"Rifles through fear, identity, meaning, and cultural memory in forty–four short, surreal stories." — Vanity Fair
"By turns moving, funny, and maddening…. very much in the key of Donald Barthelme." —The New York Times Book Review
"Somehow both grounded and absurd, each one of the stories trying get at that heart of the confusion and sadness at the core of contemporary life." — VICE
From the highly acclaimed author of Edisto and The Interrogative Mood , Padgett Powell's new collection of stories, Cries for Help, Various, follows his mentor Donald Barthelme's advice that "wacky mode" must "break their hearts." The surrealistic and comical terrain of most of the forty–four stories here is grounded by a real preoccupation with longing, fear, work, loneliness, and cultural nostalgia. These universal concerns are given exhilarating life by way of Powell's "wit, his . . . dazzling turns of phrase" (Scott Spencer).
Padgett Powell's language is both lofty and low–down, his tone cranky and heartfelt, exuberant and inconsolable. His characters rebel against convention and ambition, hoping to maintain their very sanity by doing so. Even the most hilarious or fantastical stories in Cries for Help, Various ring gloriously, poignantly, true.
Padgett Powell is the author of four novels, including Edisto, which was nominated for the National Book Award. His writing has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Esquire, and other publications, as well as in the anthologies Best American Short Stories and Best American Sports Writing. He lives in Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches writing at MFA@FLA, the writing program of the University of Florida.
Here's another writer who knocks it out of the park every time and could use more recognition! Mentored by Donald Barthelme, Padgett has emerged with his own distinct voice, which is weird and wonderful and so, so smart and funny. There are forty-four (!!!) great stories about loneliness, work, reflection and more.
Really??!? I'm not a great literary critic, but I am really wondering how much the publisher paid or the favors they had to call in to gain blurbs in support of this mess. I mean, really, the book's title should have been, PLEASE PASS THE CRACK PIPE AND LET ME HAVE ANOTHER HIT OF ACID. It was like reading a piece of modern art or free verse. I know he won a national award for a novel, but this collection does not give me much confidence to try it. There were a few interesting short stories, but for the most part I was flummoxed and not much impressed, and not entertained either. I would finish one, and just think, "what was the point of that?" I've read the rambling journals of mentally ill people that this work reminded me of, and I'm not kidding. Perhaps I am totally clueless and don't deserve to read this level of literary talent, but I just don't see it. Sorry. And I don't understand the praise it has garnered. For the most part I would steer people away from this one.
To me, this is Powell's best book, an accolade that is ironic and a little silly, since this seems like a grab bag of random things that may never have even been collected except his recent surging popularity, in that it shows the range of his later years, which is in my opinion are his best, despite being very much Old Man and sometimes a little navel-gazing, in that they are less solipsistic than his meta middle work (like Mrs. Hollingsworth) while equally language-driven and experimental: a Southern weirdo mix of Donald Barthelme and Flannery O'Connor. Not everything hits but what does, soars, as salamanders cook pancakes, dancing Boris Yeltsin pulls a big one on Putin, and people live itinerantly in GA in tents, and so on.
Uneven, but certain stories fucking nail you...I just like Powell a lot so even when he's not on prose-wise (and he doesn't seem to care at times-- I can dig it), I like choppiness anyways, seems his one hat-tip to realism or 'realism'...a lot of these stories seem to follow this path of disintegration (like the loops, disintegration... or how white light/ white heat just sort of breaks down at the end like a car that idles after you turn it off) being stories chopped up and put together but usually for all the fucking around they come up and say something you thought (or thought you thought) but never verbalized, other times he can be a riot. Recommended if you like Powell at his most far-out (not Edisto, not even the Interrogative Mood....yea, past that...keep going)
"With Powell’s slapdash sexism comes a sense of gross entitlement that belongs in the past with other absurd ephemera." --Miriam W. Karraker reviews @Full Stop :: http://www.full-stop.net/2016/01/13/r...
