AND THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES: A Chicago gal riffs on death, sex, life, dancing, writing, wonder, loneliness, place, family, faith, coffee, and the FBI (among other things) - Softcover

McNair, Patricia Ann

4.67

9 ratings by Goodreads

9780998803906: AND THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES: A Chicago gal riffs on death, sex, life, dancing, writing, wonder, loneliness, place, family, faith, coffee, and the FBI (among other things)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0998803901 ISBN 13: 9780998803906

Publisher: Side Street Press, 2017

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Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. "These are the moments I want to tell, to write, the ones that leave me a little raw, that hold love and memory and pain and suffering and survival."—Patricia Ann McNair, from "We Are All Just Stupid People"

Dancing to the jukebox in dark taverns; saying goodbye to her father on the last morning of his life; having sex in the backseat of a car at a drive-in movie; drinking scotch in a nightclub in Havana, Cuba, and coffee in Paris; making up stories on the run; flirting with boys on summer nights on a Chicago beach; finding the perfect sentence; gathering the entirety of her recently deceased brother's things in two plastic garbage bags—these are just a few of the raw and loving moments that Patricia Ann McNair shares in her essays and riffs. This is how things become true, she tells us in a piece about her father s FBI file... with each retelling... AND THESE ARE THE GOOD TIMES are the stories McNair tells and retells. At turns funny and heartbreaking, these brief pieces are full of truth and not just her own, but ours as well.

"Short story writer McNair (The Temple of Air, 2011) proves to be an irresistible personal essayist of refreshing candor, vibrant openheartedness, rueful humor, and unassuming wisdom. In the title piece, which opens this companionable, down-to-earth collection, young McNair joins her beloved father at Sullivan's, his favorite tavern, bugging him for coins for the jukebox and dancing happily by herself. Enthralled by music, hubbub, and motion, McNair remains adventurous and omnivorously curious. Swinging backward and forward in time, she vividly chronicles such indelible experiences as spending her seventeenth summer as a volunteer at a dental clinic in Honduras, how she set about losing her virginity after her father died when she was 15, her bartender days, a fling in Cuba, and marriage. McNair frankly addresses sexuality and sexual abuse, the last two presidential elections, and the lives and deaths of loved ones. Throughout these vital, confiding, potent, and superbly well-crafted essays, McNair also muses on her path to becoming a writer and a writing teacher, generously sharing insights into the creative process and 'the yearning toward wonder.'"—Donna Seaman, Booklist

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About the Author:

Patricia Ann McNair has lived 90 percent of her life in the Chicagoland area. In fact, she now lives (with her husband, the visual artist Philip Hartigan, and Pablo, their skinny old cat) just two miles from the site of the hospital where she was born. She's managed a gas station, tended bar and breaded mushrooms, taught aerobics, and worked on the trading floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Today she is an Associate Professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. McNair's short story collection, The Temple of Air, was awarded Book of the Year by the Chicago Writers Association, Southern Illinois University's Devil's Kitchen Reading Award, and named a finalist by the Society of Midland Authors. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been published widely and received a number of honors including several Illinois Arts Council Awards, and the Solstice Short Story Award.

Review:

The essays in And These Are the Good Times are so arrestingly good that I had to stop several times to marvel at how keen, generous, and compassionate Patricia McNair's writing is. She's put her arms around the world and embraced so many of its complexities with the great heart and wondering eye of a poet. --Christine Sneed, author of Little Known Facts and The Virginity of Famous Men

Patricia Ann McNair adds her remarkable voice to an impressive list of Chicago nonfiction writers who have soared to national attention. Her style leaps from the page: unselfconsciously sexy, laced with the big questions, sporting a gritty wisdom. These essays are smart, sophisticated, writerly, and simultaneously intimate and familial. Add to this her range of literary interests and the breadth of her subject matter--dancing to jukeboxes, reading her father's FBI files, running gas stations, working the Chicago Mercantile Exchange--and you have a collection that will absorb, delight, and keep you turning the pages. --Anne-Marie Oomen, author, Love, Sex and 4-H, 2016 Next Generation Indie award for Memoir

Good, in the dexterous eyes and mind of Patty Ann McNair, lodges itself in the details. A safety-pinned button on the cuff of a Cuban valet's fresh uniform; the cool relief of Thin Mints after the flu; Christmas interpreted by a 400-pound cab driver. These essays travel widely through time and geography, and all are places and moments you'll count yourself lucky to have ventured with a wry, smart yet tender-hearted guide. McNair searches for home, and finds homes instead. --Mardi Jo Link, author of Bootstrapper: From Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm

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