I finally read this one. I know a lot of Chicago writers point to this as the definitive collection of stories about Chicago and the vibrant characters that inhabit it. I liked it. I really did, but i didn't love it like I wanted to. The thing that kept me from truly loving it was that while Dybek is a very lyrical, poetic writer, his stories sometimes lack focus and momentum. Many of his stories are ABOUT characters and ABOUT places and ABOUT tragedies without actually diving full-in and allowi...

Kind of like the Charles Bukowski of prose.

The very first line: "Tonight, a steady drizzle, streetlights smoldering in fog like funnels of light collecting rain." I discovered this book incidentally as I searched in our library's online catalog for guides for visiting Chicago. It arrived on hold for me from Glenview Library and I brought it home still under the impression that I would be reading a guide to Chicago's coastline. Reading it was quite an unexpected and throughly enjoyable pleasure. The first line drew me right in and I reali...

The stories “Chopin in Winter” and “Blight” are magnificent and they reminded me of Jack Kerouac “There seemed to be some unspoken relationship between being nameless and being a loser. Watching the guys from Korea after their ball games as they hung around under the buzzing neon signs of their taverns, guzzling beers and flipping the softball, I got the strange feeling that they had actually chosen anonymity and the loserhood that went with it. It was something they looked for in one another, t...

"The Coast of Chicago" is a lyrical short story collection about growing up in Chicago in the 50's and 60's--the poverty, the wild aimlessness of boyhood, those who escape the neighborhood and those who don't. Each longer piece is followed by a short-short, which was a fun pattern. Dybek adeptly captures the mood of the city, especially at night and in the winters. My favorite story in this collection is the simply gorgeous "Chopin in Winter," which is about a boy and his grandpa who fervently l...

Blight is one of the best stories I've read in a long time, and in some ways its quality dampens the rest of the book for me. As a teacher of mine once said, "Stu really packs it in." A lot of the stories in this collection feel like novels. By the end so much has been seen and experienced that there's an ache for, but a satisfaction in knowing that it Dybek did it right.

This is a great book. I lived in Chicago for a number of years and I am a catholic born in Eastern Europe so I can definitely relate to parts of what Dybek describes in this book. Stuart Dybek grew up in the South Side of Chicago. At the time, his neighborhood was an ethnic neighborhood full of poles, ukranians, czechs, etc. Most of the characters in the book still have customs coming from the old country, inherited prejudices, church going rituals, love for music, etc.Most of the stories have a...

If you ever wanted to take a time capsule and go back in time to the Chicago South Side during the 60's and 70's, than this book will take you there. Dybek beautifully describes the lonliness and sadness of the back alleys of a working class neighborhood. I lived in the South Side, definitely during a different time, but he captured a feeling that I had while living there. You see fragments from that era on the street corners, and mixed in with the new culture that's taken over the South Side. I...

Solid selection of stories. “Pet Milk” is one of my all-time favourites

Those were the days when the Belsen Street Pollacks came down the stairwells with their pockets filled with broken glass, an old Jew shouting out of the window, little Skip Kowalcyk reaching up to grab his fill of undergarments from the laundry lines - old Trouthead Mulvaney was on the mound for the Cubs, the smell of simmering beef heart and boiled tar in the air, Mayor Daley tapping the ash from his cigar as he rode by in his grand Buick, like some kind of pristine ocean liner, outfitted in br...

I’ve experienced that rare pleasure of hearing Stuart Dybek read his work—in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where he is a sometime adjunct professor at Western Michigan University, and so sometimes, not at all often, has read to a large and hungry Kalamazoo audience, myself among them. That was poetry. Good stuff. Really good stuff. And so picking up this collection of stories about my favorite city, Chicago, and Dybek’s hometown, too, I knew I would be in for a street wise treat. Oh yeah. Fourteen storie...

I really enjoyed this collection of short stories even though I'm not sure that I understand a few of the endings since Dybek writes poetically. My favorite is Lights because I had totally forgotten about this childhood activity..."Lights! Your lights! Hey, lights!" Makes me smile every time I think about it. I also like the lines from Strays..."I never give any of them names. We don't know an animal's name. A name's what we use instead of smelling." Have no fear...I'll continue to name my pets

I read this short story collection when it was chosen for the " one book one Chicago " in 2004. I think the reason the story's resonated so much for me was that I know the neighborhoods,the streets and the people,which it so much easer reading than Dubliners by James Joyce.The book really had me at the section titled "Nighthawks" a young man killing time at the art institute would always end his day viewing Edward Hoppers painting named Nighthawks.Dybek than brings the paint to life . The couple...

I love the idea of this book. Having lived in Chicago for many years I was familiar with many of the locales.Where it fell flat for me was in the 1) lack of stories and the 2) lack of beauty in the prose. Yes Chicago is a gritty city (especially the south side) but the imagery in this book just didn't excite me. 3 stars. Perhaps a higher rating for the concept.

I read this book specifically because I was going to join a book club, but then I read it and had no interesting thoughts or points, so I decided not to. Also I feel like short stories are always hard for me? Anyway, this was fine, but I feel like I really didn’t get anything out of it.

Most of these stories have a narrator looking back to the time of the story from an undisclosed or unimportant future vantage point. The way the character looks back indicates the story is vital memory(to the character's existence even). Dybek's vivid flashes of past come in layer upon layer, rendering the story into not just memory, but perhaps the most important time of these characters' lives. The sense of nostalgia is thick and alive--it's hypnotic at times, but slows the read a bit, too. Th...

Read this at Paddy’s recommendation in college and reread cuz i now live in the Chicago Neighborhood where most of the stories take place! Mix of memoir-y short stories and flash fiction the former I think works overall better than the latter. In particular dybek is sooo good at building a whole story around arresting, strange, or amusing images, and exploring irrational responses to pain. while pretty different in some ways, this aspect of his style reminds me a lot of the mixing up of memory,

The stories in this book were so beautifully written. Stuart Dybek is an amazing storyteller. I was surprised at much I liked this collection of short stories. I don't usually seek out short story collections to read. I decided to read the book because of an upcoming Chicago History Museum Book Club Discussion.I can't pick any single one of these stories as my favorite. They were all that good! I understood every character in every story. I may not have identified with every one of them but I un...

[Earlier this year, I had the honor of being asked to join the staff of the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame, specifically to help choose the honoree each year of the organization's Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement. 2018's recipient was Stuart Dybek, and I was asked to write a critical overview of his work for the accompanying program. I'm reprinting it in full below.]It’s been a fascinating thing this month to read through the entire prose oeuvre of Stuart Dybek in chronological order for the...

Unflinching, conversational voice, beautiful stories. Masterful, Dybek is such a G, and a really cool dude on top of it all