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Hiding Out
Hiding Out is a collection of hilarious, sparkling stories about people avoiding the consequences of their poor decisions. A jilted lover dresses as a robot to win back the heart of an ex-girlfriend. A man builds a time machine to embrace the identity he always denied. Playful and empathic, these misadventures feature lonely hearts failing terribly to make a connection.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
9 people are currently reading
604 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Messinger
13 books124 followersCo-publisher of Featherproof Books, books editor of Time Out Chicago, founder of The Dollar Store Show, Boston native, Chicago dweller. Don't trust anyone with more friends than books.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
November 28, 2007
The publishing of this book is an occasion to celebrate. There are many wonderfully sincere, humbling moments in each of these stories. Many of them involve characters stuck in dream worlds filled with obstacles they struggle to overcome during waking life. Rich, seductive things happen to these characters, magical things, moments charged with wonder and compassion, originality and most notably, honesty.
Perhaps the greatest achievement here is the balancing act Messinger manages to pull off. He's like a skillful boxer, socking you upside the head with genuine, tender drama while simultaneously working your body with real moments of humor and levity. Part of his charm lies in his ability to inspect life's inequalities and contradictions without flinching. This is an author with the censor switch turned off and that's the best kind. His readers will benefit from all of his candidness and imagination. We get glimpses into the lives of some of the most refreshing characters to grace the page in quite some time. Don’t dip a toe first (he didn’t), plunge headfirst into Messinger's pool of outcasts, ghosts, wiseacres and heartbreakers… you won't be sorry.
Perhaps the greatest achievement here is the balancing act Messinger manages to pull off. He's like a skillful boxer, socking you upside the head with genuine, tender drama while simultaneously working your body with real moments of humor and levity. Part of his charm lies in his ability to inspect life's inequalities and contradictions without flinching. This is an author with the censor switch turned off and that's the best kind. His readers will benefit from all of his candidness and imagination. We get glimpses into the lives of some of the most refreshing characters to grace the page in quite some time. Don’t dip a toe first (he didn’t), plunge headfirst into Messinger's pool of outcasts, ghosts, wiseacres and heartbreakers… you won't be sorry.
February 5, 2008
I really liked the cover. The stories were good, too.
October 21, 2014
In his disparaging late-1950's book about Chicago, "The Second City," New York journalist AJ Liebling notes that the only Chicago author worth his salt that had not fled the city was Nelson Algren. The comment has enlivened what Liebling would consider to be my Chicagoan inferiority complex, and has me defensively running around reading as many Chicago authors as I can find. In the after-life, I will confront Mr. Liebling. "James T. Farrell may have gone to New York," I will say, "but Joe Meno stayed," and never mind that Liebling wasn't a fan of Farrell, anyway.
Messinger is an active figure in the Chicago literary scene, frequently hosting readings, writing for Time Out Magazine, and fathering featherproof Press. "Hiding Out" reflects his presence in Chicago. The stories are set here, and believably so. Surprisingly, he is originally from Boston (still not sure if I believe that). The authenticity of his Chicago-based stories is a testament to how much of a feel Mr. Messinger has for his adopted home. It is a challenge, it seems, for some authors to write of any place except that of their origin, even while in exile.
There is enough range displayed to keep this collection into settling into an easy rhythm. Subjects range from a high school slam poet savant, replete with commentary on cultural exploitations and miscommunications, and a tale of an ex-boyfriend stalking, dressed in an elaborate robot costume. The titular connection in the stories--the poet hides on stage, from himself, the stalker behind an impenetrable Iron Man wall, etc.--lends consistency to the book.
I look forward to more books by Messinger, and am excited to explore the rest of featherproof's roster. Also, he is doing a reading at Roosevelt University next Wednesday, April 10, which should be radical awesome.
Messinger is an active figure in the Chicago literary scene, frequently hosting readings, writing for Time Out Magazine, and fathering featherproof Press. "Hiding Out" reflects his presence in Chicago. The stories are set here, and believably so. Surprisingly, he is originally from Boston (still not sure if I believe that). The authenticity of his Chicago-based stories is a testament to how much of a feel Mr. Messinger has for his adopted home. It is a challenge, it seems, for some authors to write of any place except that of their origin, even while in exile.
There is enough range displayed to keep this collection into settling into an easy rhythm. Subjects range from a high school slam poet savant, replete with commentary on cultural exploitations and miscommunications, and a tale of an ex-boyfriend stalking, dressed in an elaborate robot costume. The titular connection in the stories--the poet hides on stage, from himself, the stalker behind an impenetrable Iron Man wall, etc.--lends consistency to the book.
I look forward to more books by Messinger, and am excited to explore the rest of featherproof's roster. Also, he is doing a reading at Roosevelt University next Wednesday, April 10, which should be radical awesome.
