The Spot

by David Means

The Spot is an old blacksmith shed in which three men tweeze apart the intricacies of a botched bank robbery.

The Spot is a park on the Hudson River, where two lovers sense their affair is about to come to an end. The Spot is at the bottom of Niagara Falls, where the body of a young girl floats as if caught in the currents of her own tragic story.

The Spot is in the ear of a Manhattan madman plagued by a noisy upstairs neighbor .

The Spot is a suburban hospital room in which a young father confronts his son’s potentially devastating diagnosis.

The Spot is a dusty encampment in Nebraska where a gang of inept radicals plot a revolution. The Spot draws thirteen new stories together into a masterful collection that shows David Means at his at once comically detached and wrenchingly affecting, expansive and concise, wildly inventive and firmly rooted in tradition. Means’s work has earned him comparisons to Flannery O’Connor ( London Review of Books ), Alice Munro, Bob Dylan, Jack Kerouac ( Newsday ), Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson ( Chicago Tribune /NPR), Denis Johnson ( Entertainment Weekly ), Poe, Chekhov, and Carver ( Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ), but the spot he has staked out in the American literary landscape is fully and originally his own.
 

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Ebooks, Contemporary

176 pages, Hardcover

First published May 19, 2010

About the author

David Means is an American short story writer and novelist based in Nyack, New York. His stories have appeared in many publications, including Esquire, The New Yorker, and Harper's. They are frequently set in the Midwest or the Rust Belt, or along the Hudson River in New York.

Reviews

[Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Spesso la confessione più sincera e realistica di un crimine era fornita proprio dalla persona più innocente. Spesso chi aveva tutto da perdere si lanciava con audacia, come quelli che si tuffano dalle scogliere, o come i cercatori di perle. Quei ragazzi indigeni che trovavano il coraggio di entrare nell'acqua scura, le gambe che battevano piano, sforbiciando verso la luce, le braccia tese a stringere e a afferrare. Era un po' quello che doveva fare un investigatore in quelle situazioni: immergersi il più possibile in profondità, con l'aria che brucia i polmoni e le braccia tese in avanti nella speranza di riportare in superficie una perla".

Una prima descrizione per questi racconti, che sono ombre in agguato o trasparenze nella sabbia: sublimi, incantevoli, misteriosi, corporei, in una parola meravigliosi. Davvero, viene voglia di piangere sentendo quanta bellezza la pagina porta con sé. E poi subentra l'inquietudine, sotto forma di domanda. Prima una sola, poi molte, e non c'è altro da fare che tuffarsi nel testo in cerca di luce, di respiro, di contatto, di una voce che dica io, portandoti in fondo alla strada, restituendoti un momentaneo silenzio. In un crescendo di inimitabile stile e travolgente necessità, c'è un mondo di esperienze e narrazioni, di azioni e trasformazioni, di magie e di metamorfosi. E tu leggendo ti trovi sempre al centro di tutto, al limite di un abisso che confina con il cielo, dove natura e paesaggio si fondono formando un teatro di ossessione e solitudine. Come può accadere che quella donna così inconsapevole sia la causa del male? C'è davvero un posto così buio dove l'oblio scatena un passato che ci fa desiderare il dolore? Il tuo coltello, il fiume, il treno, possono essere lasciati a questo disordine? Il nostro tradimento resterà un detrito privo di senso? Le cose andranno esattamente secondo il piano? Qualcuno li accoglierà o resteranno sepolti nell'inganno? Sembra che l'autore non abbia risposte se non nella continuità del raccontare, nella sottigliezza dell'indagine, nella raffinatezza del tratto, nel gioco del linguaggio e nella molteplicità della voce. C'è semplicemente da dire che questo libro ha dimestichezza con il destino. Con il destino di tutti noi.

[SCARABOOKS · Rating 4 out of 5]

In certe storie lette, viste, sentite o vissute, esiste un punto in cui il corso delle cose vira. Vira nel senso che la storia cambia colore o qualità o direzione . E si avvia al suo esito. A volte con un movimento lento, quasi impercettibile. Oppure con un’improvvisa accelerazione.
Di quel punto parlano quasi tutti questi racconti.
Un punto. Una cosa piccola. Che accade in un attimo. Che magari non c’entra niente, ma che però sta o misteriosamente riecheggia in una qualche profondità. Di sguardi. Di burroni. Di ricordi. Di laghi. Di convinzioni. Di provincia americana. Di disperazione o di noia.
Un punto, che è come un buco nero, in cui tutto viene attratto da una forza irresistibile e si condensa. Dove il rumore è così forte che non senti più nulla e il tempo rallenta fin quasi a fermarsi.
Lì, esattamente in quel punto, Means costruisce i suoi racconti.
Secchi. Duri. Bellissimi. “Pasticcio” su tutti.

