What do you think?
Rate this book
Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories
In this remarkable collection of bite-size stories, Stuart Dybek, one of our most prodigious writers, explores the human appetite for rapture and for trust. With fervent intensity and sly wit, he gives each tale his signature mix of characters―some almost ghostly, others vividly real―who live in worlds tinged with surreal potential. There are crazed nuns hijacking streetcars, eerie adventures across frozen ponds, and a boy who is visited by a miniature bride and groom every night in his uncle's doomsday compound. Whether they are about a simple transaction, a brave inquiry, a difficult negotiation, or shared bliss, the stories in Ecstatic Cahoots target the friction between our need for ecstatic self-transcendence and our passionate longing for trust between lovers, friends, family, and even strangers.
Call it micro-fiction or mini-fiction, flash fiction or short shorts. Whatever the label, the marvelous encounters here are marked by puzzlement, anguish, and conspiratorial high spirits. In this thrilling collection, Stuart Dybek has once again re-envisioned the possibilities of fiction, creating myriad human situations that fold endlessly upon each other, his crackling prose drawing out the strange, the intimate, and the mysterious elements in each.
Call it micro-fiction or mini-fiction, flash fiction or short shorts. Whatever the label, the marvelous encounters here are marked by puzzlement, anguish, and conspiratorial high spirits. In this thrilling collection, Stuart Dybek has once again re-envisioned the possibilities of fiction, creating myriad human situations that fold endlessly upon each other, his crackling prose drawing out the strange, the intimate, and the mysterious elements in each.
208 pages, Paperback
First published June 3, 2014
36 people are currently reading
592 people want to read
About the author
Stuart Dybek
64 books215 followersStuart 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, including: a 1998 Lannan Award; the 1995 PEN/Bernard Malamud Prize "for distinctive achievement in the short story"; an Academy Institute Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994; a Guggenheim Fellowship; two fellowships from the NEA; a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center; and a Whiting Writers Award. He has also received four O. Henry Prizes, including an O. Henry first prize for his story, "Hot Ice." Dybek's story, "Blight," was awarded the Nelson Algren Prize and his collection, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, which was nominated for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, received the 1981 Prize for Fiction from the Society of Midland Authors and the Cliff Dwellers Award from the Friends of Literature.
Dybek grew up on Chicago’s South Side in a Polish-American neighborhood called Pilsen or Little Village, which is also the main setting for his fiction. He received an M.A. in Literature from Loyola University in Chicago and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He teaches at Western Michigan University when he is not in Chicago.
He has received numerous awards, including: a 1998 Lannan Award; the 1995 PEN/Bernard Malamud Prize "for distinctive achievement in the short story"; an Academy Institute Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994; a Guggenheim Fellowship; two fellowships from the NEA; a residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center; and a Whiting Writers Award. He has also received four O. Henry Prizes, including an O. Henry first prize for his story, "Hot Ice." Dybek's story, "Blight," was awarded the Nelson Algren Prize and his collection, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, which was nominated for the National Book Critics' Circle Award, received the 1981 Prize for Fiction from the Society of Midland Authors and the Cliff Dwellers Award from the Friends of Literature.
Dybek grew up on Chicago’s South Side in a Polish-American neighborhood called Pilsen or Little Village, which is also the main setting for his fiction. He received an M.A. in Literature from Loyola University in Chicago and an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa. He teaches at Western Michigan University when he is not in Chicago.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews
January 22, 2015
I was not familiar with Stuart Dybek's stories until I recently listened to the New Yorker fiction podcast of ZZ Packer reading Dybek's wonderful "Paper Lantern." That story is not in this collection; it's in "Paper Lantern," a book of nine stories also published last year, at the same time as "Ecstatic Cahoots." Here you'll find fifty short -- many very short -- stories that are often weird and mostly wonderful. This is "Misterioso," the first story in the book, in its entirety:
"You're going to leave your watch on?"
"You're leaving on your cross?"
And "Ransom":
Once in college, broke and desperate, I kidnapped myself.
Ransom notes were sent to all interested parties. Later, I sent hair and fingernail clippings as well.
They steadfastly insisted on an ear.
