Gates of Eden

by Ethan Coen

A middle-aged man beheads his wife, then calmly explains how she drove him to it . . . A fat little mafioso is going to war--in the clean, well-mannered streets of Minneapolis . . . A Jewish boy watches with wonder the rise and fall of a Hebrew school rebel--and sees the sadness at the heart of his own family. . . . Welcome to the world of Ethan Coen, one half of the filmmaking team that has unleashed a visionary, brutal, and uproarious portrait of America in such screen classics as Fargo and Raising Arizona . Now Ethan Coen translates that vision to the printed page--in fourteen keenly imagined, sharply etched short stories. Blending parody with pathos, making the heinous heartbreaking, Coen demonstrates his unique gift for stunningly inventive narrative, brutal irony, offbeat characters, and crackling dialogue, delivering everything you would expect from such an original imagination.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Humor, Crime, Literary Fiction, Mystery, The United States Of America

261 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, known together professionally as the Coen brothers, are four-time Academy Award winning American filmmakers. For more than twenty years, the pair have written and directed numerous successful films, ranging from screwball comedies (O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Raising Arizona, The Hudsucker Proxy) to film noir (Miller's Crossing, Blood Simple, The Man Who Wasn't There, No Country for Old Men), to movies where genres blur together (Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink). The brothers write, direct and produce their films jointly, although until recently Joel received sole credit for directing and Ethan for producing. They often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes. They are known in the film business as "the two-headed director", as they share such a similar vision of what their films are to be that actors say that they can approach either brother with a question and get the same answer.

Reviews

[Hosein · Rating 3 out of 5]

این ریویو فقط برای یادآوری اینه که نشر چشمه نه تا داستان رو توی این کتاب گذاشته، ولی در اصل پونزده‌تا داستانه. به طرز جالبی دوتا از این داستان‌هایی که حذف شدن می‌تونستن بدون سانسور چاپ بشن. یعنی من حس کردم یکی اونجا گفته حالا که چهارتا رو حذف کردیم این دوتا رو هم حذف کنیم دیگه، مردم می‌خرن و کسی هم نمی‌فهمه. بفهمه هم مهم نیست.

در کل کتاب خوبیه اگه زبان اصلی بخونین، برای فارسیش پولی خرج نکنین.

[Mario Morenza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Después de leer este libro de relatos, confirmo que Ethan Coen es tan buen cuentista como cineasta. Las puertas del Edén nos deja con ganas de leer más ficciones de Ethan Coen o de releer este volumen una y otra vez, una y otra vez, lleno de situaciones hilarantes, mafiosos, personajes al borde de un ataque de nervios, detectives poco astutos; cuentos con mucho humor negro y de esa sensibilidad a veces corrosiva, a veces reveladora, que nos hace mirar de una manera clara y aterradora nuestro tiempo.

[Michael Fierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first, I thought this book was too meh to give it one of my usual elaborate reviews but Dammit Janet I got caught up in it so here I go.

I've been a big fan of the Coen brothers since I first saw The Evil Dead on VHS in the late 80's, having noticed that Joel Coen was a co-editor (& uncredited dialogue writer) for the film. That got me to look into every project every single person associated with The Evil Dead had done.

I found VHS versions of the neo-noir film, Blood Simple, the slapstick knee-slapper, Crimewave (of which btw I hear is much better on acid O_O), and the cartoony southern-fried, Raising Arizona. I hooted out loud, cringed in delight & distress, and pumped my fist in the air throughout these films and then followed everything the Coen brothers had their hands in from there on out.

After an obsessive phase of reading a slew of short stories by Joe R. Lansdale (a few of which were crime-related-southern-area'd stories with outrageous situations & dialoge and were similar enough in tone, if you follow me) and a weekend of re-watching Blood Simple and Fargo, I was stoked to find this new release edition of Ethan Coen's first published book of short stories.

I had very high expectations for Gates of Eden and couldn't wait to delve into it as soon as I got home!

Yikes! Is that Clive Owen turning into a Werebear on the cover!? And some chick wants to run her hand through that rug!? No!

