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Fun with Problems: Stories
In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is “one of our greatest living writers” (Los Angeles Times). The stories in this new collection share the signature blend of longing, violence, and black humor with which Stone illuminates the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid bare with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return.
Fun with Problems showcases Stone’s great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses—by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive—that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our truest selves.
Fun with Problems showcases Stone’s great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses—by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive—that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our truest selves.
195 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2010
14 people are currently reading
557 people want to read
About the author
Robert Stone
29 books246 followersROBERT STONE was the author of seven novels: A Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers (winner of the National Book Award), A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. His story collection, Bear and His Daughter, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2006.
His work was typically characterized by psychological complexity, political concerns, and dark humor.
A lifelong adventurer who in his 20s befriended Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and what he called ‘‘all those crazies’’ of the counterculture, Mr. Stone had a fateful affinity for outsiders, especially those who brought hard times on themselves. Starting with the 1966 novel ‘‘A Hall of Mirrors,’’ Mr. Stone set his stories everywhere from the American South to the Far East. He was a master of making art out of his character’s follies, whether the adulterous teacher in ‘‘Death of the Black-Haired Girl,’’ the fraudulent seafarer in ‘‘Outerbridge Reach,’’ or the besieged journalist in ‘‘Dog Soldiers,’’ winner of the National Book Award in 1975.
His work was typically characterized by psychological complexity, political concerns, and dark humor.
A lifelong adventurer who in his 20s befriended Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and what he called ‘‘all those crazies’’ of the counterculture, Mr. Stone had a fateful affinity for outsiders, especially those who brought hard times on themselves. Starting with the 1966 novel ‘‘A Hall of Mirrors,’’ Mr. Stone set his stories everywhere from the American South to the Far East. He was a master of making art out of his character’s follies, whether the adulterous teacher in ‘‘Death of the Black-Haired Girl,’’ the fraudulent seafarer in ‘‘Outerbridge Reach,’’ or the besieged journalist in ‘‘Dog Soldiers,’’ winner of the National Book Award in 1975.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
March 16, 2023
This was my first outing with this author. It would be safe to say we did not get along very well. The stories were of a darkish flavor, which almost always is a magnet for me, the writing was fine, but I never did sync up with it. The one exception was "Honeymoon". That one was killer. Other than that, I felt like I was just reading words. More than once I found myself thinking please god, let it be over soon. With it being a short story collection, I persevered. If you are considering this one, read the other reviews. My rating is based solely on how much I enjoyed the book. Overall, this was a problem for me. I did not have fun with it.
February 27, 2023
I've been underwater, friends... for good reasons and not-so-good ones. Life.
Underwater means unable to take a breath. Unable to communicate. It could also mean drowning.
Underwater, just like the newlyweds in Robert Stone's story, "Honeymoon". The story is only a few pages long, but it is lethally good. It dragged me down into the depths and left me down there, strangely happy to be shark bait.
Ironically, it's this kind of writing that I needed to shoot me back to the surface, to revive and engage me. A deeeeeep inhale of much needed, life-saving oxygen.
This type of writing gives me hope in a world where Colleen Hoover gets her own table at my local bookstore. Robert Stone is something else altogether.
I found this collection to be less solid than Bear and His Daughter, but still dangerous and searing. And let's face it, I'm not entirely at ease unless those sharks are circling.
Underwater means unable to take a breath. Unable to communicate. It could also mean drowning.
Underwater, just like the newlyweds in Robert Stone's story, "Honeymoon". The story is only a few pages long, but it is lethally good. It dragged me down into the depths and left me down there, strangely happy to be shark bait.
Ironically, it's this kind of writing that I needed to shoot me back to the surface, to revive and engage me. A deeeeeep inhale of much needed, life-saving oxygen.
This type of writing gives me hope in a world where Colleen Hoover gets her own table at my local bookstore. Robert Stone is something else altogether.
I found this collection to be less solid than Bear and His Daughter, but still dangerous and searing. And let's face it, I'm not entirely at ease unless those sharks are circling.
March 9, 2011
Strong collection by Stone. It lacks a power house story like Bear and His Daughter's "Under the Pitons." In fact there are probably at least three or so stories from Bear that I would rank higher than the offerings in Fun with Problems. That said, I do feel that Fun with Problems is more consistent in quality than the earlier collection. There are no real low points (well, unless you want to take into account Stone's universe of stoners, losers and betrayers), with things staying steady in the downward spiral of Stone's characters. If there is a weak link, it's probably the title story, which seems a mean meandering trip to nowhere. But even there, you can always hang on to the sentence, the description, the dialogue, because Stone, at age 73 (and not in the best of health) is that increasingly rare bird in this post literate age: a writer's writer. I have often likened Stone to Conrad, but here he seems closer to Nathaniel West, as the slime of Hollywood seems to dominate. It's a collection filled with writers, actors, artists, and drugs (lots of them), and has Stone returning to the world of his most overlooked novel, Children of Light. I'm glad for the return trip, because Stone knows Hollywood, and the characters that live there. It's largely a dark trip, with some gallows humor thrown in (along with razor sharp dialogue). But for all of it's darkness, Stone, in the collection's last story, "The Archer," through the eyes of a drunken artist named James Duffy, let's a little light in:
In all of Stella's good early stuff, all those wild whirling colored lights, was about the teeming overripe possibilities of the coming age, maybe his, Duffy's, was about the exhaustion of those possibilities, the disappearance of that time, the great abridgment of the popular age. The ghost of a century, a show closing down for lack of interest.. But, he thought, somebody had to be around to tell the story. It was too easy to mock the tag end of it, to do a burlesque on the failure of public joy. Someone ought to show it with a degree of compassion, he thought. Someone ought to have a heart about it.