July 19, 2013
Strong all the way through, dark and smart and lonely. Best of all is “Bicycle Kick,” which has a passage I love so much I want to kiss it on the mouth:
***
“So there are no ill effects?” I asked.
“Well, as I said, you could die.”
I looked him in the eye, my one good eye flicking back and forth between the two of his.
“So, if you had to give me odds for living another forty years, say until I was seventy, what would the odds be?”
“I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”
“Ten to one? One hundred to one?”
“I’ve never really understood what that means,” he said.
“Just give me the odds.”
“Of you living till you’re seventy?” he said. “I’d say it’s thirty-five, seventy-five.”
I shook my head. Dr. Owen and his nineteenth-century frame, blunt disregard for my need to be reassured and fucked-up math was too much. This man was making my world small. I imagined he was a moon who had just eclipsed me.
***
***
“So there are no ill effects?” I asked.
“Well, as I said, you could die.”
I looked him in the eye, my one good eye flicking back and forth between the two of his.
“So, if you had to give me odds for living another forty years, say until I was seventy, what would the odds be?”
“I’m not very good at that sort of thing.”
“Ten to one? One hundred to one?”
“I’ve never really understood what that means,” he said.
“Just give me the odds.”
“Of you living till you’re seventy?” he said. “I’d say it’s thirty-five, seventy-five.”
I shook my head. Dr. Owen and his nineteenth-century frame, blunt disregard for my need to be reassured and fucked-up math was too much. This man was making my world small. I imagined he was a moon who had just eclipsed me.
***
June 26, 2008
Good and odd short fiction. I really, really enjoyed the fact that every bit of this book had story elements to it...the colophon page, the about the author, the catalog. Great actualization of using the entirety of the book (okay almost the entirety) to create dialogue. The stories were fast, funny and often moving in an unexpectedly relateable way.
April 3, 2009
Messinger is cute. and clever. I'll give him that. But in a lot of the stories, he relied on that cuteness too much. I'm not saying the characters aren't realistic (in his his stories at leas that are TRYING to be realistic), or that often his descriptive language isn't fresh. It's just that, at the end of the day, or rather, by the last line, few of the stories here add up to much more than what they were: a way to pass the time in a train station in china. Which there are far worse things to read to pass the same time. I'd take Messinger over practically anything on the bestseller list.
But I wanted more than just amusing little stories. And maybe it's because his character's were always so passive and pathetic that it got old and I didn't know what to make of a book of so many lame people. And in his crazier stories, well, I don't know why they were crazy other than for novelty. I didn't get anything from the additional level of time machines, ghost dreams, and angels. Some could argue, as they have with so many other speculative things: there is nothing to "get." But I always felt like I should be getting something, like the story was just weird because it could be. Like choosing a black narrator or a chinese narrator as he did for two stories. It felt like a device to prove his work doesn't just appeal to his white demographic. even though the stories were more or less the same, but oh, he's black, or, oh he's chinese. Which could be the point. But the stress of the blackness or chinese-ness felt forced.
That being said, a few stories like "Wrought Iron" packed a punch with their closing lines that added the missing level to the story I wanted, redefining in one sentence everything you'd just read, or at the very least, confirming your suspicions, sating your curiosity without wrapping anything up. Likewise, "You can never forget" handles past and present overlays well enough to create a strong emotional sense of nostalgia even for one who's never had a kid. And for him to be able to do this in such a small space for a reader who can't even begin to comprehend the "like father like son" thing from the father's perspective . . . well it is impressive.
But I wanted more than just amusing little stories. And maybe it's because his character's were always so passive and pathetic that it got old and I didn't know what to make of a book of so many lame people. And in his crazier stories, well, I don't know why they were crazy other than for novelty. I didn't get anything from the additional level of time machines, ghost dreams, and angels. Some could argue, as they have with so many other speculative things: there is nothing to "get." But I always felt like I should be getting something, like the story was just weird because it could be. Like choosing a black narrator or a chinese narrator as he did for two stories. It felt like a device to prove his work doesn't just appeal to his white demographic. even though the stories were more or less the same, but oh, he's black, or, oh he's chinese. Which could be the point. But the stress of the blackness or chinese-ness felt forced.
That being said, a few stories like "Wrought Iron" packed a punch with their closing lines that added the missing level to the story I wanted, redefining in one sentence everything you'd just read, or at the very least, confirming your suspicions, sating your curiosity without wrapping anything up. Likewise, "You can never forget" handles past and present overlays well enough to create a strong emotional sense of nostalgia even for one who's never had a kid. And for him to be able to do this in such a small space for a reader who can't even begin to comprehend the "like father like son" thing from the father's perspective . . . well it is impressive.