A Prince rides forth from castle Brautigan. Mighty in language, seeped in the power of a well examined life. His sorrows woven into a knapsack where he carries the magic of everyday sins and redemption. He stops for a while, bestowing gifts, then is gone, traveling along the nearest Trout stream he can find. Great stuff from an excellent writer...
From the man behind the immortal The Interrogative Mood (and its attendant conceptual coup - one of those darned things that descend upon a writer and tell him or her "unfortunately you will never again be inspired by a better idea than me"). But. Hurray to no rules! Hurray to no discernible hierarchy of literary values! Hurray? Are you sure? Not totally, I guess, no. Is Powell a prodigious smoker of cannabis? I would say that if Powell is NOT a prodigious smoker of cannabis then his writing is heroic. If he IS a prodigious smoker of cannabis then I would have to say that his writing is merely pleasing and admirable. He studied under Barthelme. Dr. D.B. And of course it shows. Hella shows. But there is some Beckett here too. And some Alfred Jarry (some of this stuff being pure 'pataphysics; the absurd analysis of things themselves absurd). Beckett starts by being crazy (degree-zero crazy, but only insofar and being a writer in concerned) and having almost no world. Crazy writing in almost no world. Barthleme likewise starts by being degree-zero crazy. But with Barthelme (as w/ postmodernity) we have a superfluidity of world (even if only synthetic / simulated world). Powell splits the difference. He has too much and not enough world. He can go any place he pleases at any moment - and flouting a hierarchy of values, his decisions never feel like they have been belabored - but he doesn't give himself a lot to work with. You want to be careful about reading too much of this stuff per sitting. Very possible to get annoyed. No reason you should have to. Ideally, you would hire somebody w/ great powers of foresight to plant these stories (torn individually from the binding) around the world at places you will be passing through during the course of your life, and you would ocassionally encounter these stories, over a great swath of time, and ponder them quizzically before going about yr journeyings. Failing that: maybe just keep this book on yr toilet tank. For yourself during long toilet sessions. For unsuspecting visitors. Etc.
Cries for Help, Various reads like a fever dream that I'm convinced if read aloud is positive alchemy. I strongly suspect Padgett Powell is functioning on another level of reality. And I can only imagine while reading these (very short) stories a shift has taken place in the universe making sense of the impossible and leaving the mundane trampled in its wake. Powell's writing style is the literary equivalent of a Vulcan mind meld. I can see a lot of the stories here being fleshed into novels in their own right but love the disorienting knowledge that this snippet, this snapshot in alternate reality is all I get. It's definitely something to chew on and savor.
Frustrating in that Powell's reach extended his grasp by such a very narrow margin. He obviously has a sly eye for impressionistic metaphor, but it's as if he took all of Denis Johnson's occasional tendencies to overwrite and all of Lydia Davis' occasional tendencies to underwrite and said hey, why don't I mash these together and see what happens? And then jerked off on a copy of "Howl", I don't know, I was constantly disappointed when a moment of clarity was upended by either endless self-reference or trivial strangeness.
Eg: A single fine sentence - "This woman was red-headed but not in that arsenical juicy weird true red-headed way". That adjective phrase syntax is so crazy disordered that it makes you think hard (but quickly) about every word inside it, and so in an instant conjures an image, a feeling, a place, an attitude, a valence, and memories of every red-headed woman you've ever seen. However, it exists in a page-long story that is otherwise unremarkably bland and remarkably pointless.
