Stories in the Worst Way

by Gary Lutz and Garielle Lutz

Book Overview

Fiction. Short Stories. Originally released by Knopf in 1996, Lutz's rigorously innovative debut barely made a ripple in the mainstream publishing world. Meanwhile, however, the book attained a cult... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679425969
• ISBN13: 9780679425960
• Release Date: November 1996
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
• Length: 162 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

Smart Prose

Fragments of an unfulfilled life. Lutz is an urban Carver with a sophisticated grasp on grammar. Sparse and exact, this is smart language. Every sentence is a feat, an accomplishment in perspective. To read this book fast is to miss the point. Sit with the incredible delicacy of Gary's prose and you begin to understand why Gordon Lish felt publishing "Stories in the Worst Way" was more important than keeping his own job.

All Hail Gary Lutz!

Gary Lutz is to postmodernism what Henry Miller was to modernism, it's as simple as that. Here we have a writer who deserves to be cannonized, by his unique aplomb, cutting-edge wit, incomparable story-craft, and sensitivity to social issues pervading our culture of commodity and appearances...and yet he's outright ignored by the "Establishment." There is no hope for those glib, irony-insensitive, self-righteous critics who think of his work as overbaked and pretentious...he's obviously trying to use his style to make a valid point or two. Go back to the classroom and stop trying to impress us all with your fashionably hateful and derived commentary.

Inspissance

This word--I know what it means even though I'm sure it's made-up. That's the kind of edge that Gary Lutz dances on and gleefully. He will surprise a reader with a turn of phrase or a turn of plot or character that elicits a gasp and sometimes also a guffaw. I particularly loved "The Daughter," the last story in the book, where the narrator creates an index about his daughter. "Inconsolably okay, 00" This book is inconsolably underread.

Cultural Dysphoria As A Lovely Verb

Lutz is a master wordsmith. He is Pablo Neruda chained to a wall, injected with heroin and winched in hard between American culture and a hard place. He is Sherwood Anderson nauseated by time travel. He is Thomas Pyncheon finally equipped with the brevity in the soul of wit. He is Kurt Vonnegut leaking sad little pools of schadenfreude. The sad reverberations of his comedy and the comic undertones of his tragedy are so subtly realized that his grace may escape you if let it. Don't let it . The ghosts of our discontent orbit through his stories with dismal whimsy. It's the best collection of short stories of the last half century. Lutz can do in three paragraphs what it takes others a novel to accomplish. Extraordinary writer, haunting book.

A startling and original voice

Where the hell did this guy come from? How come there's no picture of him on the book? Why isn't he world famous?! This amazing collection is like nothing I've ever read. Bits of smug language mixed with chunks of black humour and inventive story construction will make your head spin!