Welcome to Dybek's world. Many of these stories feature a couple in various states of erotic thrall. In one, they've been thrown out of a movie theater for public lewdness. In another, while she dozes on a blanket on the grass, he is carried off by a single ant. In a third, they exchange fantasies and when she says she would like to shave him with an old-fashioned straight razor, he says "sounds nice," while thinking there's no way in hell she's getting near him with a razor. Then there's the nun who beans the conductor and hijacks a streetcar, the boy who is visited every night by a tiny bride and groom, the old man who checks into a cheap hotel to die, the coat from another life that might take a man back to who he was supposed to be before he became who he is.
There are recurring themes and images in these stories, also characters who may or may not be reappearing. As might be expected in a collection of fifty of anything, some are forgettable, some even regrettable. But when Dybek is at his best, he is really, really good.
"You're going to leave your watch on?"
"You're leaving on your cross?"
And "Ransom":
Once in college, broke and desperate, I kidnapped myself.
Ransom notes were sent to all interested parties. Later, I sent hair and fingernail clippings as well.
They steadfastly insisted on an ear.
Welcome to Dybek's world. Many of these stories feature a couple in various states of erotic thrall. In one, they've been thrown out of a movie theater for public lewdness. In another, while she dozes on a blanket on the grass, he is carried off by a single ant. In a third, they exchange fantasies and when she says she would like to shave him with an old-fashioned straight razor, he says "sounds nice," while thinking there's no way in hell she's getting near him with a razor. Then there's the nun who beans the conductor and hijacks a streetcar, the boy who is visited every night by a tiny bride and groom, the old man who checks into a cheap hotel to die, the coat from another life that might take a man back to who he was supposed to be before he became who he is.
There are recurring themes and images in these stories, also characters who may or may not be reappearing. As might be expected in a collection of fifty of anything, some are forgettable, some even regrettable. But when Dybek is at his best, he is really, really good.
November 28, 2022
Picture Chicago just as a snowstorm hits.
A young lad, 20 years old, has left the return home from his girl-friend’s family house late. She has been helping him study Spanish for a test the next day. He had hoped for an invitation to stay over, but with strict parents no such luck, so with the transport system already suspended, and pretty much nobody outside as the snow comes in heavy, in unsuitable clothing, he sets out to walk home.
After a while, to warm up, he stops at a seedy bar, the only place left open it seems. Surely it’s a myth that the Bears drink there, but when he walks in, sure enough, they are there.
Being underage though, it’s a brief stay.
Back outside, one of the few vehicles still on the road, a solo driver of a limo, offers him a lift. The snow is that heavy now that to stop may mean the vehicle won’t get moving again; could be he has been picked up as the driver may need someone to push.
This is Córdoba.
The story of long remembered chance encounters has a novelistic quality to it. It is rich in atmosphere, humour and completely engaging.
If I ever despair of contemporary American writing, which seems quite often these days, I reach for Dybek.
This book is a collection of 50 pieces, some flash fiction and some longer pieces.
The rest of the stories in the book I enjoyed far less. Most of them are flash fiction, 200-500 words. I feel out of my depth here. I’ll have to revisit them at some stage, as I think they require a different approach from the reader, more like reading poetry than reading a short story.
A young lad, 20 years old, has left the return home from his girl-friend’s family house late. She has been helping him study Spanish for a test the next day. He had hoped for an invitation to stay over, but with strict parents no such luck, so with the transport system already suspended, and pretty much nobody outside as the snow comes in heavy, in unsuitable clothing, he sets out to walk home.
After a while, to warm up, he stops at a seedy bar, the only place left open it seems. Surely it’s a myth that the Bears drink there, but when he walks in, sure enough, they are there.
Being underage though, it’s a brief stay.
Back outside, one of the few vehicles still on the road, a solo driver of a limo, offers him a lift. The snow is that heavy now that to stop may mean the vehicle won’t get moving again; could be he has been picked up as the driver may need someone to push.
This is Córdoba.
The story of long remembered chance encounters has a novelistic quality to it. It is rich in atmosphere, humour and completely engaging.
If I ever despair of contemporary American writing, which seems quite often these days, I reach for Dybek.
This book is a collection of 50 pieces, some flash fiction and some longer pieces.
The rest of the stories in the book I enjoyed far less. Most of them are flash fiction, 200-500 words. I feel out of my depth here. I’ll have to revisit them at some stage, as I think they require a different approach from the reader, more like reading poetry than reading a short story.
October 18, 2018
[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history.
