Customer Reviews

Elbow Room: Stories (Scribner Signature Edition)

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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.

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.

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.

McPherson has an exquisite ability to create characters full of complexity and move them through stories like a chess master. The stories where white and black American lives intersect are compelling and full of unexpected twists masterfully told.

This set of twelve short stories is an introspective into the lives of people who live in our very communities but have never gotten around to knowing them very well. James McPherson explores that world and brings it to us in an almost lyrical way from a most colorful experience in the fourth-grade to a pastor who loses his flock because he cannot adjust to modern times to a young couple that must deal with their respective parents in a mixed marriage. This 1978 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a look into a mirror and we see the diversity that has become our culture heritage.

Collected here are a dozen stories which deal with people's lives, families, interactions, relationships, and experiences as a part of African American society. The result is an engrossing group of stories that move quickly and enjoyably. My only qualm is that perhaps I didn't feel it deserved the Pulitzer, but only mildly. It's good reading.

This was a terrific read because it helped me better understand African American, male fiction in period between Ralph Ellison and James Baldwin and later writers such as Walter Mosley and Paul Beatty. McPherson's stories seem fresh and his narrative voice stays with a reader long after the book is placed down. He creates simple scenes and then uses powerful, short, declarative sentences to move the stories forward. I enjoyed this so much that I purchased it later on, autographed, by the author.

I have read many Pulitzer Prize winning books of fiction, and some of them are a collection of short stories. I am not a big fan of collections, but this one seems to be an easy read.

I found Mr. McPherson to be a master story teller, and his stories are very entertaining.

I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in short stories and pulitzer prize books in general.

As Americans we are raised to feel the need for a little space all around us. It is certainly a cultural thing. We are always asking for a little "elbow room" whether it is just to breathe in a crowded room, or to take some time out to think far away from everyone else. James Alan McPherson's Pulitzer-winning short story collection deserves its own "elbow room" as well; each story merits a chance to sit and think, about social interactions, missed opportunities, and fate-al attractions.

Each story stands well on its own, and even though another Amazon reviewer said that the stories get better as the book progresses, I have to disagree. The very first story, entitled "Why I Like Country Music" is a wonderful look back at childhood love and how that memory can still reverberate even today just with a few bars of country music; most definitely my favorite. Though, don't let that stop you, there are many more gems interspersed throughout.

In the middle of the collection is "The Story of a Scar" where a seemingly innocent, "just making pleasant conversation" question, starts off an intense story of love and reminds one how sometimes poor choices can not only continue to haunt you for the rest of your life, but how they can leave physical marks as well. "I am An American" involves an African American couple. When they are ditched by their "friend of a friend," the husband inadvertently becomes part of a mini detective saga with a couple of Asian men.

All of the stories explore relationships or lack thereof, including interracial coupling and even just day-to-day interactions between blacks and whites and between just black people themselves. They are about connections, missed or made, but also what happens when you give yourself some "elbow room" from a person, a memory, or a place in time and look back and consider what may have been. This space also may allow you to see someone else's point of view, a view that may not have been possible (as in "A Loaf of Bread") without taking that step back.

Make sure you give yourself some "elbow room" to sit and enjoy these stories, but also between each one, to really think about what they are saying outright or whispering between the lines. McPherson's stories are highly readable and intensely meaningful.

The first story is for all you boys that had crushes on girls in elementery school, and I'm sure you all did