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Us He Devours
14 short stories.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
185 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 1964
45 people want to read
About the author
James B. Hall
20 books1 followerJames B. Hall was a prolific author and a distinguished teacher at the University of Oregon. Hall wrote more than 20 books -- novels, short stories and poetry -- and was widely published and anthologized.
He founded the creative writing program at Oregon and also taught at the University of California-Irvine and University of California-Santa Cruz. He was a co-founder of the Northwest Review, the UO literary magazine. His students and proteges at UO included Ken Kesey and Barry Lopez.
He founded the creative writing program at Oregon and also taught at the University of California-Irvine and University of California-Santa Cruz. He was a co-founder of the Northwest Review, the UO literary magazine. His students and proteges at UO included Ken Kesey and Barry Lopez.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 11, 2019
My attention was drawn to this collection decades ago by my good friend Pete Groff and (mostly due to the striking cover artwork) I gave it a read. Now, years later, I've decided to reread it.
What this is is a compilation of lit short fiction from the 50's and early 60's, mostly in the pared down mode of Hemingway (but with a bit more psychological detail and less "adventurous" settings or characters), but not as stark and cut-back as, say, Raymond Carver. Subject wise, the focus tends to be on the anomie of suburban life or academia, with a focus on life's losers and compulsives or those in conflicted circumstances. As I've said before, I read a lot of genre material so it's always bracing to return to this "straight-ahead" material which just attempts to capture real, human people thinking real, human thoughts in real, human conditions.
And this is a good solid read. Not everything worked for me, of course, but good amount of it is striking and strong writing. Worth picking up if you ever see a copy and like lit short fiction from that time period.
"Under The Boughs Of Ambition" (one of the two academia stories) is about an Elderly English teacher at small college arriving to give his final seminar, only to find the room empty because of a prank. While an interesting character study (he teaches the Romantics but finds them flawed, doesn't get along with the faculty and has a problematic wife at home), it didn't gel for me.
A little stronger were the following:
"The Antennae, and the Race" - the oldest son returns to his position at the family's small-town hardware business (run by his younger brother) after having been through a rather brutal treatment for alcoholism (seemingly based on "aversion" tactics) following increasing personal and business mistakes. This is a powerful portrayal of alcoholism in the 50s, with an extremely dark ending, although a bit scattered in the telling (are we supposed to take the man's artistic endeavors at store displays as examples of a crushed talent? What does the title have to do with anything?)
"A View Of The Beach" - recounting of a young man's cross-country trip to Miami Beach with his teacher and her daughter, who he attempts to seduce later at the beach, but this goes awry unexpectedly. A bittersweet little thing.
"An Assault In This Park" - a family takes a lunchtime picnic in the park, where we are privy to the wife's feelings of neglect (and her disappointment with her limited, "maternal" role) and her husband's insecurities about his teaching position at the local University and the future his daughters face (with predatory men - like he used to be during his youth - in the world). Then, a strange preacher begins to harangue the crowd from the park's rotunda. The details of 50s/60s suburban married life and its disillusionment are solid, not sure about about the preacher part.
"A Try From The Gulf" - a much traveled European ne'er-do-well, stuck in Cuba, pays to be smuggled to Florida by plane, but discovers that perhaps he was better off (or could more easily handle life) before he left. What is nowadays a familiar story (illegal immigration) is made more interesting by the setting, time period and terse style.
There were a number of solidly "good" stories:
"In The Eye Of The Storm" follows the travails of a suburban husband and ad writer who suffers a strange compulsion because of which he must order/own anything he writes copy for (he's his own best customer) and how this leads to financial ruin for him and his wife. A great little piece about the desperate edges of the 50s suburban dream, in which the brave new frontier comes with a hefty price tag.
"The Gambler: A Portrait Of The Writer" has a man constantly upend the life of his wife and kids as he indulges his desperate gambling compulsion (and is welcomed into the fellowship of other gamblers, even as The Syndicate attempts to buy him off). There's some great writing in this ("'Well maybe the games are crooked,' she would say and pour him some coffee. 'No. NO!' he would rage, for he could never consider this."), some great observations about the ins and outs of being a "professional" gambler (moving your family, cashing in property at pawn shops) and the psychology of same.
"Up In The Yards" - a young man heading off to be a soldier reflects on an event from his boyhood when he met a hobo, a WWI veteran, in the rail yard, who had war trauma and came to a sad ending. A dark tale.
"The Freezer Bandit" - the titular character relates his odd compulsion (which he justifies poorly) of wandering the suburban streets and targeting homes, where he stealthily steals the contents of deep freezers, and what happens when he is caught in the act by a young boy. Strange crime narrative.
