Barry Yourgrau

As the subtitle says, 'One man's struggle to clean up his house and his act'. An engaging and self-deprecating sojourn through Yourgrau's struggle to reverse his incipient hoarding and discover why he can't let go of things. The book is structured as an investigation of hoarding as well as a humorous domestic tale, and is quite engaging, if not entirely helpful to the seeker of advice. As I'm on something of the same quest to divest, it held my interest. In the process, the author reconnects show more with family and finds out more about his father than he knew to look for. Yourgrau's persona is funny, humble - definitely someone you would like to sit down and have a beer with.

My only Yourgrau reading so far is his fabulous set of short stories [Wearing Dad's Head]. He has also written and appeared in the film of [The Sadness of Sex]. I must look that up. show less

Oh my lord, what a beautiful work of art. Hilarious, grotesque and poetic. One of those gems I tripped over in a used bookstore. If the cover (not the stupid one with the headless hat), first story, and title didn't sell me immediately (they did), then the last sentence of the author's bio on the back clinched it: "His reading act, performed at all the right Manhattan art haunts and beyond, blends literary stand-up comedy and surreal oedipal drama." WTF? Amazing! Also, the quote from Roy show more Blount, Jr. is very apropos (I hate that word for some reason, and use it grudgingly): "Reading Barry Yourgrau is addictive, like putting peanuts in your nose and they turn into these spaceships or something." I've gotta find his other two works listed in this book, based solely on their titles: "The Sadness of Sex" and "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane" show less

Oh my lord, what a beautiful work of art. Hilarious, grotesque and poetic. One of those gems I tripped over in a used bookstore. If the cover (not the stupid one with the headless hat), first story, and title didn't sell me immediately (they did), then the last sentence of the author's bio on the back clinched it: "His reading act, performed at all the right Manhattan art haunts and beyond, blends literary stand-up comedy and surreal oedipal drama." WTF? Amazing! Also, the quote from Roy show more Blount, Jr. is very apropos (I hate that word for some reason, and use it grudgingly): "Reading Barry Yourgrau is addictive, like putting peanuts in your nose and they turn into these spaceships or something." I've gotta find his other two works listed in this book, based solely on their titles: "The Sadness of Sex" and "A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane" show less

A cross between Rick Steves travelogue and Monty Python sketch with occasional bursts of Philip K. Dick science fiction or Edgar Allan Poe horror or J. R. R. Tolkien fantasy or Salvador Dali surrealism or Gary Larson Far Side cartoon or Brothers Grimm fairy tale. Hop on and and take a unique journey across the globe, read Barry Yourgrau’s forty-four travel-snappers and your notions of what it means to take a trip will be shaken up and nothing short of Yourgrau-ized.

As by way of example, show more here are episodes in the life of globetrotter Barry as he roams and roves and rambles in lands and landscapes and among creatures both human and nonhuman that you’ll never see described in books on travel:

UPRIVER
Move over Joseph Conrad and Álvaro Mutis, here comes Barry Yourgrau with his tale of adventure up a jungle river. He’s on a mongrel steamer and the humidity and heat are brutal. There are a couple of seedy business types and an old lawyer. There’s also a woman. Here’s how Barry describes her:

“a virginal young woman in a high-throated dowdy frock, no doubt going out to be a governess. . . . She sits staring straight ahead in her torn chair, in an eerie rigid manner, without a word – without even, as far as I can tell, the slightest action of her frail breast. The behavior and the pallor of her skin, make certain extravagant rumors I’ve heard play about my mind.”

Barry speaks to one of the business types about all of this. Almost predictably, the cigar chomping crudester makes an off-color remark. The tale concludes with a touch of Conrad and a pinch of Mutis:

“Around us the engine throbs, and groans, and drags us along deeper into the dark, choking walls of the wilderness, bearing in our midst the pale cargo of the governess, inert and transfixed in her cracked chair, like a feeble, desiccated figurehead, or a blighted icon, of our enterprise.”

* * * * *

Here's a story that speaks to our experience of being violated or suffering injustice at the hands of rude, disgusting people. How many rude people have your encountered in public places? For myself, more than my share.