Stone deliberately lets the mask slip, as it's the writer speaking here rather than the character. The stories preceding "The Archer," arguably are not about compassion or heart, but more about a merciless eye that sees America for what it is in this late time, and crafts his dark fictions accordingly. However, it's Duffy's gesture of reconciliation at the end of the collection that does signal the compassion and heart that the reader has probably been craving since the first story. When it does come, it's not cheap, but well earned. A meaningless gesture (a gift to a clueless college girl) that somehow does mean something to all.
In all of Stella's good early stuff, all those wild whirling colored lights, was about the teeming overripe possibilities of the coming age, maybe his, Duffy's, was about the exhaustion of those possibilities, the disappearance of that time, the great abridgment of the popular age. The ghost of a century, a show closing down for lack of interest.. But, he thought, somebody had to be around to tell the story. It was too easy to mock the tag end of it, to do a burlesque on the failure of public joy. Someone ought to show it with a degree of compassion, he thought. Someone ought to have a heart about it.
Stone deliberately lets the mask slip, as it's the writer speaking here rather than the character. The stories preceding "The Archer," arguably are not about compassion or heart, but more about a merciless eye that sees America for what it is in this late time, and crafts his dark fictions accordingly. However, it's Duffy's gesture of reconciliation at the end of the collection that does signal the compassion and heart that the reader has probably been craving since the first story. When it does come, it's not cheap, but well earned. A meaningless gesture (a gift to a clueless college girl) that somehow does mean something to all.
April 11, 2010
The self-involved, self-destructive, tortured creative soul appears to have an unbounded appeal for certain authors. Apparently (sigh), Robert Stone is one of those authors. In this very slim collection of seven stories, he presents us with an assortment of characters, most of whom are living fucked-up lives. Some are interesting, some are utterly devoid of interest. As Stone is a competent writer (though he hardly merits the L.A. Times' hysterical acclamation as "one of our greatest living writers"), the success of any given story is largely dependent on the strength of the narrative and the characterization.
Given the huge variation in the quality of the stories, the only sensible strategy is to assign individual grades:
Fun with Problems. 2/5
Honeymoon. 4/5
Charm City. 3/5
The Wine-Dark Sea. 2/5
From the Lowlands. 3/5
High Wire. 0/5
The Archer. 4/5
Which works out to 2.5 stars on average. However, since the worst stories tended to be longer ("High Wire", a meandering, rambling account of the relationship between two addicted narcissists - it goes from barely alive to diseased to moribund, taking 50 pages and some non-negligible portion of your life - is simply unforgivable) I choose to round this down to a two-star rating overall.
The collection is somewhat redeemed by the stories "Honeymoon" (3 pages) and the final story, "The Archer". This review may be colored by my general difficulty in warming to stories involving unlikeable characters - so sue me!
Given the huge variation in the quality of the stories, the only sensible strategy is to assign individual grades:
Fun with Problems. 2/5
Honeymoon. 4/5
Charm City. 3/5
The Wine-Dark Sea. 2/5
From the Lowlands. 3/5
High Wire. 0/5
The Archer. 4/5
Which works out to 2.5 stars on average. However, since the worst stories tended to be longer ("High Wire", a meandering, rambling account of the relationship between two addicted narcissists - it goes from barely alive to diseased to moribund, taking 50 pages and some non-negligible portion of your life - is simply unforgivable) I choose to round this down to a two-star rating overall.
The collection is somewhat redeemed by the stories "Honeymoon" (3 pages) and the final story, "The Archer". This review may be colored by my general difficulty in warming to stories involving unlikeable characters - so sue me!
January 3, 2010
Robert Stone’s story collection is deep down funny in a very sad way. His characters are mostly high functioning intellectual or artists who have serious drinking, substance and/or mental issues who manage to get themselves into outrageous situations and just when mayhem is about to ensue the other characters reach deep and relieve the tension. Stone’s humor seemingly comes out of nowhere. You never see it coming and as a result you can’t avoid a belly laugh but these aren’t likeable people and you’ll work hard NOT identify with them. The characters are users who don’t even get pleasure out of using others, even distantly observing what they’re doing, owning it but they’re so sunk into their sad lives they can’t stop……they’re apathetic, entropy has set in and they are slowly or quickly doing what they’ve always done though it’s not working if it ever has. They are all of a certain age. What are those lines from Dante, “Midway upon the journey of our life found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.” Where is your buddy Virgil when you need him? And someone warn Beatrice not to answer her cell. They need to help these folks FAST.
I love the subtly of Stone’s writing, his use of words is utterly unique, his plot elements seem to hinge on the fanciful yet somehow he sets you back down in reality again. The ride is bumpy but still you feel safe.
I love the subtly of Stone’s writing, his use of words is utterly unique, his plot elements seem to hinge on the fanciful yet somehow he sets you back down in reality again. The ride is bumpy but still you feel safe.
September 4, 2024
is there more to life than cheating, drugs, and killing yourself? idk but the back cover reviews say oooh wow what a view into the human soul and damn idk. ig i just don’t like the content? like the writing is good, it’s the plot points that are cringe. the genz censorship brain worms got me. it gets better in the second half
3 stars
3 stars
March 26, 2012
I found these stories absolutely brilliant. Unlike most contemporary short fiction, these aren't work to read. They grab hold and won't let go. One reads on with a sense of growing, horrified pleasure, and the increasing certainty that one is in the hands of a storytelling genius. Because of Stone's brilliance in stripping his characters bare, and the pitiless workings of Stone’s "mechanistic universe" (thanks for that, Tatjana Soli), the endings are completely satisfying - another reward simply not offered by the vast undifferentiated mass of most contemporary short fiction.