"The Claims Artist" - a compulsive fiction writer can find no employment to sustain himself while he endlessly writes, until an industrial accident at a temporary job severs some of his fingers, for which he is compensated by the insurance company. This (and the time that the money buys him to write in) proves an inspirational windfall...but when money again gets tight, the inevitable question arises.... a good, sharp little story.
"While Going Down The Road" - A doctor attends the auction of his father's farm. He resents the old man (who, as a traveling salesman, was rarely home) but also knows the old man is dying and wants to make his transition into later life as painless as possible. This is a nice little humane story, full of observational detail.
Finally, three of the stories were stand-outs.
"Us He Devours" - almost a bit of magical realism, this relates the story of a female bank teller who is visited by on some nights (and occasionally ravished by) a goat that perches in a tree by her window. As time passes, she must seek the goat further away from home, in fields and meadows, and bring it costly offerings (but sometimes even this is not enough). But her job at the bank allows her ready access to large amounts of cash... a desperate, dry little piece about sexual sublimation (one presumes). Excellent.
"Inside A Budding Grove" - told in serial epistolary form, this is a devastatingly, darkly funny portrayal of an academic casting around to connected fellow academic friends as he tries to get his dullard son (who has recently impregnated a girl) into a college on a scholarship, all while gossiping about and/or bad-mouthing each friend to the other. Savage.
"Ace In The Hole" - A WWII Air Squadron reassembles post war for the funeral of "The Skipper," their leader. Reflections on those youthful years as a dangerous (and under-appreciated) night-flyer over France. Just a really excellent capturing of some veteran's lives during and after WWII. Excellent.
What this is is a compilation of lit short fiction from the 50's and early 60's, mostly in the pared down mode of Hemingway (but with a bit more psychological detail and less "adventurous" settings or characters), but not as stark and cut-back as, say, Raymond Carver. Subject wise, the focus tends to be on the anomie of suburban life or academia, with a focus on life's losers and compulsives or those in conflicted circumstances. As I've said before, I read a lot of genre material so it's always bracing to return to this "straight-ahead" material which just attempts to capture real, human people thinking real, human thoughts in real, human conditions.
And this is a good solid read. Not everything worked for me, of course, but good amount of it is striking and strong writing. Worth picking up if you ever see a copy and like lit short fiction from that time period.
"Under The Boughs Of Ambition" (one of the two academia stories) is about an Elderly English teacher at small college arriving to give his final seminar, only to find the room empty because of a prank. While an interesting character study (he teaches the Romantics but finds them flawed, doesn't get along with the faculty and has a problematic wife at home), it didn't gel for me.
A little stronger were the following:
"The Antennae, and the Race" - the oldest son returns to his position at the family's small-town hardware business (run by his younger brother) after having been through a rather brutal treatment for alcoholism (seemingly based on "aversion" tactics) following increasing personal and business mistakes. This is a powerful portrayal of alcoholism in the 50s, with an extremely dark ending, although a bit scattered in the telling (are we supposed to take the man's artistic endeavors at store displays as examples of a crushed talent? What does the title have to do with anything?)
"A View Of The Beach" - recounting of a young man's cross-country trip to Miami Beach with his teacher and her daughter, who he attempts to seduce later at the beach, but this goes awry unexpectedly. A bittersweet little thing.
"An Assault In This Park" - a family takes a lunchtime picnic in the park, where we are privy to the wife's feelings of neglect (and her disappointment with her limited, "maternal" role) and her husband's insecurities about his teaching position at the local University and the future his daughters face (with predatory men - like he used to be during his youth - in the world). Then, a strange preacher begins to harangue the crowd from the park's rotunda. The details of 50s/60s suburban married life and its disillusionment are solid, not sure about about the preacher part.
"A Try From The Gulf" - a much traveled European ne'er-do-well, stuck in Cuba, pays to be smuggled to Florida by plane, but discovers that perhaps he was better off (or could more easily handle life) before he left. What is nowadays a familiar story (illegal immigration) is made more interesting by the setting, time period and terse style.
There were a number of solidly "good" stories:
"In The Eye Of The Storm" follows the travails of a suburban husband and ad writer who suffers a strange compulsion because of which he must order/own anything he writes copy for (he's his own best customer) and how this leads to financial ruin for him and his wife. A great little piece about the desperate edges of the 50s suburban dream, in which the brave new frontier comes with a hefty price tag.
"The Gambler: A Portrait Of The Writer" has a man constantly upend the life of his wife and kids as he indulges his desperate gambling compulsion (and is welcomed into the fellowship of other gamblers, even as The Syndicate attempts to buy him off). There's some great writing in this ("'Well maybe the games are crooked,' she would say and pour him some coffee. 'No. NO!' he would rage, for he could never consider this."), some great observations about the ins and outs of being a "professional" gambler (moving your family, cashing in property at pawn shops) and the psychology of same.
"Up In The Yards" - a young man heading off to be a soldier reflects on an event from his boyhood when he met a hobo, a WWI veteran, in the rail yard, who had war trauma and came to a sad ending. A dark tale.
"The Freezer Bandit" - the titular character relates his odd compulsion (which he justifies poorly) of wandering the suburban streets and targeting homes, where he stealthily steals the contents of deep freezers, and what happens when he is caught in the act by a young boy. Strange crime narrative.
"The Claims Artist" - a compulsive fiction writer can find no employment to sustain himself while he endlessly writes, until an industrial accident at a temporary job severs some of his fingers, for which he is compensated by the insurance company. This (and the time that the money buys him to write in) proves an inspirational windfall...but when money again gets tight, the inevitable question arises.... a good, sharp little story.
"While Going Down The Road" - A doctor attends the auction of his father's farm. He resents the old man (who, as a traveling salesman, was rarely home) but also knows the old man is dying and wants to make his transition into later life as painless as possible. This is a nice little humane story, full of observational detail.
Finally, three of the stories were stand-outs.
"Us He Devours" - almost a bit of magical realism, this relates the story of a female bank teller who is visited by on some nights (and occasionally ravished by) a goat that perches in a tree by her window. As time passes, she must seek the goat further away from home, in fields and meadows, and bring it costly offerings (but sometimes even this is not enough). But her job at the bank allows her ready access to large amounts of cash... a desperate, dry little piece about sexual sublimation (one presumes). Excellent.
"Inside A Budding Grove" - told in serial epistolary form, this is a devastatingly, darkly funny portrayal of an academic casting around to connected fellow academic friends as he tries to get his dullard son (who has recently impregnated a girl) into a college on a scholarship, all while gossiping about and/or bad-mouthing each friend to the other. Savage.
"Ace In The Hole" - A WWII Air Squadron reassembles post war for the funeral of "The Skipper," their leader. Reflections on those youthful years as a dangerous (and under-appreciated) night-flyer over France. Just a really excellent capturing of some veteran's lives during and after WWII. Excellent.
February 24, 2016
A solid collection that is buoyed by a handful of very strong stories (the first two and The Claims Artist are the stand outs of the collection). The main issue I had is that for the most part the stories are so short they almost never are given enough time to develop into anything (there are 14 stories in 185 pages but at least 28 of those pages are blank or title pages between stories).
It's also a pretty straightforward collection, the description makes it sound like it will be more experimental then if was, so I was a bit let down that it ended up being pretty normal.
That said, it does have a fairly consistent thread of despondency and destitution - and a grasping for means beyond reach - that ties the collection together fairly nicely.
Good overall, check it out if you can find it cheap (it's a striking looking hard cover that has the dust jacket image printed onto the book itself, so it is a nice visual addition to the collection).
It's also a pretty straightforward collection, the description makes it sound like it will be more experimental then if was, so I was a bit let down that it ended up being pretty normal.
That said, it does have a fairly consistent thread of despondency and destitution - and a grasping for means beyond reach - that ties the collection together fairly nicely.
Good overall, check it out if you can find it cheap (it's a striking looking hard cover that has the dust jacket image printed onto the book itself, so it is a nice visual addition to the collection).
August 11, 2018
An odd collection of stories, some surreal and strange, others deadeningly real. There's a sort of humorous discussion about cultural malaise that runs through them all as a theme, and they all carry a certain originality of description that I enjoyed.
September 16, 2024
We filed past. During the sermon I had thought of Skip in uniform. Even his rank was a joke; he did the job of a light colonel, but only on his day of discharge was he anything more than a captain. We were nearly all captains. No promotions for Josie Squadron ever came through. But Skip was not now in uniform. He was in a medium-priced gray suit. They had rebuilt the side of his face.
No one changed expression as we filed past.
Then we were out of the pale-green room where the organ whistled softly. I knew we were also out of the old squadron forever. At last we were disbanded. Everyone knew it. Now we did not remember that we had helped win a war, and had lived, and had come back. Now we were the surplus generation, and there was nothing left of all that had happened except the mixed terror of our triumphs over weather, and our own fear.
In used bookstores, sometimes when looking for specific volumes I run into something unfamiliar that startles me and demands that I buy it, prioritize it over whatever books I set out to get, and view it as a special, personal, and serendipitous find. For obvious reasons, Us He Devours grabbed me right away from the shelf, and I had to discover what was under that spectacular and ominous cover.
