That's True of Everybody [Hardcover]

Mark Winegardner (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 2002

The proprietor of a bowling alley whose artist daughter paints only
phalluses. A ninth-grade girl who marries in haste only to be faced with impotence. A libidinous poet who learns the meaning of harassment. A gifted basketball player whose fraternal twin sister is awarded $200,002 for being pregnant. The life and loves of a professional lawn mower. The life and death of a drive-in movie theater.
All of these elements make up the multicolored canvas of Mark Winegardner's debut short-story collection. Winegardner, whose rich and epic novel, Crooked River Burning, gave the much maligned city of Cleveland, Ohio, a fresh and vibrant aspect, returns to the Midwest that he knows so intimately and casts a piercingly compassionate eye on its denizens who lead lives of not necessarily quiet desperation. The result is a kaleidoscopic picture of a people who are arrogant and humble, faithful and disloyal, driven and floundering-a people who are, finally, America itself.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Laced with acid wit and withering realism, the 13 stories collected here describe lives of aimlessness and muted disaster in the Midwest. In a section called "Tales of Academic Lunacy: 1991-2001," Winegardner (Crooked River Burning; The Veracruz Blues) satirizes bureaucratic hijinks at a small college with great humor but only middling originality. In "Keegan's Load," a poet who has self-published all his poems receives an endowed chair and a cushy course load; in "The Visiting Poet," a teacher who seduces bohemian female students is exposed but ultimately given tenure and a significant pay raise. Elsewhere, individuals wander from psychological trough to trough without ever collapsing completely, sometimes even achieving triumphs. The burned-out radio sportscaster who narrates "Halftime" leads a life so unsatisfactory that he can't even keep himself awake at the wheel of his car although his drowsiness is partially a medical condition, its metaphorical aspect looms over the story like a hungry python. In "Rain Itself," a gigantic young teenager working as a landscaper bests a bullying co-worker in a perverse game of "chicken" played out on a bridge over a railroad track a small victory in a simple life. In "Travelers Advisory," a maladjusted young woman goes to a job interview in a blizzard instead of attending her father's memorial service, atoning by leaving messages on her father's answering machine. The homey, relaxed voice telling the stories is one you've probably heard before while it is readable, it becomes rather monotonous. These lyrical, down-to-earth tales of loss and emptiness in the heartland could probably have reached farther but then again, so could their characters.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Winegardner follows up his impressive debut, Crooked River Burning, with this story collection.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1st edition (July 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151008647
• ISBN-13: 978-0151008643
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,791,875 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark Winegardner was born and raised in Bryan, Ohio, near Exit 2, a town of 8,000 which supplies the world with its Dum-Dum suckers and Etch-a-Sketches. His parents owned an RV dealership there, and every summer he traveled with his family across the USA in various travel trailers and motorhomes. By the time he was 15, he had been in all 48 contiguous states. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Miami University and went on to receive a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing from George Mason University. He published his first book at age 26, while still in graduate school. He has taught at Miami, George Mason, George Washington, and John Carroll Universities, and is now a professor in the creative writing program at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Winegardner has won grants, fellowships and residencies from the Ohio Arts Council, the Lilly Endowment, the Ragdale Foundation, the Sewanee Writers Conference and the Corporation of Yaddo. His books have been chosen as among the best of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Chicago Sun-Times, Los Angeles Times, the New York Public Library, and USA Today. His work has appeared in GQ, Playboy, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, DoubleTake, Family Circle, The Sporting News, Witness, Story Quarterly, American Short Fiction, Ladies Home Journal, Parents and The New York Times Magazine. Several of his stories have been chosen as Distinguished Stories of the Year in The Best American Short Stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best collection I've read in 5 years, March 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: That's True of Everybody (Hardcover)

I first read Winegardner with his epic, brilliant novel CROOKED RIVER BURNING, a book I can't recomment highly enough. It was a pleasure, and even a shock, to see him as at home writing short stories as he is writing a big, visionary novel.

I'm not sure if there's any American writer who's been shortlisted as often for Best American and other prize anthologies and been overlooked by the annual judge. But it's important to note that the stories here that have had such attention--"Keegan's Load," "Song for a Certain Girl," "That's True of Everybody" (which appeared in TriQuarterly and is collected here as "The Untenured Lecturer") and "Ace of Hearts" are, as a group, as good a quartet of stellar stories as you're going to see from any writer the past five years.

I very rarely give 5 stars to books, but this one blew me away.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A major writer, fully in stride, November 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: That's True of Everybody (Hardcover)

I began reading Winegardner's work after hearing him read his funny and disturbing story "Keegan's Load" in front of a truly wowed crowd of about 1000 people here in Madison, Wisconsin. I bought his story collection that day, and was frankly shocked that all of it was as good as that story. I don't remember taking so much pleasure in discovering a writer since I first read Lorrie Moore. Since then, I have read both his novels -- The Veracruz Blues (excellent) and Crooked River Burning (a masterpiece). Winegardner is about to become pretty famous, once his sequel to THE GODFATHER comes out. He's a much better writer than Mario Puzo, so prepare yourselves. In the meantime, read this book now so that once Winegardner hits it big, you can pride yourself on being ahead of the curve.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Enormous heart and skill, August 25, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: That's True of Everybody (Hardcover)

This is a hell of a good book: audacious without being showoffy, full of heart without ever stooping to sentimentality. The first story, "Thirty-Year-Old Women Do Not Always Come Home," is a particular stunner: that rarest of short stories--the sort that manages to get a 300-page novel into a 20-page story, without the effort ever showing.

Many of these stories have showed up as Distinguished Stories in Best American Short Stories, and one, "Keegan's Load,"is in the new New Stories from the South (2003). He'll be a regular in those annuals for years, I bet -- unless he does such a good job with the sequel to The Godfather (don't be surprised if it's better than Puzo's) that he sticks to novels from here on. I doubt that, though. No one with this much evident love for short stories is likely to abandon the form.