One Barry quote and a couple of my short comments capsulize this tale of rudeness and violation:

SUITCASE
"I'm on an old fashion train. I doze off to the gentle sway of the wheels. I wake up. I blink. Then I sit bolt upright. My suitcase is missing."

Turns out, the conductor took Barry's suitcase since Barry was asleep. He goes ahead and opens it out in a field while the other passengers watch.

Barry runs out and shouts at the conductor but receives little explanation and absolutely no apology. Barry returns to the cabin with his suitcase.

Sorry to say, the world is chock-full of such conductors.

* * * * *

And here are two brief tales from the collection in their entirety:

PROTECTION
When I return from my walk to the ruins, there's a note slipped under my door at the little hotel. It's a warning, that an attack by pirates is imminent - and that every guest is expected to place his firearm at the service of the management.

I rush along the balcony and downstairs, in an uproar.

"What is all this about?"I demand, rattling the paper at the huffing woman who tends the desk. She's now wrenching a shutter closed. "You must bring your gun, right down here," she replies. "To protect us." "But why on earth would I have a gun!" I protest. "And protect against whom - what does this mean, "pirates'?" I demand frantically. "Desperate men, desperate men," she snaps back. "Is on the radio. Marauders. But how you not have no gun?" she cries, unwilling to believe my news. "You're a man, you say you're a traveller, yes? You must have means to defend yourself!" I shake my head, and fling up a hand at her insistence and ignorance.

"What I am is a poetic traveller," I inform her. "I take the chances of the road equipped with a journal," I explain, "to record my impressions. Plus a sketch pad and watercolors. But I'm really an indifferent artist," I confess. "I also carry a cheap camera, and a child's bouncing trifle I got at a street stall, to remind me of something dear years ago. That's what I have."

The woman stares at me and then claps her hands to her head.

"No gun!" she cries. "But how will we protect ourselves!" She starts wailing, and ponderously heaves herself about. "But surely someone else has a gun!" I protest. "No, no," she wails. "You the only guest, is the off-season." But what about the hotel, it - my god," I squawk, "you can't expect your guests to supply an arsenal to defend the place!" But the woman isn't listening, she's fallen to her knees by the counter where she grimaces in fervent, terrified prayer.

I'm a quandary. I start back toward my room, but then I change my mind. With a thudding heart, I step outside, into the muggy temperate air. The beach and the inlet lie just thirty yards below. I scan them, and the empty horizon, and the small headland with its domestic crumble of ruins, from which I'd just returned. All is silent, with the sluggish stillness of late afternoon. But now this vista pulses with menace. I edge out a few feet more and peer frantically and absurdly left and right, looking for anything near the hammock, the scraggly picnic table, the beach chair, for use as a lethal weapon.


CAMPFIRE
I make my campfire by the side of the road. Sad grey folk drift out from the cold woods and settle by the rim of the flames. There're the ghosts of travellers, like myself, who've gone before me. I poke at the fire and hunch stolidly in my coat, and they start up their round of tales. Ghosts telling stories in the firelight. They groan and murmur at what haunts them: memory, regret. The night wind rummages with its stony fingers in the burning embers and knotted brush. I nod, my eyes welling, as one in rags laments a love abandoned in a strange country, out of selfishness and pride, out of a traveller's false extravagance of self-regard. Regretted ever since . . . like an early death. The speaker's quavering face is gaunt from remorse, from the torments of memory.

I keep my peace, full of my own thoughts, waiting for the flames to ebb away and break up this company. But why am I among them, they want to know. One like me, still in the midst of his days. Or rather, here on the broken margin. They chide me in their dreary way on the vainness of the traveller's life. On the desolations of the cold woods. ButI just settle further in my coat, stolidly waiting them out, staring int the dying flames.


Barry Yourgrau, born in 1949, the same year of birth as such outstanding authors as Martin Amis, Jane Smiley, Patrick Süskind, Richard Russo, César Aira, Richard Price and, on a much more humble level, yours truly, the Goodreads reviewer posting this review. I love the fact Barry and I share the same year of birth - I count Barry among my all-time favorites. Wacky and weird - exactly to my literary taste! If I was stranded on a desert island and had but one author to read - Barry is my choice! show less