What I wanted was an XTRA LARGE COMBINATION PIZZA of over-the-top cheesey dialogue, red juicy pepperoni gore, a few loads of bulletsized sausage bits, a fair amount of cri$p greenback peppers, a tomato to-mahto cast of women, hammy characters, maybe some Canadian Bacon (out of town cops anyone?), a touch or more of blackmail pepper, a good dose of ugly oily characters with bad teeth and whose eyewincing, tear-inducing garlic & onion breath is enough to make you shudder, and of course, a good sprinkling of parmesan-flavored gangsters to top it off, all rounded up with a dirty crust of mob bosses. Did I miss any ingredients? Aw cheeze, I don't think so.

What I got was one of those limp snack pizzas you take a chance on getting at 3:17 a.m. at the Yuckit 'n Chuckit gas station on your way back from THE CLUB you just tortured yourself all the way thru to the end coz you were just desperate enough to convince yourself that one of the last 2 remaining girls was ok enough to go home with only to realize that when & if you had've gotten her you woulda woke up next to her in the bright morning sun no longer with your beer goggles on.

What I wanted



What I got



I guess it's only fair to say that I think there were a couple of ok stories in the collection. Were they memorable? I don't know. I can't remember. But I'm going to take a stab and say they were probably, "It is an Ancient Mariner" and "Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland" and I think I remember a few laughs during "The Boys" but I can't be sure. One thing I am pretty sure about is that I know the audiobook is most likely a whole lot better, knowing that the voice acting was done by John Turturro, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi, and Ben Stiller. But, that'd make anything better.

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

This will be quick. I was disappointed with this collection. I wanted The Big Lebowski or Blood Simple but I got a whole bunch of stories that had a distinct air of The Ladykillers and Raising Arizona about them.

I guess that makes Joel the dark and brooding brother who's a hit with the ladies whilst Ethan stands to one side and cracks wise to hide his insecurities. That or he simply didn't want to write a bunch of noir stories, saving them for his films, instead writing compiling all the duds that couldn't be movies in to this book.

They're not really duds, they are intriguing and he clearly has a talent when it comes to words but he failed to sustain my interest for 20 pages at a time and therefore he gets a big fat 2 star rating.

[John Wiswell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review references both the audio edition and the unabridged text edition.

The Coen Brothers have long appeared masters of quirky American voices. Jewish, rednecks, hitmen, insurance salesmen, FBI officials - they've created a gaggle of characters. But there is the question of whether they're better directors than writers, and get lucky with so many talented casts. John Goodman and William H. Macy can make most dialogue work.

Enter this collection of short stories by Ethan Coen. I was fortunate enough to get both the unabridged text and the abridged audio production, and happily compared how his prose read against how the actors performed.

First, the performers. Good Lord, what talent. John Turturro delivers two stories with dynamic aplomb. John Goodman is hilarious as the oversexed interloper and gossip in "It Is an Ancient Mariner." Ben Stiller is wonderfully uncomfortable and regretful in "I Killed Phil Shapiro." Steve Buscemi is a top-shelf scumbag for "Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland," then turns around and becomes a farcical pulp detective for "A Fever in the Blood." These short stories could all be terrible and would still be worth listening to just for the voices the actors draw from them.

I read the text first, to test my inner ear against the actors' external ones. "It Is an Ancient Mariner" was where it first kicked, and where Coen shows some of his boldest prose moves. It's written as a conversation with someone sitting down to a lunch counter, but we only ever hear the gossip's side. He pauses for imagined reactions that grow increasingly scene-breaking, including halfway through in assigning a name to the unknown chatter, destroying the illusion that we're talking to him. Yet the destruction isn't off-putting; it's funny. The whole story is brash in its games with how gossips speak, and how lurid the narrator will get. It soon results in pushing just how much you'd swallow for this conceit, rendering humor whether you decide it's ridiculous or continue to suspend your disbelief.

That story is lurid, too. Coen compares sex with Marcia Ziegler to having your penis stuck in a paint mixer, and goes more absurd from there. In that sense, it's a microcosm for how the entire collection handles rough material. Coen is comfortable writing orgasms and murders in almost grotesquely silly fashions. He's also unafraid to write bigoted, homophobic characters who are so unrelentingly ignorant that some audience members will probably condemn the author. It's a shame if they do. In the eponymous "Gates of Eden," a sexist and self-indulgent detective enters getting lucky but exits soiling himself and with a butt covered in bee stings. In "Cosa Minapolidan" we see homophobia spun into a vengeful gang haggling over a corpse that may or may not have been gay when alive. Their problems, their morals, their toughness and their grit all exist in the same plane of ridicule.