July 9, 2010
Perfect for fifteen minute in-between-whatever reads, Hiding Out had me cracking up in inappropriate places.
I immensely enjoyed two storied in particular: Bicycle Kick and Not Even the Zookeeper can Keep Control.
Bicycle Kick opens with a kick in the face. Upon being rushed to the ER, the main character finds out that the-foot-to-his-face has left only black eye, but his cat scan reviled two previously present head aneurysms side by side. While the average aneurysm could be removed by a simple procedure, this man's case was too risky, in danger of erupting the second aneurysm thus killing him immediately. He left the hospital diagnosed "a walking time bomb". The aneurysms could erupt at any given time, or maybe never. But fret not; humor ensues.
In Not Even the Zookeeper, a man-eating wolf is the newest animal addition. “Tourists went to the zoo and watched it from behind bulletproof glass. The wolf salivated at the sight of the onlookers, drool lolling from his jaws and, on occasion, he pointed at the most frightened as if ordering at a deli", but it isn't long before he escapes. . .
Short story short, I recommend this book to anyone who likes to laugh. I hope I never meet the person who doesn’t.
Also: this book fits in an oversized pocket. +!
I immensely enjoyed two storied in particular: Bicycle Kick and Not Even the Zookeeper can Keep Control.
Bicycle Kick opens with a kick in the face. Upon being rushed to the ER, the main character finds out that the-foot-to-his-face has left only black eye, but his cat scan reviled two previously present head aneurysms side by side. While the average aneurysm could be removed by a simple procedure, this man's case was too risky, in danger of erupting the second aneurysm thus killing him immediately. He left the hospital diagnosed "a walking time bomb". The aneurysms could erupt at any given time, or maybe never. But fret not; humor ensues.
In Not Even the Zookeeper, a man-eating wolf is the newest animal addition. “Tourists went to the zoo and watched it from behind bulletproof glass. The wolf salivated at the sight of the onlookers, drool lolling from his jaws and, on occasion, he pointed at the most frightened as if ordering at a deli", but it isn't long before he escapes. . .
Short story short, I recommend this book to anyone who likes to laugh. I hope I never meet the person who doesn’t.
Also: this book fits in an oversized pocket. +!
December 7, 2007
[A] striking debut...reading his succinct stories is as natural as breathing. But like the quick, fool-the-eye, knock-you-flat moves of kung fu (a recurrent theme), these tales of lonely, brooding, sweetly romantic guys pack covert and concentrated power.—Chicago Tribune
Messinger’s stories are aching, not bleak, and the collection, wittily and expressively illustrated with Rob Funderburk’s line drawings, is fun, engaging, and a bit more than thought-provoking. A fresh, spot-on debut.—Mark Eleveld, Booklist
Nothing is as it seems: A jilted lover dons robot armor to win back the heart of an ex-girlfriend; an angel loots the home of a single father; a teenager finds the key to everlasting life in a video game. In this much-anticipated debut, one of Chicago's most exciting young writers has crafted playful and empathic tales of misguided lonely hearts. Sparkling with humor and showcasing an array of styles, Hiding Out features characters dodging consequences while trying desperately to connect.
Messinger’s stories are aching, not bleak, and the collection, wittily and expressively illustrated with Rob Funderburk’s line drawings, is fun, engaging, and a bit more than thought-provoking. A fresh, spot-on debut.—Mark Eleveld, Booklist
Nothing is as it seems: A jilted lover dons robot armor to win back the heart of an ex-girlfriend; an angel loots the home of a single father; a teenager finds the key to everlasting life in a video game. In this much-anticipated debut, one of Chicago's most exciting young writers has crafted playful and empathic tales of misguided lonely hearts. Sparkling with humor and showcasing an array of styles, Hiding Out features characters dodging consequences while trying desperately to connect.
January 8, 2009
Although I immediately recognized this as "good" writing and a "solid" collection, it took me the first few stories to really feel immersed. And then I realized what the problem was with this book I was supposed to like; no, love much more than I was: I had entered the secret world of boys, unfamiliar territory to be sure. No wonder I felt two steps removed...
But then, but then! The most amazing thing happened. I began to understand, to hang on every word and nuance. See, now I know secrets. Boys, I know your secrets. I have been the detached older sister in the rec room, the sexed-up woman in the pool, the brother's girlfriend, the longed-for ex. And now I know how I was seen through all their eyes.
Fresh off the pool story, I asked a date what he was like as a child. I suspected a brick-thrower. Sure enough, he said he was often frustrated and acted out violently. I saw the brick go flying through the air...But I know, I know now that isn't a bad answer. Just a true one.