Eg2: The following is one entire story. "The kind of exhaustion I am talking about is, simply, or not simply, the broken heart. It makes you long to hold hands with someone you have not hurt who has not hurt you. This longing would be immediately and hotly extant if a dark girl offered you a cup of flan." Strong beginning though I think the adverbial hedging is annoying, love the flow of "hotly extant" and the weirdness of "dark girl/cup of flan", I mean, this is so literarily CUTE, it's a CUTE sentence but what is it saying? IS IT MAYBE JUST SAYING EXACTLY WHAT I JUST SAID, THAT FLAN IS WEIRD AND "HOTLY EXTANT" IS A COOL WAY TO EXPRESS EXIGENCE WITHOUT ANY GREATER PURPOSE UGHHHHHHHHFNSLKFLSFLSFJUOEWUFOEFSOFFHS I HATE THIS
I have a friend who writes like this: he's talented but lazy, and so just writes a good line or two and then spends the next four paragraphs metacommenting on the good lines and THEN runs out of stream because empty content can't carry itself forward very far. So his compendium of work consists of cute ultra-short stories for which no one will ever pay a dime because I guess his name isn't Padgett Powell.
Everyone who calls this style post-postmodern can go fuck themselves. Putting Charles Dickens and Janis Joplin together in a story about middle school and then using the story to comment on how weird it is that you've put Dickens and Joplin in a middle school story might have some surface element of post-postmodernism in its designed contradiction, but there is no deconstruction/reconstruction, it's just a self-conscious collision of weird things, man. It's incoherent and unclever.
Powell is at his best here when he avoids ultra-absurdity by inhabiting a realistic modern voice and taking that voice to its furthest logical conclusion. "The Imperative Mood" and "Gluing Wood" were two such stories, and the only ones I liked at all.
Here's the thing about post-postmodern writers like Powell, and even the masters, like Donald Barthelme, who preceded them. If a piece works, it really works. It's funny, apt, deadpan, clever and satisfying. If it doesn't work, then all of the craft and effort and skill at the author's command isn't going to save the piece. So it is here.
All of the pieces are brief; a few pages at most. All are based on some quirky or unusual premise. Most of them do work, at least for me. The recounting of my daughter the spy is loaded with great one-liners and wry observations, and follows a sad and thoughtful arc reflecting a parent's thoughts about his almost grown child. It is rueful and delightful, and handled with a sure and light touch. The same can be said about 21st century horse rustlers, or Janis Joplin/Charles Dickens, or boxwood guitars. But, tying up anacondas, meat shirts, and cookie flyers left me nowhere.
My bottom line on these jazzy improv writers is that the really good stuff is really good, and the failures, (to use a rather harsh description), are usually noble failures with some good lines sprinkled in. There is no shame in skimming for the best ones; it's how prospectors pan for gold.
(Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
Absolutely stunning work here - guerrilla storytelling. Some of the ideas that Powell commits to here - a cycle of stories about former Russian leader Yelstin out on the town with a nuclear suitcase, a story where Charles Dickens and Janis Joplin attend the same gradeschool class - would be so stupid if they weren't done with a steely confidence and a throbbing earnest heart. Points off for deep misogyny in a ton of stories, and a tendency to over-tread some monologues - those downsides are related - but the first and last stories in the collection are horse-centered barn-burners about chance and connection that make me happy to be human. Ballsy experiments, with mixed results that are totally sublime more often than not. Will revisit.
I really, really wanted to like these stories. Don’t get me wrong, I liked a couple— the ones with actual narrative! Powell just seemed to pick a shock value phrase and then stream of consciousness into a explicitly stated “moral” for like 3 pages, which isn’t necessarily bad, until it’s what 75% of the stories are. There’s no uniqueness in narrators, and also I don’t want a man to describe nipples to me ever again. In addition, Powell blatantly fetishized women of color? He calls a woman of color “chewy” at one point? Anyway. His style is very nice, but it seems as though he banks on it instead of coming up with good characters or a plot. Unfortunately, two stars.
The Imperative Mood is probably the best thing I've read in a few years. "Consider getting a lawyer so you can call him and ask him to survey your entire situation and discover if you are good for successful litigation against anyone and suggest that you do not want to die not having lived a full life and sued someone"
I don't always "get" some types of writing but can usually find something to appreciate. Not so with this one. I just felt very grossed out and irritated that I was continuing to try and read this, when it felt like the author was perhaps playing a trick on me and this wasn't actual writing at all.