Detectives, gangsters and inmates color many of the stories as emerging from the pulp traditional, either parodying it or paying some scatological tributes. There are rarer stories that fixate on the profound, like "A Morty Story," about a boy being raised as a Jewish fundamentalist. His parents, religious instructors, orthodontist and teachers all seem to be wrangling him towards a cultural identity he doesn't understand, and that may no longer exist the way they think it does. The certain dragging people towards uncertainty might serve as the theme of the collection - if you include all the cases of unduly convinced people self-destructing or being reduced to silliness. It's a theme worth exploring, as are most of the stories within whichever version you decide to pick up.

[Anna Alexander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Many of us know Ethan Coen as one half of the Academy Award-winning Coen Brothers who wrote and directed such classics as Fargo and O Brother Where Out Thou? In Gates of Eden we meet a strange mix of characters that only someone who wrote The Big Lebowski could conjure.

There’s Joe Carmody, an incompetent amateur boxer who takes a job as a private investigator and agrees to shoot pictures of the wife of a local thug to try to catch her in the act with another man. Joe learns the hard way that he is just as incompetent as a P.I. as he was a boxer.

There’s Michael Simkin, the son of a rich Jewish family and class clown who defies the principal of his Hebrew school until he makes the wrong gesture at the right time during assembly.

There’s Victor Strang, a fledgling private investigator ,who gets his ear bitten off in a vicious attack and tries to make sense of the world through a series of odd dreams.

We’re immersed in family drama in the story The Boys about a man who is talked into going to The Crazy Horse Pageant in Vermillion, South Dakota by his two sons only to find the cooks at the local greasy spoon do not how to make omelets.

My favorite story was Cosa Minapolidan. The de Louie mob decides to relocates to Minneapolis because the head boss thinks Minneapolis is Chippewa for New Naples. The gangsters find out the hard way that there’s not much action in Minneapolis so they have to make up their own.

There are a couple of radio plays (complete with sound effects) thrown for variety and to mix things up. In Hector Berlioz, Private Investigator Coen puts in musical cues for suspense and as a transition between scenes. The running joke through the play is no one can pronounce his name:

Woman: Mr. Greneen, there’s a Mr. Burly Ox to see you concerning –
Berlioz: Berlioz. Eck-dor Berlioz.
Woman: - a Mr. Egg Door Barley Oaks to see you regarding the Capostello Foundation.

Coen writes the way his characters speak so it feels like you’re reading an audio book. In the story Destiny the incompetent boxer Joe Carmody is introduced to the local thug Benny Bendeck who bursts into the locker room yelling, “Ah, look, it’s Bagadonuts. Look at ya, ya f-ing Bagadonuts, you’re a f-ing Bagadnuts, f-ing look at ya!”

I don’t normally seek out books of short stories because most books have a few good stories with the rest being filler. Gates of Eden is not one of those. Each story has a distinct voice with unique characters. Coen does not fall back on the same writing style and keeps the reader guessing at the start of each story. It’s a quick read and is perfect for a rainy or snowy Sunday afternoon when you don’t want to leave the house.

[Harley Gesford · Rating 4 out of 5]

The prose and use of language is top notch. Much expected from a Coen. As a collection of shorts, it was quite good. Began to blend here and there but I dug it nonetheless.
God, to have a authorial voice like a Coen would be something spectacular.
Anyways, bless Ethan Coen and his beautiful, wacky view of this world.

[Gareth Howells · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating prose that wasn't what I was expecting. Mostly atmospheric character pieces, rather than tight narratives, all done with occasional sparks of Coen humour and distinctive cynicism.

[André · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review : Voor filmkenners zullen de broers Joel en Ethan Coen zeker geen onbekenden zijn. Zij hebben een aantal pareltjes van de cinema op hun geweten: Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski... Werken waarvan er verschillende in de prijzen vielen op festivals over heel de aardbol. De broers noemen zich co-regisseur van hun films, maar eigenlijk is er toch een soort taakverdeling: Joel doet het praktische regiewerk, Ethan de productie en ...de scenario's. Het prachtige Fargo won in Hollywood de oscar voor het Beste Scenario, en je vermoedt dan ook dat dat meer de verdienste is van Ethan dan van Joel. Maar dat Ethan geen filmbeelden nodig heeft om een verhaal te vertellen bewijst hij nu met zijn bundel kortverhalen De poorten van Eden.