It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the first time, as we here on the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame have been making plans for tonight’s ceremony, and have been gathering in the effusive praise from his friends and colleagues you’re reading in this program. Like many, I had read his most famous book, 1990’s The Coast of Chicago, in my twenties soon after it had come out; like many, it was at the urging of a woman I was trying to make into my latest romantic partner, a slam poet and former student of his who told me that "everything I needed to know about her" could be gleaned from the book; and like many, once I did read the book, Dybek’s unforgettable prose took on a life of its own with me, apart from the six bittersweet weeks said woman and I ended up together. (And strangely, like Dybek’s story “Córdoba,” said woman just happened to live at the corner of Buena Avenue and Marine Drive, which made me feel like one of the sweet but hapless male heroes of his pieces when coming across this fact last week.)
But still, I had never explored the rest of his fictional work before this month, so I decided to start with his first, 1980’s Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. Even 38 years later, it’s easy to see with this book why Dybek started gaining a feverish cult following from his very start, because the writing on display is startlingly unique; the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, the gritty urbanism of Nelson Algren, the sweet nostalgia of the Saturday Evening Post, but with the naughty subversion of the Countercultural era. (Also, what an astounding historical record of a Chicago that no longer exists, as best typified by the very first story of the book, "The Palatski Man," in which alley-going knife sharpeners on horse-drawn carriages still live in a wild rural wonderland, right in the middle of the city.)
Next came The Coast of Chicago, deservedly now known as a modern classic, one of those magical moments in literary history when everything came together perfectly. An expansion of Dybek’s look back at his childhood as a Polish-American in the Little Village neighborhood (in a post-war time when the area was undergoing a transition into a mostly Mexican neighborhood), it’s also a thoroughly contemporary collection of pieces about masculinity, sexuality, and experience-hungry youth, containing many of the most indelible and heartbreaking stories of his career, such as the aching "Chopin in Winter" where we watch the twin fates of a dying immigrant grandfather and an illegitimately pregnant teenage neighbor. (Also, for those keeping score, this is the book that contains the notorious "Pet Milk," mentioned over and over by his admirers in this program.)
A decade later saw Dybek’s so-far only novel, 2003’s I Sailed with Magellan, although this technically comes with an asterisk for being a "novel in stories," the literary length that he’s destined to be mostly remembered for. A non-linear look at the life of the sometimes infuriating, always engaging Perry Katzek, this is Dybek doing a deep dive into his checkered youth within a rough-and-tumble, pre-gentrification Chicago -- a world of mobsters and viaducts, dead disabled boys turned into Catholic martyrs, broke but striving social workers living in rundown northside SROs, and as always the women beside them who propelled them along, messy mistakes and all. To me, it was my favorite of all his books, and one I know I’ll be coming back to again and again for the rest of my life.
And finally, a decade after that, Dybek gave the world the remarkable gift of 59 new stories in a single year, with the twinned 2014 publications of Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern. A reflection of Dybek’s years of honing his craft in the academic world, as both a beloved professor and working artist, these pieces are mostly tiny little diamonds from a now master of his craft, fiction that often approaches flash-fiction but that packs all the wallop of stories ten times the size. Split between general stories (Cahoots) and specific love stories (Lantern), these books see Dybek at the absolute top of his game, a crowning achievement to a busy and award-packed career that is about to celebrate its half-century anniversary.
With all the wonderful anecdotes in this program from long-time friends who are intimately acquainted with his work, I’m proud to be one of the few to say that it’s perfectly all right if you’re not familiar yet with all of Stuart Dybek’s books. It is in fact a perfect time to become so, with all of his titles still in print and with a brand-new greatest-hits collection that was just recently published by Jonathan Cape/Vintage. Still as relevant as ever, still as powerful as ever, he is truly one of America’s greatest living authors, and a bright star in the annals of Chicago’s literary history.
July 20, 2014
It's hard not to have a real affection for these stories, since I think a lot of these stories were written, or at least seeing print, when I was Dybek's student-- he had a rare talent for placing things in the NYer and smaller mags, and it was, to me at the time, the smaller mags where Dybek was doing the interesting stuff.
Now, twenty years or so later, I'm a little less bowled over by these stories, having read some things since-- Lydia Davis, Joy Williams, etc-- that I think do more with the lyricism of the very short form. And Stu, whatever he's calling himself, is always Dybek in these stories, a weird Polish-American version of Tom Cruise from Risky Business. There's that vulnerability, of course, along with the bluster, but for me, it hasn't aged that well.