[soulAdmitted · Rating 4 out of 5]

Primizie di desolazione direttamente dai luoghi in cui le croci domestiche non metaforiche si tengono insieme con il filo per il bucato, il bucato si tiene insieme con i fili delle collane rubate, le collane rubate si tengono insieme con capelli lunghissimi strappati, a pagamento, in albergo, e gli alberghi si terranno probabilmente insieme finché non esplodono. Come gli uomini e le donne non metaforici e come quasi tutto il resto. (Santa Flannery, consola Means...).

[Douglas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Means is our very own Rust Belt Chekhov. The title story, The Spot, is a masterpiece of gritty realism. Shank, one of the main characters, asks of another, “Give me the nitty-gritty. Give me the sick parts that this country ain’t ready for, the bits folks would never believe.” And this sums up this collection. That doesn’t mean the nitty-gritty is fantastical, either. Sometimes the most unbelievable things that happen in this country are lurking under the surface, acting as underpinnings to business as usual. Means suggests that unbelievable things happen all around us, if we simply try to spot them.

[Dustin the wind Crazy little brown owl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short Stories comprised of Long Sentences. At first I was afraid this would be awfully dull, but as I ventured further into the collection, I found several stories that intrigued me. My personal favorites in this volume include: Nebraska, The Spot, Reading Chekhov and Facts Toward Understanding the Spontaneous Human Combustion of Errol McGee.
The reader must be in the right mindset in order perceive the gems of this collection.

Favorite Passages:

The Knocking
Go to it, old boy! I'm sure I said. Get into it! Pound away! The age of the handy task is waning. We're in the twilight of the age of knocking, I'm sure I said. The great tradition is on the way out, I'm sure I said, I think, because he was going full bore with a terrifying, frenetic effort, pinpointing the sound with a steady, ecstatic perfection.
_______

His was the work of a man on the edge of madness.

A River in Egypt
"So the trick to fostering believability lies in tweaking the extremely fine fissure between the known present and the unknowable future. If it's tweaked correctly, even years from now an audience will ignore the errors and focus only on the viable world that had once really existed, and still exists, in all human interaction."
____

This was a cry that rent open the universe and, in doing so, peeled back and exposed some soft, vulnerable tissue in Cavanaugh's brain.
____

Not because I'm absolutely certain that you struck the child but because I'm not certain, and if I don't do it and further harm comes to this boy I'll never forgive myself and I'll sit forever down in my own particular hell.
____

The streets in White Plains were always dusty and forlorn, and somehow reminded him of a Western town just before a shootout; folks were hidden away, peeking out in anticipation of violence.

Nebraska
Where else to begin but beneath the dining room table, where she's hiding, dazed and alone, tormented by fear and loneliness, lost to time (it seems), most certainly to be forgotten? The annals of history won't record this lonely moment while the house cracks in the heat, aches high up in the rafters, snaps along the joists; the genuine linoleum in the kitchen glistens oily to the touch, the trees and grass away in the wind off the river and she hunches down beneath the table, where she at least feels safe, listening to the wind as it lifts through the trees to make a hushed sound and then depletes itself so that a dog's bark, husky and dry, can arrive from far off, and then even farther away a soft hooting sound - someone calling - and then another dog, given a sharper, more precise bark while she examines her knees, worn to white threads, and then extends her legs and says aloud as she touches her shins and ankles, You've got good long legs, fine, fine legs. She leans back and looks at the underside of the table, the battered legs and feet (Who left this grand artifact here?), and then, looking up, sees the words GRAND RAPIDS stenciled on the underside of one of the leaves.
___

How much despair is inherent in lifeblood, to put a name to it and yet to avoid speaking of it; they were that deep underground - and the underground was ethereal, nonexistent, and supplanted by their own hopes. It was all vainglory. It was all desire to overcome some inner chink in the armor - or so they thought. Light seemed to seep through the cracks; that's how it felt - as if they were able to read each other's mind. She could look into Byron's face; she could see it in his eyes, his wide brown eyes, nothing like doubt, nothing like that at all, but some immutable glint of fear. It is fear that will destroy us, he hinted: One wrong move and we're doomed, and so when we approach, it must be with the utmost certainty and firm-footedness, not a bit of room to spare, not an inch one way or another.
___

You see, at night there were ghostly casts of light in the sky that killed the stars, he said. There were the appearances of strange flying craft that devoured the migrating birds and cut holes across the heavens, rending them apart so you could see the guts of the universe. So in protest we lay in the road and let the police drag the women into the culvert and the men, who gave no struggle, away into the system of justice you've created. You see, man, the sky was weeping and strange, and it was sorrowful and purple, like that bruise there on your head. So now the universe is a fucking mess.
____

. . . all frozen there for a moment in the fear and agony until there is the flash of muzzle fire and then - in what seems to be a modulated time/space, not slow motion but rather something else, a kind of compact glimmering shimmer of movement -
____

. . . like a leaf in the wind, crumpling over himself.
____

. . . into some congruence with the natural world, the everlasting world that would eternally outlast these stupid sinning willful men who were dying by the own clock.
____

. . . in the morning if she saw some kind of new light from the window, sifting down through the motes of dust, she might go up and out again into a new world, entering with bare feet and walking the dew-wet road down to the river, where maybe if all was right and the world was back into some order she would find a cool cove loaded with myrtle and elderberry, and sit and watch the currents move and the boats far off.


