Release date: April 1, 2003 | Series: Ballantine Reader's Circle
Fitting Ends is the first collection of fiction by the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist Among the Missing and now appears in this newly revised edition with two never before collected stories.
Written before Among the Missing and originally published by Northwestern University Press, Fitting Ends features thirteen stories detailing the almost panicked angst of the American generation now approaching thirty. Struggling with gaps between youthful expectations and adult experiences, these characters long for understanding and acceptance—but are thwarted by failed love, family disruptions, numbing work, and sexual confusion.
Chaon is one of the most promising new voices in fiction, and this re-issued collection offers further evidence of his unique talent.
“The best of these stories . . . possess a rare, disorienting force. When you look up from them, the quality of light seems a little different. It’s a reminder to those of us who have almost forgotten what literature can sometimes do.” —Boston Book Review
“The most honest, observant and timely book written this year about the American generation now approaching thirty . . . Chaon speaks with clarity of feeling, and more than a little oddball wit, about the lives of those left behind the demographic curve of America—men and woman with pointless jobs, doughy faces, soured relationships, bad credit. . . . Each story pulls you into its subtle emotional vortex, largely because of Chaon’s knack for simple but poignant detail.” —New York Newsday
“Remarkable . . . Each story is a marvel of complexity, dense with meaning and nuance. . . . Very few first works are as solid, moving, and pitch-perfect as Chaon’s.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer
“[AN] OFTEN PERCEPTIVE, LUCID VOICE.” —The New York Times Book Review
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“Powerful . . . A writer to savor . . . Dan Chaon shows a marked affinity in both setting and sensibility with fellow Midwesterners Wright Morris and Willa Cather.” —Chicago Tribune
From the Inside Flap
Fitting Ends is the first collection of fiction by the acclaimed author of the National Book Award finalist Among the Missing and now appears in this newly revised edition with two never before collected stories.
Written before Among the Missing and originally published by Northwestern University Press, Fitting Ends features thirteen stories detailing the almost panicked angst of the American generation now approaching thirty. Struggling with gaps between youthful expectations and adult experiences, these characters long for understanding and acceptance?but are thwarted by failed love, family disruptions, numbing work, and sexual confusion.
Chaon is one of the most promising new voices in fiction, and this re-issued collection offers further evidence of his unique talent.
?The best of these stories . . . possess a rare, disorienting force. When you look up from them, the quality of light seems a little different. It?s a reminder to those of us who have almost forgotten what literature can sometimes do.? ?Boston Book Review
?The most honest, observant and timely book written this year about the American generation now approaching thirty . . . Chaon speaks with clarity of feeling, and more than a little oddball wit, about the lives of those left behind the demographic curve of America?men and woman with pointless jobs, doughy faces, soured relationships, bad credit. . . . Each story pulls you into its subtle emotional vortex, largely because of Chaon?s knack for simple but poignant detail.? ?New York Newsday
?Remarkable . . . Each story is a marvel of complexity, dense with meaning and nuance. . . . Very few first works are as solid, moving, and pitch-perfect as Chaon?s.? ?The Cleveland Plain Dealer
?[AN] OFTEN PERCEPTIVE, LUCID VOICE.? ?The New York Times Book Review
Dan Chaon is the acclaimed author of Among the Missing, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and You Remind Me of Me, which was named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle, The Christian Science Monitor, and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Chaon's fiction has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Short Stories, Pushcart Prize, and The O. Henry Prize Stories. He has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award in Fiction, and he was the recipient of the 2006 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Chaon lives in Cleveland, Ohio, and teaches at Oberlin College, where he is the Pauline M. Delaney Professor of Creative Writing.
This is a fine collection of stories by a young writer whose intuitive grasp of life's ambiguities combines with a well-developed storytelling ability to give the reader much to enjoy and ruminate on. Mostly set in a small town in western Nebraska, these stories have youthful protagonists who are often at a loss or are simply lost. Their lives have veered off course, somehow, or gone into a stall, and they're like the recovering young alcoholic in "Going Out," who is sober but bewildered, losing ground, finally walking down a dark country road in his boxer shorts, startled by the ghostly face of a curious cow.
There is the mystery of identity that runs through many of these stories, from the young man in the first story "My Sister's Honeymoon: A Videotape," who ponders his sister's personality change when she gets married, to the high school student in "Transformations," whose older brother has revealed himself as not only gay but a female impersonator. In "Fraternity," a young man discovers that a fraternity brother injured in a car accident is no longer the person he once was. A girlfriend in "Rapid Transit" tells a young office worker, "You're not who you think you are."
Meanwhile children struggle to understand their parents. In two stories, the mothers have histories of mental illness. In another, the title story, a young man puzzles over a wayward older brother whose life seems to take a fatal turn after the telling of a lie. The richness of how circumstance alters and often diminishes identity is particularly well drawn in this story. The protagonist, on a visit home, reflects on how the loose threads of lives may come together for a moment in the mind's eye or the heart, like the neat ending of a short story, but because life is not art they unravel again.
While all this may sound a bit bleak, it is not. The stories leave you with uncertainties about the characters, whose lives are often tentative and touched with unresolved regrets, but there is a lightness and a degree of irony about them that make their ambiguities linger afterward in a way that's nicely gratifying. For another collection of well-written stories with a rural setting, I recommend Kent Meyers' "Light in the Crossing." Also, set in a small town not far from Chaon's fictional St. Bonaventure, Nebraska, there's Kent Haruf's fine novel, "Plainsong."
In this varied collection of short stories Chaon proves he is a master of the medium. All the stories are highly readable, I never found myself skipping forward with some stories to see how many pages I had to the end. My enjoyment from this collection reminded me of reading the old Story magazine for those of you familiar with that magazine.
One curve ball for some readers might be the first story "My Sister's Honeymoon: a videotape", which of all the stories is the most atypical. Initially it seemed a bit episodic but give it a chance, the theme emerges slowly. Most of the stories revolve around small towns in Nebraska but they never seem repetitive. Over the course of the book the reader is introduced to a cast of widely divergent characters.
Some might find the stories a bit dark but I find a wry, sardonic aspect that is somehow satisfying and saves the writing from that uniform bleakness typical of writers affecting a post-modernist pose. The stories are about people who are in difficult circumstances but there is an honesty to Chaon's writing that compensates for the melancholy mood. The last story "Fitting Ends" is probably the most potent of the collection but its moodiness is not gratuitous. It really gives you a lot to think about which ultimately is the reason I love Chaon's writing.
At the end of the book there is an interview with Chaon which will be of interest to those wishing to know more about his motivations and methods.
Dan Chaon is a fabulous writer and all the stories in this collection are worth reading but the title story, Fitting Ends, is a universe unto itself: it is a perfect distillation in simple, infinitely resonant language of the incalculable pain of individuals stunted by family dynamics of alienation and heartbreak.
