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Look! Look! Feathers
by
Mike Young (Goodreads Author)
A tuba player surfs the web from a cyst on his hand. A town of spilled peaches fields its own game show. A mosquito fogger finds an unlikely friend. The stories in Mike Young's debut collection Look! Look! Feathers tap into the surreal and sad, the absurd and ragged dreams scratching at the edge of the American heart. Punks drive auctioned police cars, and necklaces of blu...more
200 pages
Published
January 1st 2011
by Word Riot Press
(first published 2010)
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There is a lot to be said about these twelve stories, but in short, Look! Look! Feathers is an impressive first collection and Mike Young is a gifted new storyteller. Young's narrative voice is like that of an entire community of unique personalities, each presenting its own history with a special hospitality and confidence that draws you in instantaneously and stays with you long after the tale has been told. Some stories are more interesting and vivacious than others, but they all possess an e...more
The writing is powerful. I love how the author can capture the brief bit of splendor in seemingly everyday moments.
Seriously, this guy is the Barry Hannah of a new generation, but (im)possibly more jaded, fragmented, jostled, boozey, druggy, and electrified...Yep. These stories are good, even I-read-them-eating-a-can-of-peaches-in-a-parking-lot good! In fact, they're great! I seriously hope Mike Young writes a novel, and I hope that when he does the energy of these stories remain with the same face-punch splatter through the brain. Is it even possible for this guy to get any better? Anything is possible, so...more
All apologies to Fresno, but driving the 350 miles between L.A. and San Francisco, the scenery unspools in little more than a piss and a half of endless, bleached nothing. Leaving the Bay Area and heading toward Southern Oregon, the Interstate rises out of the Central Valley and winds left of center. During these next 350 miles, pretty much the same piss and a half, the trees, the elevation, the entire character changes. In this corridor, Red Bluff to Yreka to Talent, the weeds and speed give wa...more
I'm not sure how Mike Young got so good already. I mean, dude is pretty young but his stories and poems that pop up here and there and everywhere are always so full of vibrant color, stunning language, and an engaging brand of funny wisdom that seems to bubble out of their small town, sorta white trashy settings and characters. Also--I had a new sensation reading these stories. It was this: You can spot a great sentence writer pretty quickly, but Mike somehow takes his killer sentences and build...more
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Mike Young’s short stories live in the bizarre corners of our world, just past the surface of what we see in passing, but recognizable all the same. Suburban jocks idolize their washed-up, half-insane coach. Residents of shitty apartments and motel kitchenettes drink, fight and talk about all the great plans they have. Everyone is lonely in their own special way, and everyone likes to think that their voice is unlike anyone else’s. Problem is, several stories in, sometimes those voices bleed tog...more
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“The World Doesn’t Smell Like You,” from Mike Young’s story collection LOOK! LOOK! FEATHERS, is a quest narrative about these high school dumbasses who need to know whether the rumor’s true that their gym teacher, Coach Schiel, has only got one ball.
It’s one of the L!L!F stories I got to read an early draft of, it’s the story I got to publish in Keyhole 10, and when in a certain mood, it’s my favorite story in the collection. Other favorites are “Susan White,” “Snow You Know,” “The Same Heart,”...more
It’s one of the L!L!F stories I got to read an early draft of, it’s the story I got to publish in Keyhole 10, and when in a certain mood, it’s my favorite story in the collection. Other favorites are “Susan White,” “Snow You Know,” “The Same Heart,”...more
Amazing that he's able to incorporate pop culture and entirely avoid kitsch. Enough has been said about his strong voice. More importantly, these stories explore human emotion as technology has tampered with it. Mosquito Fog is in my top three contemporary short stories.
Someone in comments said she was giving this 5 stars because she loved how gross it is. I am not finishing it and giving it one star because I do not love how gross it is.
I loved how gross this book is. I read it straight through.
Funny and heartbreaking in a brilliant way. Read it.
I am exactly halfway through this collection of stories, but I had to come here and gush about it because I am in love. Mike Young is a a force. These stories are everything it is to be a person in America, growing up, or staying the same, or just living, but blue-collar-smart, like if Barry Hannah fell into the brainhole of a Freaks & Geeks freak (or geek). It's like when someone lets you in on a revelation that you didn't know you knew, and you're like "Holy shit! I knew that. But holy shi...more
pretty brilliant first book of short stories, most set in califa north of the Sacramento river. most are pretty raw, deal with losers making very bad decisions, and ordinary folks trying to play a fucked up game with fucked up rules not of their making.
I really liked this collection of wild, sad, strange stories by Mike Young. The unforgettable title story was my favorite.
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Mike Young is the author of the poetry collection
We Are All Good If They Try Hard Enough
(Publishing Genius 2010), the story collection
Look! Look! Feathers
(Word Riot Press 2010), and the chapbook MC Oroville's Answering Machine (Transmission Press 2009). He runs
NOÖ Journal
and Magic Helicopter Press.
More about Mike Young...
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