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Men in the Making
From the critically acclaimed author of The Wake of Forgiveness —“a mesmerizing, mythic saga,” as described by the New York Times —come ten remarkable stories that uncover unexpected beauty in the struggles of the modern American male.
Like Richard Russo, Bruce Machart has a profound knowledge of the male psyche and a gift for conveying the absurdity and brutality of daily life with humor and compassion. Whether they find themselves walking the fertile farmland of south Texas, steering trucks through the suffocating sprawl of Houston, or turning logs into paper in the mills just west of the Sabine River, the men of these stories seek to prove themselves in a world that doesn’t always welcome them. Here are men whose furrows are never quite straight and whose hearts are near to bursting with all the desires they have been told they aren’t supposed to heed.
“ Bruce Machart is one of our most ambitious and fearless young writers . With Men in the Making , he has composed a remarkable paean to the complex fragility of the American male. I read these stories in a state of tender amazement.”—Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life
Like Richard Russo, Bruce Machart has a profound knowledge of the male psyche and a gift for conveying the absurdity and brutality of daily life with humor and compassion. Whether they find themselves walking the fertile farmland of south Texas, steering trucks through the suffocating sprawl of Houston, or turning logs into paper in the mills just west of the Sabine River, the men of these stories seek to prove themselves in a world that doesn’t always welcome them. Here are men whose furrows are never quite straight and whose hearts are near to bursting with all the desires they have been told they aren’t supposed to heed.
“ Bruce Machart is one of our most ambitious and fearless young writers . With Men in the Making , he has composed a remarkable paean to the complex fragility of the American male. I read these stories in a state of tender amazement.”—Steve Almond, author of Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life
208 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2011
About the author
Bruce Machart
7 books29 followersBRUCE MACHART's fiction has appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, Story, One-Story, and elsewhere, and has been anthologized in Best Stories of the American West. A graduate of the MFA program at Ohio State University, he currently lives and teaches in Houston.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
May 31, 2019
Well narrated, but this might be better read in text. The stories are brutally dark, yet very good. Good old boys & girls baring their darkest secrets in a way that twisted my guts each time. I should have just read a story a day with a lighter book in between. They weren't dark just to be dark, but very true to life. I could really relate through some of my darker, stupider moments to some of them. Definitely not a pleasant read, but the author has a descriptive way that's devastating. Good despite the subject, I guess.
This review is a mess, but that's the way the book left me. Don't read it in the rain or when you're feeling bad.
This review is a mess, but that's the way the book left me. Don't read it in the rain or when you're feeling bad.
February 5, 2012
I was halfway through Bruce Machart's debut collection of short stories, Men in the Making, when I rushed over to Facebook and posted this somewhat breathless message: "I can only read one story per day because they are like miniature razor blades bumping through my bloodstream. This is fiction that excoriates and scrubs the reader from the inside out." That sort of hyperbole is pretty typical of me and sometimes I'll later "reflect and regret" when I look back at what I've written.
Not in this case. Machart's ten stories, set mostly in Texas, are brutally good. It's the kind of fiction you read with equal parts pleasure and pain. It's the kind of pain that's good for you--the dental yank of the festered tooth, the extraction of the splinter, the snap-crunch back into place of the dislocated shoulder. At times, the stories can be hard to read, but when we've made it through to the end, we're rewarded with that sweet succor of catharsis.
But yes, it can be emotionally wrenching to reach those epiphanies. Machart, who also wrote the excellent novel The Wake of Forgiveness, doesn't shy away from the awful. He forces you to take your eyes off the road ahead and stare at all the gory realities of the wreck on the shoulder of the highway. In "The Only Good Thing I've Heard," for instance, we spend some time with Raymond, a nurse in a burn unit, as he administers debridement treatments to the patients. There are scenes in there guaranteed to make you squirm. But you cannot look away.
Or consider this opening paragraph of "Monuments":
Every word in that paragraph is carefully orchestrated and impeccably placed, from the drunk's hand reaching out to the sideview mirror for balance to the "dark green cool of the grass" to the "crumpled stop." That kind of hard work on the part of the writer is all but invisible to the reader caught up in what's happening on the page. The details in that paragraph are so vivid and so shocking you forget it started with the seemingly-casual comment that the narrator comes from a broken home. But that absentee mother and the narrator's longing for love are central to the story. Kevin with his peeled skin is important, too, but he's the gory window dressing that pulls you inside the door.
