Eating Naked

by Stephen Dobyns

From the bestselling author of The Church of Dead Girls and Boy in the Water, a collection of award-winning stories that probe our strange and unpredictable emotional lives.

In his first collection of stories, Stephen Dobyns, peerless chronicler of the menace and unease that lurk in small-town America, turns his attention to the dark, inescapable forces that test the patience, fidelity, and even good sense of the most ordinary people.

The sixteen stories in Eating Naked-two of which appeared in The Best American Short Stories-range from surreal to poignant, from chilling to comic. At the center of them all are men and women challenged by their own uncontrollable, illogical natures: poets with free-floating guilt, spouses with unacceptable sexual compulsions, farmers with midlife crises, gas men with erratic timetables. Marriages unravel, well-laid plans dissolve, and placid lives are turned upside down by something unforeseen-be it as mundane as a chance conversation, as inevitable as death, as improbable as a murderous pig. Now writing in a new form, Dobyns once again reveals his psychological acuity and grasp of social frailty. Sharp, funny, and profound, Eating Naked gets to the heart of a world in which order and reason rarely prevail over human peculiarity and longing for the astonishing and the unexpected.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Modern

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 11, 2000

About the author

Dobyns was raised in New Jersey, Michigan, Virginia, and Pennsylvania. He was educated at Shimer College, graduated from Wayne State University, and received an MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1967. He has worked as a reporter for the Detroit News.

He has taught at various academic institutions, including Sarah Lawrence College, the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers, the University of Iowa, Syracuse University, and Boston University.

In much of his poetry and some works of non-genre fiction, Dobyns employs extended tropes, using the ridiculous and the absurd as vehicles to introduce more profound meditations on life, love, and art. He shies neither from the low nor from the sublime, and all in a straightforward narrative voice of reason. His journalistic training has strongly informed this voice.

Reviews

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

The opening story about a man who becomes a post-mortum celebrity becuase he gets killed by a movie-star pig that falls out of a window...is priceless.

I usually get frustrated with short stories - just when I get into it, it's over. But I really enjoyed these because they were so absurd, but alos very funny.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dobyns writes some great stories. He comes up with some very unusual characters and has some very unusual things happen to them. At the same time, he shows us things in all that which aren't just applicable to the unusual, things we all want to know. It makes for some thrillingly enchanting stories to read. Plus, you have to love the title. Beats having a pig fall on you.

[Novel Consumer · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Denise knew that her marriage was over the night Josh tried to f*ck her with a carrot". Cmon, how could anyone NOT want to continue reading that story? Loved every story, although the endings left me...wanting more maybe? Something about the endings didn't live up to the rest of the story. Definitely recommend.

[Ahlem · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nobody will ever want to get married after reading this.

[Zainab · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some great, some good, very few that are boring. The insights about relationships and human psychology are amazing. Impressed!

[Rogue Reader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eating Naked doesn't fit my bookshelves, and maybe that's an expression of why the book doesn't work for me. I *thought* it was culinary writing, you know, food writing and I was surprised because I've read and really enjoyed others by Dobyns. Eating Naked though didn't do it. Melancholic, dysfunctional, micro-details of daily lives that aren't that interesting. Did really enjoy selected shorts, like the titular, Eating Naked, where an unlikely set of three sit at the dinner table and eat roadkill - naked of course. And afterwards, they just go on their way with just a memory or maybe not even.

[Sbrdsbks · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of stories. Some stories deserve at least four stars, but other stories don´t. So three stars is the result. Dobyns must be a very creative man to think up all those strange situations and settings, also he knows how to maken his main characters human and credible. But often the seond part of the story is less than the beginning, as if after a spectacular start he doesn't know how to finish.

[Cathy Moore · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I find with most short story anthologies, this was very mixed. They are mostly strange stories, often themed around marriage and relationships. Some were excellent, particularly the title story where three people have dinner in the nude. I also enjoyed the story of the wife of a man crushed to death by a falling pig and the one where a man carries around a model of the house of his dead best friend.

[Brian Richards · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of darkly funny stories..

[Josephine Meeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Geweldig boek, vreemde verhalen maar zeer fascinerend om te lezen

[B November · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting read!

[almu · Rating 4 out of 5]

una historia todos los días mientras me tomo mi café de la mañana. excelente.

[Olivia L · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining and funny, but I didn’t find the stories overly insightful (which I assume is the point).

[Damyanti Biswas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up the collection of short stories "Eating Naked" by Stephen Dobyns at a sale two years ago and then promptly forgot about it. Now that I have tried to sort my books into some sort of order (read separate the travel from the recipe books, and the short story collections from novels!) this book caught my eye.

I did not like the first story, "A Happy Vacancy" finding its ending sort of 'preachy'. The premise was interesting: a serious poet and professor is killed by a pig (being transported for a movie shoot) falling from the sky, and how his wife comes to terms with his death. I loved the story (and the writing) right up to the end, when I felt it was an "explanation paragraph" too long. Literary short stories which talk too much at the end of what the story is about (just in case the reader didn't get it?) have never been my favorite.

Dobyns is a well-known writer with dozens of poetry collections and novels under his belt, is a Pushcart prize-winning short story writer who has taught creative writing to folks since before I was born, so I don't know if I have the right to call anything by him 'preachy'. But as a reader, I've found I have to drop some books I don't like overmuch so I can get on with reading ones I actually love.