All Wondering
Lets say the beach erodes fifty yards in at the rate of a yard a year, give or take a few. By the time the Atlantic reaches his body - by then nothing but bones, if even that - it won't matter, Carl said. Unless his body works its way up and out, like a seed in reverse.
____

. . . like a marionette in the quiet of the off-season, jerked around by invisible strings stretching up to the Holy Father.
____

Burn the bastard. Freeze his ass. Shoot him into space. Plunge him into the center of the earth.


The Spot
Jack Dunhill, a.k.a Bone, a.k.a. the Bear, a.k.a Stan Newhope, a.k.a. Winston Leonard, a.k.a Michigan Pete, a.k.a. Bill Dempsey, a.k.a Shan, said Not those waves but that little pucker on the surface out there is where the Cleveland water supply is drawn in, right there, and if you were to dump enough poison on that spot you'd kill the entire city in one sweep. Believe me, I've thought it out. You'd just have to hit right there, he said pointing again, and then he turned to examine her gaze, and in doing so presented his face, weathered from years of picking blueberries and cherries in Michigan, and, after that, a merchant marine gig during Vietnam. You see, the water is unsuspecting until it hits that spot. It has no idea it's gonna be collected, drawn under the streets, cleaned up, and piped into homes. Not a clue. But then it touches that suck, its future vanishes. No chance of becoming a wave after that, no kissing the shore and yearning back out into the lake. Instead, it ends up pooled into a bowl of baby cereal. That's the mystery of chance. One minute you're one thing, the next you're another, and choice had nothing at all to do with it.
____

. . . Mansfield john succumbed to the image he had painted: a bright young girl entwined in a skein of sexual confusion, open to just about anything. A girl born out of the loins of Akron, smothered by a father's touch.
____

. . . her delicate neckline and the shallow hopelessness of her gaze and the way he'd educated her in how to make use of her flesh to earn funds.
____

After that, he'd begun to zero in on a price, speaking to the image he had conjured of a somewhat dainty man in neat trousers, with the kind of studied, dreamy comportment you'd expect from a farmer who had gone into the seed business and left fieldwork behind for good; there was a hint of yokel in the Mansfield john's voice, a bit of hick around his tongue tempered by churchgoing and Sunday-school teaching. Yes, there was most certainly some Bible study in the formality of his elocutions, and there was fear in the amplitude of his voice - just loud enough to sound natural. In the phone booth, Shank imagined Mansfield as a man with neat hair, parted clean on the left-hand side, held with a shellac of brilliantine, cut tight above the ears. His wife would be in the family room watching television, aware of her husband in the kitchen, maybe even listening in on his side of the conversation, which to her would seem naturally cryptic because he often made deals on the phone, talking about seed prices,, the best hybrids to plant, the way to intercrop carrots with corn. With this in mind, Shank took care when the dickering began and told Mansfield, Just say soy if you're going to bid lower on Meg, and alfalfa if we hit the magic number. Eventually the john said, softly, Yes, alfalfa is the way to go because it's a versatile crop, alfalfa will do just fine in your soil if you're lucky with the weather.
____

. . . she'll think about how it would feel to be devoured by darkness and then spat out somewhere, startled and renewed, fresh and tight from a spigot into a bucket or out onto a lush lawn somewhere pleasant -
_____

Give me the nitty-gritty, he said. Give me the sick parts that this country ain't ready for, the bits folks would never believe. . . .
Well, she said, his teeth popped out during the fight. His bridge, I guess you'd call it, the four front ones, and when I was done I popped them into my mouth and said, What's up doc?
_____

Guys who hallucinated burger joints, strip clubs, and billboards behind their eyelids.
_____

Do I feel the guilt that comes from that? I certainly do. Do I live each day pondering it? I certainly do. Do I lament the way history chewed my best buddies up? I certainly do. Do I wonder at the great forlorn gravity of the way things went in the past? I most certainly do. Do I spend my days in a state of total lament? I certainly do. Do I tell the same old threadbare stories over and over as a way to placate the pain that is stuck between my rib bones? I do indeed. Am I just another lost sixties soul who dropped one tab too many and can't extricate myself from a high? I certainly am.
____

You went in and smoked some hash and listened for the spirits to call. And they did call, man. Those spirits came in all forms and sizes and said things you'd never forget, at least not for a while.
____

Timing is everything when it comes to the work of baptism. One wrong move and God enters the world at a weird angle.
____

I can't account for her spirit, but her body sung in wide windmill loops as it was drawn downstream . . .