Another standout story is "Because He Can't Not Remember"--the tension starting in the double negative of the title. It's about a couple--new parents--in the last five minutes of their life together in a Walmart parking lot on "another Houston night so hot and humid you could hang teabags from tree branches to steep." In a few moments, their lives will intersect with the troubled Ramirez twins in their blue LeMans cruising the parking lot and they will all be changed forever. After reading this, I sat in my chair, unable to move for several minutes, reamed through and through by the unbearable heaviness and beauty of the writing.
Machart also does an excellent job of describing the worlds in which his characters live; the details of the stories take us to places most of us have never been--a lumber mill, for instance, with this explanation of a debarker from "The Last One Left in Arkansas":
After reading Machart's story, I know enough to stay away from one of these machines and not let my curiosity lead me inside to check out those quills at a time when no one else knows I'm in there and the foreman comes along to throw the switch. That happens here in "The Last One Left in Arkansas" and it's not pretty.
There's not a single story in this collection that doesn't work its ass off to earn genuine sympathy for its characters. These men defy the stereotype of blunt, hard-shelled machismo; Machart makes them far more complex than that. Oh sure, there's some swagger, but we recognize it for the thin shield it is; like this paragraph from the opening story, the aptly-named "Where You Begin":
For every Jimmy, we get men like the members of the pipe fitter's union in "Among the Living Amidst the Trees" who shave their heads in sympathy for a co-worker with cancer:
These are rough-hewn and heavy men, men with calluses thick as rawhide, men who aren't afraid to keep something tender beneath their rib cages, and to expose it to the elements when occasion calls for it, no matter how it hurts.
In Men in the Making, Machart is trying to get all the way to that inner core of hurt, past the leather epidermis of stoicism and brute force. What he finds, in fact, is that men are some of the most tender creatures around--whether they know it or not. The very last line of the last story in the book neatly sums it up: "to be a man, a whole man, is to remain forever in need." Though women aren't the main characters in these stories, neither are they marginalized. We are all travelers on the same journey, Machart says, with the same vulnerabilities and fear. Every reader has something to gain from the beautiful scouring debridement of Machart's fiction.
Not in this case. Machart's ten stories, set mostly in Texas, are brutally good. It's the kind of fiction you read with equal parts pleasure and pain. It's the kind of pain that's good for you--the dental yank of the festered tooth, the extraction of the splinter, the snap-crunch back into place of the dislocated shoulder. At times, the stories can be hard to read, but when we've made it through to the end, we're rewarded with that sweet succor of catharsis.
But yes, it can be emotionally wrenching to reach those epiphanies. Machart, who also wrote the excellent novel The Wake of Forgiveness, doesn't shy away from the awful. He forces you to take your eyes off the road ahead and stare at all the gory realities of the wreck on the shoulder of the highway. In "The Only Good Thing I've Heard," for instance, we spend some time with Raymond, a nurse in a burn unit, as he administers debridement treatments to the patients. There are scenes in there guaranteed to make you squirm. But you cannot look away.
Or consider this opening paragraph of "Monuments":
When I was ten, after my mother left Dad and me and flew off to Europe, Kevin, the five-year-old next door, got run down in front of our house. He was chasing a cat, and after his body hit the pavement and slid into the grass near the Houston Lighting and Power substation across the road, neighbors say a bearded man in overalls stumbled down from the truck, put a hand on the sideview mirror to keep his balance, and took a leak right there in the street, beer cans falling from the cab to his feet. Later, we heard that Kevin's aorta had burst, that he probably hadn't felt the asphalt peeling his skin or the dark green cool of the grass where he'd come to a crumpled stop.
Every word in that paragraph is carefully orchestrated and impeccably placed, from the drunk's hand reaching out to the sideview mirror for balance to the "dark green cool of the grass" to the "crumpled stop." That kind of hard work on the part of the writer is all but invisible to the reader caught up in what's happening on the page. The details in that paragraph are so vivid and so shocking you forget it started with the seemingly-casual comment that the narrator comes from a broken home. But that absentee mother and the narrator's longing for love are central to the story. Kevin with his peeled skin is important, too, but he's the gory window dressing that pulls you inside the door.
Another standout story is "Because He Can't Not Remember"--the tension starting in the double negative of the title. It's about a couple--new parents--in the last five minutes of their life together in a Walmart parking lot on "another Houston night so hot and humid you could hang teabags from tree branches to steep." In a few moments, their lives will intersect with the troubled Ramirez twins in their blue LeMans cruising the parking lot and they will all be changed forever. After reading this, I sat in my chair, unable to move for several minutes, reamed through and through by the unbearable heaviness and beauty of the writing.