I can appreciate the dark humor here, but the absurdity of some of these stories verges on sloppy and tossed-off to me. After having read several hard-hitting books by women (mostly of color) recently, I couldn't help but feel put off--jokey alienation feels like the domain of the privileged white male sometimes.
I really liked some of the first stories in this book, one about a modern day horse thief and one about Janis Joplin and Charles Dickens in a 3rd grade class together.
But then the lack of cohesion of plots kind of lost me so I stopped reading it.
The author seems interesting, so I plan to check out a novel at some point.
But also the POV is a little Bukowski-flavored for my current mood.
While I can enjoy brief moments when Powell’s brilliance entertains me, for the most part, my mind is not sufficiently twisted to appreciate his writing.
If this is what passes for good writing these days, we're in trouble...Either that, or I'm an idiot. I did not understand a single one of these "stories."
2 jan 16, kindle, #13 fom powell for me, pile of stories, 44 was it? first one "horses"...begins: the other horse traders are over there in the 7-eleven. sounds familiar. know i read another had to do with horses, horse wrestling or rustling, banditos maybe. ummm. there's a tin man.
3 jan 16, finished. 5 oh 5 ay em. waking up at 2 2-30. i am not looking forward to the time change...what is it? spring forward? fall back? i think so. fall forward does not sound right. spring back? went and dumped a bucket of acorns in the bush yesterday, the second in as many days. not much in the way of snow. could go and stand by the window...if this was a regular december...four or five feet of accumulation above my head, me with a cup of coffee, no one to notice me not caring that the roof might cave in.
these stories are a hoot. i don't know anyone writing stories quite like this. they are a literary event. heh! i finish, right, and the kindle brings up about ten covers, 'readers also enjoyed'. one of them is a literary event. i've got another page open, looking for the event. just a sec.
have $67.96 in points available. reward points. i will not accumulate reward points this year like other years as the supplier has been bought by a bigger supplier...i assume it is a bigger supplier, but this is how the free market works. getting bought up by folk with money to burn. by not rewarding buyers with points. just a sec.
taking some time. tempus fugit. has it been thirty years or so since i read Edisto? i believe that was a literary event.
sheesh...still have the circle of light trying to figure out what i meant...thing is looking in electronics for a manual. heh! ...okay, found it, another collection of stories. i doubt the collection i just purchased will be like this collection.
if you enjoy words and enjoy how words can be applied, how they can be joined one to the other in combinations not seen before you will enjoy this collection. i did. don't know if "horses" is also in another collection. i looked. in Typical: Stories and Aliens of Affection: Stories and though i didn't see "horses" listed on a contents page, seems like i read it before. there's also news of mr hollingsworth, the wife, a daughter...fenster ludge...who last i heard was seen or not seen in a rooming house behind the post office. some other stuff.
some great lines...do not ride your sunset pony that dark way. steer the mean little bastard into the light. a nod or tilt maybe to tempus fugiting and the poet.
the acorns from the day before were gone. good thing. what with winter and all.
I'm not sure where I got this author, must be from a book review. I certainly like his name, Padgett Powell. A little alliteration! And what a first name! In his photo he looks like a man who works with his hands, like a welder or farmhand or an old warehouse worker. He's no youngster.
This is a book of short stores, probbly 50 of them, most only a few pages long.
Well, the first two were wonderful. They were so good I was whooping with excitement. In the first one a young man is waiting in the parking lot for his--cowboy poet friends--as they drink coffee at a 7/11. They had stolen 50 horses they planned to give back to Indians, which would ultimately return three million buffalo to the Great Plains. Hmmm... Eventually he gets tired of holding all the horses while the sheriff, from his big Crown Vic, asks what's he doing with all the horseflesh.
The second story takes place in the grade school at an orphanage. Janis Joplin is a confident nine year old student who is entranced by Charles Dickens, a ten year old, who is charming, talkative and regales the class with long stories. The teacher and all the students look forward to whenever Charles raises his hand and answers some question. Janis and Charles meet in the bushes out front where Janis kisses Charles, who thought it was like being licked by a dog. He was OK with it.