I was about to put the book down in my 'to be given away' pile, when I began reading "The Chaucer Professor". The premise hooked me again, and I could not put it down to the end, and this time the story was delightful, funny, ironic, subtle. It stripped the masks off the characters, revealing complex, contradictory layers underneath. It whetted my appetite for more.

The other stories are gems, nearly all of them, and I'm in awe of how Dobyns takes an often absurd, ridiculous situation and proceeds to make of it a meditative story, profound and thought-provoking. I re-read the first story, and I still don't like the ending, but I learned a valuable lesson: when reading a collection of short stories, sample a few stories before you decide whether you like it.

[Gabriel Valjan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I borrowed Eating Naked from a friend who had taken it out of the library. Confession: I had never heard of the prolific writer who lives in Westerly, Rhode Island, according to his Amazon page. As many of the reviewers here have attested to Dobyns's originality, I was also taken with highly original premises to his stories. The "payoff" is where many readers stay with him, or put the book down. Again, I kept asking myself, "How does this writer come up with these ideas, these situations?" Originality. Where Stephen King or Kafka take the mundane and ordinary events of life and scare you, Dobyns does the opposite by making you laugh or cringe. Did you notice in the reviews that everyone remembered the falling pig? Whether or not you like the story the point is that you remembered the fatal porker -- more so, if you know the Harvard Square area. I agree the story was preachy at the end. The Chaucer professor starts out with the Department Chairman bent on ousting a freeloading visiting guest lecturer. Here is what I think is Dobyns's gift is: subversion. You, as the reader, walk in, understand the premises, and then slowly see your expectations and assumptions undermined. The Chaucerian prof manages to gain his adversary's empathy over a series of drinks and a meal -- which the Chairman pays for! By the way, Dobyns must like carrot cake because it figures in several stories. One story opens with a wife's decision to leave her husband because of a carrot. You don't want to laugh, but you do. That was another twisted story. I agree with readers that you may not like what Dobyns "does" with the premise, but it'll either keep you reading or not. I was left curious about his poetry since subversion in poetry is a nice surprise (thinking of Emily Dickinson). The title story must have been Dobyns's favorite, so start with that one.

[Max Anadon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I'm not exactly sure of the definition, I would say the 16 short stories here reflect Americana. I found the stories atypical, and not ending up the way I expected or wanted (okay, so I repeat myself). I enjoyed the book more for that reason.

I also liked the way it looked at things/events in our lives, and the gray moral lines that intertwine...what would it be like if something fell from the sky (like a county fair winning pig) and killed your spouse? What would others say? What would you say if it happened to someone you knew?...Would you be helping someone by 'helping' them find out their spouse was cheating on them with many people? You knew because you were one of the cheaters, but no longer?...Sad when obsession goes too far, and you realize only after irreversible repercussions have happened...that things go on around us and within families, and we are on the periphery, both physically and in understanding...

[Regan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Meh.

One of the quotes on the back of the book says, "[this] collection is an unbroken chain of examples of how to write a short story."

And that's the problem, really. Because who wants to read an unbroken chain of examples of how to write a short story? You want to get lost in the stories, you want to forget that the same person wrote all of them, you want to believe in the perfect and tiny universes that each story creates, you definitely do NOT want to think, "Gosh, this reminds me so much of that creative writing course I took in college!"

Apparently Dobyns is a crazy-prolific writer, with some 9 volumes of poetry and 19 novels. Can't say as I'm inspired to go look up any of them, really. I do remember reading one of these stories in the Best American Short Stories series. Hm. Nope. Still not interesting enough to make me want to read more of the guy.

If you're a Dobyns fan and/or want this book, let me know. I won't read it again.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

darkly whimsical collection of short stories of impulse and restraint. bizarre little premises and pained deliberation over the absurdity and the what-ifs somehow make the characters feel true to life. what if a very serious academic and poet gets crushed to death by a pig being airlifted over town to a film set? what is the meaning of wanting to lead a life which has meaning?

[Joe Mossa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found shephen by accident. his book was a prize from a bookstore in mansfield ohio. it was wrapped in brown paper. i am happy i found him. his writing is unique. every sentence is interesting and he presents interesting, educational philosophy as he writes humorous stories about everyday people.

[Tabitha · Rating 1 out of 5]

I barely remember reading this book, but apparently I didn't care for it much. After reading other peoples reviews I feel like I need to give it another shot. I probably wouldn't bother, except I can't recall why it was I didn't like it.

[Steven · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most (about 2/3) of the stories were very well-written and interesting (plots, characters, etc.). I was quite pleased. There were a few closer to the end that dragged on a bit, but for the most part the stories were innovative and held my attention.

[Juan Fuentes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Empezó decepcionándome, porque los dos primeros cuentos -incluyendo el que da título al libro- me parecieron bastante flojos. Por suerte luego encontramos algunos que merecen la pena. No hay ninguno malo, todos están bastante bien construidos, pero pocos son de los que te llegan.

[Foreign]

French editor: Daniel Arsand

[Jene]

I am realizing I am just not a fan of short stories. I much preferred his novels.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

16 tightly written short stories that fall somewhere between comedy to tragicomedy.

[W. Benson Cartwright · Rating 4 out of 5]

First story collection I ever read.

[Laina · Rating 1 out of 5]

I like short stories, but I did not really care for this book. Most of the stories were too ridiculous and kind of depressing, without being very funny. I would not recommend.

[Dean · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first Dobyns books but certainly not the last . Great short stories.

[Christine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastical, yet believable plots!

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

Generally entertaining stories, good writing, lots to admire.