Machart also does an excellent job of describing the worlds in which his characters live; the details of the stories take us to places most of us have never been--a lumber mill, for instance, with this explanation of a debarker from "The Last One Left in Arkansas":
Imagine a porcupine turned inside out, a big mother with three-foot-long steel quills. That’s what a debarking drum is like. An enormous pipe, fifteen feet in diameter and lined inside with hundreds of these quills. Load it with a dozen or so twenty-foot-tall, forty-year-old Arkansas pine trunks, turn that sucker on, get it rolling good, and thirty seconds later you’ve got naked trees, fresh and clean as an Eden stream. Step back, blow the bark and sap out the discharge vents, smell that rich, sappy-sweet smell, and keep on keepin’ on.
After reading Machart's story, I know enough to stay away from one of these machines and not let my curiosity lead me inside to check out those quills at a time when no one else knows I'm in there and the foreman comes along to throw the switch. That happens here in "The Last One Left in Arkansas" and it's not pretty.
There's not a single story in this collection that doesn't work its ass off to earn genuine sympathy for its characters. These men defy the stereotype of blunt, hard-shelled machismo; Machart makes them far more complex than that. Oh sure, there's some swagger, but we recognize it for the thin shield it is; like this paragraph from the opening story, the aptly-named "Where You Begin":
You know Jimmy, all right. Here’s a guy with--as he’ll tell you--a truck and some luck and on good nights a fuck. A guy just far enough out of his mind to own the Exxon shipping and receiving record for blindfolded forklift driving--all hundred and five feet of the loading dock and down the ramp without ever putting on the brakes. Yup, Jimmy’s got more bowling shirts than sense, but you’ve been knowing him a long time, and when tit turns to trouble he ain’t ever late in that truck. He’s good people, Jimmy, never mind all his ribbing.
For every Jimmy, we get men like the members of the pipe fitter's union in "Among the Living Amidst the Trees" who shave their heads in sympathy for a co-worker with cancer:
These are rough-hewn and heavy men, men with calluses thick as rawhide, men who aren't afraid to keep something tender beneath their rib cages, and to expose it to the elements when occasion calls for it, no matter how it hurts.
In Men in the Making, Machart is trying to get all the way to that inner core of hurt, past the leather epidermis of stoicism and brute force. What he finds, in fact, is that men are some of the most tender creatures around--whether they know it or not. The very last line of the last story in the book neatly sums it up: "to be a man, a whole man, is to remain forever in need." Though women aren't the main characters in these stories, neither are they marginalized. We are all travelers on the same journey, Machart says, with the same vulnerabilities and fear. Every reader has something to gain from the beautiful scouring debridement of Machart's fiction.
October 27, 2011
Bruce Machart is one hell of a writer. I'd go so far as to say that he is a "3-D writer"--his stories jump off the page in vivid Technicolor with perfect Dolby sound and the grit of Texas sand in your mouth. He has a mastery of language that makes even a four page story a deep and enriching experience. And these are not easy stories to tell as they are all about men or boys at a crossroad or epiphany of one kind or another. There are ten stories in the book, all of them gritty, real, raw and intense. A lot of dogs die in this book. A lot of men have to face themselves in this book. And a lot of readers will be deeply impressed with the searing honesty in each and every one of them. This is definitely a "guys" book, but ladies, you don't want to miss out on this amazing book either, for it's worth the read (and a re-read, or a dozen re-reads). Cutting to the chase, "READ THIS BOOK".
May 28, 2024
I’ll recommend this book to men I respect and love for the rest of my life (much like I do for The Old Man and the Sea). MacHart has the ability to core out the essence of what it means to face loss and struggle, as a modern man, while maintaining dignity and honor. The way MacHart crafts his prose, not only holds up to the greats, like McCarthy, but also imprinted on me so deeply that I will never see some of the things he described the same way again. This is a book that changed me and that I stretched out so I could savor each story.
January 20, 2026
Despite a lack of variation in these stories, its investigation of masculinity is tackled from several angles. The view here, of what it means to be a man, is in conversation with similar themes in Hemingway’s work, while being written with an urgency reminiscent of Denis Johnson. And though violence, desperation, and loneliness are at the core of Machart’s view of masculinity, it comes with plenty of authorial introspection.
October 12, 2019
A collection of short stories that explores the question of What makes a Man?
Some were better than others, but I enjoyed the author's perspective.
Some were better than others, but I enjoyed the author's perspective.
