With his first collection of stories--some comic, others compassionate, all of them enthralling--Shepard again displays his prodigious writing talent. Ranging from winter-league baseball in pre-revolutionary Cuba to a postapocalyptic frontier in the American South, from the set of Murnau's classic horror film Nosferatu to more familiar scenes of family life, these 14 stories span an immense fictional landscape with great verve and humanity.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Jim Shepard's novels include Flights and Kiss of the Wolf. In this, his first short story collection, he skillfully varies his narrative voice and creates ingenious structural forms. In "Mars Attack," the narrator's childhood collection of science-fiction bubble-gum cards serves, as he digs each card out, to stir up painful memories. In "Nosferatu," Shepard invents a putative journal that the German silent film director F.W. Murnau kept during the making of the famous 1922 vampire movie, turning the director himself into a twisted Nosferatu-like figure. The title story is a comic evocation of three farm-league baseball players who travel to Havana in 1951, in search of wine, women, and baseball, only to tangle with a young Fidel Castro.
From Publishers Weekly
A memorable cast of characters faces various forms of alienation-psychological, political, physical, economic, social-in 14 alternately humorous and poignant short stories from novelist Shepard. Writing mostly in the first-person, Shepard crafts an astonishing assortment of utterly convincing voices. An apolitical American baseball player finds himself playing in Cuba during Castro's rise. A fighter pilot expounds on the rarefied thrills of flying F-15s. Spending the night with a friend from dance class, a privileged young girl struggles to endure less affluent surroundings. Legendary director F.W. Murnau chronicles his physical and emotional hardships during the shooting of Nosferatu. A self-reliant adult son feels marginalized by the mental illness of his brother. A troubled boy imagines his mother as the Vikings' workhorse running back, himself behind center while his father calls ineffective plays from the sideline as the bruising 1975 Steeler defense batters them after every snap. The division of stories into sections titled "Strangers" and "Family" proves an unfortunate editorial choice that unbalances the collection, but each of these seamless, insightful narratives stands vividly on its own. One hopes that this collection will send readers in search of Shepard's fine novels (Kiss of the Wolf; Lights Out in the Reptile House, etc.)
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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More About the Author
Jim Shepard was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and is the author of six novels, including most recently Project X, and four story collections, including the forthcoming You Think That's Bad (March 2011). His third collection, Like You'd Understand, Anyway, was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. Project X won the 2005 Library of Congress/Massachusetts Book Award for Fiction, as well as the ALEX Award from the American Library Association. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, Harper's, McSweeney's, The Paris Review, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, DoubleTake, the New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope: All-Story, and Playboy, and he was a columnist on film for the magazine The Believer. Four of his stories have been chosen for the Best American Short Stories and one for a Pushcart Prize. He's won an Artists' Grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at Williams College and lives in Williamstown with his wife Karen, his three children, and two beagles.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A MUST!,
This review is from: Batting Against Castro: Stories (Hardcover)
Great stories. Few writers would dare to rewrite Salinger's "Just Before the War with the Eskimos" in a white trash landscape and Roth's "The Conversion of the Jews" in a catholic school. But Shepard did it. And landed on his feet. Amazing! Read this and follow with the novel "Nosferatu" (a fragment included here). "Batting Against Castro" is all that a short-stories collection should be: a kaleidoscope vision of the world as we don't know it and, also, an intimate invitation to visit a writer's mind. A rare privilege.R.S.V.P. NOW!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty amazing stuff here...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Batting Against Castro: Stories (Hardcover)
If you're as sick as I am of cookie-cutter, writer's program writing, you should check out this fine collection of stories. Divided into two sections, "Strangers" and "Family," it manages to avoid every cliche going in contemporary American fiction. Shepard goes straight into the character, and if you don't like it, that's your problem. Quick example: "Who We Are, What We're Doing," in which you get a speed rap from a gung-ho flyboy who totally digs killing other people from his over-teched fighter plane. For three pages, you're there, like it or not. That's "Strangers" for you, but the "Family" is no less hard-edged. I usually burn out on a book of short stories after a couple, and lay it down to come back to later. Not with "Batting Against Castro." Shepard's a winner.-- Ed Ward
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Battling Against Castro,
By graeme sanderson (Williamstown, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Batting Against Castro: Stories (Hardcover)
Jim Shepard's collection here is a real treat. It's a must read, an innovative style with a fluid rhythm and enthralling nostalgia. Shepard has shown what a promising author he is with Nosferatu, and Battling Against Castro ups the ante.
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