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The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock: Stories
According to conventional wisdom some goals are best not pursued. The characters in The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock have yet to learn this. Pocket Hercules taps into the power of the ancient wonders to mend a broken heart, with some heavy metal to help. Little League coach Gary Shouldice probably goes too far in motivating his son. Leon Rayner serenades a girl he barely knows with his week-old punk band. From small town watering holes to veterinary clinics to jam band festivals the people portrayed in The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock are undeterred in the pursuit of their dreams. And maybe they should be. Deterred, that is.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
100 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
1 person is currently reading
47 people want to read
About the author
Mike Faloon
5 books7 followersMike Faloon is a former DJ, dishwasher, and drummer. He is the author of The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock and the co-editor of Fan Interference. Faloon co-founded Go Metric and Zisk zines and has contributed to Cabildo Quarterly, Cashiers du Cinemart, Razorcake, Submerging Writers, and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. His latest book is The Other Night at Quinn’s (Razorcake/Gorsky), a collection of music essays about the free jazz scene that emerged at a diner in upstate New York.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
April 30, 2012
Book Giveaways: WINNER! (Thanks Mike Faloon!)
The stories and essays making up this compliation range from the hialrious to the heartbreaking. But what makes these stories and essays so enjoyable is the realisitc personalities that resonate through the words and the voices given to the characters and narrator. In every story I could clearly picture the characters, and relate them to someone in my own life...and, as hard as it is to admit, I've been some of these people, as well.
Mike Faloon is an author to watch.
RECOMMENDED
The stories and essays making up this compliation range from the hialrious to the heartbreaking. But what makes these stories and essays so enjoyable is the realisitc personalities that resonate through the words and the voices given to the characters and narrator. In every story I could clearly picture the characters, and relate them to someone in my own life...and, as hard as it is to admit, I've been some of these people, as well.
Mike Faloon is an author to watch.
RECOMMENDED
August 21, 2011
saw this mentioned....have it now...
stories.
good reads, all, some refreshing takes on things...unique...as i am rather clueless when it comes to....music...unique in that i never heard the terms arena band...jam band....a few others. stories? essays? fiction? the jacket says fiction. he uses his name for a character in more than one piece.
thought that was strange, what w/our...society...
i mean, is it really non-fiction, say like michael perry writes? or just technique? using your name for a character's name?
favorite? dunno. the hot box is neato..heh heh! the wake, the guys talking at the wake, that was a hoot. i liked the pieces that had to do w/music, of where that was an active ingredient...i like the mules story, about the scouts.
all in all, well worth a look see.
1st: newton's cradle: an introduction
1st person, present tense, 'bout a teacher who should have left when he had a chance and so on....gets called in to the big wig's office...."it's a hell of a thing, you know?"
2nd: gary shouldice: candidate for the board of education.
heh heh! whereas i wanted more in the 1st story...in this one, the man should have quit (gary i mean) when he was ahead...say, after his intro, hello, i'm gary....etc.
this piece is gary talking to whoever is listening, telling them who he is, etc... what's scairy is that there are people who would vote, and vote big big, for gary...spooky.
3rd: the hanging gardens of split rock
pocket hercules, this kid who works at the mall, tape city...and then there's andy, this girl who works across the way in the bakery. teenage angst.
4th:mrs. scott's hot box
yikes! ever see the movie, cool hand luke? the hot box? in this one, thehot box is a janitor's closet....yikes. or? do we need to bring back things like this (have they left us?) so as to avoid the kind of mayhem we see all too often? if the teachers are drawing blood, does that mean the students won't?
5th one last round for charlie dell
this is like guys speaking at a funeral for charlie. interesting story, if only (and not only because of) because of the telling, like one of the earlier 1st/2nd....neato narrative technique. people have a tendency to want to explain themselves, seems like, and a few of these guys are a real hoot.
6th the whistle stop
'bout an election...this one might have been a bit hard to follow for me, and that could very well be my fault as shee-ite happens on time and unexpected and so it goes. small town politics, and that is a hoot, as the folks held office, but the dynasty ended with moi....alas.
7th westchester
this story is a hoot...bout people who don't know things...like, the well-to-do. a refreshingly honest take on life, one of the "have-nots" (my term, not faloon's) looking at the "haves'....and how they operate. you read these and you want to holler, there is no justice in the world!....all things considered, survival of the fittest, darwin, and the rest of that malarkey.
8th gumballs or gravestones
1st person....
...looking at another review, i saw, again, that these are called "essays and stories"....
this story? essay? they're not labelled in my copy....this one is about a couple that are "dating"...college age.
9th: half armadillo, half sherman tank
i-narrator again...music is talked about...arena rock, prog rock, etc. i guess this one almost could be is more like essay, but okeedokee...
