Fun with Problems [Hardcover]

Robert Stone (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 2010

In Fun with Problems, Robert Stone demonstrates once again that he is "one of our greatest living writers" (Los Angeles Times). The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length—some are almost novellas, others no more than a page—but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return. Fun with Problems showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses--by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive--that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Lonely and frustrated lives are explored in this new collection from the National Book Award–winning author of Dog Soldiers. Stone's evocative prose treads through the murky waters of dead dreams and waning hopes, bringing out the pathetic and nasty side of people warped by addiction, sex, violence and time. Characters are almost blind to redemption, like the alcoholic professor-artist of The Archer who lashes out at a world that wants to celebrate him, or the Silicon Valley executive in From the Lowlands who has built a mansion, only to discover that no matter how much of the world you conquer, there's always something hunting you. High Wire, a story about a Hollywood screenwriter's on again/off again affair and friendship with a bipolar actress, condenses the years between the death of Elvis Presley and the rise of Bill Clinton into a wrenching treatise on love, addiction, success and failure. Stone doesn't just let his wounded characters whimper in the corner. He turns them loose on a world hard enough to knock them down but indifferent enough to not care about them once they're gone. (Jan.)
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From Booklist

These stories are no feel-good tonic. Stone does not dabble in the heartwarming, but rather mines the depravity of weirdos whose success resides in having not died by the end of the story. In the entanglements Stone crafts, mere survival is no small feat. The stories are witty and diverse and are all unified by some element of brokenness. Whether it be alcoholic painter, drug-guzzling screenwriter, or small-town attorney, each protagonist remains despicable yet demands a certain sympathy. Everyone is broken, but nothing has yet to fall apart. In “High Wire,” a story about the unraveling of a Hollywood set, Stone writes “Suffering is illuminating, as they say, and in my pain I almost learned something about myself.” Each character comes closer and closer to truth, but heartbreakingly, never quite turns the corner. You know they are on the right track though and that makes suffering with these characters enjoyable. The epithet for Fun with Problems could read: folks who don’t fail all of the time. --Blair Parsons

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1ST edition (January 11, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618386254
• ISBN-13: 978-0618386253
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #788,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ROBERT STONE is the author of seven novels: A Hall of Mirrors, Dog Soldiers (winner of the National Book Award), A Flag for Sunrise, Children of Light, Outerbridge Reach, Damascus Gate, and Bay of Souls. His story collection, Bear and His Daughter, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and his memoir, Prime Green, was published in 2006.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad Stories, Told So Well, November 28, 2009

By 

Adam Rust "a_rust" (Durham, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fun with Problems (Hardcover)

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Remarkable. I have read Dog Soldiers, but this is of a different order. This is a book about what comes after hope. Stone puts it best in the last story, when, a character compares his seascape to that of an earlier artist:

"The good early stuff, all those wild whirling colored lights, was about the teeming overripe possibilities of the coming age...maybe his was about the exhaustion of those possibilities, the disappearance of that time, the great abridgment of the popular age. The ghost of a century, a show closing down for the lack of interest."

To me, that is a broader statement that is not about two paintings, but really about two eras. Stone is an artist now, but he came of age at a brighter time, when people were re-imagining the possibilities for lives and for our society. Now, forty years on, Stone is assessing his, and his generation's, finistere. Those ideas resonate throughout this book.

Stone's collection of sevens stories presents a set of individuals who experience the costs of substance abuse, or of failed integrity, or of dreams set aside. They are people who have betrayed their hopes, in small ways or great: an actress whose final role will be overdose, a writer who make copy for lad mags, a classicist who writes software manuals.

One aspect of these stories is their tendency to end suddenly. The fall comes quickly, out of nowhere. These people have accidents. In particular, the chorus of drinkers, free-basers, and tweakers in these pages meet with a lot of misfortune.

This book reminds me of some of the writing of Raymond Carver. With its setting in modern California, it makes me think of how Robert Altman interpreted Raymond Carver in Short Cuts. It has echoes of Frank Bascombe or Jernigan. These are people living at the margins, struggling with their own temptations. These stories feature actors, writers, and musicians who have lost their way. It is not a dirge, in spite of its content. Sometimes this book is absolutely funny.

