Synopsis
A superb collection of stories—his first in twenty years—from one of our most acclaimed literary figures, whom The New York Times Book Review has called “a writer of the first magnitude.”
Place exerts the power of destiny in these ten stories of lives uncannily recognizable and unforgettably strange: a boy makes a surprising discovery skating at night on Lake Michigan; an Irish clan in Massachusetts gather at the bedside of their dying matriarch; a battered survivor of the glory days of Key West washes up on other shores. Several of the stories unfold in Big Sky country, McGuane’s signature landscape: a father tries to buy his adult son out of virginity; a convict turned cowhand finds refuge at a ranch in ruination; a couple makes a fateful drive through the perilous gorge of the title story before parting ways. McGuane’s people are seekers, beguiled by the land’s beauty and myth, compelled by the fantasy of what a locale can offer, forced to reconcile dream and truth.
The stories of Gallatin Canyon are alternately comical, dark, and poignant. Rich in the wit, compassion, and matchless language for which McGuane is celebrated, they are the work of a master.
The New York Times - Stephen Metcalf
Hell is other people, goes the old existentialist saw. Words to live by, I say; now if only it weren t so hellish to be alone. There is, however, a moment before you get to know a person too well, before they ve become part of the mental furniture, as it were, when unfamiliarity bestows upon them a mystery they may not otherwise deserve. In Gallatin Canyon, his new and often astonishing collection of short stories, Thomas McGuane isolates this moment, and exploits it to its fullest literary potential. McGuane has become our poet-philosopher of the arm s length, of the prudently aborted intimacy that keeps both isolation and commitment equally at bay.