What do you think?
Rate this book
Galán
Los protagonistas de estos relatos se mueven como sombras solitarias por los márgenes del sur de Estados Unidos: son negros en una tierra profundamente racista, son mujeres en una sociedad de hombres que les impone silencio y resignación, son homosexuales condenados a sentirse intrusos, son músicos de jazz, son muchachos callejeros y violentos, son drogadictos, estafadores, vagabundos y meleantes.
En Galán (1959) Alston Anderson se acercó a todos ellos, los siguió en la crudeza de su camino hacia unos destinos crueles e irónicos y leyó su vulnerabilidad, su desarraigo y su rabia enmudecida en los surcos de unos rostros tan herméticos como el polvoriento y desolado paisaje que habitaban. Largamente olvidado, este libro que prometía una nueva era en la literatura afroamericana llega al fin, y por primera vez, en nuestro idioma.
En Galán (1959) Alston Anderson se acercó a todos ellos, los siguió en la crudeza de su camino hacia unos destinos crueles e irónicos y leyó su vulnerabilidad, su desarraigo y su rabia enmudecida en los surcos de unos rostros tan herméticos como el polvoriento y desolado paisaje que habitaban. Largamente olvidado, este libro que prometía una nueva era en la literatura afroamericana llega al fin, y por primera vez, en nuestro idioma.
216 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
13 people are currently reading
1102 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
May 21, 2025
Vaya…
Bien es cierto que Trotalibros me tiene malacostumbrado, pero esto es de grado superior. No me atrevería a decir que sea su mejor libro del año, pero desde luego ha puesto la pica bien clavada en Flandes.
“Galán” es una colección de relatos, hilvanados todos entre ellos (aunque algunos de manera más explícita que otros) que nos presentan una colección de estampas de la vida de las comunidades negras en los Estados Unidos, entiendo, de la primera mitad del siglo XX, especialmente en Alabama y Nueva York, pero no exclusivamente. Que este libro nos haya llegado a través de Trotalibros es algo que agradecer, porque es una antología que requiere de un inmenso trabajo en la traducción y corrección para brillar, y eso es precisamente sello de la editorial andorrana.
Enrique Maldonado Roldán ha hecho un magnífico trabajo adaptando y trasladando el habla original que Alston Anderson recreó en estos cuentos, repleta de jerga, particularidades semánticas y sintácticas, dobles sentidos, musicalidad… Por lo que leo en las reseñas en habla inglesa, creo que ha logrado trasmitir fielmente lo que pretendía, logrando ese tono oral y casi de jazz lingüístico que tienen los relatos.
(No me pregunte nadie por qué, pero en mi cabeza las voces de los personajes sonaban con acento de chulapos madrileños.)
Los relatos varían, casi con forma musical, desde el ritmo rápido, oral y canalla de algunos, hasta la delicadeza más tierna y la sensibilidad de otros. Algunos cortos, sencillos, sin grandes vueltas. Otros con giro de tuerca y sorpresa final. Algunos dolorosos, otros divertidos, todos apasionantes. Y la voz del autor se mantiene, discreta, sólo apareciendo para reivindicar su autoría sin robar el protagonismo a sus protagonistas. Protagonistas de los que te enamoras en apenas un par de párrafos.
No me atrevo a recomendar ningún relato en especial, porque cada uno es un tesoro en sí mismo y merece mucho la pena su lectura. Una pena que el tropiezo profesional de su siguiente novela acabase con la confianza o la ambición literaria de Alston Anderson, porque estos relatos lo ponen al nivel del Olimpo literario estadounidense.
Perfectamente podría ser uno de los grandes redescubrimientos literarios de este año, y además en una cuidadísima edición que bien podría ser ejemplo de cómo hacer las cosas.
Muy recomendable.
Bien es cierto que Trotalibros me tiene malacostumbrado, pero esto es de grado superior. No me atrevería a decir que sea su mejor libro del año, pero desde luego ha puesto la pica bien clavada en Flandes.