Reading Chekhov
Adultery is multifaceted, he said. It's shapeless but at the same time has a rudimentary figure, like a snowflake . . .
_____

The sun came through the gate and then the embroidered curtains he brought back from Spain, spreading a lattice across her body that he traced with his fingers, from her belly - with its cesarean scar - to her chin.
_____

The brutal way the trains heaved to a stop, out of sight but not out of earshot - the clandestine sensation of secreting some part of his life away.
_____

They made love in his apartment most afternoons, one way or another, during lunch.
_____

They read "The Lady with the Pet Dog" together, in the grass in the park, lying on a blanket, while across the street, near Grant's Tomb, a boy lifted a pit bull up by a stick to strengthen its jaw.
_____

I'd come to Lincoln Center some night, he said, when you're with your husband, and watch you two listening to the symphony. I'd meet you at the fountain during the intermission and we'd steal away.

No, we'd meet just as we're meeting now. Except it would go on forever. The story would end and then it would just keep going, the way this one does. That's what it's about. It would keep going onward, like the light from a star.
___

The point where lust and love meet, where one ends and the other begins: the innate sincerity buried in the act of betrayal. The way it revealed the vestiges of her home to her, so that upon her return she saw everything, the pebbles in the driveway a buttermilk color, the old shingles smeared with moss, the clapboards lifting away from their nails, the yard wide and grand all the way down to the water's edge, the light in her daughter's room through the curtains . . .
____

I want to kiss you on the riverbank, to implicate you into my existence . . .
____

At the lookout off the Palisades Parkway, in her car, the lights of the Bronx Milky Way of stars quivering in the Indian summer heat . . .
____

As she left her office, the thin black skirt she wore was overcharged with static. She sprayed it and felt it lift away, but by the time she was back on the street it was recharged, clinging in wavelets to her thighs, riding along her crotch, sliding up with each step as she climbed the stairs to his apartment, where, in the wintry afternoon light, she stood before him and marched, letting the hem rise up and up her thighs until he was on his knees, clutching her waistband by the elastic.
____

It was that simple, in some ways, the wonder of the affair, the sense of lines that were drawn and redrawn: to have demarcations so clear and perfect, like lines on a map, not the regions and countries gut the everlasting longitudes and latitudes; that part she retained when all else was gone.
____

When you argue about your own story, she explained, well, that's the end of things.
____

A fetid, oily smell emerged from beneath the cast: sweat, dead skin, and dirt. Afternoons, she lay on a divan in the back room and read Tolstoy.

The way bone heals, calcifying and thickening and becoming stronger. The knob of new bone you can feel against the skin. The elation of the cast being removed, the saw touching the skin but not cutting, the sudden sensation of freedom.

Summer was deep and warm. Behind them the office building, with its reflective glass, collected and cubed the vista. The great terminus of parting; the deep, elegiac tragedy of it.
. . . .
The dry silence of a late Friday in early July.
____

Ginkgo nuts fell early from trees along Claremont Avenue - the drought had urged the season forward - and a man collected them in a cloth sack, working slowly in the heat, plucking them up one at a time.
____

I looked at her back, the bones of her back, and they were, well, they reminded me of the bones of a sardine. You could chew and swallow them and not even notice.
____

There was deliberation at the deepest level, even in the falling away, the parting, the bitterness. There was an inelegance. No matter how fanciful and wild, no matter how impulsive, in retrospect it had stood within the fact of the marriage itself. Still, she beheld a certain dignity in the exactitudes: the smell of cut flowers at a bodega, rubber bands bright red around their stems; the dusky light off Broadway on summer afternoons; the heavy wall along Riverside Park, cool against their calves, as they sat holding hands during lunch, turning now and then to glance down through the trees to the river, which was broken up into shards, a deep blue against the green.


Facts Toward Understanding the Spontaneous Human Combustion of Errol McGee

The Fire
Above his skull, on the ceiling over the chair, a large blister of seared paint had formed. The first fireman on the scene couldn't help himself. He popped it with the tip of his ax.

The Skull
Too neat, the fireman thought, seeing it. Too damn tidy.

Udall's Natural Hair Ointment
One dubious theory has it that intense pressure in the nasal cavities can somehow induce spontaneous combustion.

The American Dream
. . . a pale pink outline of a cocktail glass sputtering epileptically.

