The Secret Goldfish: Stories
by David Means
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Description
It is a less and less well-kept secret that David Means is one of our best fiction writers. In the past few years he has won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and received critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Readers familiar with Means's electrifying work will recognize the vision at play in The Secret Goldfish; trio of erotically charged kids go on a crime spree in Michigan; a goldfish bears witness to the demise of a show more Connecticut marriage; an extremely unlucky man is stalked by lightning, but this new work is funnier, more generous, and bigger in its reach. Each story stands on its own, and yet linked together they produce a quintessentially American experience, not the stars and stripes on the bumper sticker kind, but the stoned and bored and looking for touble kind. Means's writing is shot through with emotion and beauty. A subversive humor, and an almost religious fervor, drives these stories, and Means's miraculously precise observations bring them to life. Eileen Battersby of the Irish Times wrote, "The roll-call of honor, from Eudora Welty to John Cheever, John Updike, William Maxwell, to Richard Ford, Tobias Wolff, and Annie Proulx is long and rich. Just when it seems that things could get no better, along comes David Means." This is a brilliant lineage, and yet David Means writes like no one but himself. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
I am not a subscriber to Esquire, The New Yorker or McSweeney's, but I've read other stories that have found their way onto the pages of those magazines. That's why I'm puzzled that David Means has been in all of them and more.
It was difficult to find anything I liked among this collection of short stories with the exception of the story sharing the same title as the collection and one or two others.
The writing had no warmth to it and that meant I couldn't care less about the characters. Some of the stories had what I felt was gratuitous violence made all the more disturbing by the seeming emotional disconnect of the writing.
My last big issue was the fact that in at least two of his stories he declined providing a name for some show more characters, providing the standard "X" as in "Then X said..." I'm used to it with Kafka and some other writers, but I feel there was more of a reason for that choice in their writing. Here, it just struck me as an attempt to illustrate the unimportance of a character - it was too blunt, no subtlety. Unless, by his omission, he actually meant to call more attention to the nameless character. If that theory is ever confirmed, I'll add an extra 1 1/2 stars because he'll have gained some respect from me. show less
It was difficult to find anything I liked among this collection of short stories with the exception of the story sharing the same title as the collection and one or two others.
The writing had no warmth to it and that meant I couldn't care less about the characters. Some of the stories had what I felt was gratuitous violence made all the more disturbing by the seeming emotional disconnect of the writing.
My last big issue was the fact that in at least two of his stories he declined providing a name for some show more characters, providing the standard "X" as in "Then X said..." I'm used to it with Kafka and some other writers, but I feel there was more of a reason for that choice in their writing. Here, it just struck me as an attempt to illustrate the unimportance of a character - it was too blunt, no subtlety. Unless, by his omission, he actually meant to call more attention to the nameless character. If that theory is ever confirmed, I'll add an extra 1 1/2 stars because he'll have gained some respect from me. show less
Disappointed with this collection of short stories, which is surprising, because usually I love short stories (especially dark ones). Means is a gifted writer; there are many beautiful sentences and phrases thrown into this collection but the short stories themselves were a bit hit or miss for me.
Picked it up by accident. Definitely not my type of literature. I have a feeling that most of the stories are somewhat pointless, but I am not an art connoisseur. These are definitely not good yarns, but perhaps a great art.
YUCK!!! Not worth the read.
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But for all Means’s narrative reliance on tragedy, he never indulges in gothic excess. His prose is exquisitely modulated, at once elegiac and dispassionate, alive to both beauty and absurdity in the midst of horrific events.
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Author Information
Awards and Honors
Work Relationships
Contains
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2004
- Epigraph
- The pure products of America go crazy - William Carlos Williams
- Dedication
- To Geneve
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 184
- Popularity
- 177,821
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.09)
- Languages
- English, Swedish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 6
- ASINs
- 3