It turned out to be a collection of short stories, mostly 10-15 pages each, written in the '50s and early '60s. The collection is dragged down a bit by inconsistency, but most stories are very good, even if they're more sketches than narratives, little peeps into strange lives. The weakest story of the bunch, the confusingly-titled "Inside A Budding Grove" (in which if there's any connection to Proust it went over my head), is followed immediately by "Ace in the Hole", the saddest and most powerful short story I've read in some time. Most stories stick close to the bundle of manic images and themes that clearly ran through Hall's weird head all those years: home refrigeration, loss of body parts and general disfigurement, desperation, unconventional addiction, material wastefulness, the holes we can only dig deeper. With Hall we're deep in the underbelly of post-WWII America, an era that time has smoothed into one of happy families, unprecedented wealth, and well-earned peace, yet for many Americans was anything but. You'll love it if you're a fan of Nelson Algren, Tennessee Williams, or early John Hawkes. For all the darkness, Hall doesn't come off as a particularly cynical man, and by the final story one is surprised to feel a great pathos.
The highlights:
-"Us He Devours": the collection opens with a title story, one of the least narrative and most atmospheric of the bunch. Reminds me more of Washington Irving than anything else. I was admittedly disappointed that the stories that came after it were all much more conventional.
-"Ace in the Hole": I don't want to say much about this one other than that it's masterfully delivered. Worth picking up the whole book just for this.
-"The Claims Artist": this one is very representative of the tone and themes of the book- a gruesome comedy par excellence.
-"While Going Down The Road": only about 160 pages separate "Us He Devours" from this, the final entry, but they could hardly be more different. This one is very straightforward and very human, and hammers home one of the central and saddest themes- general and constant terror at the prospect of age.
No one changed expression as we filed past.
Then we were out of the pale-green room where the organ whistled softly. I knew we were also out of the old squadron forever. At last we were disbanded. Everyone knew it. Now we did not remember that we had helped win a war, and had lived, and had come back. Now we were the surplus generation, and there was nothing left of all that had happened except the mixed terror of our triumphs over weather, and our own fear.
In used bookstores, sometimes when looking for specific volumes I run into something unfamiliar that startles me and demands that I buy it, prioritize it over whatever books I set out to get, and view it as a special, personal, and serendipitous find. For obvious reasons, Us He Devours grabbed me right away from the shelf, and I had to discover what was under that spectacular and ominous cover.
It turned out to be a collection of short stories, mostly 10-15 pages each, written in the '50s and early '60s. The collection is dragged down a bit by inconsistency, but most stories are very good, even if they're more sketches than narratives, little peeps into strange lives. The weakest story of the bunch, the confusingly-titled "Inside A Budding Grove" (in which if there's any connection to Proust it went over my head), is followed immediately by "Ace in the Hole", the saddest and most powerful short story I've read in some time. Most stories stick close to the bundle of manic images and themes that clearly ran through Hall's weird head all those years: home refrigeration, loss of body parts and general disfigurement, desperation, unconventional addiction, material wastefulness, the holes we can only dig deeper. With Hall we're deep in the underbelly of post-WWII America, an era that time has smoothed into one of happy families, unprecedented wealth, and well-earned peace, yet for many Americans was anything but. You'll love it if you're a fan of Nelson Algren, Tennessee Williams, or early John Hawkes. For all the darkness, Hall doesn't come off as a particularly cynical man, and by the final story one is surprised to feel a great pathos.
The highlights:
-"Us He Devours": the collection opens with a title story, one of the least narrative and most atmospheric of the bunch. Reminds me more of Washington Irving than anything else. I was admittedly disappointed that the stories that came after it were all much more conventional.
-"Ace in the Hole": I don't want to say much about this one other than that it's masterfully delivered. Worth picking up the whole book just for this.
-"The Claims Artist": this one is very representative of the tone and themes of the book- a gruesome comedy par excellence.
-"While Going Down The Road": only about 160 pages separate "Us He Devours" from this, the final entry, but they could hardly be more different. This one is very straightforward and very human, and hammers home one of the central and saddest themes- general and constant terror at the prospect of age.
December 16, 2020
The late James Byron Hall was born (1918) in a very small town, Midland, in Clinton County, Ohio (not far from Wilmington College in Ohio), and was my late father's cousin. I have a paperback copy of this book. Noting that one of James Hall's students at the University of Oregon during the late 1950's was future author Ken Kesey ("One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"), who gave much credit to having Hall as one of his undergraduate English professors.
June 11, 2025
The Freezer Bandit and The Claims Artist.
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