At the Jim Bridger

From the Publisher

“The subtle excellence of these stories makes it easy to lose oneself in them and, more impressively, to recall them later with such clarity and emotion that they seem like one’s own memories.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Trying to sum up a Ron Carlson story is like trying to hold sparkling spring water in your bare hands—no matter how you cup your fingers, some of the magical stuff leaks out.... At the Jim Bridger shows us a real master at work.” —The Seattle Times

“The stories in At the Jim Bridger—eleven exquisite tales of men and women...do the work of true art. Ordinary things, which never before seemed wonderful, suddenly, gracefully, are.” —Esquire

“Carlson [has] written an accomplished, open-hearted book, full of good, grown-up humor and fierce intelligence. Writer’s writer or reader’s writer, Carlson and the stories of At the Jim Bridger deserve all the attention they can get.” —The Boston Globe

Alan Cheuse

The sweet but never saccharine quality of Carlson's prose fits perfectly with the quest for wholeness attempted by his characters.
—San Francisco Chronicle

Anthony Day

This collection of stories about people in the uncertain moral terrain of the American West consistently surprises and delights.
—Los Angeles Times

Justin Cronin

Carlson [has] written an accomplished, open-hearted book, full of good, grown-up humor and fierce intelligence.
—The Boston Globe

Kyrie O'Connor

Carlson does not throw one air ball...he concentrates on people - relentlessly American and almost all men - at internal crossroads.
—The Hartford Courant

Charles May

Carlson...has remained true to the literary form he seems to love best and at which he excels...
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

From The Critics

For nearly twenty years, Carlson has devoted his energies to the short story. While not all the tales in his fourth collection succeed, the author, as always, challenges us to imagine a world both familiar and strange. In "The Potato Gun," a father, in the wake of his mother's death, procrastinates work and worries about his family. A keen attention to the simple rituals and sensual experiences of daily life is visible in Carlson's best writing. His beautiful title story, in which a man begins an extramarital affair after almost dying in a blizzard, is reminiscent, in its depiction of nature, of the work of Hemingway or Jack London. Yet unlike those great writers of the outdoors, Carlson can be funny, quirky, domestic. He continually surprises, generating a unique world that, while marred by loss and inadequacy, is redeemed by moments of tenderness and grace.
—James Schiff

Publishers Weekly

In this taut, focused collection, veteran short story writer Carlson (The Hotel Eden) captures the ordinary occurrences that define our lives. Sharing graceful, unadorned prose and elegant metaphors, the nine stories and two brief sketches collected here portray characters at moments when the solid ground of reality slips out from under them. High school figures prominently: for Carlson, the teenage years offer the perfect transitional moments, when minor incidents are writ large. Fortunately, he depicts these mundane experiences a boy's first date ("The Potato Gun"), his first fistfight ("At Copper View"), his first car ("The Ordinary Son") with neither condescension nor irony, but a mixture of serious reflection and na ve wonder. In "The Ordinary Son," Reed's average intelligence in a family of geniuses makes him its only distinctive member; he amazes his young brother, who is practicing quantum physics with crayons, with the simple pleasure of his brand-new car. Elsewhere, the teenager's unique sense of alienation is a chronic condition: in "Towel Season," Edison's absorbing interest in a highly theoretical engineering project separates him from the neighborhood husbands and wives; in the title story, Donner's recounting of a near-death incident on a camping trip leads to a brief connection between him and a woman who is not his wife. With a precision and consistency rarely achieved in similar collections, this volume should earn Carlson continued, well-deserved recognition. National advertising; author tour. (May) Forecast: Readers will be acquainted with Carlson's name from his appearances in Esquire and Harper's, not to mention O. Henry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Blurbs by heavy hitters like John Irving and Michael Cunningham will help to entice browsers. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The agonies of adolescence and the moral confusions of adulthood and middle age are observed with finely honed wit in this entertaining fourth collection from the Arizona author of Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1977) and Plan B for the Middle Class (1992). There are two brief interludes, one a wry explanation of how real life gets fictionalized, the other a teenager's imaginary romantic personals ad: they echo each other, but their linkage is not otherwise explored. The nine fully developed stories, as varied and uneven a lot as are the contents of its three predecessors, uniformly employ a witty, knowing (usually first-person) narrative voice and a tangy colloquial style that often bursts into authentic comic aphorism (e.g., "It was a bit like being in the army: when in doubt, paint something"). A few stories fall flat: "The Clicker at Tips," about a nowhere relationship played out in a bar whose patrons watch Monday-night football, and "Gary Garrison's Wedding Vows," about the love life of a woman led by her inchoate "feelings," seem especially lame. But when Carlson creates a protagonist with an original relationship to his milieu and circumstances, he can dazzle. The title story's rich portrayal of a conflicted sport fisherman's experiences with his current woman and with a man formerly encountered in extreme circumstances, and thereafter unforgotten, expertly jumbles various marital, parental, and sexual "feelings" together. In "Towel Season" and "The Potato Gun," timid, passive family men are shaken into riskier, hence more fulfilling—and threatening—behavior. And Carlson's at his best in "Evil Eye Allen," a dippy anti-romance about high school hormonal mischief and homespunSatanism, and especially, "The Ordinary Son," a delightful tale of growing up among—and away from—a family of Texan geniuses, including a NASA physicist, a save-the-planet poet, and a girl who calls herself "Isotope." At his (frequent, though inconsistent) best, this is one of our better storytellers. It's about time for a Ron Carlson Selected Stories. Author tour