Garbage [Paperback]

Stephen Dixon (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Shaney Fleet is the owner of a working-class bar, and his problem is garbage. When a private hauler tries to coerce Shaney into purchasing collection services, he resists. Soon no hauler will remove his black-listed trash, and garbage that is not even his own begins to appear at his front door. Ultimately, his apartment is torched, his head bashed in, and his bar closed by the health department. In this well-wrought parable of modern urban life, literal garbage becomes a metaphor for the petty encumbrances, bureaucratic entanglements, and apparently insoluble problems that surround Shaney. As in the works of Kafka and Beckett, the mood is at once ominously threatening and irrepressibly comic. Albert E. Wilhelm, Tennessee Technological Univ., Cookeville
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Paperback: 165 pages
• Publisher: Cane Hill Pr; 1st edition (June 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943433002
• ISBN-13: 978-0943433004
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,661,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Stephen Dixon is the author of twenty-seven works of fiction including, most recently, Phone Rings and Old Friends (both published by Melville House). His novels Interstate and Frog were both finalists for the National Book Award. Frog was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His work has received the O. Henry Award, the Best American Short Stories award, the Pushcart Prize, The American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, and he has been a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Breathless, desperate and gripping, July 27, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Garbage (Paperback)

Fast-paced, panicky, comic, stressful, insufferable, and not without moments of grace. On page one, the narrator, a barkeep, is approached by thugs who want to pressure him into using their mob-controlled garbage service. The story progresses from there. The story is told in a matter-of-fact style by a narrator who defines resilience and individuality. A book of desperation but also of hope for the human spirit.

5.0 out of 5 stars Great., June 28, 2010

By 

Bob Swain "Seattle" (Seattle) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Garbage (Paperback)

This book is exactly the opposite of its title. It should be read by every American.

I can't understand why it hasn't become one of the greatest of American classics. I read it twenty years ago and can't forget it.