This Kind of Man

by Sean Murphy

Overview

THIS KIND OF MAN offers an unvarnished look at life in 21st Century America, excavating the complicated, tender, wild truth of what it is to be a man across generations and relationships.

 

These stories interrogate the pressures and tensions of late-stage capitalism, and the ways men grapple with them, often without success. Issues such as marriage, fatherhood, aggression, alcoholism, gender expectations, generational backlash, and the inexorable dread of death, abound.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940179158714
Publisher:	Unsolicited Press
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Sold by:	Draft2Digital
Format:	eBook
File size:	378 KB

About the Author

Sean Murphy is founder of the non-profit 1455 Lit Arts, and directs the Storytelling Initiative at Shenandoah University. He has appeared on NPR's "All Things Considered" and been quoted in USA Today, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, and AdAge. A long-time columnist for PopMatters, his work has also appeared in Salon, The Village Voice, Washington City Paper, The Good Men Project, Sequestrum, Blue Mountain Review, and others. His chapbook, The Blackened Blues, was published by Finishing Line Press in 2021. His second collection of poems, Rhapsodies in Blue was published by Kelsay Books in 2023. His third collection, Kinds of Blue, and This Kind of Man, his first collection of short fiction, are forthcoming in 2024. He has been nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, twice for Best of Net, and his book Please Talk about Me When I'm Gone was the winner of Memoir Magazine's 2022 Memoir Prize. To learn more, and read his published short fiction, poetry, and criticism, please visit seanmurphy.net/ and @bullmurph.

Editorial Reviews

2024-10-02
Murphy ponders the inner workings of men in this collection of literary short stories.

In the title story, a widower contemplates what he’s learned about fatherhood—and cooking—in the aftermath of his wife’s death. A boy responds to his dad’s tough love in “Winning” by working to best him athletically, unprepared for what that might mean. A frustrated man in a gentrifying resort town in “Now’s the Time” repeats cliched bits of wisdom to himself as he hikes toward a date with destiny. In “Philippi,” a lawyer tags along to his girlfriend’s high school reunion in a small West Virginia mining town, only to realize the reunion isn’t the real reason she’s going back. Across these and 17 other stories, Murphy probes the questionable ways that men move through the world, charting their actions’ impacts on others and on themselves. In other tales, for example, a dad ignores his son’s concussions, an undocumented migrant runs from the dangers of a new country, and a concerned brother feels betrayed when he discovers his sister has a secret partner. The best stories connect its characters’ behaviors to historical forces of American life; in one memorable story, “Red State Sewer Side,” a boy relocates with his family from town to town, fighting off bullies at school as his father lays off workers on his company’s behalf. Murphy excels at evoking the expression of toxic masculinity in its many forms: “I don’t even know where you came from,” the cruel father in “Winning” frequently tells his son, as well as “I should sue the hospital for malpractice….They gave me thedumbone by mistake.” But not every story finds a use for such toxicity, once it’s summoned. Several pieces read like essays or sketches, rather than full-fledged stories; characters are rarely named, and physical locations are often left undescribed. Murphy’s uses of rhetorical questions, shocking reveals, and the present-tense, second-person perspective often read as bids for urgency, but readers may instead wish instead that the characters and their difficult worlds were more fully developed.

A bold but roughly sketched set of stories.

Kirkus Reviews