Fifteen Thousand BTU Electric Chair,” and the titular character in “The Paperhanger”—all of these people are positively we...more
The gristle and Gothic (with a capital G) of working-class South perfectly balanced with luminous, lyrical prose. Not to mention some durn good storytelling to boot. Be forewarned, if this collection is ever an entry in Harper's Index, it would read:
Number of frozen mammal corpses: 4.
Number of frozen human corpses: 3.
Number of taxidermied pets: 1.
Number of sentences I wish I'd written: more than fifteen, judging by pages I've dog-eared.
Number of frozen mammal corpses: 4.
Number of frozen human corpses: 3.
Number of taxidermied pets: 1.
Number of sentences I wish I'd written: more than fifteen, judging by pages I've dog-eared.
Let’s see, five stars for every story... the math is too high. I loved this. Beyond love. Of course.
One of the best things I find about William Gay— something in common with Rick Bass, Cormac McCarthy, see a pattern developing here?— is that his men are old souls. Broken, hard-knocked, perceptive and wise and then you read that they’re 24, 25, 28. It’s such a pleasure, such a relief after other books treat those ages like babies. It makes me feel like there’s a part of the world where I fit afte...more
One of the best things I find about William Gay— something in common with Rick Bass, Cormac McCarthy, see a pattern developing here?— is that his men are old souls. Broken, hard-knocked, perceptive and wise and then you read that they’re 24, 25, 28. It’s such a pleasure, such a relief after other books treat those ages like babies. It makes me feel like there’s a part of the world where I fit afte...more
I read this book while spending time with my mom as she started chemo treatment for breast cancer. It was just the tonic I needed - characters who were familiar but not stereotypes, story lines that were the real life combination of humor and tragedy. I fell in love with William Gay's writing.
I love William Gay's writing and was so sad to learn of his passing.
His writing is unlike any I've ever read before. People praise Cormac McCarthy - and rightfully so - but Gay surpasses the portraits he paints with his words, even as sparse as McCarthy.
Such a treat.
His writing is unlike any I've ever read before. People praise Cormac McCarthy - and rightfully so - but Gay surpasses the portraits he paints with his words, even as sparse as McCarthy.
Such a treat.
One of the best collections of short stories I've ever read. Whenever I read his work I want to leave everything and move down to Tenn. or Kentucky and drive around in a blue pick up truck. Gay is a man that knows how to write beautiful stories of lives falling apart.
Gay's brilliant Southern Gothic stories are haunting. Nowhere but in a Gay anthology would you find a story like "The Paperhanger." I was entranced by the lurid characters, the helplessness of some, and the immediate southern voice they all shared.
Southern gothic at its finest. Most of these stories involve someone dying, going crazy, or otherwise destroying their own lives. The descriptions of rural southern living are gritty and terrifying, the characters equally so.
William Gay has a gift for portraying the ugly side of human nature and the many dark and violent situations that arise from it with a prose style that is downright lyrical and poetic, even (or especially) if it seems overwrought at times. Comparisons to Cormac McCarthy are a little much, but there is some of that same darkly overwrought elegance in the dna of these stories.
The last two stories of the collection are by far the strongest and most moving, which I mention only because it may at ti...more
The last two stories of the collection are by far the strongest and most moving, which I mention only because it may at ti...more
Definitely some five star stories mixed in here and when he's one he's a savory sensual delight, but reading them altogether they start to run together a bit and the body count gets a little too bloody and high.
Anyone looking for a doorway to the works of William Gay need look no further. I first read this collection 2 years ago, and the stories and characters have stayed with me. Recently read it again and was just as impressed the second time around. If you've never read William Gay, read this collection and become hooked on an excellent author. RIP WG
I loved these stories, the vivid color of the scenes, the characters took you through the moments of their lives, into their techniques for solving the problems that they are struggling through.
I love this man's work. The first page of the first story and I was all in. I am from Tennessee and I can hear people long gone now speaking to me throught Mr. Gay' s book. READ IT!
very strong collection and some of these stories are amazing. a great way to wade into william gay... i did enjoy the novels more. maybe because his character development is so rich and the longer form allows more time to explore.
This book was good. It's a collection of stories. They're sometimes hard to follow and if I remember correctly, the stories kind of come together in the end.
Gay's stories, like his novels, are atmospheric, dark, and deeply satisfying. It's the voice, though, that grabs. AFter one paragraph you know you are in the hands of an assured, confident writer. In addition to a formidable vocabulary (stygian?) he reinvents language, creates compounds that make poetic sense : hearthammer, foldup, halfbent. Later, more dashes appear to legitimize his creations, which is a shame, but what can you do? If kittens, rainbows and bloodless murder mysteries are your f...more
Most of the stories deserved five stars. I felt a couple were about 3 pages too long, so it would be a 4.25 or so if such a thing were allowed.
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William Gay (b. 1943) was the author of the novels Provinces of Night, The Long Home, and Twilight and the short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. He is the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship.
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