McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales (Paperback)

~ Michael Chabon (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Chabon teams up with the editors of Dave Eggers's McSweeney's magazine to create a fiction anthology with an innovative, simple concept: the stories are driven by adventurous plots and narrative action, in contrast to the current trend toward stories that are "plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew," as Chabon writes in his introduction. The roster includes such heavyweights as Michael Crichton, Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Nick Hornby and Harlan Ellison. As the retro title might suggest, the collection is heavy on sci-fi and detective stories, often updated with contemporary twists. Crichton offers a detective yarn called "Blood Doesn't Come Out," in which a disgruntled PI takes out his frustration on his wife in a cheeky spin on the domestic violence that punctuates the pulp fiction of Jim Thompson and James A. Cain. Hornby's contribution is an entertaining sci-fi story called "Otherwise Pandemonium," about a man who buys a VCR that fast-forwards into an apocalyptic future. In Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes," a debilitating drug called Albertine wreaks havoc by sending users back in time to relive their memories. Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly" is a thoughtful story in which a woman climbs Kilimanjaro to bolster her self-confidence after experiencing a personal crisis, but proves oblivious to the deaths of three porters when the weather on the mountain turns ugly. Half a dozen or so stories are markedly slight, but overall this is a strong collection.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

A Vintage Contemporaries Original

Includes:
Jim Shepard's "Tedford and the Megalodon"

Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter"

Dan Chaon's "The Bees"

Kelly Link's "Catskin"

Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman"

Carol Emshwiller's "The General"

Neil Gaiman's "Closing Time"

Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium"

Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick"

Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn’t Come Out"

Laurie King's "Weaving the Dark"

Chris Offutt's "Chuck’s Bucket"

Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"

Michael Moorcock's "The Case of the Nazi Canary"

Aimee Bender's "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers"

Harlan Ellison's "Goodbye to All That"

Karen Joy Fowler's "Private Grave 9"

Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes"

Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance"

Sherman Alexie's "Ghost Dance"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (March 25, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140003339X
• ISBN-13: 978-1400033393
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #246,037 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #31 in

  Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( C ) > Chabon, Michael

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Haphazardly entertaining, May 4, 2003

By	mrliteral - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales was a book I really wanted to like. After all, it featured short stories from some really great writers, and the emphasis was going to be on adventure. I really wanted to like it, and found it disappointing that the book was only entertaining in spots.

The goal of the book, as Chabon states in the introduction, is to have an anthology of short stories in a more "classic" vein: the sort of stories that were published in decades past, filled with fun and mystery as opposed to the more literary, plotless, "moment-of-truth" stories of today. Unfortunately, this book did not make me long for yesteryear, but instead made me think that the passing of short genre fiction was not necessarily a bad thing.

The biggest flaw in the book is that the authors - almost all excellent at long fiction, seem to be unable to write a truly good short story. A couple stories, such as "The General" and "The Albertine Notes" are borderline unreadable. Most of the others are just so-so. Even Stephen King - who has shown over the years that he is adept in short fiction as well as novels - has contributed an only mildly okay story which is probably only best enjoyed by his Dark Tower fans. And Harlan Ellison - a master of the short story and an author who I really enjoy - is also a disappointment here, with a story which comes more as a Harlan Ellison parody than the real thing.

There are one or two gems in the bunch (but not much more). Nick Hornby and Elmore Leonard have written a couple good stories, but that's around it. Ironically, some of the stories seem to consist of the very material that Chabon is trying to avoid: for example, one story is nothing more than a character study of a woman climbing a mountain; there is no adventure or real conflict in the tale; it may be good writing, but it does not fit with the themes of the anthology.

Most people will buy this book because they enjoy one or more of the authors featured within. My recommendation is to read the authors you like and approach the others at your own risk.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars generally dreadful, April 3, 2003

By A Customer

The premise of this anthology was terrific-- round up a bunch of first rate (mostly "literary") writers and have them do stories that are unpretentious, unaffected, rip roaring good reads. Just look at the cover illustration and you know what I mean. But the more the literary the writers here, the more it's plain that most of them saw the project as a kind of fun-slumming and as a result, their work wreaks of condescension and self-parody. The only good stories here are written by the likes of Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock and Kelly Link. Genre writers all, but nevertheless heads and tails better than the likes of Rick Moody, Dave Eggers, Jim Shepard, Chabon, etcetera. If you want to read a knockout anthology that wonderfully achieves everything this antho doesn't, check out "CONJUNCTIONS:39-- The New Wave Fabulists" The contrast between the two collections is profound.

18 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars disappointing, April 5, 2003

By	Andrew C. McMurry (Waterloo, Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I had great hopes for this anthology, but to be charitable, it's not a must-read. Michael Chabon wanted to bring together strong genre and mainstream writers to reinvigorate the short story by turning away from the ubiquitous "moment of truth New Yorker-type" story toward the classic generic tale, i.e., the plot driven short. But the mainstream writers in this collection write as if they know they are slumming, and, ironically, they try too hard to elevate their stories above the very genres they are working in. Thus, the stories don't satisfy at any level, because they're neither very good at playing the generic game nor significant in their own right. As for the generic writers like Ellison, King, Leonard, and Moorcock--well, their stories are about what you'd expect, which means they don't really belong here at all. Their inclusion here mainly serves to underline the failure of the other writers to play the generic game with any success. (Not that these stories are particularly memorable either: Ellison's effort, for example, is a story I've read in one form or another in almost every one of his collections, and King's story from the Roland cycle could conceivably interest those readers who have had the extraordinary patience to follow the Roland cycle in the first place.) The bright spots are stories by Neil Gaiman and, surprisingly, Dave Eggars himself, publisher of McSweeney's. The latter is written with a great deal of care and respect for the reader and the genre (which I'd characterize as the Hemingwayesque travel-adventure tale) and it does manage to revivify that genre in a way the other stories all-too often fail to do. The low point is the execrable offering by Chris Offut, whose narrative conceit is that it was written over a weekend in time for the deadline but unfortunately reads is if it was written the night before. I won't say anything about the bizarre offerings by Sherman Alexie and Kelly Link, or the tired and threadbare plots of Nick Hornby and Michael Crichton.

Maybe what this collection proves is that hybridity doesn't always work. Or maybe what it proves is that one must know the generic rules before one breaks them. Or maybe it just proves I like my drinks straight.