“Galán” es una colección de relatos, hilvanados todos entre ellos (aunque algunos de manera más explícita que otros) que nos presentan una colección de estampas de la vida de las comunidades negras en los Estados Unidos, entiendo, de la primera mitad del siglo XX, especialmente en Alabama y Nueva York, pero no exclusivamente. Que este libro nos haya llegado a través de Trotalibros es algo que agradecer, porque es una antología que requiere de un inmenso trabajo en la traducción y corrección para brillar, y eso es precisamente sello de la editorial andorrana.
Enrique Maldonado Roldán ha hecho un magnífico trabajo adaptando y trasladando el habla original que Alston Anderson recreó en estos cuentos, repleta de jerga, particularidades semánticas y sintácticas, dobles sentidos, musicalidad… Por lo que leo en las reseñas en habla inglesa, creo que ha logrado trasmitir fielmente lo que pretendía, logrando ese tono oral y casi de jazz lingüístico que tienen los relatos.
(No me pregunte nadie por qué, pero en mi cabeza las voces de los personajes sonaban con acento de chulapos madrileños.)
Los relatos varían, casi con forma musical, desde el ritmo rápido, oral y canalla de algunos, hasta la delicadeza más tierna y la sensibilidad de otros. Algunos cortos, sencillos, sin grandes vueltas. Otros con giro de tuerca y sorpresa final. Algunos dolorosos, otros divertidos, todos apasionantes. Y la voz del autor se mantiene, discreta, sólo apareciendo para reivindicar su autoría sin robar el protagonismo a sus protagonistas. Protagonistas de los que te enamoras en apenas un par de párrafos.
No me atrevo a recomendar ningún relato en especial, porque cada uno es un tesoro en sí mismo y merece mucho la pena su lectura. Una pena que el tropiezo profesional de su siguiente novela acabase con la confianza o la ambición literaria de Alston Anderson, porque estos relatos lo ponen al nivel del Olimpo literario estadounidense.
Perfectamente podría ser uno de los grandes redescubrimientos literarios de este año, y además en una cuidadísima edición que bien podría ser ejemplo de cómo hacer las cosas.
Muy recomendable.
June 1, 2023
I saw this on the shelf at Books-A-Million a few weeks back, was tempted to pick it up then but decided to go with something else and keep this in mind as a possible online order for a lower price. I did order it, and it turned out to be totally worth it.
"Lover Man" is a collection of short stories by an author I'd never heard of before, named Alston Anderson. He wrote this book in the late Fifties, published a novel in 1965, and then promptly disappeared from public notice. Born in 1924 in the Panama Canal Zone, he died in 2008 in obscurity in New York. The stories in this book concern, for the most part, the Jessup family of a small town in Alabama, as well as various citizens of that town, and some of the action takes place in New York City and postwar Germany as well.
This is just a beautiful, moving collection of stories about the Black experience in America, at a time when Jim Crow was in full effect and the lives of Black people below the Mason-Dixon line were constantly in danger. Anderson captures the tone of lives lived in the margins of society, not just Blackness but also queerness and drug addiction. We see a side of life in America that, at that time, was not readily available for mass consumption, though it is fair to say that many of the themes he tackles are commonplace today (if no less in peril from forces on the right-wing spectrum in modern-day America). These aren't political harangues, however; they're brief vignettes of Black lives as they are captured at distinct moments in time.
We see the comedy of seduction play out between a shy schoolteacher and a crafty handyman, the drama of abortion for a revered deacon and his secret mistress, the uncertain sexuality of a young son away from home for the first time at a private school, and the vicious rivalry between two men with sharp razor blades and short tempers. There's a lot here to admire and enjoy, and the fact that this book is seeing the light of day again after being neglected for so long is a blessing to lovers of American literature everywhere. "Lover Man" is, above all else, a great collection of stories that never turns out like you think they will, but which rewards your commitment to reading them. Alston Anderson doesn't have a huge body of work, but when your premier contribution is something as good as this collection, you really don't have to be more prolific.
