Emperor of the Air [Paperback]

Ethan Canin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 1989

Highly acclaimed and wildly successful, Ethan Canin's first book combines exquisite precision, humor, and a rare maturity of observation, capturing those miraculous moments when life opens up and presents itself to us. Here are short stories by a writer under thirty that aren't about existential emptiness. Full of life, rich with personal history, plot, and revelation, the stories in Empeor of the Air are the work of an extraordinarily gifted young writer.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Canin's outstanding debut, winner of a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship, gathers nine stories originally published in the Atlantic, Esquire and Ploughshares, among others; two were selected for the Best American Short Stories 1985 and 1986. At 27, the gifted author, a Harvard Medical School student who was a creative writing instructor and an Iowa Review editor, informs a technical expertise with a keen sense of the dynamics of the human psyche. His far-reaching vision encompasses "The Year of Getting to Know Us," where the protagonist recognizes in himself aspects of his father's disturbing uncommunicativeness, and "American Beauty," where a teenager cannot escape his bitter older brother's grim prescription of life's inevitabilities: "You're going to turn into a son of a bitch, just like me." Several of the marvelous tales showcase love's singular, redemptive powers: an elderly couple revives their comatose relationship in "We Are Nighttime Travelers"; a daughter bribes a guard to release her mother who is caught shoplifting in "Pitch Memory"; and a straight-arrow husband lies for his wife in "Where We Are Now." With a fine attention to detail, Canin continually surprises readers as he casts the mundane in new light (for example, the young narrator of "Star Food" unloads bags of potato chips in their aluminum racks "as if I were putting children to sleep in their beds").
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This collection is the deserving winner of a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. The nine stories show their young author to be a worthy successor to such distinguished past winners as Philip Roth, Elizabeth Bishop, and Robert Penn Warren. Writing primarily in the first person, Canin speaks convincingly in a variety of fictional voices: a deprived Iowa teenager, a 69-year-old astronomy teacher, a troubled husband in southern California, a young woman harried by her mother's disappointments. Canin's ordinary Americans are memorable individuals caught in situations leading to sudden, still moments of comprehension. This is an engrossing achievement, recommended for all fiction collections.Starr E. Smith, Georgetown Univ. Lib., Washington, D.C.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (March 7, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060972084
• ISBN-13: 978-0060972080
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,217,323 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, compelling writing, March 6, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Washington, D.C.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Emperor of the Air (Paperback)

I read this collection of stories by Ethan Canin 10 years ago, and continue to recommend it as an absolute must for anyone who enjoys fiction. The writing is straightforward and evocotive, and the plots are about real experiences that it seems almost everyone, regardless of age, race or class, will find almost eerily familiar. I agree with the reviewer who loved "We Are Nighttime Travelers." I was 29 when I read it, but my reaction was completely visceral. "Star Food" and "Where We Are Now" have the power to be classics as well. My former literature professors might send me out of class if they heard me say this, but I honestly feel these stories are very different from much of the "literary" fiction we read these days. Canin never writes over our heads. He never tells stories that appeal only to intellectual minds or to an inside group of reader/writers who have all spent time at the same fellowship programs and writers colonies. He respects his readers and has the courage to go straight for the heart. Every good story should be suspenseful, and Canin creates an irrestible sense of "what will happen now?" from the very first line. He gives us stories with beginnings, middles and ends that linger in the mind for years. Obviously, I just can't say enough. . .

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A triumph of style, July 22, 2001

By 

J. Gilmore "jonnygil" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Emperor of the Air (Paperback)

Canin's prose is very natural, sparse and elegant simultaneusly. Because of that, if he can continue to produce he will likely be read for a long time. As far as the substance of his stories . . . At times I did feel that he was overreaching-the title story was not my favorite. However, I enjoyed and gained (I feel) from all of them. "Where We Are Now" is an honest study on the lost dreams of a midwestern couple in LA. I also very much liked "The Year of Getting to Know Us," about a man revisitng his distant relationship with his dying father.

I am impressed with Canin's ability to shift from 1st to 3rd person and back, and with the exception of "Pitch Memory," create interesting, authentic characters. I think he is a very talented writer, talented enough to forgo cuteness and pretension. As far as criticsm, there is a sense of repitition reading the stories, as all of the main characters are essentially dreamers. But the book *is* called "Emporer of the Air," and I think that the stories are different enough, reflecting crises at adolesence, early adulthood and old age, that they read and feel distinct. One story is about an older brother leaving home, another a dying old man emotionally estranged from his physically present wife, and another is about an old man who longs for something to care for. The stories may be too subtle for some, and parts may displease others for opposite reasons. Ultimately, though, it is telling that Walker Percy gave "Emporer of the Air" his endorsement, as it is at times similarly magical to Percy's "Moviegoer."

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite rendering of dialogue, September 18, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Emperor of the Air (Paperback)

This book was literary star Ethan Canin's first, a collection of short stories. I'm not a huge fan of short stories, but I'm a Canin fan, so I read it, and I'm glad I did. He's able to find compassion, loveliness, and surprise in the everyday lives of people. In the tale "We Are Nighttime Travelers," a retired couple rediscovers their love for each other, and in "Star Food," a boy protects the identity of someone stealing groceries from his parents' store. His writing is straightforward but exquisite and should have a wider appreciation among the reading audience.
Emperor of the Air was written during Canin's years as a medical student in Boston, reminding me of parallels with another boy wonder, Daniel Mason, who likewise wrote a dense and mesmerizing novel (The Piano Tuner) while he was in medical school in San Francisco. That it's possible to write like this while fellow classmates are struggling just to keep from flunking out just stuns me.