Kick In the Head: Stories - Hardcover

Rinehart, Steven

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385498535 ISBN 13: 9780385498531

Publisher: Doubleday, 2000

Synopsis

"On the sixth day of her hunger strike, Lydia Martinez entered my dreams and immediately died there."

Steven Rinehart's debut introduces us to a world where men struggle with themselves to get to a point where they can struggle with women. Rinehart's characters are dysfunctional, his worldview bizarre, yet his deft and often hilarious tales take us close to the heart of the yearning and desire all of us share.

Here you'll meet a young man attracted to trouble who gets more than he bargained for when he meets a seductive older woman; a high school teacher who struggles to resist becoming involved with a troubled female student; psychotic Boy Scouts; a man who, while investigating the accidental shooting of his best friend, finds himself involved with the dead man's wife.

These stories are about men whose lights are on--but no one's home. Rinehart conveys a seemingly weird sense of the world that ends up making perfect sense. Remarkable for the strength and distinctiveness of his characters, Rinehart writes in accomplished prose and with style that is astonishing in a first work of fiction.


In "Kick in the Head," the title story in this collection, a young man attracted to trouble gets more than he bargained for when he meets an older woman à la Mrs. Robinson. In "The Order of the Arrow," we meet a psychotic Boy Scout. And in "Make Me," a high school teacher tries to resist becoming involved with a troubled female student.

Given the current renaissance of the short story, Rinehart has the kind of memorable voice that every publisher wants to add to its list. He writes like a kinder, gentler Denis Johnson, and his stories will certainly establish him on the literary scene.-->

About this title

About the Author

Steven Rinehart spent his childhood on military bases in Europe. His family then moved to Illinois, and he went to school in Hawaii and Iowa. His stories have been published in a variety of magazines, including Harper's, GQ, Story, and Ploughshares. A recipient of both NEA and Michener fellowships, Rinehart is now at work on a novel for Doubleday. He lives in New York City.

From the Back Cover

"The stories in Kick in the Head are raw and rather eerie, filled with a quiet menace as their lonely protagonists pace the outermost rims of their lives. Steven Rinehart is unafraid to tackle big, even shocking events, and he masters them through the use of sharp and quivering details."
--Jennifer Egan, author of The Invisible Circus

"Readers who just can't understand men, or who think they know everything about men, or who happen to be men, will all learn something new about men (and women) from Steven Rinehart's sharp, funny, original, perceptive, and dazzlingly honest stories."
--Francine Prose, author of Blue Angel and Guided Tours of Hell

"Killer stuff, very exciting and fresh."
--Pinckney Benedict, author of Dogs of God

"I love Kick in the Head because I love to laugh out loud, to be shocked into silence by Steven Rinehart's crazy brilliant insights...This book sticks with you like a flashback--a meaningful, memorable, squirmy moment you don't forget."
--Matt Klam, author of Sam the Cat

From the Inside Flap

sixth day of her hunger strike, Lydia Martinez entered my dreams and immediately died there."<br><br>Steven Rinehart's debut introduces us to a world where men struggle with themselves to get to a point where they can struggle with women. Rinehart's characters are dysfunctional, his worldview bizarre, yet his deft and often hilarious tales take us close to the heart of the yearning and desire all of us share.<br><br>Here you'll meet a young man attracted to trouble who gets more than he bargained for when he meets a seductive older woman; a high school teacher who struggles to resist becoming involved with a troubled female student; psychotic Boy Scouts; a man who, while investigating the accidental shooting of his best friend, finds himself involved with the dead man's wife.<br><br>These stories are about men whose lights are on--but no one's home. Rinehart conveys a seemingly weird sense of the world that ends up making perfect sense. Remarkable for the strength and distincti