Both stories are magical, silly, and wildly inventive, great phrases mixed up with clever plots. So it was so disappointing to read some of the following stories until I couldn't stand it any longer. They all stunk. Such a disappointment. What happened? Where's his editor?
Here's an example from a random page of a luckless story... Inspect the phrase "resistant incoherence" as it pertains to John Ashbury, whose incoherence you have not so much resisted as found incoherently beautiful.
I'll try another of his but not soon. Maybe a novel?
FEBRUARY 2024 I made the mistake of picking up this book again! Same thoughts though even more so this time because I read 85% of this crap. Last time I was smsrt and only read a few more beyond the first two masterpieces! In my defense, I was on vacation and had run dry on books.
WHATEVER... a moronic collection of short stories... his editor couldn't say no, apparently...
Powell takes work. It's obvious he's talented, but he's difficult. There are stories in this collection that had me howling with laughter--the kind where you try to explain to your neighbor why you're hysterically laughing, and it just doesn't come out right. But there are other stories that left me scratching my head. As the collection progressed I did more scratching than laughing.
Definitely a mixed bag. Not a quick read. Takes practice, with some pay-off. If you're in to high-brow contemporary literature, you'll probably really like this collection!
It's probably a matter of oversimplification, of dumbing down, to characterize Padgett Powell as a southern-fried Donald Barthelme, but a) close enough and b) wouldn't be the first time I've dumbed in any direction, down, up, sideways, diagonal. A representative paragraph that helps illustrate what Powell's getting after here, in his third collection of stories, follows. Bear in mind that the speaker is a grade-school Charles Dickens speaking to his classroom inamorata, Janis Joplin: "…you do not want blond tresses that are fine and flaxen because, well, it is a hard matter to put delicately, but men do not want, in spite of all their proclamations to the contrary, to see Johnny Winter down there—excuse me, I mean Edgar. They do not wish to see Edgar Winter in the perturbations of their rut when they are weak with need and not ready to see Edgar Winter. Down there."
Well. I really did not like this book, but it didn't deserve one star. The problem was it was too poetic. I don't mean that in a beautiful-descriptive sense. I mean each story was poem-like. In fact, I hesitate to call them stories or even vinnettes. Just poems with no white-space. Which isn't bad. Each clearly had a lot of thought put into them, and so much going on under the surface. the problem is that there was nothing going on on the surface, which made it painful recreational reading. If I was reading this as part of a class and had to re-read each addition, annotating and deconstructing and discussing each word, I would probably appreciate this a lot more. But as something to read before going to bed it was incredibly dull.
Entering a Padgett Powell story is like waking up no idea where you are. Sometimes a conversation is already underway, sometimes you find yourself in the dark where all you can make out at first is a knife, gradu in the thumb notches. Maybe disorienting at first, but Powell quickly comforts you, even if in an uncomfortable way, rolling around a word or image that may have felt familiar at one time, but you learn quickly it has a certain use for the confines of this story and this story alone. But in the best stories here, including the variations of his hit The Interrogative Mood, Powell makes you find something innately human, sometimes even touching.
At times I felt a bit manic reading Mr. Powell's short stories and I began to wonder if all his stories would hit me as nonsensical. That wasn't the case. The further I got into it, I found myself really enjoying these stories, perhaps because at times they are like my thoughts, random.
I don't know that this book is for everyone but I'm glad I read it.
I felt a bit insane reading this book! Sometimes really funny, but often nonsensical to the point of being boring. Ramblings of little consequence. And a little much with all the 'firm brown girls' sexist racist bs. But I did like the story with young Janis Joplin & Charlie Dickens and the first one called Horses.
I loved "Edisto" when it first came out, and I was hoping that this book would give me the same buzz. I liked and respected it, but didn't love it at all. It's a collection of many Barthelme-like short stories. Sone of them made me laugh and/or moved me, but more of them seemed empty or merely clever.