Nu ontwaar je wel de invloed van de cinema in deze verhalen. Zij zijn opgebouwd als een film, met korte afzonderlijke sequensen en daartussen veel ellipsen. Verder ontdek je in de verhalen ook vele thema's die ook in de films van de broers voorkomen: hun moeilijkheden met hun joodse afkomst, de haat-liefde verhouding met hun geboorteplek, de gure staat Minnesota, met als hoofdstad Minneapolis, die op sommige momenten even gezellig lijkt als het interieur van een diepvriezer, de fascinatie voor gangsters en misdaad tout court... En natuurlijk zit in de verhalen ook dezelfde onderkoelde en grimmige humor, een absurdistische kijk op het leven.



Dat Ethan Coen zeer sterk is in spitse en gevatte dialogen bewijst hij bovendien door drie deeltjes van de bundel te schrijven in de vorm van een radio-luisterspel (met bruitage-aanwijzingen erop en eraan). Hector Berlioz, privé-detective, is een wat morsige imitatie van Humphrey Bogart, over wiens naam de tegenpartij uiteraard altijd struikelt. Onder elkaar, dat speelt in een sjieke Britse club, geeft de auteur dan weer de gelegenheid de draak te steken met het bekakte Engels dat over de lippen vloeit van al dan niet adellijke gentlemen. De 'gewone' verhalen spelen zich meestal af in de joodse of de gangsterwereld, of een combinatie van beide

[Ted Burke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lifetime of reading means a lot of cheap paperbacks with busted spines that one must eventually take to the used book store, the idea being to clear space in both one's apartment and in one's head. One is moving out and moving on, but not without a summation of sorts of a few plot convolutions and the writers who typed them. Ethan Coen likes to take the convolutions one has left at the curb and smash to bits with a heavy, wicked hammer. His collection of short fiction,"The Gates Of Eden", offers this collection of odd-lug short stories, collected from various magazines from where they've been published previously. Uneven, as with any collection, though there are some nice slices of dialogue, and some potent descriptive writing, but as a film maker, Coen's descriptions of things seem like film treatments at best, hurried and breathless, like the film pitches we witnessed in The Player, and our laughs are too dependent on our knowledge, even reference, of tired genre forms. But "Hector Berlioz, Private Investigator" is a Philip Marlow/ Sam Spade send up that results in some honest hoots, and 'Destiny" is a particularly vicious laugh at the boxing trade, with a Coenesque hero eating fists over and over as a direct result of his own miserably rationalized choices

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this back in around 2000 but never got far through it until recently.

It's a strange mixed bad of stories, some in the form of screenplays. Many of them are in the voice of a narrator, or are being spoken to you, or are composed largely of dialogue - and I think that's the strongest thing about them, creating interesting and unique voices. If you've seen any Coen brothers movies then the themes won't be unfamiliar - there's a lot of down-at-heel smalltime crooks and so on. However unlike the movies some of the stories don't go anywhere so unless you simply like wallowing in the atmosphere they create they can be harder to enjoy.

Still they have their moments and if you have the right sense of humour they're amusing too.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's funny how much I dislike short stories when back in the 90's I was a big fan.

To date, this is Ethan Coen (yup one half of the Coen Brothers) only publication but it is a stunner. Most of the stories feature Jewish Americans trying to cope with society and trust me, a lot are tear jerking funny. Highlights include The Old Country, a Jewish Boy creates a mini revolution and The Boys a father takes his sons for a camping trip. But all the stories are witty with a punch.

[Brett Starr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never heard of the book, found by chance at a used book store. Which sometimes is the best kind of find!

This is a really good collection of short stories that I would recommend. I enjoyed most of them. My favorites easily being -

Cosa Minapolidan
A Morty Story
A Fever in the Blood
The Boys

Seek out & enjoy good books.

BJ

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of The Big Lebowski will recognize a few references in this collection of very short stories. One would be the motto of Herzl Camp - "If You Will It, It Is No Dream." Those Achievers on Goodreads ought to see how many they can uncover. There are at least three more that I can find.

[Brent Legault · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange and funny and all over the map, the map that is impressed upon my reading bone, the bone that sits all akimbo astride my heart, my heart which pulsed in my thirsting throat throughout much of the book. Had it been a novel, I'd've wanted to marry it.

[Bill · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice set of short stories. Some are funny, some are weird, some are macabre, and some are all three. But what would one expect from one of the Coen brothers? Not a classic, but an enjoyable diversion.

