The Member-Guest

by Clint McCown

A moving, blackly funny novel in stories set during a small-time middle-American country club's annual Member-Guest Golf Tournament, The Member-Guest evokes a place and its inhabitants with the sort of eerie brilliance noy seen in American fiction since Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio. "Home Course Advantage' is that rare thing, a real story...and Clint McCown is a graceful storytefler.", said Louise Erdrich, on presenting the 1991 American Fiction Award. The Member-Guest is a tour-de-force. In a series of intimately interconnected short stories, two of them American Fiction Award-winners, it brings to delightful life a middle-American community, with all its class frustrations, marriages gone bad, dreams tumed sour...and hopes. With a balance of tenderness and razor-sharp wit, Clint McCown assembles a rich gallery of losers, cast-offs, and grotesques-all in one way or another guests straining to be members, with varying degrees of success. At times heartrending, at times deliciously perverse, The Member-Guest stares into the dark maw of empty suburban vacuity and finds humor in what it sees there. And beauty, and real sadness. It marks the debut of a major voice in American fiction.

242 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

Reviews

[Colin Bruce Anthes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here we have a very truthful, honest look at people with no personalities who sometimes find themselves in situations. Each character talks in essentially the same way as the other characters who talk with essentially the same voice as the narration, with no enthusiasm towards anything at all.

It's very rare for me to give a 2 star review, but any chance for this book to reach three stars stopped with the wild inaccuracies about the world of golf. As a former golfer myself, I was already choking on the first chapter, when McCown suggests that Rod the pro played the PGA Tour for three years despite making only I believe 9 combined cuts, then quit after finishing 8'th at Doral, using the high placing to land a job as a club pro at a measly 9-hole club.

First off, an 8'th place at Doral would make one over $100,000, covering the costs for the season, turning all other made cuts into be pure profit, and generating about a quarter of a million in sponsorships. Secondly, and more importantly, becoming a club pro doesn't even require a competitive career. Clubs aren't scouting the PGA any more than they're scouting the NBA because it's not the same profession. To be a club pro you take classes at college, pass a written test, and as far as playing goes you have to shoot 2 rounds in the mid-seventies to gain your playing status, something any amateur club champion can do with ease. This kind of writing continues throughout, with McCown suggesting that the key to each match is psyching your opponent out, something almost never done in golf, if not for the sake of courtesy, than simply because match play has barely existed since the 1940's.

Why McCown chose to write about golf I'm unlikely to ever know for sure, but I'll wager a guess it's because he had nothing else to write about. That, at least, explains why he chose to write badly about golf.

[Stephen A. Geller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is novel made up of closely related short stories all taking place at or near a golf cloud involving the golf pro, club members and other well-drawn people. Often dark, sometimes witty, this novel is well worth reading.

[Alane · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love McCown's poetry but had also heard good things about his novels. This novel appears effortless. It's a collection of conjoined short stories that were published on their own merits, some of them prize-wnning, and it shows. There are no slip ups in McCown's writing, no pacing errors, no flubs in voice.

There are some gruesome plot-twists if you're an animal. There are some ice cold women; some men who should have chosen AA over appearances in this book. And I'd be fine never playing golf again but it is a great, kind of unsettling read.

There was a pan of Rice Krispies treats in my kitchen. I chose reading the book in one sitting over eating the whole pan. I'm pondering reading it again to see if I can see the seams. And the Rice Krispies treats say hallelujah.

[Gerry LaFemina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This delightful novel-in-stories gives us the lives of these small town Americans associated with nine-hole country club at the edge of respectability. McCown writes great stories and allows each to work as a moment in a montage narrative that begins in loneliness and despair and moves with uncertainty toward hope.