In most short fiction I come upon these days, it’s an effort to keep going. After experiencing the story’s politely measured epiphany, I usually regret having wasted the time. In the best of cases, I emit a tired sigh of mild appreciation. Not the case with Stone’s stories. There is nothing mild about them. They are small masterpieces, beginning innocently enough but quickly gaining momentum. If you’re a fan of great storytelling – and especially if you’ve become, like me, somewhat disenchanted with the state of contemporary short fiction, I urge you to buy this book, and put yourself in the hands of one of the great living masters of short fiction.
In most short fiction I come upon these days, it’s an effort to keep going. After experiencing the story’s politely measured epiphany, I usually regret having wasted the time. In the best of cases, I emit a tired sigh of mild appreciation. Not the case with Stone’s stories. There is nothing mild about them. They are small masterpieces, beginning innocently enough but quickly gaining momentum. If you’re a fan of great storytelling – and especially if you’ve become, like me, somewhat disenchanted with the state of contemporary short fiction, I urge you to buy this book, and put yourself in the hands of one of the great living masters of short fiction.
April 11, 2010
Uneven Stone collection, but the final tale, "The Archer," is a keeper. Talk about FUN with PROBLEMS. Duffy is a cuckolded drunk, both artist and professor, who flees the winter of his New England discontent, surfaces at a Gulf Coast university where he is scheduled to give a speech, meets a Southern professor and his family at a restaurant, and goes into drunken fits over what he insists is faux crab meat. Hysterical, if sad.
Stone writes like a novelist, however, creating well-written tales that tell more than show. If that's your cuppa and you like tales built around degenerates, have at it!
Stone writes like a novelist, however, creating well-written tales that tell more than show. If that's your cuppa and you like tales built around degenerates, have at it!
March 3, 2017
Robert Stone was a writer who set a lot of store by the rough side of life. In some ways he wrote below himself. There was nothing ragged about his prose, but the characters he focused on and the places he put them in (geographically as well as situationally) definitely had a certain dysentery-like odor to them, resulting in a meal you enjoyed eating more than digesting.
Fun with Problems, his collection of stories published in 2010, features drinkers and dopers and women with hard luck and folks who are simply mean and pissed off and generally repellant. A public defender works over a psychological counselor he meets when both are doing their jobs in a local jail. A bum of a journalist wangles his way into the house of his ex-girlfriend's sister and infuriates the sister's husband. An art professor/artist takes a trip to lecture in the most gaseous and plastic corner of Florida's Gulf Coast and gets thrown in jail because he has been served what he considers fake crab squeezed out of a tube. A vagrant husband is turned into a mark by a woman who only wants to get into his house to case it for robbing everything in it the next day.
Everybody in Stone's world gets what they deserve--they're freeloaders, faithless, feckless and a bit freakish.
Although these stories were published in major magazines like the New Yorker, they aren't really stories. Stone inevitably lets them speak for themselves at the end and say essentially nothing.
So what gives? Well, he wrote great sentences, he probed deep into the general creepiness of people you wouldn't otherwise want to know that well, he had an acute eye for the half-baked scams that make the film world (such as it is) tick, he understood rage, he could make rage funny, funnier, then funniest, he wasn't afraid of depicting figures whose general outlines might resemble himself and skewering them for their bad judgment, habits, and associates, he was apparently able to convince highfalutin' editors that his mixed-up points of view and caricatures made sense. So here we have a kind of literary tabloid-ism, lacking the grace and humility of, let's say, Raymond Carver, but nonetheless delivering whip-cracking sentence after sentence. Really, a single paragraph of Stone's hyperbolic yet deadpan prose can contain eight sentences and twelve images another writer might trade a significant tooth for, even a front one.
There are times when you feel all right about reading stuff that is as stinky as your worst thoughts and suspicions about the people and places you disliked most in your life. At such times, Stone is your man.
Fun with Problems, his collection of stories published in 2010, features drinkers and dopers and women with hard luck and folks who are simply mean and pissed off and generally repellant. A public defender works over a psychological counselor he meets when both are doing their jobs in a local jail. A bum of a journalist wangles his way into the house of his ex-girlfriend's sister and infuriates the sister's husband. An art professor/artist takes a trip to lecture in the most gaseous and plastic corner of Florida's Gulf Coast and gets thrown in jail because he has been served what he considers fake crab squeezed out of a tube. A vagrant husband is turned into a mark by a woman who only wants to get into his house to case it for robbing everything in it the next day.
Everybody in Stone's world gets what they deserve--they're freeloaders, faithless, feckless and a bit freakish.
Although these stories were published in major magazines like the New Yorker, they aren't really stories. Stone inevitably lets them speak for themselves at the end and say essentially nothing.
So what gives? Well, he wrote great sentences, he probed deep into the general creepiness of people you wouldn't otherwise want to know that well, he had an acute eye for the half-baked scams that make the film world (such as it is) tick, he understood rage, he could make rage funny, funnier, then funniest, he wasn't afraid of depicting figures whose general outlines might resemble himself and skewering them for their bad judgment, habits, and associates, he was apparently able to convince highfalutin' editors that his mixed-up points of view and caricatures made sense. So here we have a kind of literary tabloid-ism, lacking the grace and humility of, let's say, Raymond Carver, but nonetheless delivering whip-cracking sentence after sentence. Really, a single paragraph of Stone's hyperbolic yet deadpan prose can contain eight sentences and twelve images another writer might trade a significant tooth for, even a front one.
There are times when you feel all right about reading stuff that is as stinky as your worst thoughts and suspicions about the people and places you disliked most in your life. At such times, Stone is your man.