December 22, 2025
3.75 ⭐️
April 20, 2012
In an age where if you are a male and you tell a woman---not your wife/girlfriend/mistress-- that she looks nice you open yourself up to a charge of sexual harassment, in an age where you are called sexist or worst if you hold open a door for a lady, etc. comes this collection MEN IN THE MAKING by Bruce Machart. These stories, almost all set in Texas, are about men at all walks of life literally doing the best they can. These are not stories of politically correct men worrying about their 401ks and their place in the family. These are real guys who do the work that many never notice and take for granted. There is an air of tragedy, dreams unfulfilled, about these characters as they go about their daily lives. These are men who would tell Jimmy Stewart exactly what he could do with himself as this for sure ain’t no wonderful life.
“Where You Begin” opens the collection in a tale set in Houston. There comes a time when the woman in your life is tired of your crap and tells you to go. She’s warned you before this day was coming and you heard it and didn’t really believe it. But, this time it is for real and there is not point is staying as you have done this dance before with other women over the years. Before long you are once again in your best friend’s truck, drinking beer, and cruising the interstate around Houston. It’s a ritual you both have done many times before but this time will be much different.
Next up is Arkansas and the life of a tree mill worker in “The Last One Left in Arkansas.” The debarker is a mean thing when it goes to work on a tree. What it does to a man is far, far worse. But, there is a mental debarker at work as well on the mind of the narrator. Gradually, his life story is slowly unpeeled just like the bark on a tree.
Back to Texas where the minutes before Tim Tilden lost his wife in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart will live with him forever in “Because He Can’t Not Remember.”
Nothing like a ripped water hose to slow you down in “Something for the Poker Table.” South Texas is broiling, the plants need their water, and at our age you know how to fix stuff and a few other things.
A young boy finds out quite a lot about his Dad in “We Don’t Talk That Way in Texas.” Who better to tell a man than his grandfather who lives in Texas. The boy may be from Oklahoma but there is still time to fix him.
It may be spring time in Austin but for Raymond that means nothing in “The Only Good Thing I’ve Heard.” Raymond should have listened to Tammy as she knows what she was talking about. At least at work somebody else can scream.
The other is no escape from your thoughts in “An Instance of Fidelity.”
Memories exist as “Monuments” in the mind. When you get closer and closer to 40 and over you start thinking more and more about the past. Everything changed when he was ten and nothing was ever the same for him and Patty next door. It is all he can think about these days.
An East Texas paper mill is the backdrop in “Among the Living Amidst the Trees.” Garrett and the narrator work hard all week to take their women out on Friday night for dancing and drinking. The news crews that have descended on Jasper, Texas are more trouble than they are worth. Sure what happened was bad but there are other horrible things going on.
If you live in the vicinity of Houston, Texas and you had something removed thanks to that thing known as cancer, whatever you lost rode around with Dean Covin in his car. “What You’re Walking Around Without” is about what happens to that stuff and the life Dean Covin lives these days. The story also provides a fitting end to the book.
These ten stories are emotional powerhouses that are not easy reading by any means. These stories are about the folks who keep things going day to day. Often doing thankless brutally hard jobs for low pay. These are people who knew in great detail not only hard work, but personal pain and tragedy. Pain and tragedy that is part of the fiber of their daily lives and won’t ever be changed because it is a part of who they are at the core.
The result is an intense and often emotionally draining work that makes you think long after the book is closed. These are characters that resonate within and will touch you in many different ways. Ultimately they are unsung men, heavy with burdens, doing the best that they can day in day out.
Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Texas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple © 2012
“Where You Begin” opens the collection in a tale set in Houston. There comes a time when the woman in your life is tired of your crap and tells you to go. She’s warned you before this day was coming and you heard it and didn’t really believe it. But, this time it is for real and there is not point is staying as you have done this dance before with other women over the years. Before long you are once again in your best friend’s truck, drinking beer, and cruising the interstate around Houston. It’s a ritual you both have done many times before but this time will be much different.
Next up is Arkansas and the life of a tree mill worker in “The Last One Left in Arkansas.” The debarker is a mean thing when it goes to work on a tree. What it does to a man is far, far worse. But, there is a mental debarker at work as well on the mind of the narrator. Gradually, his life story is slowly unpeeled just like the bark on a tree.
Back to Texas where the minutes before Tim Tilden lost his wife in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart will live with him forever in “Because He Can’t Not Remember.”
Nothing like a ripped water hose to slow you down in “Something for the Poker Table.” South Texas is broiling, the plants need their water, and at our age you know how to fix stuff and a few other things.
A young boy finds out quite a lot about his Dad in “We Don’t Talk That Way in Texas.” Who better to tell a man than his grandfather who lives in Texas. The boy may be from Oklahoma but there is still time to fix him.