10th the revenge of crothamel's mules
another eye-narrator piece, but in this one, one of them is named faloon....so is this like ummmm michael perry/gore vidal/vonnegut's son? real stuff? what do you call it? non-fiction?
about scouting...the good the bad the ugly, although in this one, they are "the fascists, the burnouts, and the losers". yay, verily, now and forever. pretty good story about one of the mules getting his.
11th kung fu sex shop
short piece about missing the train, or whatever it is called, nyc.
subway? maybe that's it. heh! reminds me of the time....
12th glowsticks optional
this must be 'essay' stuff...about jam bands...some sort of concert in the boonies...and so on. faloon is big into music, seems like, basedon these--i learn new expressions--arena band...jam band....a few others. all these additional definitions over and above what i'm familiar with.
13th the anarchy eight
this is another story/essay? that includes a character named mike faloon...so, i'm thinking oprah winfrey here, was it james whatever? james frey? she rakes him o'er the coals, for giving drinks to poor dam souls?
fiction? non-fiction? the back it says, 'fiction'...a reviewer on the back says, 'stories and essays' but there is no story-by-story definition. i don't care, really, either way...save for personal experience....'why do i get the idea that everything you write really happened?'--as was said to moi yay, verily long ago. not.
and when i told an oral story, a listener reported me to the police, and i only heard about it because my uncle is a cop (was a cop at the time)'you know this guy?' asks another...no! i don't know him! my uncle, heh!
the anarchy eight is about this plot-joke-something, may 25th! panic sets in, a subdued panic among the teachers. i still don't get why they were suspended for a day...for leaving notes, 'may 25th!'....that's as far as they got. they never developed a punch-line. and so on.
14th:sex, drugs, and pre-cooked sausage
this is about that first job...this one, mike faloon working at the pizza joint, all that entails...
15th: leon tries again
about music, starting a band, group, whatever the deal, and so on
stories.
good reads, all, some refreshing takes on things...unique...as i am rather clueless when it comes to....music...unique in that i never heard the terms arena band...jam band....a few others. stories? essays? fiction? the jacket says fiction. he uses his name for a character in more than one piece.
thought that was strange, what w/our...society...
i mean, is it really non-fiction, say like michael perry writes? or just technique? using your name for a character's name?
favorite? dunno. the hot box is neato..heh heh! the wake, the guys talking at the wake, that was a hoot. i liked the pieces that had to do w/music, of where that was an active ingredient...i like the mules story, about the scouts.
all in all, well worth a look see.
1st: newton's cradle: an introduction
1st person, present tense, 'bout a teacher who should have left when he had a chance and so on....gets called in to the big wig's office...."it's a hell of a thing, you know?"
2nd: gary shouldice: candidate for the board of education.
heh heh! whereas i wanted more in the 1st story...in this one, the man should have quit (gary i mean) when he was ahead...say, after his intro, hello, i'm gary....etc.
this piece is gary talking to whoever is listening, telling them who he is, etc... what's scairy is that there are people who would vote, and vote big big, for gary...spooky.
3rd: the hanging gardens of split rock
pocket hercules, this kid who works at the mall, tape city...and then there's andy, this girl who works across the way in the bakery. teenage angst.
4th:mrs. scott's hot box
yikes! ever see the movie, cool hand luke? the hot box? in this one, thehot box is a janitor's closet....yikes. or? do we need to bring back things like this (have they left us?) so as to avoid the kind of mayhem we see all too often? if the teachers are drawing blood, does that mean the students won't?
5th one last round for charlie dell
this is like guys speaking at a funeral for charlie. interesting story, if only (and not only because of) because of the telling, like one of the earlier 1st/2nd....neato narrative technique. people have a tendency to want to explain themselves, seems like, and a few of these guys are a real hoot.
6th the whistle stop
'bout an election...this one might have been a bit hard to follow for me, and that could very well be my fault as shee-ite happens on time and unexpected and so it goes. small town politics, and that is a hoot, as the folks held office, but the dynasty ended with moi....alas.
7th westchester
this story is a hoot...bout people who don't know things...like, the well-to-do. a refreshingly honest take on life, one of the "have-nots" (my term, not faloon's) looking at the "haves'....and how they operate. you read these and you want to holler, there is no justice in the world!....all things considered, survival of the fittest, darwin, and the rest of that malarkey.
8th gumballs or gravestones
1st person....
...looking at another review, i saw, again, that these are called "essays and stories"....
this story? essay? they're not labelled in my copy....this one is about a couple that are "dating"...college age.
9th: half armadillo, half sherman tank
i-narrator again...music is talked about...arena rock, prog rock, etc. i guess this one almost could be is more like essay, but okeedokee...