Read
March 30, 2019lots of good stuff in here (the tantrum over imitation crab in "the archer," f'rinstance) but for me it's all about "charm city." i won't spoil it and pls avoid spoilers at all costs but, like... what an elegant & funny way to turn class assumptions on their head. i'd applaud but then i'd probably lose my page
January 22, 2025
The Hose Again
It rubs peach scented "old writing professor with flagging libido reignited one last fateful time by hot young crazy chick" genre lotion on its skin, without any story actually being exactly about that - weird.
It rubs peach scented "old writing professor with flagging libido reignited one last fateful time by hot young crazy chick" genre lotion on its skin, without any story actually being exactly about that - weird.
December 2, 2009
Remarkable. I have read Dog Soldiers, but this is of a different order. This is a book about what comes after hope. Stone puts it best in the last story, when, a character compares his seascape to that of an earlier artist:
"The good early stuff, all those wild whirling colored lights, was about the teeming overripe possibilities of the coming age...maybe his was about the exhaustion of those possibilities, the disappearance of that time, the great abridgment of the popular age. The ghost of a century, a show closing down for the lack of interest."
To me, that is a broader statement that is not about two paintings, but really about two eras. Stone is an artist now, but he came of age at a brighter time, when people were re-imagining the possibilities for lives and for our society. Now, forty years on, Stone is assessing his, and his generation's, finistere. Those ideas resonate throughout this book.
Stone's collection of sevens stories presents a set of individuals who experience the costs of substance abuse, or of failed integrity, or of dreams set aside. They are people who have betrayed their hopes, in small ways or great: an actress whose final role will be overdose, a writer who make copy for lad mags, a classicist who writes software manuals.
One aspect of these stories is their tendency to end suddenly. The fall comes quickly, out of nowhere. These people have accidents. In particular, the chorus of drinkers, free-basers, and tweakers in these pages meet with a lot of misfortune.
This book reminds me of some of the writing of Raymond Carver. With its setting in modern California, it makes me think of how Robert Altman interpreted Raymond Carver in Short Cuts. It has echoes of Frank Bascombe or Jernigan. These are people living at the margins, struggling with their own temptations. These stories feature actors, writers, and musicians who have lost their way. It is not a dirge, in spite of its content. Sometimes this book is absolutely funny.
My favorite story involves a formerly successful college painting professor. Having wrecked his marriage and his reputation, he has recently taken to making a living as a lecturer on the second tier speaking series. Maybe it is beneath him. After all, should a great painter be forced to eat imitation crab meat? If he does, should he assume the responsibility to let his guests know that they are actually eating red paste in a tube, made by people who laugh at Americans for eating it? And, if they can't serve whiskey on a Sunday in Pahoochee, would it be appropriate to order some kind of amphetamine? Yep, it ends badly for him. I can't blame him, I suppose. Imitation crab meat is a problem.
"The good early stuff, all those wild whirling colored lights, was about the teeming overripe possibilities of the coming age...maybe his was about the exhaustion of those possibilities, the disappearance of that time, the great abridgment of the popular age. The ghost of a century, a show closing down for the lack of interest."
To me, that is a broader statement that is not about two paintings, but really about two eras. Stone is an artist now, but he came of age at a brighter time, when people were re-imagining the possibilities for lives and for our society. Now, forty years on, Stone is assessing his, and his generation's, finistere. Those ideas resonate throughout this book.
Stone's collection of sevens stories presents a set of individuals who experience the costs of substance abuse, or of failed integrity, or of dreams set aside. They are people who have betrayed their hopes, in small ways or great: an actress whose final role will be overdose, a writer who make copy for lad mags, a classicist who writes software manuals.
One aspect of these stories is their tendency to end suddenly. The fall comes quickly, out of nowhere. These people have accidents. In particular, the chorus of drinkers, free-basers, and tweakers in these pages meet with a lot of misfortune.
This book reminds me of some of the writing of Raymond Carver. With its setting in modern California, it makes me think of how Robert Altman interpreted Raymond Carver in Short Cuts. It has echoes of Frank Bascombe or Jernigan. These are people living at the margins, struggling with their own temptations. These stories feature actors, writers, and musicians who have lost their way. It is not a dirge, in spite of its content. Sometimes this book is absolutely funny.
My favorite story involves a formerly successful college painting professor. Having wrecked his marriage and his reputation, he has recently taken to making a living as a lecturer on the second tier speaking series. Maybe it is beneath him. After all, should a great painter be forced to eat imitation crab meat? If he does, should he assume the responsibility to let his guests know that they are actually eating red paste in a tube, made by people who laugh at Americans for eating it? And, if they can't serve whiskey on a Sunday in Pahoochee, would it be appropriate to order some kind of amphetamine? Yep, it ends badly for him. I can't blame him, I suppose. Imitation crab meat is a problem.
March 16, 2010
This is part of my review that was posted over at The Millions:
The dilemma of the likable character. It’s good to have a character who we root for, who has flaws but works to overcome them. We are taught as fledgling writers that our characters need to be complex but also sympathetic. Even as a teacher, I’ve noted on student papers that a particular character wasn’t interesting enough to carry the story. But have we as a reading public become too soft, too politically correct, insisting that the character be accessible, understandable — gasp, a nice guy? Do we make the same demands with the classics as we do contemporary works? Would we insist, in the romantic realist tradition that Robert Stone descends from, that Melville’s Captain Ahab be someone that we can relate to? Or that his obsession with the whale be something that can be fixed in a twelve-step program? I’ll admit one might not want to run into a Robert Stone character at a classical music concert, Shakespeare play, Hollywood movie premiere, or, more likely, a bar, but that’s not because he or she wouldn’t be charming, erudite, clever, but because after reading these stories one knows the darkness that lurks beneath the polished surface.