But then, but then! The most amazing thing happened. I began to understand, to hang on every word and nuance. See, now I know secrets. Boys, I know your secrets. I have been the detached older sister in the rec room, the sexed-up woman in the pool, the brother's girlfriend, the longed-for ex. And now I know how I was seen through all their eyes.
Fresh off the pool story, I asked a date what he was like as a child. I suspected a brick-thrower. Sure enough, he said he was often frustrated and acted out violently. I saw the brick go flying through the air...But I know, I know now that isn't a bad answer. Just a true one.
September 27, 2007
This is going to be good... I was right. It was good, amazing even. The collection both starts and ends with strong, heartrending stories. And all the ones in between are just as good. My favorites are probably "Bicycle Kick" and "True Hero," but all of them made me smile and sometimes laugh out loud and more than a few made me feel a little pang of sadness for the characters and the situations they found themselves in. Several I've read more than once and I'm sure I'll be revisiting many more of these lovely stories.
May 26, 2014
I thought about giving this an extra star for the two stories included in the end, one as part of the about the author section and the other as the blurb about the book. Most of these stories are good to great, and they're actual stories with a plot and beginning, middle, and end, unlike a lot of stories that read as though you were just dropped in to the middle of some random episode or event. But there were still one or two clunkers in here. Overall, though, they were well-written and interesting. Quick read. Looking forward to reading more from this publisher.
February 24, 2014
Here's a funny story: I bought this book on a whim, admittedly drawn in both by the synopses and the accompanying art, and I decided I'd only read it on the plane to China. I didn't finish it then, put it away for maybe a year and started reading it on the plane to Japan. Finished it now of course. It was bizarre, but somehow relatable. The way it was broken up was just enough to satisfy yet leave you wanting a bit more. Will probably read again at some point.
December 1, 2007
This is an excellent collection of short stories from the Time Out book review editor. Hiding Out is real people: petty and profound, hip and hilarious. If you want to hear me express myself a bit better on this subject, see my review at http://www.ink19.com/issues/november2...
June 25, 2009
I read this book in a few short hours. Each story is devastating in some way, and I actually copied a few passages down because I liked them so much. I loved how each story seems to end with a sense of transition, and I found all of the men very relatable and lovable, even with their flaws. Highly recommend!
February 22, 2012
I'd give it a 4.5! At first the stories seemed familiar of every quirky short story collection I've read recently, but the further along I went, they became unique and resonated with a voice clearly Messinger's own. Cool :)
I also just love featherproof books and their concepts of what the book should be.
I also just love featherproof books and their concepts of what the book should be.
October 28, 2007
Some stories made me laugh outloud, others made me cringe a little and one (the wolf attack story) made me scratch my head and go "huh, that was a weird one."
Very enjoyable. Kudos Johnathon. Hope the book tour went well!
Very enjoyable. Kudos Johnathon. Hope the book tour went well!
July 22, 2008
A solid collection of short stories. They're incredibly Chicagoland centric, down to earth and just a little quirky. And I felt the collection got better towards the end (Winged Attack, Christmas Spirit and Scream in the Dark were all really great).
December 25, 2007
The title story is pure gold. The book is worth it for that one alone. The rest of them felt a little all over the place to me, but it's ok: that just means Messinger's only going to keep getting better, and more consistently better.
June 22, 2008
co-founder of featherweight press and other impressive accolades, author jonathan messinger wrote this collection, male or female he "gets it"...what it feels like to want to hide and also want to be found at the same time
September 18, 2007
This is a fast read. I bought it Saturday at the Renegade Craft Fair and finished it by Sunday morning. The story about the guy who emails himself was my favorite.
October 14, 2007
Capturing the essence of the short story genre, this collection is bittersweet and grotesque, in a good way.
Read
November 15, 2007This definitely beats Aksyonov so far-- bravo!
Want to read
October 27, 2007I'm looking forward to this one. Anybody else familiar with it? Seems like this guy is an up-and-comer. I'm always interested in new Chicago authors.
November 11, 2009
This book is beautiful and strange and made me want to use language in entirely new ways. The amazing drawings that accompany it and the aesthetic of the book are also gorgeous
January 4, 2008
"Bicycle Kick" was my favorite story.
December 27, 2007
pure delight with a little bit of something caught in my throat.
January 19, 2008
This is an uneven collection, but with a few gems mixed in. The cover art and the line drawings, on their own, are worth the price of admission.
January 22, 2008
I am in smit with these stories. Review to come at enfusemagazine.com/culture
March 19, 2008
Short stories, local author, people in various stages of remove from life. Also, I actually read the whole thing.
June 5, 2008
A collection of odd short stories, some better than others, but overall very entertaining. If you enjoy short stories, give this book a try.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews