At the Jim Bridger: Stories

by Ron Carlson

Book Overview

Welcome to the short stories of Ron Carlson, where strange beach towels turn up in your suburban living room; where the ordinary son of a family of geniuses spins a rollicking tale of happiness and disappointment; and where a desperate ex-con with a broken heart must hide out in a desert hotel, only to make a startling discovery. Epic in scope and confessional in tone, At the Jim Bridger enfolds the reader in a world of love and mystery, and makes...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312307241
• ISBN13: 9780312307240
• Release Date: May 2003
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.4" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A Fine Writer's Many Moods

If you ever get a chance to see Mr. Ron Carlson read some of his work don't miss out. He has many moods, but you might catch him in his Arizona version of Mark Twain mood, where word leaps up on word to outdo everything that has gone before, for a a folklorist of the fabulist he has no peer. Then to turn to the tales collected in AT THE JIM BRIDGER is to fall into a trap of melancholy and missed chances that will remind you of a more varied sort of John Cheever. The suburban outlook is unmistakable, but in Carlson it is endearing. One story, "The Potato Gun," is haunting as anything ever written by Andre Dubus, while "The Towel Season" is like something Nabokov might have written had he a household full of kids.

Decency, hope, integrity, love

There is a decency about the characters in Ron Carlson's short stories that is never sappy, that rings true. And missing is that element so common in so much of today's fiction--smartalecky irony. His people may seem naive, but they also seem real, yearning for completion, meaning in their lives. Ron Carlson is a major short story writer, in the same league as Raymond Carver and Russell Banks.

He knows more about the human heart in conflict with itself

than anybody. "At the Jim Bridger" is Carlson's third book of short stories in a row; each time I didn't think it was possible for him to surpass himself, but somehow he does. His whimsical, funny, sad stories about love and lost and possibility are far truer to me than Carver's stories of dissolution. Carlson has the amazing ability to tell a sweet or happy story without selling out to melodrama or senimentality; he can tell a gut-wrenching story of loss and despair without giving in entirely to cynicism and morbidity. I can't tell you how many friends who tell me "I don't like books of short stories" I've converted to worshippers of Carlson over the years through gifts of "Plan B for the Working Class" and "Hotel Eden"; now I have a new axe to grind, and grind it I will. I can't wait to see his new novel next year.

This is a book you should read.

Ron Carlson is perhaps the best short fiction writer in America. He can do something very view authors can do: write a happy story without making it tripe. These stories are funny, moving and true, whether they really happened or not. Pick this up with "The Hotel Eden" and then track down "Plan B for the Middle Class" and "News of the World."

Ron Carlson's Done It Again

Start with any of these stories, and you'll soon be hooked. Read "At the Jim Bridger" from the front, from the back, it doesn't matter. Soon you'll be grabbing other Carlson books--"News of the World," "Plan B," "Hotel Eden"--and the next thing you know, you'll have devoured everything he's written the way I have. Nobody cares more about the short story than Ron, and it shows. Stories like "Towel Season," "Ordinary Son" and "Potato Gun" are told by narrators who only get one shot making their stories matter to others, and all they have is heart, humor and voice to get them there. And the title piece is an explication on story telling from the master. You simply won't be able to put this book down. One caution, however: if you read this book in public be prepared for strangers glaring at you because of all your laughing.