[E. G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

--Destiny
--The Old Country
--Cosa Minapolidan
--Hector Berlioz, Private Investigator
--Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland
--A Morty Story
--A Fever in the Blood
--The Boys
--Johnnie Ga-Botz
--I Killed Phil Shapiro
--It is an Ancient Mariner
--Gates of Eden
--The Old Boys
--Red Wing

[Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy-to-read, enjoyable, interesting, quirky short stories.

[Michael Goldfuss · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a BIG fan of the Coen brothers and have seen all 18 films they have made up to date.
This book consisted of a number of short stories/scripts/small novels that reminded me of the structure of western stories in their 2018 film "The Ballad of Buster Scruggs". Just like Buster Scruggs, there is a lack of thematic elements that join the stories together that might turn some people off. What I enjoyed is that so many comparisons can be made between plots/themes from this book and future Coen bros. scenes.

Some examples include:

- The private eye attempting to record an affair in the first chapter "Destiny" reminded me of the private eye subplot in the 2003 film "Intolerable Cruelty'.

- The back and forth dialogue in the stories 'Old Boys' and 'Hector Berlioz: Private Investigator' reminded me of the dark comedies 'Fargo' (1996) and 'A Serious Man' (2009).

- The midlife crisis realization of the protagonist in 'Red Wing' reminded me of themes from 'Burn After Reading' (2008).

- The Serious tones and tension built in 'A Fever in Blood' and 'The Ancient Mariner' remind me of the serious tones from 'True Grit' (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).

- The many bumbling idiotic nitwit characters reminded me of every George Clooney role in Coen brother movies.

Being a fan of the Coens, it was fun to see those distinctions. The quirky characters, mock tributes, witty parodies are signature Ethan Coen. However at many times, stories lacked.. or moreso dragged. Because of the lack in a common theme or motif, many of the stories felt stale or unfinished and left me unsatisfied. I see it as a diary/screenwriting phase for future movie scenes which I personally do not mind. I may listen to it in the future as the audiobook versions are read by John Turturro and John Goodman, who appreciate the same humor as Ethan.

[Nick LeBlanc · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of mostly B-sides of Coen Brothers' movies and sketched ideas. I could do without the radio plays and he relies a bit heavily on characters' voices in a narrative--which can come off as sort of grating when not being filtered through the mouth of great actors. Lots of these stories are just character sketches masquerading as stories. I didn't mind this so much as characters and good dialogue are usually my favorite parts of stories. But, I could have used a bit more narrative voice separated from the characters. But, that's a challenge of reading a short story collection straight through. Coen really shows his command of natural dialogue and sly dark wit throughout. My favorites were The Old Country, A Morty Story, A Fever in the Blood, The Boys, Gates of Eden, and Red Wing. The other stories weren't really worth the time to me. Considering this was from 1999, there are some indications of the films that were to come as well as shades of the previous movies they had worked on up until this point. You can really detect A Serious Man, Fargo, and Miller's Crossing.

If you're a fan of the Coens' work it is worth reading. If not, or if you don't know who I'm talking about, there might be something better out there for you to read.

[Artavazd Yeghiazaryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Պարտադիր ընթերցանություն Քոեն եղբայրներին գնահատողների համար։ Ոնց որ 11 հատ փոքր քոեանական կինոներ լինեն։ Ու քանի որ տպագիր/օնլայն տարբերակներ գրեթե հնարավոր չի ճարել (տպագիրը կարծես մի հրատարակություն ա եղել ու վերջ), քաշեք ու լսեք աուդիոն, որտեղ ամեն պատմվածքը կարդում են Ջոն Գուդմանը, Սթիվ Բուսեմին, Ջոն Տուրտուրոն ու այլ հրաշալի քոենական դերասաններ։

[🐴 🍖]

yeesh that line about never meeting your heroes might need a corollary along the lines of "never read story collections by your favorite directors." as you might imagine there's some killer dialogue here & there but the prevailing air is one of half-assedness, laced with a fair amt of what nyt would call "racially tinged" language (check out e.g. the pidgin english ascribed to the "bucktoothed" japanese american antagonist in the title story). far as i'm concerned the one real standout was "a fever in the blood," which is like (w/o spoiling too much) the prologue to a private eye novel that might be impossible to write... tho i'd sure like to see someone try. you betcha

[Mark Tooley · Rating 3 out of 5]

These short stories are undeniably from a Coen brother... quirky characters, quirky dialogue, murderous scenarios. Enjoyable, but missing something in a short story format. That being said, the title story does contain the best "toilet" scene this side of the bridal salon visit in Bridesmaids. Absolutely brilliantly written as well as inducing tears of laughter. The final story, Red Wing, also scored a four...