There's a lot here to like, and more importantly, there's a lot here. Some of it is great, some of it'll make you scratch your head, and a lot of it is somewhere in the middle.
Now, twenty years or so later, I'm a little less bowled over by these stories, having read some things since-- Lydia Davis, Joy Williams, etc-- that I think do more with the lyricism of the very short form. And Stu, whatever he's calling himself, is always Dybek in these stories, a weird Polish-American version of Tom Cruise from Risky Business. There's that vulnerability, of course, along with the bluster, but for me, it hasn't aged that well.
There's a lot here to like, and more importantly, there's a lot here. Some of it is great, some of it'll make you scratch your head, and a lot of it is somewhere in the middle.
January 15, 2015
Beautiful, sometimes mesmerizing collection of short (sometimes very short) stories from one of the real masters of the form. These stories are sometimes linked (several stories involve characters named Gil and Bea) but mostly they just have recurring themes and motifs (looking back at the Jazz Age, intimacy and vulnerability, mist, snowfall, Chicago). I tended to prefer the more realist stories in this book, but occasionally a story like "Swing," with strong metaphorical content, would knock me over. Highly recommended.
My favorites from this collection:
"Transaction"
"Cordoba"
"Swing"
"Tea Ceremony"
"Flies"
"Brisket"
"Happy Ending"
My favorites from this collection:
"Transaction"
"Cordoba"
"Swing"
"Tea Ceremony"
"Flies"
"Brisket"
"Happy Ending"
February 20, 2015
50 short stories in 200 pages, so short shorts. and while dybek is no lydia davis, he would be perfectly acceptable to your yuppie older brother, or straight lace suburb neighbor, if they read books that is.
dybek is full of tenderness and sentimentality, made good by setting them mostly in the poor and mean streets of chicago, where tenderness could get you killed, or beat up, or laughed at anyway. so a certain bravery too, to these stories of love, mostly.
dybek is full of tenderness and sentimentality, made good by setting them mostly in the poor and mean streets of chicago, where tenderness could get you killed, or beat up, or laughed at anyway. so a certain bravery too, to these stories of love, mostly.
October 7, 2019
I had to sort of speed-read the last couple of stories in here because my copy was due at the library. It's a ridiculous and stupid thing to have to do, like speed-reading poetry.
I didn't like all the stories but when there's 50 of them odds are one or two won't be to your liking. Most of them, however, are. Dybek has some really great "lyrical" writing (an adjective I've never stooped to use before) and finds the mother of invention in the minutest of details. For every gross horny-dad sex scene there's a line I love, although the only one I thought to write down was this one, when a seedy bellhop witnesses a pair of rosaries looping out of a keyhole:
"even in a fog you can't be lost once you understand the journey takes you from Station to Station."
I also loved the use of tropes that connected some stories in the gentlest of ways. This is truly a great collection, one that compels me to want to write, the rarest of things.
I didn't like all the stories but when there's 50 of them odds are one or two won't be to your liking. Most of them, however, are. Dybek has some really great "lyrical" writing (an adjective I've never stooped to use before) and finds the mother of invention in the minutest of details. For every gross horny-dad sex scene there's a line I love, although the only one I thought to write down was this one, when a seedy bellhop witnesses a pair of rosaries looping out of a keyhole:
"even in a fog you can't be lost once you understand the journey takes you from Station to Station."
I also loved the use of tropes that connected some stories in the gentlest of ways. This is truly a great collection, one that compels me to want to write, the rarest of things.
June 28, 2014
Prior to this book, my only other encounter with Stuart Dybek was his last short story collection, the sublime I Sailed With Magellan. Most, if not all, of these stories have already appeared in various publications, and I'm guessing that a writer of Dybek's stature can get anything he writes published by somebody.
This collection is as disparate as Magellan was unified. There are stories that are one or two paragraph fragments. Some qualify more as verse. Some are really abstract. And while I certainly think it's important for a writer to stretch his or her creative muscles, very few of these offbeat stories do much other than call attention to their oddity.
The more traditional Dybek stories are more hit than miss, but there aren't enough hits among the fifty stories here. When one does crop up, it enthralls while also highlighting the highly variable quality of much of the work here.
Basically, this book was a chore to read, and there wasn't enough pay off for the effort.
This collection is as disparate as Magellan was unified. There are stories that are one or two paragraph fragments. Some qualify more as verse. Some are really abstract. And while I certainly think it's important for a writer to stretch his or her creative muscles, very few of these offbeat stories do much other than call attention to their oddity.
The more traditional Dybek stories are more hit than miss, but there aren't enough hits among the fifty stories here. When one does crop up, it enthralls while also highlighting the highly variable quality of much of the work here.
Basically, this book was a chore to read, and there wasn't enough pay off for the effort.
May 9, 2016
I had a chance recently to hear Stuart Dybek read at the College of DuPage, and really liked the story he read which is included in this collection.
With 50 stories, it has to be expected that some are great and some are forgettable.
There is much to think about here. Often the stories are arranged so that a word or idea in one story emerges in the next. There is remarkable lyricism, and often remarkable weirdness. Some of the shortest stories are fragments.
With 50 stories, it has to be expected that some are great and some are forgettable.
There is much to think about here. Often the stories are arranged so that a word or idea in one story emerges in the next. There is remarkable lyricism, and often remarkable weirdness. Some of the shortest stories are fragments.
January 18, 2015
Bring your dream-brain, poetical brain, lover's brain to the reading and you'll be just fine. Good stuff.
December 23, 2014
Sensual, mysterious, and great shifts of form and content.
July 4, 2017
3.5 ish, inspiring for sure, but not as memorable as I'd hoped!
August 3, 2021
Read nearly all of this and found some sparks but mostly it didn’t make me feel good, and the characters felt dated in a particular trying too hard way.
July 29, 2020
Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories (2014) is a collection of micro-fiction by Stuart Dybek, ranging from one to five or six pages in length. Pithy and often macabre, Dybek’s style, to me, seems reminiscent of both Flannery O’Connor and Edward Albee, sometimes absurd but always meaningful. The table of contents features a kaleidoscope of topics: Ordinary Nudes, Ransom, Flu, Brisket, Belly Button, Transients Welcome, and Pink Ocean.
Expect to be jolted into an alternate reality in stories like “Ravenswood” in which a nun, exchanging her habit for that of a conductor, hijacks a bus. Find the book’s title embedded in the story “Swing,” which provides the context for the phrase “ecstatic cahoots” originating in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Revel in the lyrical prose in the same story: “They were racing along the puddled forest path strewn with deadfall and, afraid he’d trip, the boy didn’t dare look back. The rush of his running drew the skin tight over his face, as if he were masked in latex.”
Winner of four O’Henry Awards and a McArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient, Dybek is the fiction writer to turn to for thrilling encounters and escapes into the strange, the intimate, and often puzzling stories that reflect the human condition.
Expect to be jolted into an alternate reality in stories like “Ravenswood” in which a nun, exchanging her habit for that of a conductor, hijacks a bus. Find the book’s title embedded in the story “Swing,” which provides the context for the phrase “ecstatic cahoots” originating in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. Revel in the lyrical prose in the same story: “They were racing along the puddled forest path strewn with deadfall and, afraid he’d trip, the boy didn’t dare look back. The rush of his running drew the skin tight over his face, as if he were masked in latex.”
Winner of four O’Henry Awards and a McArthur Foundation Fellowship recipient, Dybek is the fiction writer to turn to for thrilling encounters and escapes into the strange, the intimate, and often puzzling stories that reflect the human condition.
May 25, 2020
I was fairly impatient with this book. Partly my own fault: with something so short--comprising bite-sized pieces, many not even be long enough to be called flash fiction--I feel the urge to finish very quickly. Many of the pieces were prose poems and poems require time and stillness to appreciate. A lot of the pieces were very dreamy... and hearing about someone else's dreams is rarely satisfying. And there were so many of them. I don't remember The Coast of Chicago being like this.
Still, some of the pieces were engaging, and I even found some of the more poetic ones arresting.
I would advise a potential reader of this book to read it one or two pieces at a time, preferably on rainy afternoons with a cup of tea.
Still, some of the pieces were engaging, and I even found some of the more poetic ones arresting.
I would advise a potential reader of this book to read it one or two pieces at a time, preferably on rainy afternoons with a cup of tea.
June 9, 2025
I'd love to know how Dybek sets about writing a story. How much he plans for the magic and illusions that come about so subtly in his stories, and how much it just happens naturally. I was introduced to Dybek via The New Granta Book of the American Short Story, and was intrigued to read more. This is a very fun collection. Although the world he creates is one that is oft-times surreal, if not just curious, it feels like a world you're not unfamiliar with. Misterioso is the opening story (those two lines are the story in its entirety), and has me going back to it time and again, finding new meanings. The two lines of dialogue appear in a later story too, expanding on their enigma.
