Troublemakers

by John McNally

Troublemakers is an often hilarious, sometimes frightening, occasionally off-the-wall collection of stories about men living on the edge. From the streets of Chicago's southwest side to the rural roads of Nebraska to the small towns of southern Illinois, these men tread a very fine line between right and wrong, love and hate, humor and horror.

Each story is a Pandora's box waiting to be opened: a high school boy with a new driver's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0877457271
• ISBN13: 9780877457275
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: University of Iowa Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Wickedly funny . . .

The cover photo on this book (cuffed hands) isn't quite right. This is not gritty realism or "Cops"-like docudrama. Instead, author McNally's sensibility lies somewhere between the blue-collar melancholy of Raymond Carver and the outrageous humor of Hunter Thompson. His characters (all males in their early teens to their thirties) are comically pathetic, living lives that barely hang together. Teenagers Hank and Ralph appear in three stories set on the Southside of Chicago, obsessed with girls (who are all repelled by the two boys) and spending their aimless days and nights on the ragged boundary line between adolescent angst and Big Trouble. Roger, a UPS driver, moves blankly through empty days haunted darkly by thoughts of Squeaky Fromme and Charles Manson, while a fellow worker runs a personal ad and discovers the liberating mysteries of "raw carnality." Meanwhile, romantic relationships and marriages languish and sour. Far from being bleak, the wonky dialogue and cock-eyed situations in these stories had me laughing out loud. In my favorite story, a debt-ridden young English instructor is beleaguered at work by witless students and an annoying, politically-correct faculty and then harassed at his new home by a neighborhood bully. All comes unglued for him at a faculty party where he gets entirely too drunk. Only the last longer story, "Limbs," shows McNally stretching himself into something more novel-like, as he explores the disintegrating impact of a murder on the lives of several small-town people, and here there are few laughs, just a dizzying descent into confusion and rage. I love this book. It is both disturbing and fiercely entertaining.

Insightful, Compassionate, and Moving

John McNally's Troublemakers sparkles with electric language and moves the heart with touching scenes faithfully depicted. Often these days, one must look widely and patiently to find contemporary fiction that rises above the level of workshop attempts to that of true literary art. McNally has shown his work to be sensitive, laugh-out-loud funny, and true to the spirit of what it means to be human. For all familiar with the plight of the college adjunct, I especially recommend "The Politics of Correct", a tale of a young man oppressed, financially and culturally, to such an extreme that radical decisions and actions are called for, and it resonates with a veracity nearly impossible to find in other works dealing with this subject. This collection is a fine example that good literary work is out there, if one looks patiently for it.

A book that restores my faith in fiction

John McNally's TROUBLEMAKERS is a remarkable book. I work in a bookstore, and so often -- but not always -- the new fiction titles can fill me with a glum despair, and all I can do is hope and wait for a publisher with integrity and guts to bring Richard Yates' wonderful books back in print. And then TROUBLEMAKERS came in, I read it, and I felt that despair lift from off my back. McNally's book of stories exists for all the right reasons: the writer cares about language, he cares about his characters, and he can tell a story. These three aspects come together in TROUBLEMAKERS, and the result is story after story that surprises, scares, entertains, and involves the reader. Above all, McNally's care for language and character helps the reader to see. This is a book that I would recommend to the aspiring writer and to the seasoned reader: there are things here to learn from, and things that will remain with the reader. This is a book that belongs on the shelf with Yates' LIARS IN LOVE, Bausch's SPIRITS, and Dubus' FINDING A GIRL IN AMERICA. The story "Limbs" alone is worth the price of the book.

Hang On!

If you're looking for maximum payoff from the modern short story and are the kind of person who enjoys that thrilling, terrifying feeling when your car peeks at the top of a massive rollercoaster, then "Troublemakers" is for you. This, Mr. McNally's first collection of fiction, is filled with startling moments of humanity on full display -- in pain, looking ridiculous, characters who are constantly being jolted with the fact of their own odd places in the world. McNally never looks down at his readers but seems to grant each of us the dignity and respect of telling it like it is. In one story, about a group of friends traveling to the Snaker River to watch Evel Knievel jump his sky cycle across the abyss, we view a heartbreaking scene in a local store that proves we are all, like Knievel during his jump, caught hovering over one chasm or another, trapped between meaningfulness and hope. Stories of boys, men and women who can't help but betray one another and, at the same time, regret that sad compulsion. Buy this one and hang on.

A Masterful Combination of High and Low Art

I ran out and bought this book after the remarkable review in the Chicago Tribune. I must say, I was *not* disappointed. These are fast-paced, intelligent, and sensitive tales of men at their moments of greatest crisis. Inevitably, they respond in ways that are as hilarious as they are heartbreaking--the husband who decides to mail the decapitated head of a dear to his estranged wife, the desperate young man who steals a trunkload of Tootsie Rolls to pay for his girlfriend's abortion, the destructive kid who spends his days trying to set his neighbor on fire with his magnifying glass. Wacky as these stories often are, McNally manages to strike the right balance of sympathy and disdain at the foibles that drive these imperfect creatures. Unlike so much contemporary fiction, these stories explore motive and consequence in equal parts. And every surprise feels like the knock-out punch we should have seen coming. This book reminds me of the bittersweet insights usually only found in the short fiction of Richard Bausch and Charles Baxter. Also, anyone who grew up in Chicago in the 1970s will recognize the dead-eye depictions of the time and place. I hope a second book is soon on its way. For now, I'm planning to reread this one.