Plan B for the Middle Class: Stories - Hardcover

Carlson, Ron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393033708 ISBN 13: 9780393033700

Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc, 1992

Synopsis

A collection of stories about midlife includes tales of a single mother who keeps house on an aircraft carrier and a new father who is seduced by a motorcycle. By the author of Truants.

About this title

About the Author

Ron Carlson teaches Creative Writing at Arizona State University. He is the author of six books of fiction: At the Jim Bridger (stories), The Hotel Eden (stories), Plan B for the Middle Class (stories), The News of the World (stories), Truants (novel), and Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (novel)

Reviews

Carlson's winning new collection of short fiction issues from a sensibility set ever so slightly--and variously--askew. His range swings from a surreal monologue by a typical-sounding mother who apparently lives with her children on an aircraft carrier ("On the U.S.S. Fortitude ") to the emotionally disarming lead story "Hartwell," a powerful depiction of the protagonist's self-humiliation as he seeks an end to his loneliness. The author's capacity for such variety is itself disarming; these 11 stories include as well the marginally amusing trifle "Fort Bragg: How Subliminal Advertising Changed My Life," and a more conventional, taut tale of a father attempting to understand his unhappy son's death in Alaska ("Blazo"). It is as if Carlson ( The News of the World ) had expressly set himself a different goal for each tale--long, short, goofy or deadly serious. His expansive talent yields success in all, the best being the first and the last--the title story, about a man reviewing how the past has gotten him to his present, which leads him to reassess where to go from there.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Carlson (The News of the World, 1987; Truants, 1981; Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1977) writes stories in High Workshop Style: odd frameworks, scant forward motion, pearled with mundane perceptions of gladness and gloom that all come across as post- adolescent: ``I love to fly,'' the narrator of the title story confides--``I always sit in the window and press the corner of my forehead against the plastic glass. I can feel the little bumps in my skull which are full of ideas and I move my head slightly. It kind of hurts in a nice way. Today my skull is full of sex. I'm trying to remember sex.'' This story has its moments--a young couple, parents of small children: their exhaustion, their deferred life--but is dragged on long past the point at which its middleweight anecdotes support it as a tale. Similarly in ``The Golf Center at Ten Acres,'' a story about an ex-touring-pro who rescues his failing life by turning disaster into novelty, Carlson reaches for a rueful philosophy that is snagged by the story's overlength. The fey humorous pieces included here--like a single mom, in ``On The U.S.S. Fortitude,'' living with her family alone on an aircraft carrier--are mostly outlined whimsies; and only in ``Blazo''--a man going to Alaska to see where his grown son died- -does Carlson seem enough interested in his characters, as opposed to his own shiny voicings, to make for involving fiction. Bland stuff. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

What a wonderful collection of short stories! These pieces feature men and women in midlife, meeting challenges and adapting to sometimes unforeseen circumstances. Whether the protagonist is Zoo Lewis reminiscing about his teenage sexual awakening while struggling to absorb the loss of his job, or Tom Burns attempting to understand his son's death by traveling to the son's burned-down cabin in Alaska, the experiences ring true. "Hartwell," whose protagonist is an absent-minded professor enamored of a young female student, is a bittersweet tale of manipulation and unrequited love. On a more whimsical note, "Sunny Billy Day" is the arresting tale of a baseball player with the ability to get umpires to retract their calls against him. The writing is clever, the ideas inventive, and the characters empathetic. Carlson's stories have appeared in GQ , The New Yorker , and Playboy , among others. Recommended for most collections.
- Kimberly G. Allen, National Assn. of Home Builders Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc
• Publication date: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393033708
• ISBN 13: 9780393033700
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 223