August 14, 2020
I saw Dybek read from this a few years ago and I enjoyed it enough to buy it, get it signed, and read about half of it. I just read the whole thing and I like some parts of it, but its decadence is not as appealing to me now as it might have been then. The undercurrent of drunk horniness that suffuses this book is well-written, but is not as relevant to me at this point in my life as it has been in others (alas!). It’s clear that he gets a lot from Fitzgerald (even the title), and I think he’s a worthy heir to that style.
September 18, 2020
This is my first Dybek collection and I found it brilliant. His use of language and his way of turning a descriptive phrase is not to be missed. I am a fan of flash fiction, of which this collection contains several. The opening story, 'Mysterioso', I found to be phenomenal at setting a scene and letting you know the characters with so few words it is genius. I have his collection Paper Lanterns on my TBR, which I will dig out ASAP. Recommended.
June 3, 2023
The short and flash stories in this collection are wry, dreamline, unnerving, poetic, horny, wistful, and mysterious. Read in order, they call forward and back to each other, revealing how the author circles the same ideas and phrases, brushing them from different angles. The writing here inspired me. I want to do some of the things Dybek does here. I want to recognize things I've only caught glimmers of on a first read. This was a fun, fascinating trip through vistas of prose.
August 4, 2024
Five of these Fifty stories made any sense or managed to entertain. And they were the stories that measured more than two or three pages. The snippets--and there are many in this collection measuring half a page--could've been pulled randomly from this talented author's discarded notebooks. I read them all, but I wouldn't read them again. And if I ever find the time machine I'm searching for, I won't read any of them.
December 27, 2025
I hate the damn star system. Several stories in this collection -- I Never Told This To Anyone, Current, A Confluence of Doors, The Samaritan, Flu, Swing, Alms -- are so hearty, surreal and disturbing by turns that the deserve six or seven, but the overall group of fifty is a bumpy three-star, so four it is. If nothing else, a short story collection should be the R&D department of language and sentences, flinging and tweaking and pulverizing it like a pizzaiolo with fresh dough; this does.
August 13, 2014
Here is my review of PAPER LANTERN from the San Francisco Chronicle, 10 July, 2014
Paper Lantern by Stuart Dybek
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 207 pages, $24.00
Ecstatic Cahoots by Stuart Dybek
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 195 pages, $15.00
REVIEWED BY VALERIE MINER
June is a great month to celebrate fiction with the publication of Stuart Dybek’s two effervescent, musical collections, Paper Lantern, nine love stories, and Ecstatic Cahoots, fifty short-short stories. His characters explore urban Chicago and the edges of Lake Michigan as they muse about weather, sex, romance and the multiple meanings of life. Author of three previous story collections and two books of poetry, Dybek, at 72, isn’t the most prolific of writers, but he is among the most acclaimed, with fellowships and grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA as well as a Lannan Award, a Whiting Award, the O’Henry Prize and the PEN/Malamud Prize.
Dybek’s upbringing in Chicago’s South West Side, a multi-ethnic blue collar community, fuels these pieces as do this Catholic education and his passion for jazz. He uses childhood memories as well as adult experiences as a social worker, teacher and long-time professor. The stories are discursive, often spirals or circles, braiding realism, fantasy and lyricism.
The title story in Paper Lantern describes three colleagues leaving their lab for supper at a fabled local café, the Chinese Laundry, a former washing establishment whose only concession to dining décor is a red paper lantern. Over dessert, one asks, “Say, did anyone turn off the Bunsen burner…” 195 The color red threads through the tale as they share a blood orange under the lantern light and worry about fire. Back at the lab, they discover, “Flames occupy the top floor….through radiant, buckling windows, we can see the mannequins from the dressmaker’s showroom. Naked, wigs on fire, they appear to gyrate lewdly before they topple.” 195
As the narrator watches the lab’s conflagration, he recalls a lover he once photographed staring at a big blaze along a Chicago River. His ten page digression into sexual passion and automotive danger comprises two-thirds of the story, which eventually takes us back to the ruined lab. “The wind gusts, fanning the bitter chill of night even as it fans the flames, and instinctively we all edge closer to the fire.” 207
“Four Deuces” introduces Rosie and Frank, gamblers who buy a tavern from Verman the German. They have big dreams of fixing it up and turning into a popular, profitable watering hole. “We put up an old Solidarność poster and a picture of the Polish Pope next to Mayor Daley. Frank figured immigrants want a little of the homeland, so we put in Żywiec on tap…” 73 Rosie and Frank are luckier at the track than in domestic life. Infidelity, desertion, violence and retribution drive the hot, humid and snowy, cold novella as Rose breathlessly relates her saga about “sumnabitch” Frank to a customer at the bar.
