Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories

by Thomas McGuane

Overview

From the acclaimed author of Ninety-two in the Shade: Set in the seedy corners of Key West, the remote shore towns of the Bahamas, and the unforgiving landscape of Big Sky Country, a “uniformly brilliant” collection (The New York Times Book Review) of familial dysfunction, emotional failure, and American loneliness that celebrates the human ability to persist through life's absurdities

For more than four decades, Thomas McGuane has been heralded as an unrivaled master of the short story. Now the arc of that achievement appears in one definitive volume—forty-five stories, including two new and six previously uncollected pieces. These are stories of people on the fringes of society, whose twisted pasts meddle with their chances for companionship, moving from the hilarious to the tragic and back again.

“A master of the short story... Cloudbursts is clearly the product of a life's worth of thought and feeling and experience; it ought to be savored.” —The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345805928
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/12/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	576
Sales rank:	268,110
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

THOMAS McGUANE lives on a ranch in McLeod, Montana. He is the author of ten novels, including the National Book Award-nominated Ninety-two in the Shade, three works of nonfiction, and four collections of stories. His work has won numerous awards, including the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, and has been anthologized in the Best American Stories, Best American Essays, and Best American Sporting Essays.

Table of Contents

Sportsmen 3

The Millionaire 8

A Man in Louisiana 22

Like a Leaf 31

Dogs 44

A Skirmish 49

Two Hours to Kill 57

Partners 62

The Road Atlas 70

Flight 80

Vicious Circle 85

Cowboy 100

Ice 110

Old Friends 118

North Country 136

Zombie 141

Miracle Boy 156

Aliens 184

The Refugee 206

Gallatin Canyon 254

Weight Watchers 267

The House on Sand Creek 278

Grandma and Me 288

Hubcaps 299

On a Dirt Road 311

A Long View to the West 324

The Casserole 333

Motherlode 338

An Old Man Who Liked to Fish 359

Prairie Girl 363

The Good Samaritan 373

Stars 391

Shaman 401

Canyon Ferry 409

River Camp 418

Lake Story 440

Crow Fair 449

Tango 470

The Driver 485

Papaya 492

Little Bighorn 509

Kangaroo 517

Viking Burial 535

Ghost Riders in the Sky 542

Riddle 550

Editorial Reviews

ONE OF THE WALL STREET JOURNAL'S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

"Dazzling ... Potent ... Cleareyed ... There's so much to praise and parse ... The stories are uniformly brilliant.... Would it be ludicrous to list, say, 20 of them as favorites?.... McGuane has emerged a master of the short story... Cloudbursts is clearly the product of a life's worth of thought and feeling and experience; it ought to be savored. That said, if you find yourself tearing through the book like a flash flood washing out a dirt road, I say go for it. You can always reread later, and you probably will." —The New York Times Book Review

"Wonderful, essential ... compelling and often astonishing. The stakes always feel high (characters can die and do die), and there's no such thing as a not-funny McGuane story. The result is a continuous succession of storytelling delights." —The Los Angeles Times

"Prose as chiseled and striking as a Rocky Mountain butte.... The brightness and humor of the writing never fails to delight." —The Wall Street Journal

"A masterful addition to the form." —Minneapolis StarTribune

"Sharply observed.... McGuane belongs on the social observer shelf with other short story masters including Anne Beattie, John Cheever, and Roald Dahl.... Simply a masterpiece." —New York Journal of Books

"More than a few [stories] are what you might call, what you should call, masterpieces.... A great writer." —Washington Independent Review of Books

"[An] outstanding career-capping volume.... Brief, stormy, and refreshing, McGuane's stories erupt like the namesake of this marvelous collection." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Powerful.... Damn funny.... McGuane is a master, choosing his words with a lapidary's precision and setting them in sentences that burn brightly, finishing his stories with epiphanies to treasure.... One of our finest living short-story writers." —Booklist (starred review)

"A career-spanning collection of short stories from McGuane, who's observed America's outskirts with equal measures of pathos and humor.... Putting all these stories in one place also spotlights the evolution of his prose over time. In his early stories, he could pull off a Cheever-esque domestic drama like 'The Millionaire,' about a family secreting away their pregnant teenage daughter at a summer home.... The newer stories, by contrast, are at once sturdier and more sensitive.... A stellar writer on the outdoors who's gotten better at describing interior wildernesses over time." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