"Lover Man" is a collection of short stories by an author I'd never heard of before, named Alston Anderson. He wrote this book in the late Fifties, published a novel in 1965, and then promptly disappeared from public notice. Born in 1924 in the Panama Canal Zone, he died in 2008 in obscurity in New York. The stories in this book concern, for the most part, the Jessup family of a small town in Alabama, as well as various citizens of that town, and some of the action takes place in New York City and postwar Germany as well.
This is just a beautiful, moving collection of stories about the Black experience in America, at a time when Jim Crow was in full effect and the lives of Black people below the Mason-Dixon line were constantly in danger. Anderson captures the tone of lives lived in the margins of society, not just Blackness but also queerness and drug addiction. We see a side of life in America that, at that time, was not readily available for mass consumption, though it is fair to say that many of the themes he tackles are commonplace today (if no less in peril from forces on the right-wing spectrum in modern-day America). These aren't political harangues, however; they're brief vignettes of Black lives as they are captured at distinct moments in time.
We see the comedy of seduction play out between a shy schoolteacher and a crafty handyman, the drama of abortion for a revered deacon and his secret mistress, the uncertain sexuality of a young son away from home for the first time at a private school, and the vicious rivalry between two men with sharp razor blades and short tempers. There's a lot here to admire and enjoy, and the fact that this book is seeing the light of day again after being neglected for so long is a blessing to lovers of American literature everywhere. "Lover Man" is, above all else, a great collection of stories that never turns out like you think they will, but which rewards your commitment to reading them. Alston Anderson doesn't have a huge body of work, but when your premier contribution is something as good as this collection, you really don't have to be more prolific.
September 25, 2025
Anyone interested in a Black American variation of Winesburg, Ohio? I certainly hope so. Both books are masterpieces working within the same formal milieu (community as character; individuals as traits thereof); the phenomena of the American Experiment inimitable to here and only here; and I fundamentally know my world is a better place for having both. While I hate math, this is the rare instance where 1+1 equaling (at time of writing) 340.1 million makes perfect sense to me. This, even when almost nothing else does here.
July 11, 2023
Alston Anderson’s life doesn’t seem real. Growing up in Panama, moving to North Carolina as a teenager, educated at the Sorbonne in Paris. A man whose only significant literary legacy are these stories which were forgotten for decades (Anderson also wrote a bizarre novel about a slave who during reconstruction decides he likes life with his master better than his freedom). He would be friendly with the major black writers of the 1950’s like James Baldwin and then would later take sides with William F. Buckley, of all people, against him. Loved by some, reviled by others for his overtly anti-political depictions of black American life, and ultimately upon his death in 2018 was completely forgotten and buried in an anonymous grave.
Knowing a little about Anderson’s life, it become easier perhaps to understand the transience of the characters he writes about here (most contemporary critics didn’t know what to do with his stories) as well the disregard they seem to have for the changing social attitudes of the day.
Most of these characters (a majority of the stories are thematically linked through the Jessup family and its slow dissolution) drink, smoke, gamble, cheat on their spouses, fight, swear, and do most of the things that, as black consciousness was on the rise toward the end of the 1950’s, seem from another era.
Race is of course a part of their lives, I imagine nobody in the South then or now can escape that, but for the most part these characters love, fight, and even die, in their own circles. If white oppression is a fact of life, these characters carry on for the most part as if its background noise in the struggle just to keep one’s sanity among the pressures of daily life.
Anderson understandably didn’t make many literary friends with a style that didn’t please white readers (the vernacular was perplexing for more than a few critics) or black writers who at that moment in American life sought to escape such vulgar depictions of themselves (as the postscript points out, Anderson was in this respect not unlike another Caribbean born black writer, Claude McKay whose queer undertones running through his work are not unsimilar to Anderson’s).