10th the revenge of crothamel's mules
another eye-narrator piece, but in this one, one of them is named faloon....so is this like ummmm michael perry/gore vidal/vonnegut's son? real stuff? what do you call it? non-fiction?
about scouting...the good the bad the ugly, although in this one, they are "the fascists, the burnouts, and the losers". yay, verily, now and forever. pretty good story about one of the mules getting his.
11th kung fu sex shop
short piece about missing the train, or whatever it is called, nyc.
subway? maybe that's it. heh! reminds me of the time....
12th glowsticks optional
this must be 'essay' stuff...about jam bands...some sort of concert in the boonies...and so on. faloon is big into music, seems like, basedon these--i learn new expressions--arena band...jam band....a few others. all these additional definitions over and above what i'm familiar with.
13th the anarchy eight
this is another story/essay? that includes a character named mike faloon...so, i'm thinking oprah winfrey here, was it james whatever? james frey? she rakes him o'er the coals, for giving drinks to poor dam souls?
fiction? non-fiction? the back it says, 'fiction'...a reviewer on the back says, 'stories and essays' but there is no story-by-story definition. i don't care, really, either way...save for personal experience....'why do i get the idea that everything you write really happened?'--as was said to moi yay, verily long ago. not.
and when i told an oral story, a listener reported me to the police, and i only heard about it because my uncle is a cop (was a cop at the time)'you know this guy?' asks another...no! i don't know him! my uncle, heh!
the anarchy eight is about this plot-joke-something, may 25th! panic sets in, a subdued panic among the teachers. i still don't get why they were suspended for a day...for leaving notes, 'may 25th!'....that's as far as they got. they never developed a punch-line. and so on.
14th:sex, drugs, and pre-cooked sausage
this is about that first job...this one, mike faloon working at the pizza joint, all that entails...
15th: leon tries again
about music, starting a band, group, whatever the deal, and so on
July 5, 2013
I won this book through Goodreads. The stories in this book would make good TV sit-com .
February 2, 2011
I've been enjoying Mike Faloon's work in zines for years so I read this collection of essays and short stories with great pleasure. The tales collected in The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock focus on young people, men mostly, working through various periods of awkwardness between high school and their early twenties.
Mike's characters aren't particularly rebellious, but they don't fit in with the status quo either. In the stories that involve multiple characters, the narrator is typically the most responsible and least likely to engage in behavior that he'd be ashamed to talk about at the dinner table. Mike explores this territory through the eyes of record store clerks, fast food employees, and a reluctant attendee at a music festival. Imagine Bartleby the Scrivener at the mall circa 1990.
What I like best about the book is the voice which is so thorough, convincing and dry that I often couldn't tell if I was reading a personal essay or fist person short story. I think this blending together of styles is what garnered such an effusive blurb from David Shields:
"Mike Faloon's The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock is utterly beguiling, utterly irresistible. His pitch-perfect humor, his likable self-deprecation, his camera eye that never quits--all of this I found quite completely charming. I unreservedly recommend these essays and stories to all readers seeking smart, precise, funny, warm, deeply human writing."
I agree 100%. Mike has a great ear for dialogue and is adept at skewering a certain kind of suburbia that hasn't changed much since the late '50s. The funniest story is told in the form of a stump speech by a baseball coach who cops to having the pitcher intentionally plunk an autistic kid during a game. Mike publishes two zines: Go Metric, which is about indie music, and Zisk, which is about baseball, and while he's deeply knowledgeable about both subjects, he doesn't go overboard with pop culture references. In fact, there's a kind of timelessness to Mike's writing that I found to be very evocative.
This review comes with a lot of disclaimers: Mike and I are both published by Gorsky and Mike and we will be teaching a zine workshop together (along with Todd Taylor, another member of the Gorsky gang) in Feb. 11. Mike will also be appearing in Vermin on the Mount. In fact, he was in the very first VOTM. So we go back.
Mike's characters aren't particularly rebellious, but they don't fit in with the status quo either. In the stories that involve multiple characters, the narrator is typically the most responsible and least likely to engage in behavior that he'd be ashamed to talk about at the dinner table. Mike explores this territory through the eyes of record store clerks, fast food employees, and a reluctant attendee at a music festival. Imagine Bartleby the Scrivener at the mall circa 1990.
What I like best about the book is the voice which is so thorough, convincing and dry that I often couldn't tell if I was reading a personal essay or fist person short story. I think this blending together of styles is what garnered such an effusive blurb from David Shields:
"Mike Faloon's The Hanging Gardens of Split Rock is utterly beguiling, utterly irresistible. His pitch-perfect humor, his likable self-deprecation, his camera eye that never quits--all of this I found quite completely charming. I unreservedly recommend these essays and stories to all readers seeking smart, precise, funny, warm, deeply human writing."
