Roy's World: Stories: 1973-2020

by Barry Gifford

A tie-in to the new documentary, Roy's World , directed by Rob Christopher narrated by Lili Taylor, Matt Dillon and Willem Dafoe, these stories comprise one of Barry Gifford's most enduring works, his homage to the gritty Chicago landscape of his youth

Barry Gifford has been writing the story of America in acclaimed novel after acclaimed novel for the last half-century. At the same time, he's been writing short stories, his "Roy stories," that show America from a different vantage point, a certain mix of innocence and worldliness. Reminiscent of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn and Ernest Hemingway's Nick Adams stories, Gifford's Roy stories amount to the coming-of-age novel he never wrote, and are one of his most important literary achievements--time-pieces that preserve the lost worlds of 1950s Chicago and the American South, the landscape of postwar America seen through the lens of a boy's steady gaze.

The twists and tragedies of the adult world seem to float by like curious flotsam, like the show girls from the burlesque house next door to Roy's father's pharmacy who stop by when they need a little help, or Roy's mom and the husbands she weds and then sheds after Roy's Jewish mobster father's early death. Life throws Roy more than the usual curves, but his intelligence and curiosity shape them into something unforeseen, while Roy's complete lack of self-pity allow the stories to seem to tell themselves.

Genres: Short Stories

720 pages, Paperback

Published September 22, 2020

About the author

Barry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness.

He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.

Reviews

[AC · Rating 4 out of 5]

A long (very long — 700 pages) set of Gifford’s largely autobiographical flash fiction dealing with his youth (Roy), growing up in the 1950’s in Chicago and elsewhere, with his beautiful and highly neurotic mother, and his gangster father — 20 years her senior — who died when Roy was 5. And, by the end, quite a poignant portrait.

[Zack · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the movie Wild at Heart, which I think came out in 1986(?), and I've tried reading Barry Gifford a few times over the years since without anything blowing my head off until this incomparable ROY'S WORLD. All the time he was writing his other stuff, Gifford has been writing down these outstanding memories of childhood in Chicago and hotels in Havana and Miami. Roy is the son of a mob-connected liquor store owner named Rudy who to his credit never stopped being a father to Roy after splitting from his intelligent, sensitive mother, Kitty, who pursued a series of relationships with other savvy Chicago types of differing quality, also never losing sight of her maternal obligation. I like that Gifford is using the old-school device of fictionalized, novelized life-recording, and he's a proven master here, no contest. This book is full of adventures in very short chapters and through them all, we get the feeling that everything is finally all right with the relationships between these family members. I won't say more about the details, but in an attempt to give you a sense of this one, it's about four inches thick and I read the whole thing (got about 30 more pages) in a couple of weeks with increasing enjoyment. Best book I've read in years.

[Steven Blaisdell · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had never heard of Barry Gifford. Apparently he's pretty well known and liked, so, so much for being on top of the literary scene. I rarely think like this, but while reading these eminently digestible short shorts I kept thinking - in a good way - of how Gifford seems influenced, even heavily influenced, by Carver and others. The stories stand up on their own, so, no worries, especially in how his time and world of experience overlaps with my own, how the baby boomer generation in a sense birthed my so-called generation x. It's more than nostalgia; more like memory once removed, not the unsettling of Freud's unheimliche but the opposite, a comfort of partial, Venn diagram recognition, of being precociously spoken for in a knowing and not unkind way. Like pulling out my old baseball cards (long gone) and looking at faces from just before my time, somewhat distanced but recognizable; they were important then, less so when I somehow came across them, and not at all now except to those whose lives were shaped by that time and place. Other people's lives and memories, not mine but close, like a 1957 Al Kaline card. It mattered then. Maybe that's all we need to know.

[Rob Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece, and one of the most moving interconnected series of stories about American childhood in all of literature. The deeper you get into this book, the more you feel as if you're living in Roy's world. I admit I'm biased--I loved these tales so much that I used them as the basis for a documentary about the time and place that Gifford captures here so brilliantly, mostly the 1950s and mostly Chicago. Learn more about "Roy's World: Barry Gifford's Chicago" at roysworldfilm(dot)com!

[Cail Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read about 100 or so pages of this. Really terrific short fiction, all of Roy’s childhood, 8-14. The story where his Dad leaves him in the theatre and he waits for him so long he sits through a second showing and pees his pants struck me with its quiet sadness. The one where he walks home from school when the teacher speaks unkindly to him also sticks out.

I’ll revisit this, my first dance with Gifford’s writing. Going to jump back into Hannah and start Martyr! soon.

[Alex Gleason · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read all 700 pages while travelling; immersive.

[Sheldon Birnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful stuff

[Joe Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was hard to read these stories all at once, so I found myself dipping in and out for breathers. They run together across Roy's life in a nonlinear pattern and can cause a sort of vertigo. But they're short, for the most part, seemingly simply written. They were all poignant and the endings to many were like cruel punchlines. I love Barry Gifford. He's always surprising. I'm glad Wyoming was included - it's one of his best.