The War in Vietnam
As one theory goes: McGee was fascinated by the protest immolation of monks in Vietnam, and had once been overheard saying he could understand the notions that get behind a man when he douses himself with gas to make a point.
____
It is not inconceivable - to those who have endured the same kind of grief - that a man, on a hot summer night, reminiscing about his son, would draw up the deep pain of that loss much the way the wick (see "Wick Theory," below) supposedly draws the melted fat, and in doing so might himself become overheated with the fires of melancholy and explode into sorrow-fueled flames.

Gloria
McGee had simply drawn too deeply from the well of memory that evening at the lake, sucked it all eagerly back, so that it stood in a stasis between his body and mind, in that delicate tissue, where it had congealed and fermented into a single spark bright and hot enough to ignite that final, albeit limited, inferno.

The Great Depression
Temperance workers attributed S.H.C. to drink and found a neat way to attach their moral/political agenda to the phenomenon by saying: That's where the drunk burned, lost to the sins of corn whisky, hard cider, boot brandy, bourbon, and ripple, until his body - mercy be to the Lord our host - absorbed too much of the distillate and burst forth in a fire of judgement. Up and down the Dust Bowl countryside, at the bottoms of hopper cars, in the corners of empty reefers you'd find them, bleached white, skulls and feet, the relics of the Lord's Judgement left to remind the living of the necessity for Temperance.

Wick Theory
In one controlled experiment a sedated pig was wound in cotton gauze - wrapped tight, swaddled like a newborn - and then set ablaze to prove the "wick effect." The theory: The fire, fed by the bubbling fat as flames wicked through the cotton, would sustain itself in a concentrated form until the fat and bones were carbonized and the cotton itself burned away and only the head, falling from the flames, would be left with the proverbial pile of ash and some smoke stains on the laboratory ventilation bib. Throughout the experiment, the subject's snout moved up and down, softly nodding.

Early Flame Experience
How these facts connect with the overall mystery of his end remains unclear, although it is often said that beneath any mystery lies another, even deeper one, and some speculate that his abilities around electrical forces and, in turn, the fires they could or might create were connected to the fact that on that summer night, alone in his cottage, he found some neat and tidy final arrangement with the demise he had avoided so easily at a time when his life was moving with such vigor and ease into an ascendancy. So it seems natural to some that all of the avoided fires - the curse of any electrician - would finally come back to haunt him in one singular burst, and in so doing provide his decline with a terminal end.


More Favorite Passages in Comments Below

[Ryan Madman Reads & Rocks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Unique and haunting. Not a scary kind of haunting. A haunting that keeps one intrigued and wanting to reread every single word. David Means' prose is definitely not for everyone.

[Héctor Genta · Rating 4 out of 5]

“E così adesso l’universo è un cazzo di casino. Non c’è un cazzo di niente che possiamo fare.”
Tra gli scrittori di racconti statunitensi contemporanei, David Means è uno dei due o tre che considero imprescindibili. Lui, Saunders e D’Ambrosio (ci sarebbero anche Mary Robison e Amy Hampel, ma di loro ho letto troppo poco). Poi vengono Aimee Bender, Canty, Adrian, Lipsyte… ma dopo.
Means è Means: scrittura non particolarmente scorrevole e di impatto non immediato per racconti stranianti e duri, sia per gli argomenti trattati ma soprattutto per il vuoto interiore dei personaggi descritti. Un vuoto doloroso, soprattutto emotivo, che li spinge a muoversi come anime perse nella nebbia. A guidarne i comportamenti non c’è più la luce della ragione, la morale è diventata una parola svuotata da ogni significato e loro sono simulacri che vagano nel buio di esistenze vuote, cercando di afferrare qualcosa usando l’istinto come unica guida. Quello che balugina nella loro notte sono solo brandelli di sentimenti, qualche emozione, luci sempre più fioche, sempre più rade.
I racconti de Il punto ci parlano di furti, violenze, rapine, omicidi, di momenti di svolta che non rappresentano però delle epifanie, ma solo istanti durante i quali è cambiato o avrebbe potuto cambiare il corso degli eventi. Sono racconti costruiti con perizia e mestiere: spesso Means ci introduce nella narrazione come se conoscessimo già i fatti, altre volte omette particolari e frequentemente la trama si sviluppa su un doppio binario, da un lato quello che accade e dall’altro quello che i protagonisti pensano. Ecco, mi sembra che uno dei tratti comuni ai racconti di questa raccolta sia proprio la necessità da parte dei personaggi di raccontarsi storie per provare a tenere insieme una realtà che sembra andare alla deriva.

[Frabe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Racconti brevi, intensi, toccanti. Mentre rilevo in GR che David Means non gode di buon apprezzamento per il suo unico romanzo, “Histopia”, le short stories... sono tutt'altra storia: nel genere è davvero un grande.

