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alliethomas88's review against another edition
4.0
Jame Alan McPherson was the first African American to win the Pulitzer prize for fiction with this collection of short stories in 1978. The stories still feel very relevant today. My favorites were “Why I Like Country Music”, “The Story of a Scar”, “A Loaf of Bread”, “Sense of Story” and the title story “Elbow Room”. This collection does not have the recognition today that it deserves.
wathohuc's review against another edition
4.0
On the whole, I enjoyed this collection of stories. McPherson is undoubtedly a talented writer. It is worthy, in my estimation, of the Pulitzer. Now, the thing about short stories is that they are constrained by their length into seeming incomplete in comparison to a novel. And this I found to be true about this collection. The stories are powerful, but seem to be incomplete. They often end ambiguously. Some are better than others. In fact, I found the earlier stories to be much better than the later stories, at least in terms of descriptive narrative. The later stories were much more abstract and philosophical, which made them a bit unintelligible, though I found them attractive in the sense that they were experimental for the short story form. The last story, and the title of the collection, is very powerful as a commentary on the possibilities and challenges of overcoming racial divides through interracial marriage and mixed race offspring. Makes me wonder what McPherson would think of the current times we are living in. Are there new stories to tell today? Are they the same basic stories today as they were of the times when this collection was published?
buzzgirl's review
4.0
Those that know me well know that I am on a quest to read all books that have won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction this year. This book was next in line, and it has been one of my absolute favourites. Whilst I undeniably love the novel over short stories, this collection really helped me better understand African American, male fiction in period between Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin. Be prepared to laugh. Be prepared to cry.
mattquann's review
4.0
I wanted to mark the halfway point in my challenge to read a Pulitzer Prize winner every month with an "older" winner, but I was also trying to read more work by black authors in an effort to improve my understanding of racial disparity. James Alan McPherson's 1978 collection, Elbow Room, ended up being an excellent choice because it allowed me a window into the black experience in America that you won't find on many of the "must-read" lists circulating these days. What's more, these stories offer a complexity and nuance that really hit the spot in a time where an international conversation about race is afoot.
The collection doesn't start strong, but after moving through the first story I was taken with McPherson's writing and range. These stories cut across a wide swath of the socioeconomic divide and McPherson handles each with skill and style. The Story of a Dead Man recounts a the life of a gangster and his many exploits as narrated by his cousin prior to a family supper. Meanwhile, I am an American places a black man in the UK navigating a robbery at his hotel, and A Sense of Story presents an open-and-shut murder case as more than it first appears. These twelve stories veer and swerve into different lanes, but each one manages to hit hard. Though the writing is continuously solid, the voice changes throughout these stories and is brought to life by pitch-perfect dialogue.
What I appreciated most about these stories are their ambiguity and refusal to offer easy answers to the reader. One of the beauties of the short story, in my opinion, is that they can leave the reader hanging in mid-air at the end of their telling. McPherson manages to straddle that line between narrative and thematic resolution. Each story poses a question by its end about human nature, black life in the US, religion, or romance in a fashion that kept me thinking about what I'd read long after I'd finished the story. This is never done in a way that needles the reader with overt virtue signalling, but instead invites internal conflict and reflection.
Despite a few stories that didn't land with me, this is a pretty excellent collection. Perhaps it was the pocket paperback, but I felt like each story asked me to think about what I was reading like I was back at school. For me, it made for stories that feel realistic but have massive symbolic and metaphorical grounding. It's the type of book that makes me want to think, discuss, and eventually revisit. For now, I'm going to pack this one up and send it by mail to a friend, but I hope you check it out too.
This the sixth book of my 2020 Pulitzer Challenge
The collection doesn't start strong, but after moving through the first story I was taken with McPherson's writing and range. These stories cut across a wide swath of the socioeconomic divide and McPherson handles each with skill and style. The Story of a Dead Man recounts a the life of a gangster and his many exploits as narrated by his cousin prior to a family supper. Meanwhile, I am an American places a black man in the UK navigating a robbery at his hotel, and A Sense of Story presents an open-and-shut murder case as more than it first appears. These twelve stories veer and swerve into different lanes, but each one manages to hit hard. Though the writing is continuously solid, the voice changes throughout these stories and is brought to life by pitch-perfect dialogue.
What I appreciated most about these stories are their ambiguity and refusal to offer easy answers to the reader. One of the beauties of the short story, in my opinion, is that they can leave the reader hanging in mid-air at the end of their telling. McPherson manages to straddle that line between narrative and thematic resolution. Each story poses a question by its end about human nature, black life in the US, religion, or romance in a fashion that kept me thinking about what I'd read long after I'd finished the story. This is never done in a way that needles the reader with overt virtue signalling, but instead invites internal conflict and reflection.
Despite a few stories that didn't land with me, this is a pretty excellent collection. Perhaps it was the pocket paperback, but I felt like each story asked me to think about what I was reading like I was back at school. For me, it made for stories that feel realistic but have massive symbolic and metaphorical grounding. It's the type of book that makes me want to think, discuss, and eventually revisit. For now, I'm going to pack this one up and send it by mail to a friend, but I hope you check it out too.
This the sixth book of my 2020 Pulitzer Challenge
grace_theliteraryfiend's review
4.0
Another short story collection and this time I wasn't bored to tears. For February I read James Alan McPherson's Elbow Room, it seemed like an appropriate read for Black History Month. McPherson won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for this collection of twelve short stories that explore the everyday lives of a eclectic group of people connected to the black community.
What I loved about this collection is that it felt so natural, each of McPherson's stories was about events or interactions that you, I, or anyone else could have. From talking to a stranger at the doctors office to being witness to a theft in a foreign country, the situations are not unto themselves exclusively black experiences. What McPherson does is beautifully take these interactions and experiences and retells them from the perspective of the black community. McPherson is a true master story teller, his stories are unique, they are engaging, thought provoking, and full of empathy. I can't imagine someone not liking this collection of short stories.
Some of my favourite stories in the collection were:
- The Silver Bullet - a comical tale of one man's attempt to join a street gang. If there was one man who was not meant to be part of any gang it is Willis Davis.
- Problems of Art - a pro-bono lawyer named Corliss Milford is set to represent Mrs. Farragot against charges of drunk driving, except the truth seems just out of reach.
- I Am An American - Leroy and Eunice are on vacation in London when they find themselves embroiled in a case of theft, where Leroy is the witness. The issue, the indivduals' who were robbed are Japanese tourists who speak very little english. Anyone who has travelled to foreign countries knows that somehow you will always end up as translator at some point in your travels.
- A Loaf of Bread - A store owner is accused of raising his prices in a predominantly black low-income community. The story is told from the perspective of the store owner and the leader of the protest group. This short story is a humbling look at human nature and greed (but not in the way you imagine).
If you are a fan of short stories I highly recommend this book, it was an easy read and always interesting. Or, if you are just looking for a good book to read for Black History Month then look no further, this is a great choice.
Happy reading everyone!
What I loved about this collection is that it felt so natural, each of McPherson's stories was about events or interactions that you, I, or anyone else could have. From talking to a stranger at the doctors office to being witness to a theft in a foreign country, the situations are not unto themselves exclusively black experiences. What McPherson does is beautifully take these interactions and experiences and retells them from the perspective of the black community. McPherson is a true master story teller, his stories are unique, they are engaging, thought provoking, and full of empathy. I can't imagine someone not liking this collection of short stories.
Some of my favourite stories in the collection were:
- The Silver Bullet - a comical tale of one man's attempt to join a street gang. If there was one man who was not meant to be part of any gang it is Willis Davis.
- Problems of Art - a pro-bono lawyer named Corliss Milford is set to represent Mrs. Farragot against charges of drunk driving, except the truth seems just out of reach.
- I Am An American - Leroy and Eunice are on vacation in London when they find themselves embroiled in a case of theft, where Leroy is the witness. The issue, the indivduals' who were robbed are Japanese tourists who speak very little english. Anyone who has travelled to foreign countries knows that somehow you will always end up as translator at some point in your travels.
- A Loaf of Bread - A store owner is accused of raising his prices in a predominantly black low-income community. The story is told from the perspective of the store owner and the leader of the protest group. This short story is a humbling look at human nature and greed (but not in the way you imagine).
If you are a fan of short stories I highly recommend this book, it was an easy read and always interesting. Or, if you are just looking for a good book to read for Black History Month then look no further, this is a great choice.
Happy reading everyone!
karencarlson's review
4.0
This story collection has a lot of variety. There’s outright hilarity, irony, social commentary, warm and gentle memoir, and some bro-lit. Themes of language and storytelling come up often, as do ideas of hiding what is true behind a façade and self-protection against emotional damage. Some stories are simple narratives; others are more complex, such as when an editor and narrator discuss a story, or when most of a story is made up of a court transcript. The first and last stories are absolutely stunning, in very different ways.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.
FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.
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