( to read in its entirety, go to: http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/un... )
The dilemma of the likable character. It’s good to have a character who we root for, who has flaws but works to overcome them. We are taught as fledgling writers that our characters need to be complex but also sympathetic. Even as a teacher, I’ve noted on student papers that a particular character wasn’t interesting enough to carry the story. But have we as a reading public become too soft, too politically correct, insisting that the character be accessible, understandable — gasp, a nice guy? Do we make the same demands with the classics as we do contemporary works? Would we insist, in the romantic realist tradition that Robert Stone descends from, that Melville’s Captain Ahab be someone that we can relate to? Or that his obsession with the whale be something that can be fixed in a twelve-step program? I’ll admit one might not want to run into a Robert Stone character at a classical music concert, Shakespeare play, Hollywood movie premiere, or, more likely, a bar, but that’s not because he or she wouldn’t be charming, erudite, clever, but because after reading these stories one knows the darkness that lurks beneath the polished surface.
( to read in its entirety, go to: http://www.themillions.com/2010/03/un... )
January 16, 2011
I picked up this book because I remembered reading, in a New York Times review that it was a "book for grown-ups." It's that. And it's dark. I kept thinking that these are "men's stories," or "manly stories." They're tough, suspenseful, brutal. I sometimes had a visceral reaction brought on by a sense of menace aroused by this Stone's stunning writing. The characters are not likable, some downright distasteful, but are intellectually appealing, highly articulate, complicated, and with more self-knowledge than we usually get in this kind of character. And I couldn't take my eyes off them. Plus, phenomenal writing.
February 14, 2010
Uh, sucked.
February 28, 2023
In Robert Stone's second collection of short stories, Fun with Problems, he continues many of the themes about broken, addicted people confronting a fickle and hostile world that he addressed in his first book of stories, Bear and His Daughter. (Please see my separate review on that title.) The
stories in Fun With Problems are well crafted, nicely written, and with a strong impact. Some might say they are often depressing, but I think they all have a moral undertone that elevates their significance. The ordinary, everyday people in these stories are seriously flawed, and frequently addicted by drugs or alcohol. They are not what you call nice people, but there is something of ourselves in each of them. They are all brought down by bad luck or bad karma, but there is sometimes a hint of redemption that remains. In the title story, a run-down, embittered attorney encounters a young female co-worker and entices her to resume drinking which she had given up. Then he takes her to bed. The next day he abandons her and leaves her to deal with her rekindled addiction. "Charm City" describes a lonely man who attempts an affair with a woman he meets. Seemingly for ethical reasons she declines to sleep with him because he is married. After they separate, it is revealed that she is actually a con-woman who uses their encounter to case his house so she and her cohorts can rob him to buy drugs. "From the Lowlands" involves a egotistic, manipulative man who exploits people to make money and live a high life. He views all those who he has manipulated as losers. But in the end a bazaar fate awaits him in payment for his cruelty. In "High Wire" a Hollywood screenwriter and actress embark on a very long term but on-again, off-again affair that is self destructive for each. As both realize the negative effects on themselves, one cannot alter the course while one is able to change the destructive patter. Lastly, "The Archer" describes (in a sometimes humorous way) a compulsive and eccentric professor, who threatened his wife and her lover with a crossbow, and proceeds to sink into a pattern of erratic, self-destructive behavior that he seems to enjoy. Fun With Problems is a very good collection of stories that I definitely recommend.
stories in Fun With Problems are well crafted, nicely written, and with a strong impact. Some might say they are often depressing, but I think they all have a moral undertone that elevates their significance. The ordinary, everyday people in these stories are seriously flawed, and frequently addicted by drugs or alcohol. They are not what you call nice people, but there is something of ourselves in each of them. They are all brought down by bad luck or bad karma, but there is sometimes a hint of redemption that remains. In the title story, a run-down, embittered attorney encounters a young female co-worker and entices her to resume drinking which she had given up. Then he takes her to bed. The next day he abandons her and leaves her to deal with her rekindled addiction. "Charm City" describes a lonely man who attempts an affair with a woman he meets. Seemingly for ethical reasons she declines to sleep with him because he is married. After they separate, it is revealed that she is actually a con-woman who uses their encounter to case his house so she and her cohorts can rob him to buy drugs. "From the Lowlands" involves a egotistic, manipulative man who exploits people to make money and live a high life. He views all those who he has manipulated as losers. But in the end a bazaar fate awaits him in payment for his cruelty. In "High Wire" a Hollywood screenwriter and actress embark on a very long term but on-again, off-again affair that is self destructive for each. As both realize the negative effects on themselves, one cannot alter the course while one is able to change the destructive patter. Lastly, "The Archer" describes (in a sometimes humorous way) a compulsive and eccentric professor, who threatened his wife and her lover with a crossbow, and proceeds to sink into a pattern of erratic, self-destructive behavior that he seems to enjoy. Fun With Problems is a very good collection of stories that I definitely recommend.
January 26, 2022
Robert Stone didn't lose many of his powers in the final years of his writing life. In fact, his second and final collection of short stories is actually more rounded than his first, Bear and His Daughter, which has several highlights but also several of what look to be unfinished drafts and not-fully-realized ideas. The quality in Fun With Problems is more consistent - so much so that it's hard to pick a favorite story. But if I had to, I'd say Charm City, for a great plot twist. I really thought the cultivated middle-aged dude was going to have a tawdry one-night stand with the woman he met at the classical music concert and regret it afterwards, maybe with his wife finding out through some slip-up he makes. Without committing a spoiler, all I can say is it doesn't go that way. Stone creates a great scene in another story, The Wine-Dark Sea, in which a famous person's indiscretion is captured by watchers' cellphone cameras and posted on YouTube. Quite a progression for a guy who began his writing career in the 1960s, in the era of manual typewriters, landline phones and film-loaded cameras.