[Ligeia · Rating 4 out of 5]

il punto è che il postmoderno ha abolito i punti

13 racconti, ciascuno con la sua bella, sottile ambientazione, un po' Carver e un altro po' Faulkner, cattivi, asciutti, come è solo la vita vera, osservata da uno che ha gli occhi più acuti che si possano immaginare, si certo non è DFW e non vuole nemmeno esserlo, è uno che vede bene e quel che vede non lo commenta, nè lo interpreta, solo lo descrive, coi toni da spaccato così tanto comuni nel postmoderno da far sembrare il tutto come un film che intravedi al volo per aver acceso tardi la tv di notte e senza avere la guida tv sotto mano, una cosa che fotografa un momento, ma quel momento è tutto quel che conta...il resto lo puoi comodamente immaginare tu

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m more than three-quarters of the page into reading one of David Means’ short stories when I come to realize that I have been reading one long, complicatedly intricate sentence. Means stories are full of those beautifully expanded sentence that he manages so well. Means is an American writer who has had stories published in many publications. His stories are typically set in the American Midwest, where originally from. His first short story collection, A Quick Kiss of Redemption, was published in 1991 and almost twenty years later his latest, and fourth, short story collection The Spot was published. The Spot has 13 short stories, each with completely different narrators ranging from a worried father to a detective investigating a teenager’s crucifixion to a hobo begging for food. Means touches on the complicatedness of human relationships and the human instinct to survive, among other things, in his stories.
The story “Reading Chekhov” follows the love affair between a Midwestern woman and a soon-to-be “man of cloth”. At first I wasn’t sure if I was reading it correctly, a man of the cloth having a love affair with a woman? And a married woman at that? Yes, I did read that right. This story brings the reader’s attention to how complicated this man’s relationship is with women, and then further complicates things making the reader question the man’s relationship with God. Adultery, as we all know, is a sin and a man that is studying theology would know this, no doubt. The man in “Reading Chekhov” doesn’t seems ready to commit to any relationship, certainly not where God is his one and only. He is having an affair with a married woman, which carries the implication that this is just a short term thing, maybe just taking care of his manly needs before swearing off of any carnal pleasure for life. Just how devoted can this man be if he is committing a sin in the eyes of God, even showing affection for her in church! “On top of the flat pleats of her tweed skirt, tight against her spreading thighs, their hands rested, clasped firmly.” This is certainly scandalous behavior for this man to be doing in church, in front of God. Means stories seems to be plucking out the idea that human relationships with God and other people is complicated, maybe even wrong sometimes.
Along with complications is relationships, there is the complicatedness of human instinct survival and what we must do to simply make it through the day. The first story is the collection is titled “The Knocking”. The title is quite fitting for the story about a man that seems to be going insane with all his thoughts on his upstairs neighbor’s knocking. As the story progresses it is reveals that this man has gone through a divorce, which is deeply affecting his life. Soon the knocking becomes, in a way, a coping mechanism for the pain of the deep loss he feels for having lost his wife and kids and home. “One afternoon – as I was remembering how it felt to slide my hand along Mary’s hips… the sweeping sound began; not a knocking, but simply the sound of the man upstairs cleaning his apartment in the middle of a hot New York afternoon…” The sweeping sound, which was “not a knocking”, takes away the man’s mind from the longing he has for the feel of his ex-wife’s hips. As the passage continues, the sweeping sound becomes so persistent it “shifted to knock mode”. The knocking helps distract his thoughts and make it through his day, but also serve as a sort of metaphor for the repetitiveness of the man’s thoughts. He is constantly thinking about the family he lost and the knocking, never truly at peace with himself and living a complicated existence.
To further highlight the complicatedness of his stories, Means writes long sentences that you can lose yourself in. The sentences were truly one of the strong factors in the story, they got me hooked and kept me on the line until I reached the end. As an aspiring writer, it is things like sentence structure that I pay attention to and makes me think of questions like: “How does Means make that sentence work and not feel like a run-on?” or “How does the sentence length and complicatedness fit the story?” As I mentioned earlier, one of the stories in the collection, “The Knocking” starts off with a sentence that is almost three-quarters of a page long! One of the sentences in “The Knocking” starts off by addressing the sound of a broom, then about the act of sweeping and then how the sweeping becomes a knocking in response to the narrator’s moaning. “At some point the sweet, even anachronistic, broom swish has shifted to knock mode, not so much the actual sound – because that was simply vibrations in the air – but rather the inherent pacing and gestural qualities in the way the sound produced itself….” and the sentences continues from there.
While the sentences were amazing and made me wish I could write sentences like that as well, this could also be seen as a con of Means writing. The long sentences can be a bit… distracting. At times I kept on thinking “Is this sentence ever going to end?” and I would lose track of what was actually written and focus more on sentence length, which would cause me to do some re-reading.
If you are looking to do some reading (and maybe even some re-reading!) of complicated characters, complicated relationships and human survival then David Means’ The Spot might be just what you’re looking for. It takes you through an array of characters and situations, but essentially gets down to the day-by-day struggles of human existence. Just be ready to forget happy endings when reading The Spot and enjoy peeking into the lives of people that you probably won’t ever get to meet in real life.

[Timothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book much less than The Secret Goldfish and Assorted Fire Events. The reason would be that the stories felt less human, less warm and more verbose. Instead of getting into the character's heads, it stories seemed to get into the author's words, often brilliant but functioning in a less plot or character driven way.

[Lee Klein · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cormac McCarthy of the Midwest and Hudson River? Seriously written serious stories, harsh manly humorless stuff, usually interestingly structured. I'd reckon there're two 5* stories in this collection -- the title story and the one about spontaneous human combustion -- and a 6* paragraph in one story where a father imagines how many seconds his son would pay attention to the sight of a walrus, a boat, a boat on fire, a boat on fire with passengers jumping into the water etc. With each sensational progression the kid would pay a few more seconds of attention. Which is interesting in an attentively written book involving a good deal of violent sensationalism? Attentively written up the wazoo -- so attentive the sentence ani seem a bit constricted/retentive. Thus, stains left by the stool of these stories in the bowl of this reader's imagination don't quite smell that much? I admire the talent and time that produce such writing but would have liked more space, more humor, more delight? (Means seems to revel but not delight in the language?) Existence of worlds herein I didn't wholly trust, maybe because the language dial too often seemed cranked to "Serious Literary Tone (Harper's Quality)" -- that is, I think I'd've liked these stories more if Means "dialed back" the tone toward the conversational and if, thematically, there was a little more light? Generally, sometimes I was willing to co-create these stories. Sometimes the sentence sphincter seemed so tight, access was impossible, so I proceeded with a story no more. Also, importantly, I rarely believed the characters' names -- manly surnames like Gunner, Collard, Cavanaugh -- except for Meg. Still, I ordered the first two collections -- and look forward to finding the 5* stories in them.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

What to say about a book that took me nearly half a year to finish? Means has been compared to Flannery O'Connor, Alice Munro, Bob Dylan (?), Jack Kerouac, Hemingway, Sherwood Anderson, Denis Johnson, Poe, Chekhov, and Carver. That right there should have told me that this was a writer that couldn't be pinned down. And his stories would probably be bits and pieces of this and that. Well... I found his stories to be just that... bits and pieces of this and that. The short stories are mostly about losers, downbeats, junkies, or just plain neurotic people doing what losers, downbeats, junkies and plain neurotic people do. I was disappointed that none of the stories seemed to have a resolution. People just did things and then the next story started with people doing things. Shit... I can sit on the side of the road and see half these stories.

I did kind of like the short story 'The Gulch'. A story about a bunch of screwed up teenagers making a cross and crucifying a friend to save the world fascinated me. But in the end the investigating officer ends up thinking about fly fishing... WTF?

I'm kind of disappointed and pissed off because either I didn't 'get' it or the writer didn't 'get' it. Give me O'Connor, Munro, Dylan, Kerouac, Hemingway, Anderson, Johnson, Poe, Chekhov or Carver any day. Just leave out Means.

I gave it 2 stars instead of 1 because I liked the cover and I liked the kids that crucified their friend. That's 2 things.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can’t give this book a fair rating. Not because I didn’t finish it (I did, mostly), but because it just wouldn’t seem right. My gut instinct wants to give it only one star. But that would be knee jerk reaction to the fact that I found the characters to be mostly despicable doing deplorable things – rape, murder, adultery, child abuse, robbery, prostitution. I think Means pretty much covers most of the worst acts humanly possible.

Don’t get me wrong, many of the best books out there delve into these acts and manage to be first rate. Carver comes to mind in terms of portraying awful people, and I love him. But these stories had more of a Flannery O’Conner feel to them (not a fan), which I don’t think is coincidental. One of the stories makes reference to the movie The Misfits - an oblique reference to The Misfit in A Good Man is Hard to Find – and reminded me a lot of that story.

In terms of Means’ writing style, I’d have to rate him a 4.5. He really is an incredible writer. It’s no wonder that he was the critics’ darling of 2010. So there’s my conundrum. Though I think he’s a brilliant writer, I just couldn’t get past his characters. That may have something to do with the fact that these are short stories that don’t have a chance to flesh the characters out beyond their hateful acts. But, again, if I can like Carver, that doesn’t quite explain it.

