Tabloid Dreams: Stories [Paperback]

Robert Butler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 15, 1997

A New York Times Noteworthy Paperback, 1997

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Robert Olen Butler's last short story collection, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, was a keen, piercing book told largely in the voice of Vietnamese immigrants to America. To say that his new collection is a departure is an understatement: Butler has taken actual headlines from the more outrageous of the supermarket tabloids and fashioned short fiction around them. Headlines such as "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed," "Woman Loses Cookie Bake-Off, Sets Self on Fire," and "Every Man She Kisses Dies" are the starting points for this quirky volume from one of the most original American writers at work today. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Endlessly playful, inventive and daring, Butler (They Whisper) challenges himself with each new book. He does so again in this intriguing collection of 12 short stories in which he combines the bizarre and the matter-of-fact with remarkable legerdemain. What at first seems a blatant device proves instead to be an interesting catalyst: the titles mimic lurid tabloid headlines, but Butler develops such howlers as "Help Me Find My Spaceman Lover" and "Woman Hit by Car Turns into Nymphomaniac" into eerie or outlandish situations that become funny and affecting stories capable of touching universal chords. Each tale has a first-person narrator, ranging from a nine-year-old boy who kills mobsters with insouciance to a jealous husband who is reincarnated as a parrot bought by his former wife. In one irreverent but poignant story, JFK, in hiding since the (unsuccessful) assassination attempt, attends the Jackie auction, where he muses on his late wife's naked body. Although in each entry the epiphanic moment arises from a surreal situation, the format does not result in any sameness of tone, voice, plot structure or setting; the latter include an Alabama trailer park and a Manhattan book editor's plush office. A few stories ("Doomsday Meteor Is Coming"; "Woman Loses Cookie Bake-Off, Sets Self on Fire") try too hard, but the collection has a strong emotional impact, especially when one reaches the last story, which echoes the first, both of which are inspired by the sinking of the Titanic.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks (October 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805055894
• ISBN-13: 978-0805055894
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #647,923 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Tabloid Dreams wake up the sleeping mind., March 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Tabloid Dreams: Stories (Hardcover)

Robert Olen Butler has put together a collection of fantastic stories fashioned from the headlines of tabloid magazines in Tabloid Dreams. The cover alone would prompt a would-be reader to pick the book up and flip through its pages. Disbelief turns to compassion as the reader takes a walk in the lives of Butler's extraordinary, but yet strangely ordinary, characters. The titles of the stories are directly quoted from tabloid headlines, but the stories are not the sensationalism that one would expect from a book with "tabloid" in the title. Butler weaves his stories with amazing care and towards the end of the book the reader begins to notice startling similarities between all of Butler's unusual characters. A boy born with a tattoo of Elvis shows us a glimpse into the life of the Elvis we 'think' we know, and a woman who catches her cheating husband with her glass eye learns a hard lesson. From a Titanic survivor trapped in a waterbed to a dead husband brought back as a pet bird, the reader ceases to see freaks and begins to see real people with feelings and emotions. The most startling thing about the book is that readers may actually find themselves identifying with the characters and after finishing Tabloid Dreams may also find themselves looking at humanity with a new attitude and a slightly askew view. Picking up a tabloid in the supermarket may not be a joke anymore

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fun change from his norm, January 8, 1999

By 

Leonard L Thompson - See all my reviews

This review is from: Tabloid Dreams: Stories (Paperback)

In this collection of short stories, Butler leaves (for once it seems) his experices of Vietnam behind and writes what can only be considered a series of fun and funny stories. If you are looking for deep, thought-provoking literature, read one of his other works, but if you are looking for a fun collection written by a great writer--Tabloid Dreams is for you. People look down on this collection because it isn't as poignant or "intellectual" as some of his other works...but who cares? It's fun...a great read.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Offbeat & Original, March 5, 2003

By 

Lee Armstrong (Winterville, NC United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Tabloid Dreams: Stories (Paperback)

"Tabloid Dreams" is like the sit-com version of the works of Edgar Allen Poe. There are so many dead bodies by the time we get to the end of the collection that we marvel at all the different ways they've died. In "Titanic Victim Speaks Through Waterbed," we see an Englishman who falls in love if only for a moment on the deck of the Titanic and urges the lady to get into a lifeboat and live. He dies and has numerous observations on life as he wafts around in a ghostly existence. The collection concludes perfectly as with bookends with the same incident told through the eyes of the woman in "Titanic Survivors Found in Bermuda Triangle." After having gotten into the lifeboat and mysteriously slept decades before rescue, she decides life really isn't worth living and offs herself in a bathtub. We see a widow who enters a cookie baking contest and sets her apron on fire, a parrot who is the reincarnation of his wife's dead husband fly into a window, a nymphomaniac put a meteor through a guy's brain who is busy kissing her feet, a nine-year old hit man who leaves a trail of bodies, a woman with a death kiss whose lovers drown, get baseballs smashing their brain or die in auto crashes, JFK who wasn't killed at an auction of Jackie's belongings who did die, and the whole planet gets blown up when struck by a meteor. 2 stories do not have dead bodies like the boy with the tatoo of Elvis and the court reporter with a glass eye who puts it in a glass of water to spy on her husband having an affair; but they probably would have liked to kill someone! Butler does a great job of making us look at the world from a different perspective. This collection is delightfully offbeat and original. Enjoy!