August 17, 2024
There aren't many novelists who can also write short stories. From my experience, the stylists are best equipped. Perhaps some of you don't think Stone's a stylist. His sentences are exquisite. There's always character development and plot (even if the same...themes are being mined). He writes a 34 pg short story with no page breaks that's a joy to read, intellectually. It's not a joy to read emotionally, which I presume is intentional. I can only think of one author who's on his same wavelength-Evelyn Waugh. Waugh's novels and short stories are a joy to read...and then I cannot remember a damn thing about them after reading. Stone asks more emotionally from the reader, which makes the prose more memorable, even if the themes are repetitive than Waugh's. Waugh is celebrated in Britain and where is Stone in the US?
Stone's mining of the same thematic tropes reminds me of McEwan.
Stone's mining of the same thematic tropes reminds me of McEwan.
July 4, 2025
Did not and could not! finish this short story collection. I read the first three stories and felt they had no point. They mostly circled around people with questionable morals and I disliked all of them. The men that served as the main characters were gross and often looked at women in objectified ways, or the women were written in objectified sexual ways that made me feel grossed out.
September 5, 2017
In my old age, I need funny and light. Alas, Stone's "Fun With Problems" is sad and dark. Of the seven stories in this book, six were s**t. The seventh story, "The Archer," at least had a little depth. Sorry Robert Stone fans. You can have him.
October 19, 2017
I'd never even heard of this one, by one of my favorite authors, seven short stories, well-paced, wide-ranging, carefully crafted, often hilarious. (Stone's strength is making you believe he's lived a thousand lives, all deeper than yours.)
July 17, 2017
I'm not a big fan of short stories.
December 31, 2021
Personal favourites: Charm City, The Wine-Dark Sea, High Wire
May 6, 2024
Not sure what the issue here was, but I could not get into this at all. Read the first two stories and set it aside to never be finished.
February 29, 2012
It both dismays and delights me to have discovered Robert Stone. Dismayed because he's apparently been around for awhile, and I'm only just now learning about him. Delighted because I'm just now learning about him.
This isn't a very long collection, but if these seven short stories are any indication, Stone doesn't need many words to strike the bull's eye of meaning. His lines are confident but also delicate with detail. He's one of the best wordsmiths I've stumbled across since Chang-Rae Lee or David Mitchell.
Words he puts together elegantly; plots, maybe not so much. I could complain that the stories all seem like they are about the same kinds of people having the same kinds of fun with the same kinds of problems, and that complaint's legitimate. (The synecdoche of this little book: "No one would convince him that character was fate..." That, or "They couldn't take a punch and you couldn't wake them up with one.") I don't think this singularity of purpose is a flaw, though, and I gather it is probably also one of the collection's main points.
No, the only real problem with any of these stories lies in the awkward and inelegant plot construction. For someone with a poets ear for the cadence of words, Stone oddly gets the cadences of life just a little bit wrong, rending some stories too short, some too long, and some like Frankenstein mish-mashes of different tales. Here's my take on all seven:
FUN WITH PROBLEMS: Peter, divorced public defender, inexpertly consoles his client and becomes damagingly connected with a woman looking for self-control. Peter is an unlikeable and predictable person, and his motivations aren't incredibly interesting. 3/5
HONEYMOON: The shortest piece of the book, this depressing little vignette is poetic but barely accessible. 2/5
CHARM CITY: A schizophrenic story about lonely, ineffectual Frank and the woman who seduces him. Although it's the only real story to have a chewy and obvious moral, it also has some of the best characterization. 4/5
THE WINE-DARK SEA: A weirdly splintered story about three men and the different madnesses (cultural, social, and professional) they are possessed with. Intriguing, but the ending seems cartoonish and out of place. 4/5
FROM THE LOWLANDS: Leroy is wealthy, self-absorbed, and treats the world like a machine he invented as a child. He lives high on a gorge, but is brought low by a nameless visitor. Leroy's mastery and charm is expertly portrayed; his dismay and concern is not. 4/5
HIGH WIRE: A screenwriter and an aging actress meet, separate, and meet again over the course of their drug-addled, love-tortured lives. I can see a lot of people hating this one - it sprawls so much that it's a handful of missing punctuation away from being stream-of-consciousness - but I think it reads like a slowing pulse. Their meets grow weaker and further apart in time, but there's a purpose to them that Stone delivers through the achingly eloquent narrator. 5/5
THE ARCHER: This is the only time I've ever read about madness and experienced it vicariously with such clarity. Duffy, an artist/teacher, is still recoiling from his divorce when he makes a trip to deliver a lecture and suffers a nervous breakdown. This one, unlike the breakdowns suffered in so many of these other stories, is told from the inside out. The ending rings a little hollow, but it's also beautifully done, maybe Stone's way of saying that, yes, it's all rather depressing, but there are also reasons to smile. Someone, at any rate, should be having fun. 5/5
This isn't a very long collection, but if these seven short stories are any indication, Stone doesn't need many words to strike the bull's eye of meaning. His lines are confident but also delicate with detail. He's one of the best wordsmiths I've stumbled across since Chang-Rae Lee or David Mitchell.
Words he puts together elegantly; plots, maybe not so much. I could complain that the stories all seem like they are about the same kinds of people having the same kinds of fun with the same kinds of problems, and that complaint's legitimate. (The synecdoche of this little book: "No one would convince him that character was fate..." That, or "They couldn't take a punch and you couldn't wake them up with one.") I don't think this singularity of purpose is a flaw, though, and I gather it is probably also one of the collection's main points.
