The Coast of Chicago: Stories

by Stuart Dybek

Overview

The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination, The Coast of Chicago is a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312424251
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	04/03/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	192
Sales rank:	534,215
Product dimensions:	8.70(w) x 8.15(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Stuart Dybek is the award-winning author of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, I Sailed with Magellan, and Brass Knuckles, a volume of poetry. A professor of English at Western Michigan University, he lives in Kalamazoo.

Editorial Reviews

Has claim to comparison with Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio and Joyce's Dubliners. . .Dybek's energetic prose produces dazzling effects.” —Chicago Sun-Times

“Moving and real and often brilliantly ambitious.” —Los Angeles Times

“A fictional world that is both ordinary and amazing.” —The New York Times

“Irresistible...Mr. Dreiser, Mr. Farrell, Mr. Bellow, Mr. Algren, please say hello to Stuart Dybek. He's one of yours.” —The Village Voice

“Establishes [Dybek] not merely as a talent but as a magician comparable to Eudora Welty and Joy Williams.” —Chicago Tribune

“Tender and unforgiving...No matter where you grew up, after reading these stories you'll have found the coast of Chicago” —San Francisco Chronicle

From the Publisher

These 14 dreamlike stories include ``Nighthawks,'' a man's surreal subway journey inspired by a vision of his dead girlfriend, and ``Blight,'' the tale of a recurring nightmare, in which atomic bombs drop on Chicago when the White Sox win the pennant. Dybek's ``phantasmagoric'' collection ``evokes the bizarre mysteries of everyday life in Chicago's gritty ethnic enclaves,'' PW said. Author tour. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly