The Least You Need to Know: Stories [Paperback]

Lee Martin (Author), Amy Bloom (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1996

Lee Martin was born in Illinois. He earned his MFA from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His stories have been widely published in journals including The Georgia Review, Story, Double-Take, New England Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train Stories. He received a Nebraska Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction (1995) as well as Individual Arts Fellowships in Fiction from the Ohio Arts Council (1987) and the Tennessee Arts Commission (1989).

"Together, the pieces make for a hauntingly coherent first collection, often about pitiful family scenarios in which loyalties are tested, lies offered and exposed, and in which ironies abound. . . . Bleak, midwestern landscapes well serve many of these stark and solid narratives."-Kirkus Reviews

". . . Throughout the book, Martin's writing is sensitive and lucid . . . . The characters he writes about are utterly real . . . their concerns and joys are perfectly identifiable and voiced with passion."-Publishers Weekly

"Most of the stories in this debut collection revolve around the relationship between teen-age sons and their fathers in the Midwest of the 1950s and 60s. Although Lee Martin favors endings in which the young protagonist's world is shattered by a selfish paternal act, he manages to infuse each of these similar situations with its own particular twist . . . . What (his characters) learn . . . is just how easily a life can come apart."-The New York Times Book Review

"The Least You Need to Know is Lee Martin's first book, and a strange and familiar one it is. There must be a thousand stories . . . about the relations of fathers and sons: the hokiest of themes, covered since Telemachus went in search of Odysseus. . . . Martin's real, and promising, gift is to turn this cliche back into the urgent, intensely personal myth of growth it really is, and always has been."-San Jose Mercury News

"Martin's stories are solidly crafted, imaginative, and stoically compassionate."-BookLovers

"Martin succeeds with his own portraits, with his own skill for precise and intricate detail. . . . [t]he most exciting moments in Martin's writing come not from the dramati

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"When I was a boy," opens the title story in this accomplished debut collection, "my father cleaned up crime scenes. Murders, suicides." This is the starting point for many of these narratives: a teenage 1960s protagonist whose father is in the business of death and whose mother is a bit dreamy and dissatisfied. In "Light Opera," Perry Sievers, an undertaker's child struggling to find a balance between his father's detachment and his own hot rebelliousness, is drawn into a beautiful and frightening act of petit larceny. The father in "The End of Sorry" is a strikebreaker at an abattoir, who unsuccessfully fights his wife's involvement with another man. There are exceptions to the pattern, notably "The Price Is the Price," in which a Jewish father tries to come to terms with his estranged son, a pro wrestler. The most resonant story in the book is "The Welcome Table," in which the Thibodeaux family, caught up in a cemetery scandal, flees to Tennessee seeking anonymity. Instead, father and son start training lunch-counter protesters by allowing them to practice nonviolent responses to verbal abuse, and the family gets caught up in a racial incident that threatens to divide them. Throughout the book, Martin's writing is sensitive and lucid, only occasionally veering into the florid. The characters he writes about are utterly real, if somewhat uniform (the fathers are tough and mysterious, the mothers have quirky hobbies like eggshell painting). But their concerns and joys are perfectly identifiable and voiced with passion.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A fine debut of seven stories, winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction--all, save one, previously published in literary magazines. Together, the pieces make for a hauntingly coherent first collection, often about pitiful family scenarios in which loyalties are tested, lies offered and exposed, and in which ironies abound. A number of Martin's dull and witless men (as seen by their teenage sons/narrators) work in death-related jobs, which often cut their families off from normal lives. In the title story, a son witnesses the mental disintegration of his father, who works cleaning up crime scene fatalities. It's a job that satisfies his increasingly bizarre rage for order, an expression of the same obsessive neatness that drives his wife to distraction. ``Light Opera'' concerns the son of an undertaker who begins to see the appeal of his father's strange life as a constant mourner and affirms it by lying on his father's behalf. A cemetery manager leaves New Hampshire in scandal (``The Welcome Table'') and assumes a new identity with his family in Tennessee, where he forces his son into early civil rights involvement, which the son rejects. Indeed, the sins of the parents often bear upon the children in these tales of justice and revenge. A father's job as a scab worker at the local meat-packing plant destroys his son's happy life in ``The End of Sorry.'' In the long ``The Price Is the Price,'' a Jewish merchant in goyish Evansville, Illinois, tries to win back his assimilated son by developing an inexpensive housing project for black people, but the father's business drive gets the better of him. In two short bits, old people join together out of fear (``Small Facts'') and contemplate ``sin and offense'' (``Secrets''). Bleak midwestern landscapes well serve many of these stark and solid narratives. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Sarabande Books; First Edition edition (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0964115131
• ISBN-13: 978-0964115132
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #902,741 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lee Martin is the author of the novels, The Bright Forever, a finalist for the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction; River of Heaven; Quakertown; and the forthcoming Break the Skin. He has also published two memoirs, From Our House and Turning Bones, and another memoir, Such a Life, is set to appear in 2012. His first book was the short story collection, The Least You Need To Know. He is the co-editor of Passing the Word: Writers on Their Mentors. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in such places as Harper's, Ms., Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, The Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, and Glimmer Train. He is the winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Ohio Arts Council. He teaches in the MFA Program at The Ohio State University, where he was the winner of the 2006 Alumni Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dominant fathers with feet of clay and quirky artistic moms., February 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Least You Need to Know: Stories (Hardcover)

First off, this is a beautifully designed book, a wonderful art object in its own right. Most of the stories are set in the midwest, and feature troubled adolescent boys trying to figure out the world in the context of dysfunctional and poignant family settings. A great book for classroom use as well, due to the incredible imagination and storytelling skill-Lee Martin takes historical reality and asks "what if?"

5.0 out of 5 stars great read, November 2, 2010

By 

Nasser A. Nagi (Dublin, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Least You Need to Know: Stories (Paperback)

lee martin has an excellent, very easy to read writing style and this book about his upbringing doesn't disappoint.

5.0 out of 5 stars Comparable to Salinger, October 10, 2008

By 

Leroy2006 - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Least You Need to Know: Stories (Paperback)

One of the best short story collections I have read. Comparable in many ways to Salinger.