Something to Be Desired

An excellent short story collection-McGuane's first-that affirms his place as one of America's most energetic and graceful writers. "A cornucopia of McGuane's grace, humor, gusto and smarts. ".

From one of our most deeply admired storytellers, author of the richly acclaimed , his first collection in nine years.

Set in McGuane's accustomed Big Sky country, with its mesmeric powers, these stories attest to the generous compass of his fellow feeling, as well as to his unique way with words and the comic genius that has inspired comparison with Mark Twain and Ring Lardner. The ties of family make for uncomfortable binds: A devoted son is horrified to discover his mother's antics before she slipped into dementia. A father's outdoor skills are no match for an ominous change in the weather. But complications arise equally in the absence of blood, as when life-long friends on a fishing trip finally confront their dislike for each other. Or when a gifted cattle inseminator succumbs to the lure of a stranger's offer of easy money. McGuane is as witty and large-hearted as we have ever known him — a jubilant, thunderous confirmation of his status as modern master.

From one of America’s most acclaimed literary figures (“an important as well as brilliant novelist”—) a major new novel that hilariously takes the pulse of our times.

The unforgettable voyager of this dark comic journey is I. B. “Berl” Pickett, M.D., the die of whose uncharmed life was probably cast as soon as his mother got the bright idea to name him after Irving Berlin. The boyhood insults to any chance of normalcy piled on apace thereafter: the traumatizing, spasmodic spectacle of Pentecostalist Sunday worship; the socially inhibitory accompaniment of his parents on their itinerant rug-shampooing business; the undue technical advancement and emotional retardation that ensued from his erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. What would have become of this soul had he not gone to medical school, thanks to the surrogate parenting of a local physician and solitary bird hunter?

But there is meaning to life beyond professional accreditation, even in the noblest of callings. Berl’s been on a mission to find it these past few years, though with scant equipment or basis for hope. Hard to say (for the moment anyway) whether his mission has been aided or set back by his having fallen under suspicion of negligent homicide in the death of his former lover. All the same, being ostracized by virtually all his colleagues at the clinic gives him something to chew on: the reality of small-town living as total surveillance more than any semblance of fellowship, even among folks you’ve known your whole life.

Fortunately, for Berl, it doesn’t take a village. And he will find his deliverance in continuing to practice medicine one way or another, as well as in the few human connections he has made, wittingly or not, over the years. The landscape, too, will furnish a hint in what might yet prove, if not a certifiable epiphany, a semi-spiritual awakening in I. B. Pickett, M.D., the inglorious but sole hero of Thomas McGuane’s uproarious and profound exploration of the threads by which we all are hanging.

The stories of are rich in the wit, compassion, and matchless language for which Thomas McGuane is celebrated.

Place exerts the power of destiny in these tales: a boy makes a surprising discovery skating at night on Lake Michigan; an Irish clan in Massachusetts gather around their dying matriarch; a battered survivor of the glory days of Key West washes up on other shores. Several of the stories unfold in Big Sky country: a father tries to buy his adult son’s way out of virginity; a convict turns cowhand on a ranch; a couple makes a fateful drive through a perilous gorge. McGuane's people are seekers, beguiled by the land's beauty and myth, compelled by the fantasy of what a locale can offer, forced to reconcile dream and truth.

Joe Starling, a man teetering on the edge of spectacular failures-as an artist, rancher, lover, and human being-is also a man of noble ambitions. His struggle to right himself is mesmerizing, hilarious, and profoundly moving.

Set in Key West-the nation's extreme limit-this is the story of a man seeking refuge from a world of drug addiction by becoming a skiff guide for tourists-even though a tough competitor threatens to kill him.

Patrick Fitzpatrick is a former soldier, a fourth-generation cowboy, and a whiskey addict. His grandfather wants to run away to act in movies, his sister wants to burn the house down, and his new stallion is bent on killing him: all of them urgently require attention. But increasingly Patrick himself is spiraling out of control, into that region of romantic misadventure and vanishing possibilities that is Thomas McGuane's Montana. Nowhere has McGuane mapped that territory more precisely — or with such tenderhearted lunacy — than in Nobody's Angel, a novel that places him in a genre of his own.

Thomas McGuane's high-spirited and fiercely lyrical new novel chronicles the fall and rise of Frank Copenhaver, a man so unhinged by his wife's departure that he finds himself ruining his business, falling in love with the wrong women, and wandering the lawns of his neighborhood, desperate for the merest glimpse of normalcy.

The result is a ruefully funny novel of embattled manhood, set in the country that McGuane has made his own: a Montana where cowboys slug it out with speculators, a cattleman's best friend may be his insurance broker, and love and fishing are the only consolations that last.

Declining celebrity Chet Pomeroy, attempts to win back Catherine, the girl whom he married (or perhaps did not marry) in Panama several years before. His quest for Catherine takes him to Key West, Florida, a centre of commercialism and corruption where nightmares stalk his waking hours.

A heroic young man is in pursuit of a spoiled rich girl, a career, and a manageable portion of the American Dream.

In a masterpiece of savage comedy, the author of the bestselling "Nothing But Blue Skies" writes of the perverse Whitelaw patriarch, a man who exerts his control, even in death, by means of a will that binds the family fortune to a failing marriage.

From the highly acclaimed author of and comes this collection of breathtakingly exquisite essays borne of a lifetime spent fishing.

The thirty-three essays in take us from the tarpon of Florida to the salmon of Iceland, from the bonefish of Mexico to the trout of Montana. They bring us characters as varied as a highly literate Canadian frontiersman and a devoutly Mormon river guide and address issues ranging from the esoteric art of tying flies to the enduring philosophy of a seventeenth-century angler. Infused with a deep experience of wildlife and the outdoors, both reverent and hilarious by turns, sets the heart pounding for a glimpse of moving water and demonstrates what dedication to sport reveals about life.