All I Can Truly Deliver

By Matt Vadnais

What I love most about each of these enigmatic, glistery, beautiful, and intricately inventive stories is their valuable celebration of and commitment to the Difficult Imagination. Comprised of skewed... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974822949
• ISBN13: 9780974822945
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Web del Sol Association
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.71 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Smart Storytelling That Truly Entertains

All I Can Truly Deliver is a refreshingly brazen collection of fiction that combines intellectual grit with sumptuous storytelling. The first two-thirds of the book is divided into six "cover" stories - new versions of canonical tales. Matt Vadnais explains, in a postscript to the collection, that he has hijacked "the cover" and applied it to fiction to "explore, challenge, reinforce, and defy" the "theory that there are no new stories." For him, "the cover merges the experiences of creating and enjoying art in a way that few artistic or cultural artifacts do." Whatever one makes of the theory behind the writing, there's no doubting the allure of reading and rereading these cover stories, experiencing the reverberations of classical tales and themes while enjoying finely drawn characters in compelling circumstances. Starting with a bold and overtly theatrical retelling of Franz Kafka's classic story, "The Great Wall of China," and ending with an audacious, witty, and just plain fun retelling of Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" (with a wink and a nod to Joyce Carol Oats as well), these short stories do deliver. Building on the thematic arch from the first two-thirds of the book, the remainder of the book is a novella that follows three characters - a wealthy Marxist from Kansas, a once-famous child star, and a former bassist in a big-time rock band. A virtuoso with dialogue and unconventional twists and breaks, Vadnais weaves a tale about these unlikely colleagues, who are bound to one another through a simple vocation: buying the houses of famous dead people. In the end, if there's one criticism I have of this book, it's that there isn't more of it. In an age when so many talented writers merely churn out stories with conveyor-belt characterization and cereal-box plot surprises because they fear that readers just won't get it, Vadnais has reclaimed the right to tell smart stories that truly entertain.

Very very cool

This is a really interesting and exciting book. The novella at the end is the best of the bunch, and the stories are otherwise excellent. Nobody I've lent it to has been able to put it down.

Great Book, Read In One Night

I am slated to see Matt Vadnais do a read from this book tomorrow night, so i thought i would pick it up. This is truly a wonderful collection of short stories. Very imaginitive and insightful.