[Colin N. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up “The Spot” after reading the glowing book review in the NY Times. Overall I thought these stories were good, but I did not find them as engaging as I had hoped.



The subject matter of the stories is dark and interesting. Drifters, hobos, bank robbers, and pimps abound and Means creates intelligent renderings of what could have come across as pulp. Means also has a distinct and unique writing style, often beginning a story right in the middle, circling out to provide details, and jumping backwards and forwards through time to explain a situation. There are also stories within stories, and storytelling itself is often featured.



All of this sounds great – lurid subject matter and interesting style – yet something about the stories fails to connect. I found myself just pushing forward to finish the collection. I think perhaps it has to do with the characters. You never really get much of a glimpse into their interior thoughts and motivations, just the narrative that involves them. They often do not seem real, but merely the pawns by which Means spins his structure.



Still, an interesting read.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, the library recalled this books, so I'm officially finished it, even if I haven't finished it. Which is to say that the first 2/3rds I read haven't really wowed me enough to make me plow through the rest of it before returning today. Means' prose are surprisingly flowery at points; while minimalism has been done to death in American short fiction, Means' reaction, at points, seems to be to engage in over-writing. Still, I'd recommend "A River in Egypt" and "Facts Toward Understanding the Spontaneous Combustion..."

[Hanneke · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the style, tailored to describe the intersection of time and place with insane precision. Would be curious to see if Means writes differently when the goals of the writing change. Also appreciated the fact that the stories deal with marginal figures, who all depend heavily on the stories they tell themselves. The characters feel a little like stock characters, but that actually adds to the stories in this case. The book as a whole explores perhaps more the edges of a specific spot, than the spot itself.

[Deborah J · Rating 2 out of 5]

I just couldn't connect with this selection of short stories. I heard such good things about Means, but I found it wearing that the same one note was evident in every story, whether it involved hobos riding the rails, adulterous office workers, an actor's house etc. I might just return to this book - give it the benefit of the doubt - or even try another of this author's works, but this just didn't appeal.

[Ahmad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was so excited for this book, but after reading a couple of stories I was disappointed. The stories dragged forever and I ended up hate reading it cause I bought it and didn’t want that to be a waste.
Hate reading it had a benefit though, I came up on 3 stories that I liked, A River in Egypt, Reading Chekhov and The Botch. Those were good. But the whole book consists of about 14 short stories and only 3 of them that I've enjoyed. So.. not much fun.

[Lisa]

These stories are comprised of long, gorgeous sentences. To my ear they seem overly mannered, overworked. In some ways, like Raymond Carver without the crucial immediacy. David Means is a critical darling but I think I've had my fill.

[Ric · Rating 3 out of 5]

So frustrating to read. He is undoubtedly talented, and a couple of stories are captivating. Most of them, though, are filled with amoral, reprehensible characters from whom you want to flee. Proceed with caution.

[Shozo Hirono · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started reading this book, I immediately enjoyed it, savoring the intelligent writing. But after the third or fourth story, I grew tired of the monotonous abstractness and the ironic distance. The writing is virtuosic, but unengaging.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked some of the stories better than others. I found that I had to be in the right mood to tackle some of the topics in the different stories.

[Coryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent. Nothing mind-blowing.

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just gotta give props to a short story
about spontaneous human combustion.

[Cherise Wolas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Perhaps I've overdosed on Means stories, or on story collections in general, as I've recently been reading quite a lot of them, and I felt this more as a slog, which has nothing to do with the collection and everything to do with me. As always, Means' stories are unique and unexpected.

[Meghan]

Skimmed to find stories for a library program (Michigan related.)

Found a couple.

[Ann Sauer · Rating 2 out of 5]

not what I expected.

[Jeff Hobbs · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title short story only

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much fantastic. A couple stories miss the mark a bit, mostly due to having at least a toe still in the classical postmodern realm: a conceptual, episodic, polywhatever look at a man who spontaneously combusts, and a sort of fable about an unnamed actor called "the actor." Otherwise, a great collection, stronger than Means' two previous books, though it's been quite a while since I've read either. Means has been compared to Carver, and indeed he populates these stories with down-on-their-luck (to say the least) working-class (and not-working-class) folk, but there's more than a bit of Barry Hannah in these stories: lyricism and violence play a huge role. A number of the stories involve heists or robberies, but Means focuses on why these people are forced to this sort of deed, rather than on the mechanics and drama of the thing, as we see time and again. It's nice to see the midwest represented in a hardscrabble way as it is here; Means mixes realism and lyricism wonderfully. The stories seem more grounded than Hannah's, and if they fall a bit short of the weirdness and sheer power of Hannah's stories, I'm not really sure you can fault Means for this. Recommended highly.