Going Home Again (Hardcover)

by Howard Waldrop (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The fantastic inventions and whimsical nostalgia in these nine stories suggest that Waldrop (Night of the Cooters) is either a pulp writer born out of his time or an autodidact from another world. Although many of these stories have appeared in science fiction publications like Amazing Stories and Omni, they are as close to Robert Coover as they are to Isaac Asimov. There's an alternate version of Dickens's A Christmas Carol and a Damon-Runyonized retelling of the fairy tale "The Brementown Musicians." Most of these stories revolve around curious what-if ideas tightly wrapped in oddball erudition and tied up with snappy dialogue. The best and subtlest of these is the opening "You Could Go Home Again," which takes place on a USA, Inc. Airship and slowly reveals its hero, a writer recovering from a near-fatal illness, to be Tom (not Thomas) Wolfe living in 1940. Elsewhere, one finds Peter Lorre, a refugee from a successful Nazi Reich, performing in a Brecht cabaret in "The Effects of Alienation" and Mexican masked wrestlers in an apocalyptic match with overtones of medieval mystery plays in "El Castillo de la Preserverancia." Only in the case of "Flatfeet!," in which a Keystone-Kops-meet-monsters scenario reflects Spengler's Decline of the West, do Waldrop's crazy-quilt themes wear too thin. To round out this collection and proclaim its roots, there is "Scientification," in which a tribe of intelligent insects lives on a dark, chilly earth in the distant future, a straight science fantasy out of H.G. Wells or Weird Tales.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this quirky, imaginative collectionAhis seventhAWaldrop proves that you can go home again, as long as you pack your rod, your singing saw, and your wrestler's mask. His introduction describes the poverty of the short-story writer's life, and Waldrop's solutionAfishing. These stories include a rewrite of "The Brementown Musicians," peopled with city gangsters from the 1920s, a new Scrooge in a new "Christmas Carol," and a Mexican masked-wrestler story. In most of these stories, Waldrop creates alternative histories: what if Hitler had won, what if World War II had never happened, what if Wolfe had survived and lived on with brain damage? Waldrop is adept at using lingo from various periods and is equally adept at Spanish phrases. With slogans and lots of period detail, he vividly captures the feel of each era, and as an added bonus, after each story he gives a brief history of how that story came into being. Clever, humorous, idiosyncratic, oddball, personal, wild, and crazy, these stories will certainly attract new readers for this writer. Recommended for all fantasy collections.ADoris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 222 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (July 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312185898
• ISBN-13: 978-0312185893
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,131,496 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Complicated But Well-Written Stories, December 27, 2001

By	Jon G. Jackson "j_dog_jackson" (Santa Rosa, CA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I'm another dyed-in-the-wool Waldrop fan. If you search elsewhere, you'll see that I've reviewed another of his books with very high praise. But this one has troubled me somewhat. Some of the stories are utterly remarkable, with some truly outstanding writing. Well, *all* of them are quite well-written, researched to the hilt, and then laid out for the reader to grapple with. And grapple we do.

I can't help but compare this Waldrop with the one I met in 1988. This one is far more cynical. This one has withdrawn into his own interests completely. This one is much harder to relate to. If anything, he's an even better writer than he was before. (When you do get what he's writing about, it's a knock-out blow!) Perhaps I should say, he's more eccentric?

But, I think I agree with another reviewer here, in that I wondered several times...WHY was this story written? Does it stand alone, if one is unfamiliar with the research? Some of them do, yes! Others maybe do, maybe don't. Still, his senarios remain completely convincing, and one feels compelled to see them through. Overall, well worth the read (definitely!), but not as classic as his earlier stuff.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy it before it vanishes forever!, July 16, 1998

By	Nick Mamatas (New York) - See all my reviews

Howard Waldrop's latest collection of "alternate reality" SF defies all convention. His "what if the Nazis won WWII" story brings Shemp Howard, Zero Mostel, Peter Lorre and Brecht's widow together in an absurdist play about a journey to Mars, the Red planet. Fats Waller and Tom Wolfe hang out on a dirigible. Three Mexican luchadors fight off ancient Aztec gods. That's just the beginning. Each story also has an afterword which also solves the riddle of the alternate reality and gives an insight into Waldrop's writing process. Waldrop's books never hang around the stores for long (he has about $6 in his bank account) and his stuff can be shelved under Science Fiction, Literature or anything else. I found my copy under Hunting/Fishing. Buy it on-line before it disappears!

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars New Collection From an American Treasure, August 24, 1998

By A Customer

Howard Waldrop is an American treasure, and like most, seriously overlooked. Although considered a "science fiction" writer, Waldrop isn't so easily categorized (a likely reason for his not being well-marketed). Anyone who has read and enjoyed the works of Kim Newman, Christopher Moore, Bradley Denton, William Browning Spencer and Terry Bisson will find something to like in Howard Waldrop and "Going Home Again" is a good place to start. Actually, it's the _only_ place to start unless you search for the classic, but sadly out of print, collections such as "Howard Who?", "Night of the Cooters" and "Strange Monsters of the Recent Past." Get this one now before it joins those titles.