It may be spring time in Austin but for Raymond that means nothing in “The Only Good Thing I’ve Heard.” Raymond should have listened to Tammy as she knows what she was talking about. At least at work somebody else can scream.
The other is no escape from your thoughts in “An Instance of Fidelity.”
Memories exist as “Monuments” in the mind. When you get closer and closer to 40 and over you start thinking more and more about the past. Everything changed when he was ten and nothing was ever the same for him and Patty next door. It is all he can think about these days.
An East Texas paper mill is the backdrop in “Among the Living Amidst the Trees.” Garrett and the narrator work hard all week to take their women out on Friday night for dancing and drinking. The news crews that have descended on Jasper, Texas are more trouble than they are worth. Sure what happened was bad but there are other horrible things going on.
If you live in the vicinity of Houston, Texas and you had something removed thanks to that thing known as cancer, whatever you lost rode around with Dean Covin in his car. “What You’re Walking Around Without” is about what happens to that stuff and the life Dean Covin lives these days. The story also provides a fitting end to the book.
These ten stories are emotional powerhouses that are not easy reading by any means. These stories are about the folks who keep things going day to day. Often doing thankless brutally hard jobs for low pay. These are people who knew in great detail not only hard work, but personal pain and tragedy. Pain and tragedy that is part of the fiber of their daily lives and won’t ever be changed because it is a part of who they are at the core.
The result is an intense and often emotionally draining work that makes you think long after the book is closed. These are characters that resonate within and will touch you in many different ways. Ultimately they are unsung men, heavy with burdens, doing the best that they can day in day out.
Material supplied by the good folks of the Plano Texas Public Library System.
Kevin R. Tipple © 2012
April 3, 2013
Stories
By Bruce Machart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 190 pgs
978-0-15-603444-9
Rating: Yeah.....okay
Someone or something dies in every one of these stories; more often than not it's a person, sometimes a opossum.
Men In the Making is a slim volume of 10 short stories by Bruce Machart. Each story considers a defining event in the life of a blue collar man. These men pull the second shift at the oil refineries south of Houston; shoot logs through the mills in the Piney Woods; and drive delivery trucks full of bio-waste from a hospital, in one memorable case. These men are trying to figure out how to be blue collar men in a world that finds them lacking. It is no longer enough to be the men their fathers were. Now they have to be that man plus a man that shares his feelings and shops for groceries and takes his daughter to gymnastics. Most of the men in these stories are trying but I don't have much patience for this sort of thing. You know what? Boo hoo, suck it up.
I enjoyed some of these stories but the collection in sum is disappointing. There's nothing new here. Mr. Machart is talented but has a way to go still. I will follow his work. He has potential. That said, there were a couple of stories I liked very much. "The Only Good Thing I've Heard" is about a husband trying to find a path out of the fear, anger and soul-sadness of a late-term miscarriage for himself and his wife. This story is delicate and hesitant and warm and reminds me of honey. The next story I like is "Among the Living Amidst the Trees." This story recalls a horrific crime that took place in East Texas when actual evil showed up and tied a black man to the bumper of it's pickup and dragged him behind it until all that was left of that man was grease. This story explores how a man in the making who calls this town home would face such a horror, especially when the national media arrives and holds a mirror up for him to see.
By Bruce Machart
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 190 pgs
978-0-15-603444-9
Rating: Yeah.....okay
Someone or something dies in every one of these stories; more often than not it's a person, sometimes a opossum.
Men In the Making is a slim volume of 10 short stories by Bruce Machart. Each story considers a defining event in the life of a blue collar man. These men pull the second shift at the oil refineries south of Houston; shoot logs through the mills in the Piney Woods; and drive delivery trucks full of bio-waste from a hospital, in one memorable case. These men are trying to figure out how to be blue collar men in a world that finds them lacking. It is no longer enough to be the men their fathers were. Now they have to be that man plus a man that shares his feelings and shops for groceries and takes his daughter to gymnastics. Most of the men in these stories are trying but I don't have much patience for this sort of thing. You know what? Boo hoo, suck it up.
I enjoyed some of these stories but the collection in sum is disappointing. There's nothing new here. Mr. Machart is talented but has a way to go still. I will follow his work. He has potential. That said, there were a couple of stories I liked very much. "The Only Good Thing I've Heard" is about a husband trying to find a path out of the fear, anger and soul-sadness of a late-term miscarriage for himself and his wife. This story is delicate and hesitant and warm and reminds me of honey. The next story I like is "Among the Living Amidst the Trees." This story recalls a horrific crime that took place in East Texas when actual evil showed up and tied a black man to the bumper of it's pickup and dragged him behind it until all that was left of that man was grease. This story explores how a man in the making who calls this town home would face such a horror, especially when the national media arrives and holds a mirror up for him to see.