What I love about this collection, and Anderson’s writing in particular, is that life is well..often vulgar.
People do fight, cheat, steal, and kill each other. They may spend time on social upliftment, but most of us are like these men and women, trying to carve out a little joy in an often harsh world.
Anderson’s ability to depict this with wonderful turns of phrase made this collection one of my favorite recent literary discoveries. Reading it was not unlike finding a song you love and hoping nobody else discovers it.
I recognize the various complex reasons behind why it has sunk into obscurity, but it deserves so much better.
June 21, 2025
«Me gusta creer que llegará un día en el que los hombre no serán ni blancos ni negros ni azules, sino que yo seré tú y tú serás tú. Un día en el que no haya necesidad de guerra porque tú y yo seremos uno. Entonces estará bien saludar a un desconocido como saludarlas a un amigo, y dedicarte a sus asuntos también, en lugar de solo a los tuyos».
Ahora que he leído este libro entiendo por qué a Jan, editor de Trotalibros, le parece tan especial. «Galán» respira verdad y, cuando te adentras en él, te conviertes por unos momentos en sus personajes.
Y lo mejor sería que, como el autor, consiguiéramos no juzgarlos y entender el difícil contexto en el que viven: la cerrada sociedad estadounidense de mediados del siglo pasado, que no solo rechazaba a los negros —protagonistas de estos relatos— sino que los ridiculizaba, los arrinconaba y, en definitiva, los odiaba.
En esta recopilación, encontramos a mujeres que sufrían el patriarcado en sus familias y parejas, incluso en las situaciones más nimias. A niños víctimas de burlas por parte de sus compañeros blancos. A hombres obligados a contar mentiras porque sus vidas, en un entorno tan oprimido y de una gran pobreza, no son suficiente...
El estilo de estos relatos se basa, casi por completo —ya que contienen muchos diálogos, monólogos e historias que algunos personajes cuentan a otros— en la tradición oral de estas poblaciones en la época, con un tono coloquial y un uso incorrecto del lenguaje, propio de la escasa educación que tenían únicamente por el color de su piel.
Por eso, es muy destacable el trabajo de traducción de Enrique Maldonado porque no debió de ser nada fácil trasladarlo al presente y que no solo se entienda de forma sencilla sino que podamos captar la jerga del colectivo.
Aunque mis relatos favoritos han sido «Un delicado amor», «Un grito» y «El que ama», en general me ha encantado la sensibilidad del autor y cómo nos presenta la complejidad y el día a día de sus personajes sin juzgarlos, con sus errores y sus anhelos. Acercándonos a sus vidas duras, a sus instantes felices. A los dilemas a los que nos enfrentamos todos, pero con el problema racial que las personas blancas nunca llegaremos a entender.
Ahora que he leído este libro entiendo por qué a Jan, editor de Trotalibros, le parece tan especial. «Galán» respira verdad y, cuando te adentras en él, te conviertes por unos momentos en sus personajes.
Y lo mejor sería que, como el autor, consiguiéramos no juzgarlos y entender el difícil contexto en el que viven: la cerrada sociedad estadounidense de mediados del siglo pasado, que no solo rechazaba a los negros —protagonistas de estos relatos— sino que los ridiculizaba, los arrinconaba y, en definitiva, los odiaba.
En esta recopilación, encontramos a mujeres que sufrían el patriarcado en sus familias y parejas, incluso en las situaciones más nimias. A niños víctimas de burlas por parte de sus compañeros blancos. A hombres obligados a contar mentiras porque sus vidas, en un entorno tan oprimido y de una gran pobreza, no son suficiente...
El estilo de estos relatos se basa, casi por completo —ya que contienen muchos diálogos, monólogos e historias que algunos personajes cuentan a otros— en la tradición oral de estas poblaciones en la época, con un tono coloquial y un uso incorrecto del lenguaje, propio de la escasa educación que tenían únicamente por el color de su piel.