No, the only real problem with any of these stories lies in the awkward and inelegant plot construction. For someone with a poets ear for the cadence of words, Stone oddly gets the cadences of life just a little bit wrong, rending some stories too short, some too long, and some like Frankenstein mish-mashes of different tales. Here's my take on all seven:
FUN WITH PROBLEMS: Peter, divorced public defender, inexpertly consoles his client and becomes damagingly connected with a woman looking for self-control. Peter is an unlikeable and predictable person, and his motivations aren't incredibly interesting. 3/5
HONEYMOON: The shortest piece of the book, this depressing little vignette is poetic but barely accessible. 2/5
CHARM CITY: A schizophrenic story about lonely, ineffectual Frank and the woman who seduces him. Although it's the only real story to have a chewy and obvious moral, it also has some of the best characterization. 4/5
THE WINE-DARK SEA: A weirdly splintered story about three men and the different madnesses (cultural, social, and professional) they are possessed with. Intriguing, but the ending seems cartoonish and out of place. 4/5
FROM THE LOWLANDS: Leroy is wealthy, self-absorbed, and treats the world like a machine he invented as a child. He lives high on a gorge, but is brought low by a nameless visitor. Leroy's mastery and charm is expertly portrayed; his dismay and concern is not. 4/5
HIGH WIRE: A screenwriter and an aging actress meet, separate, and meet again over the course of their drug-addled, love-tortured lives. I can see a lot of people hating this one - it sprawls so much that it's a handful of missing punctuation away from being stream-of-consciousness - but I think it reads like a slowing pulse. Their meets grow weaker and further apart in time, but there's a purpose to them that Stone delivers through the achingly eloquent narrator. 5/5
THE ARCHER: This is the only time I've ever read about madness and experienced it vicariously with such clarity. Duffy, an artist/teacher, is still recoiling from his divorce when he makes a trip to deliver a lecture and suffers a nervous breakdown. This one, unlike the breakdowns suffered in so many of these other stories, is told from the inside out. The ending rings a little hollow, but it's also beautifully done, maybe Stone's way of saying that, yes, it's all rather depressing, but there are also reasons to smile. Someone, at any rate, should be having fun. 5/5
March 28, 2010
Very well written. As usual, I'm not a big fan of short stories. I would try more of this author's full length books, though.
"She was concerned with being there. And with whom to be. It occurred to me that perhaps she was going through life without, in a sense, knowing what she was doing. Or that she was not doing anything but forever being done. Waiting for a cue, a line, a vehicle, marks, blocking. Somewhere to stand and be whoever she might decide she was, even for a moment."
"To me, Lucy was still beautiful. I don't know how she looked to other people. She was heroine. I did notice that lately she always wore long sleeves to hide the abscesses that marked the tracks where her veins had been. Her eyes didn't die. Once she looked out the small clear window that looked up Nob Hill and made a declaration:
"The rest of my life is going to last about eleven minutes."
The line was hardly lyrical, but her delivery was smashing. She looked great saying it, and I saw that at long last she had located the role of her lifetime. Everything before had been provisional, but she had made this woman her own. It seemed that this was finally whom she had become, and she could do almost anything with it. Found her moment, to be inhabited completely, but of course briefly.
I went home then, the way I always had, and saved almost everything. I saw that Lucy and I, together, had at last found the true path and that this time we were walking hand in hand, the whole distance. Again I refused the jump. She was more than half a ghost by then, and it would be pretty to think her interceding spirit saved me.
One of us had to walk away and it was not going to be Lucy. She was the actor, I thought, not me."
-High Wire
"She was concerned with being there. And with whom to be. It occurred to me that perhaps she was going through life without, in a sense, knowing what she was doing. Or that she was not doing anything but forever being done. Waiting for a cue, a line, a vehicle, marks, blocking. Somewhere to stand and be whoever she might decide she was, even for a moment."
"To me, Lucy was still beautiful. I don't know how she looked to other people. She was heroine. I did notice that lately she always wore long sleeves to hide the abscesses that marked the tracks where her veins had been. Her eyes didn't die. Once she looked out the small clear window that looked up Nob Hill and made a declaration:
"The rest of my life is going to last about eleven minutes."
The line was hardly lyrical, but her delivery was smashing. She looked great saying it, and I saw that at long last she had located the role of her lifetime. Everything before had been provisional, but she had made this woman her own. It seemed that this was finally whom she had become, and she could do almost anything with it. Found her moment, to be inhabited completely, but of course briefly.
I went home then, the way I always had, and saved almost everything. I saw that Lucy and I, together, had at last found the true path and that this time we were walking hand in hand, the whole distance. Again I refused the jump. She was more than half a ghost by then, and it would be pretty to think her interceding spirit saved me.
One of us had to walk away and it was not going to be Lucy. She was the actor, I thought, not me."
-High Wire
October 25, 2014
“Fun With Problems,” a 2010 book of seven short stories by American writer Robert Stone, has some winners and losers in its 195 pages.
I liked “Honeymoon,” a succinct, four-page story of a troubled man on a honeymoon with his second wife on a Caribbean island. With its precise detail, elliptical style, and imaginative turn of phrase (“And she was gone, disappeared like a fragrance in motion.”), the tale reminded me of one of the great early short stories from Ernest Hemingway.
“Charm City” is mordant look at a married technical writer in Baltimore who picks up a woman at a Mahler concert and drives her, with seduction on his mind, to his second house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He ends up getting “taken for a ride” himself.