Reviews

From childhood days at camp to barhopping nights as adults, men who do not want to grow up and women at least as peculiar find inventive ways to hurt each other in this quirky, affecting debut collection. "On the sixth day of her hunger strike," the first of 12 short stories begins, "Lydia Martinez entered my dreams and immediately died there." The narrator of "Make Me," Chris Bergman, is a high school science teacher torn between his ex-girlfriend, Pearl, an English teacher in love with a student named Gabriel, and Lydia, an alluring girl also pining away for Gabriel, her ex-boyfriend. As the alleged adults are drawn into the teenagers' hormonal crisis, Chris desperately tries to avoid disaster. In brittle language, alternately painful and humorous, Rinehart continues to feel out the blurred territory between innocence and precocious sexuality. In "The Order of the Arrow," Bergman is a Boy Scout mesmerized by his tentmate, an outcast named Heitman, who sneaks out after curfew, proudly breaking the rules until the night he crashes the camp's great Indian initiation ceremony. Traditional symbols of manhood in this tale are transformed into emblems of modern ambiguity about male identity and authority. Returning in "LeSabre" to the theme of the adult child toddling precariously through life, Rinehart describes an insurance representative assuring a panicked customer that she can drive her car, addressing both her fears and his. "There's no such thing as life insurance," the representative admits. For Rinehart's heroes, failure is familiar, almost comfortable. His stark prose is marked by understated humor, moments of drama, slapstick, satiric sketches of daily routine and precise detailing of internal distress. In applying chaos theory to the emotional life of modern men, he reveals with striking clarity their lingering failures and small triumphs. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A debut collection of a dozen stories, set in the Midwest and focusing on marginal people who always seem to be in motion, searching for some kind of solid connection that will perhaps make them whole. Few, if any, of the people Rinehart writes about are having any fun. They drift through life, moving from one job to another. The guys hang out in bars, looking to pick up women. And the women are experiencing (surprise) men problems. Violence, usually by gun or car, almost perpetually hangs heavy in the air, whether it's a woman who has her head smashed in with a beer bottle in ``Mr. Big Stuff,'' a particularly nasty story; ``Le Sabre,'' in which a young boy gets run over by a car; or ``Burning Luv,'' which depicts a hitchhiker taking revenge on a cowboy clown who stops to pick him up and then leaves him stranded in the desert. The best of the collection is the title piece, about a college student who embarks on a doomed affair with the diabetic, suicidal veterinarian wife of his college film professor, and not far behind is ``The Blue Norton,'' wherein a lie about the ownership of a motorcycle eventually brings down a dream relationship wished for by many men: purely sexual. Unfortunately, most of the characters are flat and lifeless, as if they were created merely for use in a short story. This is the case even for a recurring narrator named Chris Bergman, who appears as a boy in ``American Arms'' and ``The Order of the Arrow'' and as a man in several other tales. For the most part, although Rinehart is a talented writer, the results here are frustratingly unimpressive, an MFA's idea of what makes short fiction work. The stories don't end, they just stop, as if Rinehart ran out of ink (or ideas). -- Copyright ©2000, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Rinehart's engaging debut collection of short stories, men seek to make connections with women, often without welcome and rarely with much introspection or insight. But the stories ring true because the characters and situations seem real. Many of them feature the hapless Chris Bergman, who appears variously as a high school teacher, an insurance agent, and an unemployed slacker. Several of Rinehart's characters seem to drift through life without goals or direction; some have even darker sides. Two stories about adolescents, "The Order of the Arrow" and "Another Pyramid Scheme," are especially poignant, and the latter, the lone tale in the collection with a female narrator, is heartbreaking. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DChristine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Idaho Lib., Moscow
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reading Rinehart's short stories is like sitting in the back seat of a car filled with men, speeding down a dusty country road, drinking Mad Dog, and swapping stories. In the title story, the main character, Andrew, struggles with his feelings for his professor's wife, who is diabetic and gets into car wrecks every time she drinks. His desire to corral and protect her destructive spirit is at odds with his realization that he has no control over the situation whatsoever. Rinehart's stories, in all of their variety, are essentially based on that same theme. His characters are gritty and true to life--each dealing with his own fight with the world, and all of them coming to the inevitable conclusion that they can only live their lives as they know how, and hoping for the best. These stories are truly a jolt of reality--perhaps even a harsh lesson about life but, luckily, softened by the excellent and imaginative writing. Ellie Barta-Moran
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385498535
• ISBN 13: 9780385498531
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240