Por eso, es muy destacable el trabajo de traducción de Enrique Maldonado porque no debió de ser nada fácil trasladarlo al presente y que no solo se entienda de forma sencilla sino que podamos captar la jerga del colectivo.
Aunque mis relatos favoritos han sido «Un delicado amor», «Un grito» y «El que ama», en general me ha encantado la sensibilidad del autor y cómo nos presenta la complejidad y el día a día de sus personajes sin juzgarlos, con sus errores y sus anhelos. Acercándonos a sus vidas duras, a sus instantes felices. A los dilemas a los que nos enfrentamos todos, pero con el problema racial que las personas blancas nunca llegaremos a entender.
November 23, 2011
A must-read
March 16, 2025
This book takes you back in time, an era with different slang, an unfamiliar time so it’s a bit more demanding to read. Nonetheless I enjoyed it, the stories were entertaining, but funny. It’s not an easy read (I was confused at times by the continuity of the short stories; I watched a book discussion to help lol) but it causes some pauses to reflect but changing times and I like stuff like that.
I think what’s important and admiring to me about this book is the history behind a Black man publishing a book like this during the 50s. A book tackling addiction, abortion, infidelity, sexuality, racism in a small way, through complicated, funny, weird characters.
Especially in current times, it feels like we’ve forgotten how much work and sacrifices it took this country to progress and that value is being taken away without much thought this year.
I think what’s important and admiring to me about this book is the history behind a Black man publishing a book like this during the 50s. A book tackling addiction, abortion, infidelity, sexuality, racism in a small way, through complicated, funny, weird characters.
Especially in current times, it feels like we’ve forgotten how much work and sacrifices it took this country to progress and that value is being taken away without much thought this year.
August 10, 2025
3.8/5
I loved the observational approach. Made me realize how little I've read from the late 50s that doesn't have an overtly political message. The prose and dialogue are colloquial and familiar. Like the feeling of listening to the men in your family reminisce and drink whiskey when they think their wives aren't listening.
I loved the observational approach. Made me realize how little I've read from the late 50s that doesn't have an overtly political message. The prose and dialogue are colloquial and familiar. Like the feeling of listening to the men in your family reminisce and drink whiskey when they think their wives aren't listening.
May 18, 2023
Really good!
February 18, 2024
A collection of short stories — actually qu
July 13, 2021
LOVER MAN, stories of Blacks and Whites, 177 pages, with an introduction by Robert Graves, is Alston Hamilton Anderson -born January 31, 1924, Panama - July 15, 2008, New York City- first book of short stories, and they all are really great reads, as fresh as ever more than fifty years after the publication of this first edition.
Jacket design by Adrianne Blair - The double portrait on the cover is one of more than thirty beautiful pen & ink illustrations by Denys and Judy Valentine.
First Hardcover edition by Doubleday 1959
Contents:
The Checker Board
The Dozens
Signifying
A Fine Romance
A Sound of Screaming
Big Boy
Suzie Q.
Old Man Maypeck
Schooldays in North Carolina
Think
Blueplate Special
Comrade
Danse of the Infidels
Talisman
Lover Man
...From a review of "Lover Man" in Time Magazine on Sept 7, 1959:
"Voices from the South
Only rarely does a new author's first book of short stories announce much besides one more young lady who had a sheltered adolescence or one more young gentleman who did not....
Lover Man, by Alston Anderson, 35, may not come up to Saroyan's Daring Voting Man, but at least it occupies the same ballpark. With this series Anderson introduces himself not only as a first-class writer, but also as an observer who aims to talk only about life as it is lived by people who are not professionally sensitized to it.....
Anderson's people are one of the few lingering groups of exotics still maintaining cultural autonomy before the melting pot gets them —the small-town Negroes of the South.....
Born in Panama of Jamaican parents, he went to school in Kingston before going to Oxford, N.C., where he lived until he was drafted into the Army in 1943. A master sergeant at war's end, Anderson took the G.I. bill through North Carolina College ('47), went on to study at Columbia University and the Sorbonne, concentrating on 18th century German metaphysics....
