American Falls: The Collected Short Stories
Barry Gifford
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 1583225730
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
American Falls is the first major collection of short stories from Barry Gifford, master of the dark side of the American reality. These stories range widely in style and period, from the 1950s to the present, from absurdist exercises to romantic tales, from stories about childhood innocence to novellas of murder and revenge.
In the title story, a Japanese-American motel operator chooses not give up a total stranger, a black man wanted for murder, when the police come searching for him. In "Room 584, The Starr Hotel," a man rants his outrage at an amorous couple in the room next door before he himself is arrested for having committed multiple murders. "The Unspoken" recounts the confessions of a man without a mouth who tells about the woman who loved him. And in this collection’s longest fiction, a novella called "The Lonely and the Lost," a small town’s talented and colorful inhabitants solve their problems as best they can until it comes time for the devil to reap what they have sown.
Dark and light intermix in masterful chiaroscuro, dark becoming light, light revealing sinister or brooding complexity. No simple endings, only happy beginnings.
that remains, the colors somber and dim. Walking back to the hotel I mentioned this to the others, pointing to a pair of violet birds perched on the lip of a bluish-gray rainspout. “Immortal moments meant to be captured.” But I was speaking more for the benefit of Klee than Moilliet. Louis understands. It was he who paid me the greatest compliment, last December, when we first met to discuss this venture. “Until I met you,” Moilliet said, “I painted the way a man looks out the window.” Monday,
tomorrow for Thun via Palermo and Rome. The Jaeggis are wonderful people. They have been glad to see us, and now they’re glad to see us go, which is how it should be. Time to eat, and afterwards, perhaps a stroll in the little rain. The Unspoken (Il Nondetto) Translated from the Italian of an anonymous author 1 I begin like any other man, without a plan. I am staying in a seaside resort, one of many, in no particular country; perhaps somewhere on the Ionian Sea. Yes, I recall the
darkness in her that she struggles to avoid; it eats at her like a rash on the inside of her skin. The way she moves expresses inexorable distress. Often her movements are those of a lizard on a terrace in the hot sun. She skitters, stops, jerks her head, flaps her eyelids (Do lizards have eyelids? If not, why not?), runs on, light evaporating the colors on her spine: green and blue become gray. F. is serious as she pretends to gaiety. It frightens and—I must confess—delights me. Her
said yesterday. William Celine and Cherry Layne, 22, held up the Moor Hotel in Sheik, Louisiana, where they had spent the previous night posing as sister and brother. They robbed the desk clerk at gunpoint and fled in a red car, police said. Texas Highway Patrolmen were attempting to stop the car when Celine opened fire on them. Celine then shot Layne in the head before turning the gun on himself, authorities said. The weapon was registered in Louisiana to the boy’s father. Their car crashed
Orleans to hear you guys. Got an arrangement wid a sound studio in Nashville. We could make some noise there, y’all feel like it.” Jesse mumbled a blue streak to Jack. When he quit, Billy asked, “Did y’all ever do any recordin’?” “No, sir,” said Jack. “That Froo Froo and Tick-Tock and them, must be fifteen years ago they was on top. You don’t mind my askin’, what you been up to lately?” Billy Breaux took a long drag on his cigaret, then dropped the butt in the dust at his feet and killed it