February 28, 2012
Bruce Machart writes about men. All the stories in this anthology are narrated, first person, by the male protagonist. They take place in Texas, usually in the heat and desolation, sometimes on oil rigs or in places where trees are stripped and readied for construction, in bars and in pick-up trucks. The stories are often brutal and tactile, so offensive to the senses that we can smell the dead flesh or hear the hallucinations that our characters have to bear with.
The topics definitely belong on the 'y' chromosome. They are man-things like machines, cars, discussions of women's body parts, trucks, asphalt, tools, hoses, couplings, refineries. Told from the male perspective, the topics are often things women aren't interested in or have difficulty understanding.
The metaphor of clouds is often present in the stories, a prescience or portent of mood or action.
The stories vary in topic but almost all of them are about loss, manhood, desolation and hopelessness. The first story, 'Where You Begin' is about an unpublished short story writer who gets thrown out of the house by his fiancee for not job-hunting. He's picked up by his friend and they drink while driving around Houston. His friend hits a dog with his truck. The dog's owner is despairing. The depth of his loss touches the man deeply and he thinks, "Please God, someday, let me have that much to lose."
Men learn that they are impotent to protect themselves or their loved ones from disaster. Families fall apart, injuries and death occur on a regular basis, babies are stillborn, and people are murdered. The theme is manhood and what it is to become and be a man. The last story in the collection says it best - "that to be a man, a whole man, is to remain forever in need."
The topics definitely belong on the 'y' chromosome. They are man-things like machines, cars, discussions of women's body parts, trucks, asphalt, tools, hoses, couplings, refineries. Told from the male perspective, the topics are often things women aren't interested in or have difficulty understanding.
The metaphor of clouds is often present in the stories, a prescience or portent of mood or action.
The stories vary in topic but almost all of them are about loss, manhood, desolation and hopelessness. The first story, 'Where You Begin' is about an unpublished short story writer who gets thrown out of the house by his fiancee for not job-hunting. He's picked up by his friend and they drink while driving around Houston. His friend hits a dog with his truck. The dog's owner is despairing. The depth of his loss touches the man deeply and he thinks, "Please God, someday, let me have that much to lose."
Men learn that they are impotent to protect themselves or their loved ones from disaster. Families fall apart, injuries and death occur on a regular basis, babies are stillborn, and people are murdered. The theme is manhood and what it is to become and be a man. The last story in the collection says it best - "that to be a man, a whole man, is to remain forever in need."
May 22, 2012
To be honest, I'm not really sure what MEN IN THE MAKING by BRUCE MACHART is about. I was only able to read the first story and a portion of the second. From what I can gather there are ten stories about ten different men. I'm just not sure what the significance of the stories is.
I didn't get from the first story any kind of revelation. Wasn't moved, or inspired. The reason I purchased MEN IN THE MAKING is because the titled caught my attention. I'm a writer, and I hoped to gain some insight for potential male characters for future novels. I was immediately discouraged by the foul language, and vulgar actions.
In the first story a dog dies. Not good, though I wasn't emotionally attached so it didn't have the affect such an incident would normally have. In the second story I was only able to make it five pages in. The story began with a guy losing his life to a tree stripper/chopper. Not a pleasant vision. When I got to, "When I was ten, my father held me in front of him at Uncle Weldon's processing house in Odessa. After Dad had me choose the calf, my cousin Frank loaded a bullet into a special sledge hammer, and when he swung..."
That was it! I couldn't take anymore.
MEN IN THE MAKING just wasn't for me. But I do have to add that it was well written with wonderful description. Short stories can be very difficult to master; I'll give the author that. I wish I could have stomached the language and the content, but I just couldn't.
Writing is subjective. One could love a piece of work, while another could hate the very same thing. In my opinion, bad writing is bad writing. That was not the case with MEN IN THE MAKING. Just a difference of what one likes to read.
I didn't get from the first story any kind of revelation. Wasn't moved, or inspired. The reason I purchased MEN IN THE MAKING is because the titled caught my attention. I'm a writer, and I hoped to gain some insight for potential male characters for future novels. I was immediately discouraged by the foul language, and vulgar actions.
In the first story a dog dies. Not good, though I wasn't emotionally attached so it didn't have the affect such an incident would normally have. In the second story I was only able to make it five pages in. The story began with a guy losing his life to a tree stripper/chopper. Not a pleasant vision. When I got to, "When I was ten, my father held me in front of him at Uncle Weldon's processing house in Odessa. After Dad had me choose the calf, my cousin Frank loaded a bullet into a special sledge hammer, and when he swung..."
That was it! I couldn't take anymore.
MEN IN THE MAKING just wasn't for me. But I do have to add that it was well written with wonderful description. Short stories can be very difficult to master; I'll give the author that. I wish I could have stomached the language and the content, but I just couldn't.
Writing is subjective. One could love a piece of work, while another could hate the very same thing. In my opinion, bad writing is bad writing. That was not the case with MEN IN THE MAKING. Just a difference of what one likes to read.
February 27, 2012
The men in these stories are haunted by dead children, dead parents, dead wives, and wives and girlfriends who've moved out and moved on. In "Among the Living, Amidst the Trees", they are described as "rough-hewed and heavy men, men with calluses thick as rawhide, men who aren't afraid to keep something tender beneath their ribcages, and to expose it to the elements when occasion calls for it, no matter how it hurts."
The imagery is often brutal and visceral--a male nurse helping out with debridement treatments for burn victims, two men cleaning out the lingering smell in a debarker after a fellow worker has been pulverized inside. But with the exception of an overwritten first story and an overabundance of the use of second person, the writing finds beauty in the brokenness, as in this passage from "The Last One Left in Arkansas":
My favorite stories: "The Last One Left in Arkansas" about a man who confronts his feelings about the son who survives an accident that kills his brother; "Because He Can't Not Remember" about an incident gone horribly wrong in a Wal-Mart parking lot; and "What You're Walking Around Without" about a man who works transporting medical specimens after an oil rig fall leaves him damaged.
The imagery is often brutal and visceral--a male nurse helping out with debridement treatments for burn victims, two men cleaning out the lingering smell in a debarker after a fellow worker has been pulverized inside. But with the exception of an overwritten first story and an overabundance of the use of second person, the writing finds beauty in the brokenness, as in this passage from "The Last One Left in Arkansas":
Lose a child and, for a while, the only thing that can keep you sane and above ground and alive enough to hate yourself is the burn-off of rage you ignite by laying blame somewhere, on something or someone else, so you can keep it from burrowing inside you and living where deep down you believe it belongs."
My favorite stories: "The Last One Left in Arkansas" about a man who confronts his feelings about the son who survives an accident that kills his brother; "Because He Can't Not Remember" about an incident gone horribly wrong in a Wal-Mart parking lot; and "What You're Walking Around Without" about a man who works transporting medical specimens after an oil rig fall leaves him damaged.
May 16, 2012
Hot damn, this is some good writin’! I read Machart’s first book, “The Wake of Forgiveness,” and loved it, and this one is just as well written and thoughtful as his first, albeit a lot more brutal.
These are a collection of short stories about hard working, hard living men, and how they deal with love, life and mostly loss. Their losses cover girlfriends, wives, children, and physical health. Machart gets into the interior lives and feelings of these men, whom for the most part, are overlooked in literature and even in our daily lives. It is easy to think of them as stoic Marlborough men, but Machart shows us these men do have emotions and they struggle to make sense of their world just like we all do.
This book is not for the faint of heart. I think there is some sort of death in each of the stories, some more graphic than others, and if your sensibilities can’t handle the death of domesticated pets (dogs), this really isn’t the book for you. One of the hardest stories for me to read was the one involving a nurse’s aide who worked in the burn unit, I had to put that story down a couple of times and then go back to it.
Machart’s prose is spare, but powerful. His writing style and subject matter, “muscular males” reminds me of another one of my favorite authors, Robert Olmstead. If you like Olmstead you’ll surely like Machart.
These are a collection of short stories about hard working, hard living men, and how they deal with love, life and mostly loss. Their losses cover girlfriends, wives, children, and physical health. Machart gets into the interior lives and feelings of these men, whom for the most part, are overlooked in literature and even in our daily lives. It is easy to think of them as stoic Marlborough men, but Machart shows us these men do have emotions and they struggle to make sense of their world just like we all do.
This book is not for the faint of heart. I think there is some sort of death in each of the stories, some more graphic than others, and if your sensibilities can’t handle the death of domesticated pets (dogs), this really isn’t the book for you. One of the hardest stories for me to read was the one involving a nurse’s aide who worked in the burn unit, I had to put that story down a couple of times and then go back to it.
