The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge
- Book Review,
by William Kittredge
From Booklist
Kittredge's memoirs of growing up on a cattle ranch in southeastern Oregon--Owning It All (1987) and Hole in the Sky (1992)--have become classics of western literature. His short fiction is lesser known, but this fine collection should help change that. The prose style is quintessentially western: no-nonsense declarative sentences, plainspoken, without artifice, yet expressing in their very simplicity the unspoken emotions that stand behind each syllable. Several of the stories, including "Be Careful What You Want," address themes familiar from the memoirs: disaffected children of wealthy western landowners dealing with their conflicted feelings about power and the land: "Every one of us has places to go sight-seeing in their own history." What Kittredge's people encounter in their sight-seeing is a chasm between the clarity of the natural world and the muck and mess of human relations. This universal dilemma is at the core of western literature, and Kittredge serves it straight up, free of the cliches of rugged individualism. His characters hurt one another with a kind of sad inevitability that makes their silence even more deafening. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“Kittredge’s stories—graceful, savvy, expansive, poignant, and sometimes even grave—tell us that it is our affections, not our courage or our toughness or our willingness to be unequivocal, that keeps us from one day to another. And that is a truth worth hearing. I only wish there were more of these stories.” —Richard Ford
Book Description
“Kittredge paints with these colors: sky blue, night black, blood red. Nature has more—but none truer.”—The New York Times Book Review
"We were meat hunters. You spent money for shells, you brought home meat. I saw Teddy Spandau die on that account. Went off into open water chest deep, just trying to get some birds he shot. Cramped up and drowned. We hauled a boat down and fished him out that afternoon."
—from “The Waterfowl Tree”
A master storyteller and essayist, William Kittredge is best known for his unflinching vision of the hardscrabble landscape of the West and the people who survive and die in it. His stories are stripped down but bristle with life to offer a dusty, relentless landscape; the smell of freshly turned dirt; the blunt conversations about work that needs doing; and the rare, quiet moment of reflection that amounts to nothing less than poetry. This volume represents the best of Kittredge’s stories, available together in a handsome edition.
From the Back Cover
"Kittredge paints with these colors: sky blue, night black, blood red. Nature has more-but none truer." (The New York Times Book Review) "Kittredge's stories-graceful, savvy, expansive, poignant, and sometimes even grave-tell us that it is our affections, not our courage or our toughness or our willingness to be unequivocal, that keeps us from one day to another. And that is a truth worth hearing. I only wish there were more of these stories." (Richard Ford)
About the Author
William Kittredge grew up on a cattle ranch in southeastern Oregon and taught creative writing at the University of Montana. He is often praised as one of the most important voices on the American West. He now lives in Missoula, Montana.
Excerpted from The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge by William Kittredge. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Only when he moved closer, crouching again and stepping forward slowly, did Halverson at last see the animal. Low to the ground, looking upward through leafy green brush, he saw the dark belly, and realized he was being watched. The grunting had stopped and Halverson looked up and saw the bear reared and gazing down on him, black lips curled over the fangs as though the animal were smiling, and nothing but curious.
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