A Kind of Flying: Selected Stories (52 page)

Praise for Ron Carlson

THE NEWS OF THE WORLD

“An exuberant, wise and wonderfully inventive evocation of the kinds of love and longing that never really go out of style. . . . It’s a story like ‘Life Before Science’ that conveys best the blend of tragicomedy, sheer optimism, sharp perception, and almost manic energy that makes Carlson’s work so distinctive—and so appealing.”

—Alida Becker,
Washington Post

“There is in these stories a certain holiness bestowed on ordinary things, on ordinary lives, that is a powerful reminder of the late John Cheever.”

—John Irving

“Wonderful. . . . This is a genuine collection, each tale separately coherent but also full of cross-references of tone, theme and image, so that the whole finally resonates as a novel would. . . . Carlson convinces us over and over again that he’s just telling the truth, more than anything we’ll read in the paper this morning or see on the tube tonight.”

—Janet Burroway,
Philadelphia Inquirer

“A demonstration of how much a skilled writer with a little passion and compassion can fit into the smallest of spaces. Very strong stuff.”

—Madison Smartt Bell

“Carlson knows how regular guys feel, and writes about it thoughtfully, wittily, expertly. The 16 stories in this collection . . . have more dynamism than you’ll find in ten other story collections put together.”

—
Playboy

“Marvelous. . . . Domestic love of a very rare homey and affectionate sort is alive and well in the work of a writer who has acquired the technique to depict such values and situations with absolute integrity. No sentimental gushing here. . . . I read Carlson’s collection, racing from one good tale to the next, warmed by his familial passions in an otherwise wintry world.”

—Alan Cheuse,
Chicago Tribune

“Quirky and thrilling. . . . His stories have something I’ve been hungry to hear, and his quiet, familiar style is so seductive, convincing, that I am led to believe that his ordinary people have elaborate, you could even say baroque, and not minimal lives; and they have speech too. A kind of friendly, naked, confidential prattle or ramble, not fancy but expressive and wide-ranging. . . . You’ll want to read these stories as fast as you can, and hope for more.”

—Alice Bloom,
The Hudson Review

“Carlson makes it all credible, amusing and very refreshing. . . . Most of [the stories] are models of economy, packing a great deal of joy-in-life into a few pages. . . . Even Carlson’s sad stories are warm with love and humor.”

—Nancy Shapiro,
St. Louis Times-Dispatch

“Ron Carlson has a lovely way with words. . . . Family life, its joys and its pitfalls, is a recurring theme in Carlson’s work, but he handles this material in such a stunning variety of ways that his chosen theme always strikes the reader as new and fresh.”

—Phil Thomas, Associated Press

“Every story is hilarious and the characters pleasantly eccentric. . . . [The stories] are pithy and energetic and, often, ironic, but always with a touch of warm human emotion.”

—Lorna Gold,
Albuquerque Journal

P
LAN
B
FOR THE
M
IDDLE
C
LASS

“Wise and witty. . . . A lovely collection. . . . Carlson is a very funny writer indeed. . . . It is a generous author who creates a world at once so messy and loving.”

—Geoffrey Stokes,
Boston Sunday Globe

“At their best . . . [the stories] tilt the world just enough to give us a sense of how much we need it to stand upright.”

—Richard Eder,
Los Angeles Times

“A gathering of tender and often humorous tales. . . . Ron Carlson is a brilliant comedic writer. . . . With its wildly humorous but truthful look at how much we can bend without breaking,
Plan B for the Middle Class
is a revealing—and sometimes unsettling—look at what we may really mean when we talk about ‘family values.’ ”

—Maxine Chernoff,
New York Times Book Review

“Ron Carlson . . . is a master of the quirky, bittersweet domestic story. . . . Funny and well-observed.”

—Mark Bautz,
Washington Times

“Carlson plunges you into each universe, filling your mind with tactile detail and epigrammatic dialogue. Having crafted these careful, concentrated renderings of emotional states, he gets playful, spinning funky little tales. . . . The title story is a masterful and charmingly funny drama of dreams denied and dreams secured. Another splendid story collection by the author of
The News of the World
.”

—Donna Seaman,
Booklist

“He does amazing things with astonishing economy. . . . Carlson restores to minimalism both its good name and its maximum punch.”

—Joseph Coates,
Chicago Tribune

“These stories display an extraordinary craft and maturity of vision. . . . Carlson’s range—from quotidian to surreal, encompassing everything in between—is astonishing. . . . Wonderful. . . . Ron Carlson has become a wizard of the short-story form.”

—Patty O’Connell,
Boston Sunday Globe

“It is Carlson’s sensibility as a perceptive, amusing and gracious storyteller that makes this collection so strong. . . . Everything we want from a story collection and just what we need.”

—Sheri Hallgren,
San Francisco Chronicle

“There is substance and depth beneath the bizarre surface happenings. Mr. Carlson’s range is remarkable, from the quirky to the affecting.”

—Bob Trimble,
Dallas Morning News

“The wonderful stories in
Plan B for the Middle Class
mix outrageously funny observations with bittersweet meditations on mid-life.”

—R. K. Dickson,
Bloomsbury Review

“Honest and honed narratives. In these stories Carlson has made reading about the modest life irresistible.”

—Nancy Zafris,
Cleveland Plain Dealer

T
HE
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OTEL
E
DEN

“I was entirely and happily in Carlson’s thrall. The word ‘happily’ seems especially apt for this writer, who is a master of that rarity in contemporary fiction, the happy ending.”

—Margot Livesey,
New York Times Book Review

“A strange eclectic mixture of some of the funniest and saddest stories ever to cozy up together in one volume. Some stories are brilliant and deeply moving; others are wild and surreal. . . . Affirms both the breadth and depth of this writer’s vision as well as the utter singularity of his voice.”

—Judith Freeman,
Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Carlson’s stories are authentic, honest, hilarious, and full of a kind of hard-won hopefulness. Again and again he achieves the perfect balance between understated humor and understated grief.”

—Pam Houston

“Pungent stories. . . . Hauntingly evocative.”

—Margot Mifflin,
Entertainment Weekly

“Ron Carlson hides the considerable art in his stories as well as anyone writing in English; he disguises it with humor, memorable language and likeable people. . . . Carlson is terribly funny without being unserious. . . . Carlson, however,
is
an artist, a deadpan chronicler of small-town tragedies, and, like Sherwood Anderson, the best kind of American writer.”

—Nathan Ward,
Newark Star-Ledger

“These stories are imaginative, poignant, and funny.”

—
Arizona Republic

“Carlson produces clean and assured prose and animates familiar situations with imaginative twists, masterfully reported details and enough emotional honesty to fill a book twice this size.”

—
Publishers Weekly
, starred review

For Elaine

Copyright © 2003, 1997, 1992, 1987 by Ron Carlson

All rights reserved

First Edition

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ISBN 0-393-32479-6 (pbk.)

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