Machart’s prose is spare, but powerful. His writing style and subject matter, “muscular males” reminds me of another one of my favorite authors, Robert Olmstead. If you like Olmstead you’ll surely like Machart.
February 27, 2013
I listened to this book and loved it. I chose to get it because I had read the author's first novel: The Wake of Forgivness, which was wonderful. The narrator was wonderful, just right for these stories. There were ten of them, all containing decent hard working men at the main characters. To asy the stories were sad is an understatement.Several of them were just heartbreaking. There was much soul searching going on here. It was about men, from the point of view of these men so it was somewhat gritty, very strong images. As much as I liked listening to it, I wish I had a copy in print so I could reread certain passages and phrases. I'll probably end up with the book in print too.
December 19, 2011
Outstanding collection - right up there with the best I've read this year - Alan Heathcock's Volt, Miroslav Penkov's East of the West - to name a couple.
Machart's prose style may seem plain, but it carries great impact. He clearly knows how to tell a story, and this collection is evidence of that.
I can't recommend this highly collection enough, and I can't wait to read more of Machart's work.
Machart's prose style may seem plain, but it carries great impact. He clearly knows how to tell a story, and this collection is evidence of that.
I can't recommend this highly collection enough, and I can't wait to read more of Machart's work.
January 6, 2013
A lot of these stories took place in the city and environs I live in, but I think that actually worked against it. Hearing the names of streets or cities that I know just made the whole book so ordinary and took away any fictional vision, at least for me. Machart never really elevated his writing until the last two stories in the collection and that was a little too late for me. This collection is pretty average but the author has potential.
January 29, 2012
I don't read short stories. No idea why, I just don't really enjoy them. But this little packet of goodies was an absolute treat. It always impresses me when an author can put together gems like this using different voices, points of view, themes and ideas. I don't know how big of a splash this book is making in the literary world, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it win awards.
July 7, 2012
I picked this book up after seeing the author serve on a panel at the Texas Book Festival. I don't think you have to be from Texas to appreciate the wonderful voice in this collection. The storytelling is captivating and the use of second person is perfect for these tales. I was touched by many of pieces and I found myself reading some beautifully written passages over again.
July 9, 2013
It seemed like a lot of the stories in the beginning were about dead dogs. Maybe it was just my state of mind at the time, but it seemed like the message was that losing a dog is the only thing that touches a man's heart. I was hoping for more from this book, but it seemed very one dimensional to me.
October 26, 2014
Magnificent, elegant, sorrowful
Reminiscent of Ray Carver and Daniel Woodrell. Evocative settings in Houston and east Texas catch a variety of men, young and not-so-young, dealing with loss (or the recognition of loss) in often unexpected forms and manners. Recommended for readers looking for something visceral and raw in a literary landscape that is often too slick and urbane.
Reminiscent of Ray Carver and Daniel Woodrell. Evocative settings in Houston and east Texas catch a variety of men, young and not-so-young, dealing with loss (or the recognition of loss) in often unexpected forms and manners. Recommended for readers looking for something visceral and raw in a literary landscape that is often too slick and urbane.
November 16, 2012
Awesome set of stories. The story of the nurse was excellent, the story of the guy working on the oil rig who had an accident then started working to transport human organs was awesome, the story of the guy in the small town with the sexy wife was funny and poignant. Loved it.
February 7, 2015
It's a shame because I quite liked Machart's writing but what awful portraits of men. A bit too macho for my liking. If it's what men have to get through to become real men, then I'm really glad I don't know any...
April 2, 2016
The first story is easily the weakest, if you can make it past that the writing gets better. I enjoyed some stories more than others and it's not a bad collection, I just doubt I'll even remember the book or stories a year from now.
November 19, 2012
nowhere near as good as his first one...drat! Wake of Forgiveness was soooo good!
December 13, 2011
great writer.
April 27, 2012
Great dark stories set in Texas.
Nothing bad about that.
Nothing bad about that.
January 12, 2012
A great, very manly short story collection. I think Machart is a writer to be reckoned with - I liked his 2010 debut novel as well, but I thought the writing in this collection was even stronger.
August 21, 2012
wow. its been a long time since a book punched me in the chest, knocked me to the ground. well done, bruce machart.
May 28, 2012
Each tory alive.
Each story leads to a revelation of a man's psyche.
Each story simply, or at times, overwhemingly profound.
Each story rewarding, to ponder and read again.
Each story leads to a revelation of a man's psyche.
Each story simply, or at times, overwhemingly profound.
Each story rewarding, to ponder and read again.
October 1, 2012
Highly recommended.
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