From the Publisher

…of the 45 stories in this career-spanning collection, fully 35 of them date from the last decade and change. This might make the very existence of a "collected" seem redundant or at least premature, but given that McGuane is on the verge of turning 80—and that the stories are uniformly brilliant—any objections should be summarily withdrawn. "Gallatin Canyon," "Weight Watchers," "The Refugee" (and its bizarrely charming afterthought, "Papaya"), "Hubcaps," "Ice," "Stars": Would it be ludicrous to list, say, 20 of them as favorites?…McGuane has emerged a master of the short story. However close together the bulk of these pieces were written, Cloudbursts is clearly the product of a life's worth of thought and feeling and experience; it ought to be savored. That said, if you find yourself tearing through the book like a flash flood washing out a dirt road, I say go for it. You can always reread later, and you probably will.

The New York Times Book Review - Justin Taylor

★ 02/05/2018
This outstanding career-capping volume combines McGuane’s three published story collections (To Skin a Cat, Gallatin Canyon, and Crow Fair) with eight new stories, together demonstrating how the Montana author’s portraits of people (mainly men) who fail to connect to or comprehend other people (mainly women) have grown darker, funnier, and more complex over time. In an early story, “The Road Atlas,” a couple’s relationship falters as they plan a road trip. In the more recent “Little Bighorn,” a splintering couple plans to join another splintering couple for a visit to the site of Custer’s Last Stand. Parental distraction leads to confusion in “Miracle Boy” and tragedy in “The Driver.” Like their predecessors, protagonists in later stories entrap themselves by making poor choices. The runaway parolee of “Kangaroo” heads home, his probation officer and a trigger-happy sniper close behind. Errol Headley of “The Refugee” sets sail again in “Papaya,” only to be washed ashore and put to work shoveling bat guano. In pursuit of lost causes, an aging California hippie refurbishes a rotting boat (“Viking Burial”); adult siblings recall their parents’ divorce (“Ghost Riders in the Sky”); and a premed student attends dance class (“Tango”). The last story, “Riddle,” in which a man becomes utterly perplexed after witnessing a joyous moment, exemplifies McGuane’s casual, conversational style and well-honed craftsmanship. Brief, stormy, and refreshing, McGuane’s stories erupt like the namesake of this marvelous collection. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

★ 2017-12-12
A career-spanning collection of short stories from McGuane, who's observed America's outskirts with equal measures of pathos and humor.This gathers McGuane's three previous books of stories (To Skin a Cat, 1986; Gallatin Canyon, 2006; Crow Fair, 2015) and adds eight uncollected tales, cementing his reputation as a keen writer on underexplored territories, especially Big Sky Country, rural Northern California, and Key West. Putting all these stories in one place also spotlights the evolution of his prose over time. In his early stories, he could pull off a Cheever-esque domestic drama like "The Millionaire," about a family secreting away their pregnant teenage daughter at a summer home, but more often delivered strained yarns constructed around easy symbolic conflicts, like "A Skirmish," a tale of childhood bullying involving Civil War caps, or the travails of overly flirty men, as in "Partners" or "Like a Leaf." The newer stories, by contrast, are at once sturdier and more sensitive, especially "Kangaroo," about a recidivist parolee gathering his late mother's ashes and the parole officer chasing him down, or "The Driver," about a child who's an unwitting victim of his mother's neglect. But grown-up relationships, both romantic and platonic, are his consistent focus: the epic Gallatin Canyon story "The Refugee" features a man sailing to Key West to expunge his brain of a lost love and a dead friend; a new story, "Papaya," describes an abusive relationship he was in. Like McGuane's contemporaries Jim Harrison and Richard Ford, masculinity is much on his mind, but he's not much for machismo: the narrator of "Little Bighorn" recalls a busted relationship as a young man with self-deprecating humor, while in "Tango," a doctor remembers his early struggle to connect with a woman and the tragic consequences of their failure to communicate.A stellar writer on the outdoors who's gotten better at describing interior wildernesses over time.

Kirkus Reviews