Dybek is an erudite man who conveys his wide-ranging intelligence in a pleasingly common language. He finds beauty in loss as well as in communion. Both new books reveal a taste for the wild and ridiculous. Despite his penchant for metafiction, the story structures here are more organic than engineered and his dramas are driven by feeling rather than by idea. Dybek’s tone ranges from melancholic to sardonic to hilarious to bitter to nostalgic to deceptively indifferent.
Ecstatic Cahoots is the perfect title for his micro-fictions, which range from two lines to ten pages. Some, like the Hopperesque “Inland Sea,” read like prose poems.
“Horizon, a clothesline strung between crabapples. The forgotten dress, that far away, bleached invisible by a succession of summer days until a thunderstorm drenches it blue again, as it is now, and despite the distance, the foam of raindrops at its hem sparkles just before the wind lifts it to a wave that breaks against the man framed in a farmhouse doorway.” 186
The comical and wrenching, “Ravenswood,” portrays a nun hijacking a streetcar. 91 “‘I’m not in the habit of doing this,’ the Nun says from behind him. …she knocks him silly with a blow from her missal. …the Conductor finds himself hanging from a hand strap toward the rear of the streetcar. The rosary binds his wrists. He’s dressed…in the Nun’s black robes; her sensible shoes, untied, pinch his feet.” 91 As the streetcar reels forward, the conductor is lurched into deep introspection. “…he’d taken being a conductor for granted, treated it merely as a job, an identity he stripped off with the uniform, when, dear God!, it was his life.” 94
In “Flu,” Faye, recently returned from sick leave, is noticed for the first time by Aldo. “And later, when people would ask how they met and fell in love, it was always Aldo who would answer, ‘Flu.’ He’d smile earnestly. ‘It all started with the flu.’” 69
Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern confirm Dybek as a virtuoso of the short story—a nimble, compassionate writer who uses precise, lucid, original descriptions. He shows us all we need to know and nothing more.
END
Valerie Miner is the author of fourteen books including her new novel, Traveling with Spirits. She teaches at Stanford University and her website is www.valerieminer.com.
Paper Lantern by Stuart Dybek
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 207 pages, $24.00
Ecstatic Cahoots by Stuart Dybek
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 195 pages, $15.00
REVIEWED BY VALERIE MINER
June is a great month to celebrate fiction with the publication of Stuart Dybek’s two effervescent, musical collections, Paper Lantern, nine love stories, and Ecstatic Cahoots, fifty short-short stories. His characters explore urban Chicago and the edges of Lake Michigan as they muse about weather, sex, romance and the multiple meanings of life. Author of three previous story collections and two books of poetry, Dybek, at 72, isn’t the most prolific of writers, but he is among the most acclaimed, with fellowships and grants from the MacArthur Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the NEA as well as a Lannan Award, a Whiting Award, the O’Henry Prize and the PEN/Malamud Prize.
Dybek’s upbringing in Chicago’s South West Side, a multi-ethnic blue collar community, fuels these pieces as do this Catholic education and his passion for jazz. He uses childhood memories as well as adult experiences as a social worker, teacher and long-time professor. The stories are discursive, often spirals or circles, braiding realism, fantasy and lyricism.