My favorite story involves a formerly successful college painting professor. Having wrecked his marriage and his reputation, he has recently taken to making a living as a lecturer on the second tier speaking series. Maybe it is beneath him. After all, should a great painter be forced to eat imitation crab meat? If he does, should he assume the responsibility to let his guests know that they are actually eating red paste in a tube, made by people who laugh at Americans for eating it? And, if they can't serve whiskey on a Sunday in Pahoochee, would it be appropriate to order some kind of amphetamine? Yep, it ends badly for him. I can't blame him, I suppose. Imitation crab meat is a problem.

I don't believe in giving a lot of five star reviews. If I can't put it down, if I find myself arriving late to appointments, if I am reading while everyone around me is socializing - then I relent. This, for me at least, was one of those books.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fun Vs. Problems, January 20, 2010

By 

Mark Eremite "This Is A Display Model Only" (Seoul, South Korea) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fun with Problems (Hardcover)

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It both dismays and delights me to have discovered Robert Stone. Dismayed because he's apparently been around for awhile, and I'm only just now learning about him. Delighted because I'm just now learning about him.

This isn't a very long collection, but if these seven short stories are any indication, Stone doesn't need many words to strike the bull's eye of meaning. His lines are confident but also delicate with detail. He's one of the best wordsmiths I've stumbled across since Chang-Rae Lee or David Mitchell.

Words he puts together elegantly; plots, maybe not so much. I could complain that the stories all seem like they are about the same kinds of people having the same kinds of fun with the same kinds of problems, and that complaint's legitimate. (The synecdoche of this little book: "No one would convince him that character was fate..." That, or "They couldn't take a punch and you couldn't wake them up with one.") I don't think this singularity of purpose is a flaw, though, and I gather it is probably also one of the collection's main points.

No, the only real problem with any of these stories lies in the awkward and inelegant plot construction. For someone with a poets ear for the cadence of words, Stone oddly gets the cadences of life just a little bit wrong, rending some stories too short, some too long, and some like Frankenstein mish-mashes of different tales. Here's my take on all seven:

FUN WITH PROBLEMS: Peter, divorced public defender, inexpertly consoles his client and becomes damagingly connected with a woman looking for self-control. Peter is an unlikeable and predictable person, and his motivations aren't incredibly interesting. 3/5

HONEYMOON: The shortest piece of the book, this depressing little vignette is poetic but barely accessible. 2/5

CHARM CITY: A schizophrenic story about lonely, ineffectual Frank and the woman who seduces him. Although it's the only real story to have a chewy and obvious moral, it also has some of the best characterization. 4/5

THE WINE-DARK SEA: A weirdly splintered story about three men and the different madnesses (cultural, social, and professional) they are possessed with. Intriguing, but the ending seems cartoonish and out of place. 4/5

FROM THE LOWLANDS: Leroy is wealthy, self-absorbed, and treats the world like a machine he invented as a child. He lives high on a gorge, but is brought low by a nameless visitor. Leroy's mastery and charm is expertly portrayed; his dismay and concern is not. 4/5

HIGH WIRE: A screenwriter and an aging actress meet, separate, and meet again over the course of their drug-addled, love-tortured lives. I can see a lot of people hating this one - it sprawls so much that it's a handful of missing punctuation away from being stream-of-consciousness - but I think it reads like a slowing pulse. Their meets grow weaker and further apart in time, but there's a purpose to them that Stone delivers through the achingly eloquent narrator. 5/5

THE ARCHER: This is the only time I've ever read about madness and experienced it vicariously with such clarity. Duffy, an artist/teacher, is still recoiling from his divorce when he makes a trip to deliver a lecture and suffers a nervous breakdown. This one, unlike the breakdowns suffered in so many of these other stories, is told from the inside out. The ending rings a little hollow, but it's also beautifully done, maybe Stone's way of saying that, yes, it's all rather depressing, but there are also reasons to smile. Someone, at any rate, should be having fun. 5/5

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fun (With Problems), December 3, 2009

By 

K. L. Cotugno (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Fun with Problems (Hardcover)

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Each story in this slim collection is a gem, worthy of standing on its own. In each instance, someone is headed on a collision course between their past and their present, which is usually the point of all short stories. But the difference in Stone's collection is his strength as a writer, his ability to distill an entire history in economical prose, holding the reader's attention and in many cases causing the breath to quicken, the pulse to race. There are many surprises, the most pervading feeling is one of suspense, and there is regret when the book is completed. Highly recommended.