Working Men

by Michael Dorris

Book Overview

"Working Men" features fourteen stories in as many different voices: of men and women, young and old, blue collar and middle class, salesmen and craftsmen, vets and draft dodgers. They are the voices... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446670197
• ISBN13: 9780446670197
• Release Date: October 1994
• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.0" x 8.1"

Customer Reviews

Variety is the spice of life

If you value the diversity of human experience, this is a good book for you. Granted, it is about the lives of men. Even so, women will appreciate this book too. It is a compendium of short stories about men from all walks of life. As a gay man, I appreciated the fact that one of the stories involved a man who came to discover that aspect of his sexuality. I also appreciated that since I am the author of a spiritually and gay-themed book entitled "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude." This book will be a novel change from Michael Dorris' fleshed out novels. I found that refreshing. Of course, I loved his other books as well. The one constant is that Michael Dorris is a highly skilled storyteller. He has an innate grasp of the human experience which makes his books easy to relate to. Davis Aujourd'hui, author of "The Misadventures of Sister Mary Olga Fortitude"

A Rewarding Reread

Having owned this for years I recently dug it out (literally, from under a pile of similarly-owned books) and discovered a collection of stories that improves upon rereading. I recall I took readily to Dorris's style during the early nineties, a time in which everything for him looked bright and his marriage to Louise Erdrich remained intact and healthy, at least to the outside world. He and Louise seemed such soulmates--at least in the literary vein. Here was a man with promise, with a raw talent that surely would develop and refine with time, time that Dorris stole from himself with his suicide. Dorris's death makes the reading of these stories all the more pointed. Dorris saw so clearly within his words, within his writings he honed in on lives mundane and not so. His stories deal with the stuff of life: loss, love, work, family. That Dorris is no longer with us makes these stories resonate even further. For what lays beyond his fiction is this fact: Dorris' voice is worth remembering, worth taking out from time to time, worth sitting with up late in the quiet after one's own hard day of work. Within these pages are diamonds of pure truths.

A rare and gentle treat...

Working Men is a varied yet cohesive volume of short stories that left me breathless. Dorris unfolds each story and character flawlessly. Each emotion is crystalline and each presentation is a rare and gentle treat. Working Men is meant to be read and reread.

A gem: each facet a sparkling short story.

Ever since I read Dorris' Yellow Raft in Blue Water I have wanted to read more of his magical prose. And finally I have. I carefully meted out a quota of one story a day to make the experience last its longest. And, I look forward to rereading this collection again and again when I need to quench one of those reading dry spells that settles in now and again