Author: Thomas McGuane
Knopf, 2006
Best ebook deal: Sony eBook Store (ugh)
| C4 Ratings.....out of | 10 |
|---|---|
| Language..... | 8 |
| Entertainment..... | 7 |
| Depth..... | 6 |
| Range..... | 9 |
It’s difficult to discuss as a coherent whole any book of short stories, but especially a collection like Gallatin Canyon, whose most notable quality is a vast range between the register, tone, and language of each story.
McGuane fearlessly builds characters of various genders, races, education levels, professions, sensibilities, and dispositions. He strides as confidently into the life of a grumpy philandering retired lawyer as into that of a prostitute who makes extra money by rolling on her johns.
My one complaint is that McGuane seems to focus on the variety of his characters to the detriment of the trips he takes them on. He spends a lot of words setting scenes, and proving that he knows his stuff when he talks about sailing or herding cattle. He spends so much time building the lives of his characters that he rarely has enough time left to push them finally into trouble.
His stories are ultimately admirable, but never equally as entertaining.
Let me give you an example of McGuane’s impressive range. Here’s a passage from a story called “Old Friends”:
Briggs was negotiating for a tiny community in Delaware that was being blackmailed by a flag manufacturer for tax abatement against purported operating costs, absent which they threatened to close and strand 251 minimum-wage workers.
Compare that to a passage from a story called “Cowboy”:
Fall come around and when we brought the cavvy down, two of them old-timers who’d worked so hard was lame. One was stifled, the other sweenied, and both had crippling quarter cracks. I thought they needed to be at the loose-horse sale, but the old sumbitch says, “No mounts of mine is gonna feed no Frenchmen,” and that was that.
And here’s a passage from a story called “The Refugee”:
Not far away, a big ketch with the steering vane and ratlines of a long-range cruiser tugged politely at her rode.
Clearly, McGuane has the ability to change registers, lingos and personalities at will, and he likes to do exactly that.
There are a few stories that have plots and situations that match the level of detail of the setting. One such story is “Old Friends,” about a pair of lifelong friends who don’t much care for each other, but still feel obligated.
While a couple of these stories find pay dirt, I found myself for the most part uninterested in the doings of McGuane’s characters. While “Cowboy” is a pleasurable read, it’s not a page-turner, and I had trouble remembering it after I’d finished. I never cared, really, about anything that happened, and I’ve got a theory as to why.
The stories of Gallatin Canyon are defined by their settings. The story “Cowboy” is simply that: a story about a cowboy. McGuane creates his characters from the outside in, establishing their boundaries first—their gender, race, and, most of all, profession—and then sketches them out within those boundaries. His character almost always stay inside those boundaries.
The story about old friends concerns things that happen to old friends, and the story about an alcoholic sailor concerns things that happen to an alcoholic sailor. The characters never take risks and never transcend their stations, and so their actions are never truly unpredictable and never truly compelling.
It’s a shame, but McGuane’s ability to channel such a variety of people, the hallmark of this collection, is ultimately its limitation as well.
Similar books: Bear and His Daughter, by Robert Stone; Close Range: Wyoming Stories, by Annie Proulx