“The Archer” is a funny story about an alcoholic art professor who teaches in New England. He flies to a university (“Pahoochee State”) on the Gulf Coast to give a lecture and ends up, more or less, being run out of town on a rail because of his drunken behavior.
However, “The Wine Dark Sea” I found uninteresting, meandering, and pointless. The two main characters of “High Wire,” a screenwriter and actress, both heavy drug users, were not very engaging.
Stone’s characters are almost always flawed and often down-and-out, addicted to something or other, and lonely. That these characters are not upstanding citizens or great role models doesn’t bother me. However, that these characters are sometimes not that interesting does.
I liked “Honeymoon,” a succinct, four-page story of a troubled man on a honeymoon with his second wife on a Caribbean island. With its precise detail, elliptical style, and imaginative turn of phrase (“And she was gone, disappeared like a fragrance in motion.”), the tale reminded me of one of the great early short stories from Ernest Hemingway.
“Charm City” is mordant look at a married technical writer in Baltimore who picks up a woman at a Mahler concert and drives her, with seduction on his mind, to his second house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He ends up getting “taken for a ride” himself.
“The Archer” is a funny story about an alcoholic art professor who teaches in New England. He flies to a university (“Pahoochee State”) on the Gulf Coast to give a lecture and ends up, more or less, being run out of town on a rail because of his drunken behavior.
However, “The Wine Dark Sea” I found uninteresting, meandering, and pointless. The two main characters of “High Wire,” a screenwriter and actress, both heavy drug users, were not very engaging.
Stone’s characters are almost always flawed and often down-and-out, addicted to something or other, and lonely. That these characters are not upstanding citizens or great role models doesn’t bother me. However, that these characters are sometimes not that interesting does.
March 27, 2010
The shorter the story, the better here! The longer ones were draggy, yeah I get it, the characters have problems that aren't easy to escape. Lots of problems, not so much fun.
(copied review) Robert Stone has displayed a facility for creating characters dangling at the end of their rope. His first collection of short fiction in 12 years offers an assortment of these archetypal burnt-out cases, struggling to make the best of the bad situations most have created for themselves. Typical of Stone's characters, many plagued by drink and drugs, is the cynical public defender of the collection's title story, whose "life had become so solitary he had almost stopped caring what he said, or to whom." And there's the intermittently successful screenwriter whose long-term infatuation with a drug-addicted actress, played out in the story "High Wire," consists largely of observing the downward spiral of her addiction.Like life itself, Robert Stone offers no tidy endings. Most of the characters in Fun with Problems are still flailing away at their demons as the stories close. Somehow we know things will end badly for them, each a failure at life, save for their uncanny skill at serving as agents of self-destruction.
(copied review) Robert Stone has displayed a facility for creating characters dangling at the end of their rope. His first collection of short fiction in 12 years offers an assortment of these archetypal burnt-out cases, struggling to make the best of the bad situations most have created for themselves. Typical of Stone's characters, many plagued by drink and drugs, is the cynical public defender of the collection's title story, whose "life had become so solitary he had almost stopped caring what he said, or to whom." And there's the intermittently successful screenwriter whose long-term infatuation with a drug-addicted actress, played out in the story "High Wire," consists largely of observing the downward spiral of her addiction.Like life itself, Robert Stone offers no tidy endings. Most of the characters in Fun with Problems are still flailing away at their demons as the stories close. Somehow we know things will end badly for them, each a failure at life, save for their uncanny skill at serving as agents of self-destruction.
August 1, 2015
I love short stories. They can be a great introduction to a writer who you've become curious about. Such is the case with Robert Stone, who passed away recently. Friend of Ken Kesey and Neal Cassidy, but not really "on the bus" although definitely of that mindset...and he was there, after all is said and done. He is probably most famous for his book "Dog Soldiers" about a journalist smuggling drugs out of Viet Nam during our little war there. Of course, it's much more than that. (You may not have the time or inclination to read a book (many don't nowadays) so check out the movie "Who'll Stop the Rain" (1978, with Nick Nolte) which is based on the book. It's pretty great. Then read this volume of short stories. I think it was his last work. The stories are about people who seem to just be getting by. You could say that they're losers and schemers, but at least they are hanging in. Addictions abound. Crazy behavior defines their pivotal moments. Dark and funny stuff that you won't know who to recommend it to. It may lead you to his novels, which I think it's done to me.
July 5, 2020
I was split about this collection of stories. To like it or not. To finish it or not.
Eventually, it it oddly satisfying and even though there’s nothing outright fantastic here, the stories are never quite unreadable.
The stories plunge into depths of humanity, the pits, as you see multiple characters play out disparate yet similar scenarios of bleakness and black humor and irony and solitude. Didn’t Tolstoy say “All happy families are happy in the same way, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way”, or something to that effect?
In each story here, we meet characters that are desolate and sad and lonely in their own unique ways. Yet, I was surprised how easy to read these stories of human misery actually turned out to be.
Difficult to define a genre here except short stories, which would be rather unsatisfying. There’s so much more going on here, and so much more to see and experience.
Well written, and quite worth your time.
Eventually, it it oddly satisfying and even though there’s nothing outright fantastic here, the stories are never quite unreadable.
The stories plunge into depths of humanity, the pits, as you see multiple characters play out disparate yet similar scenarios of bleakness and black humor and irony and solitude. Didn’t Tolstoy say “All happy families are happy in the same way, all unhappy families are unhappy in their own unique way”, or something to that effect?
In each story here, we meet characters that are desolate and sad and lonely in their own unique ways. Yet, I was surprised how easy to read these stories of human misery actually turned out to be.
Difficult to define a genre here except short stories, which would be rather unsatisfying. There’s so much more going on here, and so much more to see and experience.
Well written, and quite worth your time.
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