The title story in Paper Lantern describes three colleagues leaving their lab for supper at a fabled local café, the Chinese Laundry, a former washing establishment whose only concession to dining décor is a red paper lantern. Over dessert, one asks, “Say, did anyone turn off the Bunsen burner…” 195 The color red threads through the tale as they share a blood orange under the lantern light and worry about fire. Back at the lab, they discover, “Flames occupy the top floor….through radiant, buckling windows, we can see the mannequins from the dressmaker’s showroom. Naked, wigs on fire, they appear to gyrate lewdly before they topple.” 195
As the narrator watches the lab’s conflagration, he recalls a lover he once photographed staring at a big blaze along a Chicago River. His ten page digression into sexual passion and automotive danger comprises two-thirds of the story, which eventually takes us back to the ruined lab. “The wind gusts, fanning the bitter chill of night even as it fans the flames, and instinctively we all edge closer to the fire.” 207
“Four Deuces” introduces Rosie and Frank, gamblers who buy a tavern from Verman the German. They have big dreams of fixing it up and turning into a popular, profitable watering hole. “We put up an old Solidarność poster and a picture of the Polish Pope next to Mayor Daley. Frank figured immigrants want a little of the homeland, so we put in Żywiec on tap…” 73 Rosie and Frank are luckier at the track than in domestic life. Infidelity, desertion, violence and retribution drive the hot, humid and snowy, cold novella as Rose breathlessly relates her saga about “sumnabitch” Frank to a customer at the bar.
Dybek is an erudite man who conveys his wide-ranging intelligence in a pleasingly common language. He finds beauty in loss as well as in communion. Both new books reveal a taste for the wild and ridiculous. Despite his penchant for metafiction, the story structures here are more organic than engineered and his dramas are driven by feeling rather than by idea. Dybek’s tone ranges from melancholic to sardonic to hilarious to bitter to nostalgic to deceptively indifferent.
Ecstatic Cahoots is the perfect title for his micro-fictions, which range from two lines to ten pages. Some, like the Hopperesque “Inland Sea,” read like prose poems.
“Horizon, a clothesline strung between crabapples. The forgotten dress, that far away, bleached invisible by a succession of summer days until a thunderstorm drenches it blue again, as it is now, and despite the distance, the foam of raindrops at its hem sparkles just before the wind lifts it to a wave that breaks against the man framed in a farmhouse doorway.” 186
The comical and wrenching, “Ravenswood,” portrays a nun hijacking a streetcar. 91 “‘I’m not in the habit of doing this,’ the Nun says from behind him. …she knocks him silly with a blow from her missal. …the Conductor finds himself hanging from a hand strap toward the rear of the streetcar. The rosary binds his wrists. He’s dressed…in the Nun’s black robes; her sensible shoes, untied, pinch his feet.” 91 As the streetcar reels forward, the conductor is lurched into deep introspection. “…he’d taken being a conductor for granted, treated it merely as a job, an identity he stripped off with the uniform, when, dear God!, it was his life.” 94
In “Flu,” Faye, recently returned from sick leave, is noticed for the first time by Aldo. “And later, when people would ask how they met and fell in love, it was always Aldo who would answer, ‘Flu.’ He’d smile earnestly. ‘It all started with the flu.’” 69
Ecstatic Cahoots and Paper Lantern confirm Dybek as a virtuoso of the short story—a nimble, compassionate writer who uses precise, lucid, original descriptions. He shows us all we need to know and nothing more.
END
Valerie Miner is the author of fourteen books including her new novel, Traveling with Spirits. She teaches at Stanford University and her website is www.valerieminer.com.
July 7, 2022
Not that good. Feels like a creative writing student. Too many unnecessary details. Like this long sentence about a piece of tape: "He put it in a brown bag that he taped shut with tape from the roll of white adhesive tape that had been stored on the top shelf of the medicine chest for as long as he could remember."
Why does the tape need a history?! It feels too constructed.
Why does the tape need a history?! It feels too constructed.
May 31, 2017
Start with your second best joke and end with your best.
This one comes pretty close to that comedic mantra but sadly the ones in the middle don't fill your stomach. I found myself more annoyed by the bad shorts than amused by the good ones.
This one comes pretty close to that comedic mantra but sadly the ones in the middle don't fill your stomach. I found myself more annoyed by the bad shorts than amused by the good ones.
February 25, 2024
I guess not surprisingly, I found this to be an incredibly mixed bag: some beautiful or even sublime moments, sensual and evocative language, and then some parts that just seemed incongruous bordering on incoherent.
November 29, 2017
A great collection of flash fiction, full of the bizarre, touching and impactful stories that Dybek always provides.
December 8, 2017
I really liked this book. If you're checking this out you probably already read a review that recommended it. I second that.
June 24, 2018
Beautiful, weird, remarkable little stories. I enjoyed about 40 out of 50 of them very much.
September 12, 2018
Mostly solid, often good, sometimes great.
December 10, 2020
filthy for no good reason, dirty old man stories, but still i did come back after every time i threw it against the wall in disgust so
Displaying 1 - 30 of 58 reviews