Village Books in Historic Fairhaven

Description

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Selected stories from a renowned poet and prose writer “who savors the elegance of simplicity and whose stories resonate and linger” (The New York Times Book Review)

Tess Gallagher’s vivid and rewarding short stories bear witness to the intimate details and subtle revelations of daily life. Set mostly in Gallagher’s native Pacific Northwest and drawn from her two widely acclaimed collections, The Lover of Horses and At the Owl Woman Saloon, these stories contain the lives of loggers, bartenders, bear wrestlers, gamblers, Avon ladies, horse whisperers, Tess Gallagher is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. She is the author of Dear Ghosts, and of Barnacle Soup: Stories from the West of Ireland with Josie Gray. She lives in Port Angeles, Washington.

In these luminous stories drawn from her acclaimed collections The Lovers of Horses and At the Owl Woman Saloon, Tess Gallagher connects the passion of her prizewinning poetry with the prose of working-class Americans struggling to survive. As in the fiction of her late husband and literary partner Raymond Carver, the result is a transformation of the ordinary into to the unforgettable. The characters in The Man from Kinvara are recognizable as our neighbors—their choices as mysterious as our own.

"The writer V.S. Pritchett once defined the short story as 'something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.' His implication was that if a piece of short fiction examined anything too closely—a seemingly endless passage in Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie, with a description on the shape of a grove of banana trees, most comes to mind—it might lose both the element of surprise and the emotionalism of the reader's imagination. What to leave out, as much as what to put in, has always been the writer's quandary, particularly for one crafting short fiction. Tess Gallagher probably knows nothing about banana trees, but she does know the timber industry, and her short story 'I Got a Guy Once' is fiction so steeped in the Northwest that it's impossible to imagine a writer from another region authoring it. The story offers just enough detail on cutting timber, and what a 'great fir spar' looks like as it falls, that it carries authority. It also implies, rather than states, the brooding, menacing nature of the trees, thus keeping the dramatic tension that results when death could be around the corner at any moment. The Man From Kinvara: Selected Stories collects 'I Got a Guy Once' along with 17 other Gallagher stories, all taken from two previous collections. Many are set in the Northwest, but usually in rural fringes like Aberdeen or Gallagher's own Port Angeles, where economic catastrophe looms treelike over lives already struggling for dignity . . . Gallagher is Raymond Carver's widow, of course, and she spearheaded Raymond Carver: Collected Stories, just out from the Library of America. The new volume restores his stories to their pre-edited state. It would be artistically unfair to compare husband and wife, though he encouraged her to tackle the form, and at least in landscape they share a similar beat. The timing of the two books is unfair to her worthy collection, however, even as it gives us a chance to reread his famous 'On Writing' essay, in which he cites the Pritchett quote. A short story writer's task, Carver adds, is to 'invest the glimpse.' By that standard, among others, The Man From Kinvara is a joy."—Charles R. Cross, The Seattle Times

"Tess Gallagher's The Man From Kinvara is a richly written volume of short stories spanning the well-known poet and writer’s vast and prolific career. Who knew narratives of such everyday life could be so fascinating and provide captivating images? . . . Most of the stories in The Man From Kinvara are set in Gallagher's beloved Pacific Northwest, and she brings this area alive in her prose. These stories are bursting at the seams with true heart."—Ann Hite, Feminist Review

"In 1996 I married the man I’d been living with since 1993. He has a rare neuromuscular disease that has, over our time together, slowly eroded his strength. In his early 20s, he began using a cane.  In 1998, at age 29, he went into a wheelchair. During that terrible year, I turned frequently to Gallagher’s poetry, reading and re-reading Portable Kisses—'Letter to a Kiss that Died for Us,' 'Widow in Red Shoes,' 'Precious' 'Glimpse Inside an Arrow after Flight.' I was not a widow, of course, but the wheelchair’s finality was a sort of death I lacked words for, and Gallagher, who had endured a worse grief, lifted the burden of mine. This very long introduction is my way of saying I feel a deep and perhaps irrational connection to this writer, who is, I think, wrongly maligned in her defense of Carver’s work. Her involvement in his legacy often overshadows her own great talent, and our more prurient instincts (the Lish Wars!  Maryann Carver’s memoir!) overshadow Gallagher’s own great talents, much evidenced in The Man from Kinvara. Kinvara is collected from Gallagher’s two books of short fiction: The Lover of Horses and At the Owl Woman Saloon. Returning to them after many years, I experienced that odd sensation of newly encountering what I’d read as much younger person, reading with the deeper understanding that comes from being older. Life may indeed bash us around mercilessly, but in a slight reward, it makes us better readers."—Diane Leach, PopMatters

Praise for Tess Gallagher

“[Gallagher’s] stories are very quiet and warm, and, at the same time, earthy and emotional.” —Haruki Murakami

“In story after story, Tess Gallagher’s men and women fight off the stupor, the small-heartedness, of ordinary life, and find themselves bathed in a sudden, miraculous light. This is lovely writing, exact and startling. What a pleasure to be reminded of the world’s haunting strangeness.”—David Long, author of The Inhabited World

“Tess Gallagher illuminates the lives of her everyday characters with lyrical prose, deep respect for their small concerns, and joy at their foibles and wisdom.”—The Seattle Times

“In Gallagher’s deft hands, it is plain to see that comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin.”—Entertainment Weekly

Table of Contents

 Introduction: A Letter MailedThe Man from Kinvara from The Lover of HorsesThe Lover of Horses   5King Death   19Recourse   33Turpentine   53A Pair of Glasses   69Bad Company   81Girls   95 from At the Owl Woman SaloonI Got a Guy Once   115To Dream of Bears   127Creatures   141A Box of Rocks   153Coming and Going   163My Gun   175Mr. Woodriff's Neckties   187Rain Flooding Your Campfire   197The Mother Thief   211The Poetry Baron   221The Woman Who Prayed   237 

About the Author

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Tess Gallagher is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. She is the author of Dear Ghosts, and of Barnacle Soup: Stories from the West of Ireland with Josie Gray. She lives in Port Angeles, Washington.

Praise for The Man from Kinvara: Selected Stories…

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“[Gallagher’s] stories are very quiet and warm, and, at the same time, earthy and emotional.” —Haruki Murakami

“In story after story, Tess Gallagher’s men and women fight off the stupor, the small-heartedness, of ordinary life, and find themselves bathed in a sudden, miraculous light. This is lovely writing, exact and startling. What a pleasure to be reminded of the world’s haunting strangeness.” —David Long, author of The Inhabited World

“Tess Gallagher illuminates the lives of her everyday characters with lyrical prose, deep respect for their small concerns, and joy at their foibles and wisdom.” —The Seattle Times

“In Gallagher’s deft hands, it is plain to see that comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin.” —Entertainment Weekly