I agree 100%. Mike has a great ear for dialogue and is adept at skewering a certain kind of suburbia that hasn't changed much since the late '50s. The funniest story is told in the form of a stump speech by a baseball coach who cops to having the pitcher intentionally plunk an autistic kid during a game. Mike publishes two zines: Go Metric, which is about indie music, and Zisk, which is about baseball, and while he's deeply knowledgeable about both subjects, he doesn't go overboard with pop culture references. In fact, there's a kind of timelessness to Mike's writing that I found to be very evocative.
This review comes with a lot of disclaimers: Mike and I are both published by Gorsky and Mike and we will be teaching a zine workshop together (along with Todd Taylor, another member of the Gorsky gang) in Feb. 11. Mike will also be appearing in Vermin on the Mount. In fact, he was in the very first VOTM. So we go back.
October 27, 2010
I normally is not a huge fan of short stories, but these were great! Hilarious and sometimes a little heart-breaking. I think what I liked about these stories was that there was an ending to them. That is what turns me off about short stories normally....that many are just a brief anecdote that just gets me interested and then stops without any kind of closure. This was a free read that I won from GR and was glad b/c this is not a title I would have picked-up and would have missed out on! I will be seeking out other works by Mr. Faloon!
I especially loved Glowsticks Optional. Reminds me of some people that I have known throughout my life and love even though we are at total oposite ends of the spectrum in opinion over WHATEVER!
Great collection of stories! I think that anyone over 35 would understand the references better than most, but really anyone who loves a interesting, witty, and heart-tugging slice of life at any age would really enjoy this
I especially loved Glowsticks Optional. Reminds me of some people that I have known throughout my life and love even though we are at total oposite ends of the spectrum in opinion over WHATEVER!
Great collection of stories! I think that anyone over 35 would understand the references better than most, but really anyone who loves a interesting, witty, and heart-tugging slice of life at any age would really enjoy this
October 26, 2010
This was a Good Reads giveaway book for an honest review. I did enjoy this collection of short stories, although a few missed their mark, I think. The underlying theme rooted for the underdog (or occasionally slapped him down), who seldom won the battle or even really understood the war. It was satisfying on the few occasions that the little guy beat the bully, though. A lot of the stories involved modern music and one story, more of an essay, is an analysis of different types of music and bands. I liked best the stories that Faloon appeared in as a character. They seemed to ring closest to the truth.
November 5, 2010
Each chapter of this book offers an independent story that features a different resident of Split Rock, with only the character of the author himself being featured in more than one story. The stories offer a tantalizing glimpse into a person and situation, and then leave you hanging at the end. Some of the stories didn't really grab me, but others were engaging and quite funny. I love the authors description of the music store clerk's scheme to get the attentions of a girl, and I also really enjoyed his telling about the action and characters at a three day jam band festival. I'd like to see a longer story that better showcases the obvious talent shown in those two shorter stories.
October 6, 2015
I think this was a pretty decent anthology of short stories. It made me think of the peices I went through for high school speech competions. Short stories normally isn't my thing because they are kind of choppy and can make a reader get whip lash but I was impressed. I was brought in by each story.
October 8, 2010
I like some of the stories but some I just don't seem to "get". I think this is one of those books you either really like or in my case a struggle to get through. Read it and see how you like it. It may be your cup of tea.
October 10, 2010
This is a free book from the Goodreads First Reads giveaways!
A collection of amusing short stories. At times I felt like I was hanging out in a bar listening to these tales from a contemporary. Not really sure if there was a theme though...
A collection of amusing short stories. At times I felt like I was hanging out in a bar listening to these tales from a contemporary. Not really sure if there was a theme though...
November 17, 2013
Highly entertaining stories of social outcasts and misfits flailing about on the fringes of suburbia. Awkward boys, delusional men, romantic teens - Faloon's underdogs are endearingly optimistic and likably anxious.
July 22, 2010
Mike is a friend and colleague. It was so thrilling to read his work. He is witty and insightful.
Read
September 4, 2010Forget it.
October 30, 2010
For a short story this was great. I didnt want to put it down. Will be looking for more books from this author.
October 1, 2010
I won this in a First Reads giveaway. Very excited to read this book!
Finished it. Very good stories. I am definitely passing this on to my friends and family for them to enjoy!
Finished it. Very good stories. I am definitely passing this on to my friends and family for them to enjoy!
May 20, 2012
A good blend of comic fiction, smartly composed essays, and reflections on everything from prog-rock to Little League baseball.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews