8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Missed Connections, July 6, 2006
This review is from: Elbow Room (Mass Market Paperback)
A man and his wife traveling in London have been told by friends to look up a local fellow named X, who will show them a good time. The man dials X's number.
"'They send warm regards from Atlanta,' I added smoothly.
'Yes,' X said. 'They're fine people. I always regretted I never got to know them well.'
'They're fine people,' I said.
'Yes,' X allowed. 'I've got a bit of a flu right now.'"
People keep doing that to each other in James Alan McPherson's "Elbow Room," a Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories first published in 1979 which revolves around the human inability to connect, whether because of racial, social, or romantic reasons, not to mention this guy in London, as seen in the charming, low-key "I Am An American," who simply can't be bothered to meet up with a pair of strangers and doesn't mind being cold about it. Here is a bittersweet, often pungent, often rambling series of tales in which the story is often less than the way it's being told.
Is it normal for a man to accost a woman in a doctor's waiting room and ask how she got that scar on her face? That's how "The Story Of A Scar" begins, and though the tale she tells is less involving upon reflection, McPherson's halting, sometimes querulous way of giving it to you reminds you of the power of narrative as character.
Points are less important, even to be avoided. Any story poised to make some point inevitably drifts off into other directions. McPherson's own identity as a black American writer is a pronounced part of "Elbow Room," and reflected in the blackness of the central characters, but any racial concerns found herein are often muted, as they are in "A Loaf Of Bread," the story of a Jewish storekeeper singled out for price-gouging practices by his black customers, by McPherson's reflections on the failed need of folks, whether they be merchant and customer or husband and wife, to come together.
The best story in the collection, by far, is "The Story Of A Dead Man," really a brilliant piece of writing equally harrowing and hilarious, featuring a sad washout of a street hood who, missing an eye and any options in life, has no pleasure left to him other than scandalizing his uptight cousin in front of the cousin's snooty wife and in-laws. Billy Renfro is one of those characters you never forget once you meet him, and McPherson gives him a vividness and style that would make for a worthy centerpiece in any novel.
There are a couple of other stories here I enjoyed reading, like "I Am An American" and "The Faithful," about a barber-preacher who won't adjust to changing times that is the book's most straightforward story and its clearest-eyed meditation on lost connections. But I had a hard time making my own connection to some of his other stories, less I think because I don't share McPherson's skin color than because he keeps himself intentionally obscure to his reader as a rule, and works his narrative devices in such a way that more conventional elements like character, story, and dialogue are left by the wayside.
While I often didn't get McPherson, I did find the experience of trying worthwhile. Nearly every story has something unique or arresting going for it. It's a more complicated form of fiction from an era when serious fiction was expected to be complicated like that, sometimes to its future detriment.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Snapshots, November 25, 2002
This review is from: Elbow Room (Mass Market Paperback)
Purposeful or not, the stories get progressively better as you move through the collection. But that does not mean that they do not start off well.
The three stories that made the biggest impact on me, however, are the last three. In particular, Enough for the City, a rumination on life and love, is enchanting and complex, and it is quite unbelievable that McPherson was able to achieve those qualities in so few pages. Perhaps the most manipulative of McPherson's stories, it is nonetheless clever and contemplative.
Take time to sit with this collection of short stories. I am quite certain that there are many aspects of the book that I missed, but will hope to gain a better understanding of the lives described as I think more about it.
Not only are the stories important tales to be told, they are also incredibly pleasant to read- with some very witty lines- such as the Southern African-American child's mother who suggested that if you work hard at being a good and upstanding individual, it meant that when you died, you would finally make it to......New York.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
MacPherson a Master of the Form, April 11, 2000
This review is from: Elbow Room (Mass Market Paperback)
In his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection, the author plays on our tendency to see people and events from inside our own little boxes. His characters are snared by assumptions, misled by appearances as they try to "read" experience and find and/or make places for themselves. The prose is gorgeous, full of sensory details and wit.
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