[Bettie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow! what and audio production - all those actors-

1. 'It is an Ancient Mariner'- John Goodman
2. 'Cosa Minapolidan' - John Doctorow
3. 'Have You Ever Been to Electric Ladyland?' - Steve Buschemi
4. 'Destiny' - Matt Dillon
5. 'The Old Country' - Liam Schreiber
6. 'Gates of Eden' - William H Macey
7. 'I killed Phil Shapiro' - Ben Stiller
8. 'A Fever in the Blood - Steve Buschemi
9. 'Uncle Morty's Story' - Liam Schreiber
10. 'The Boys' - John Doctorow
11. 'Redwing' - Ben somebody!

[Eric Aiello · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh... I'll admit I didn't read all the stories... read most of the book, though. I'm a huge fan of the Coen Brothers' movies, but this collection fell very flat for me. I chuckled sometimes, but the laughs were forgettable. I want to give his poetry a shot, but otherwise I think I'll stick with their films.

[Akiva · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a solid collection of stories largely about incompetent gangsters and ludicrous jews or the occasional ludicrous incompetent gangster jew. The author is one of the Coen brothers, who have made some of my favorite films. It had much of the fun of a Coen brothers movie, but seemed to be lacking the variety, ambition, and artistry of their best stuff.

[Victor · Rating 1 out of 5]

I did not care for his writing. His book of poems is a little better. He should stick to the movies.

[Julio Gagne · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abysmal stuntwriting. Stick to screenplays, please

[Joshua Weber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gates of Eden Is an interesting collection of vignettes by a cherished hero of of my cinephilic upbringing that left me mildly amused and more grateful it exists. It's not a question of whether Ethan Coen has an instinct for writing and a knack for witty, colloquial banter with gutter chatter among hoodlums and ne'er-do-well characters. At times however, Cohen does treat his material as solely the contents of the dialogue of a script that makes his stories seem lacking in their structure as a short-stories in self-contained worlds uniquely their own a frustrating experience as a reader. Personal favorites from the collection was "DESTINY", "A MORTY STORY" and "IT IS AN ANCIENT MARINER" which I believe are well worth your time if anything for its bluntness, style and delivery of storytelling in devices which I won't say too much on (would the spoil the fun). I see Cohen as an erudite, Princeton graduate who read Ludwig Wittgenstein (his senior thesis was on two perspectives of his later works) applying his ideas of language and the interplay it has on remolding our own realities through hard-boiled prose intriguing and intoxicating. The problem with reading work that feels intoxicating is you get black-outs you don't really remember or care to remember about. If your a fan of the body of work the Coen Brothers have made, subversion's of hardboiled prose by an intelligent filmmaker you'll enjoy your inebriated read-through. If your a fan of the actors in their films, the audiobook has the likes of John Goodman, John Turturro, and Steve Buscemi as a nice treat.

[Lionel Berthoux · Rating 3 out of 5]

Coen's ease with words (especially dialogues) is impressive, and his love for his fellow Americans, especially of the colorful variety, is contagious. The problem (at least to me) is that this book is an assembly of stories belonging to 3 categories. The first is what seems to be childhood and teenage memories from the Midwest Jewish community the Coens grew up in. These stories ("The boys", "A Morty story", "The old country", "I killed Phil Shapiro") are touching and intimate, and I would have loved to read a whole book of them. In the second category, I would put his most brilliant texts featuring small-time crooks, clueless mafiosi, 50's-type private eyes and various weirdos. These ones ("Destiny", "Cosa Minapolidan", "Have you ever been to electric Ladyland", "It is an ancient mariner"...) are imaginative and amusing to read, sometimes hilarious. But they are not enjoyable in the same way that his personal stories are - they don't hit the same region of the brains. And then there are 2 or 3 stories ("Hector Berlioz", "Johnnie Ga-Botz", "red wing") that are not fulfilling at any level. They felt unfinished; I read them and thought "oh... that is all?".
Altogether, a pretty good read. I just wish he would have written even more stories and produced two books, one for his personal stuff, the other for his crazy-ass fictional characters.