The Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards: Stories - Softcover

Boswell, Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1555975666 ISBN 13: 9781555975661

Publisher: Graywolf Press, 2010

Synopsis

Heyday of the Insensitive Bastards is an exhilarating collection, as brash as it is wise, by Robert Boswell one of our great storytellers

Set mainly in small, gritty American cities, each of these stories is a world unto itself. A man's obsessive visits to a fortuneteller leave him nearly homeless. Time collapses as two marriages slowly dissolve. And in the searing title story, a young man recounts the summer he spent in a mountain town, squatting in a borrowed house with a loose band of slackers, abstaining from all drugs (other than mushrooms)―and ultimately asking just what kind of harm we can do to one another.

About this title

About the Author:

Robert Boswell is the author of five novels, two short-story collections, and a collection of essays. He teaches creative writing at the University of Houston.

From Publishers Weekly:

In this imaginative story collection, author Boswell (Century's Son) examines the limits and losses of ordinary souls with technical mastery and profound sympathy. In No River Wide, a widowed woman visiting a longtime friend in Florida discovers that their friendship is over; her story unfolds in overlapping narratives that form a startling, resonant meditation on the nature of time. Another story finds a 30-something returning to his North Dakota home to identify the body of his missing mother; what he finds instead frees him from the long shadow of his embittered father. In the title story, a gang spends the summer squatting in the home of a vacationing family, with dire consequences; in Supreme Beings, a priest's attempts to intervene in the lives of three troubled youths lead him to confront personal and professional failure. Boswell conveys the sordid but hopeful inner lives of average people with insight and care; his shorter stories (Miss Famous, Skin Deep) showcase his pleasure in language and invention, and his longer tales pack the emotional weight of a novel. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Graywolf Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1555975666
• ISBN 13: 9781555975661
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272