Perhaps it is this kind of distance that removes Lover Man from the mountain of angry-Negro stories. Anderson is not mad at anyone. He is fascinated by the South, by what he has seen, and by what he has heard, and he manages to re-create that fascination for his reader....
The most poignant moment in the book is when the son, a U.S. soldier, learns to his astonishment that "nigger" is not the white folks' private slur but "a Cockney mispronunciation of the German word Neger [Negro] on the part of English sailors in the 17th century." ...
Jacket design by Adrianne Blair - The double portrait on the cover is one of more than thirty beautiful pen & ink illustrations by Denys and Judy Valentine.
First Hardcover edition by Doubleday 1959
Contents:
The Checker Board
The Dozens
Signifying
A Fine Romance
A Sound of Screaming
Big Boy
Suzie Q.
Old Man Maypeck
Schooldays in North Carolina
Think
Blueplate Special
Comrade
Danse of the Infidels
Talisman
Lover Man
...From a review of "Lover Man" in Time Magazine on Sept 7, 1959:
"Voices from the South
Only rarely does a new author's first book of short stories announce much besides one more young lady who had a sheltered adolescence or one more young gentleman who did not....
Lover Man, by Alston Anderson, 35, may not come up to Saroyan's Daring Voting Man, but at least it occupies the same ballpark. With this series Anderson introduces himself not only as a first-class writer, but also as an observer who aims to talk only about life as it is lived by people who are not professionally sensitized to it.....
Anderson's people are one of the few lingering groups of exotics still maintaining cultural autonomy before the melting pot gets them —the small-town Negroes of the South.....
Born in Panama of Jamaican parents, he went to school in Kingston before going to Oxford, N.C., where he lived until he was drafted into the Army in 1943. A master sergeant at war's end, Anderson took the G.I. bill through North Carolina College ('47), went on to study at Columbia University and the Sorbonne, concentrating on 18th century German metaphysics....
Perhaps it is this kind of distance that removes Lover Man from the mountain of angry-Negro stories. Anderson is not mad at anyone. He is fascinated by the South, by what he has seen, and by what he has heard, and he manages to re-create that fascination for his reader....
The most poignant moment in the book is when the son, a U.S. soldier, learns to his astonishment that "nigger" is not the white folks' private slur but "a Cockney mispronunciation of the German word Neger [Negro] on the part of English sailors in the 17th century." ...
March 2, 2025
When I came across this book at a store (two summers ago, bad on me to finally getting around to it. So many books...), I'd never heard of this author before, let alone the history behind the publication of these stories. The synopsis on the flap alone was certainly enough to intrigue me. Also, I don't read short story collections practically ever. So, figured this would be a nice switch from the normal reading I do or attempt to.
And, I think it is important to read about lives unlike our own. This certainly was the case with "Lover Man". And what stories they each were. Every single one was so unique and vividly built up. The locations, the characters, and dare I even say the "history" built around each story. However, some stories certainly fell short of others. And not just the ones that I felt were too long and the ones too short. I also found the earlier stories more interesting. Some of the last few lost me a bit, but the very last one of course was great. Of course, I do appreciate and enjoy the little connections between certain characters. This made it all the more intriguing in my opinion.
One thing is for sure: I need to, more often, try to read authors who are new to me. While this was not 5 stars in the end for me, that does not take away from the great talent of the author. Someone who I had never known about before this.
And, I think it is important to read about lives unlike our own. This certainly was the case with "Lover Man". And what stories they each were. Every single one was so unique and vividly built up. The locations, the characters, and dare I even say the "history" built around each story. However, some stories certainly fell short of others. And not just the ones that I felt were too long and the ones too short. I also found the earlier stories more interesting. Some of the last few lost me a bit, but the very last one of course was great. Of course, I do appreciate and enjoy the little connections between certain characters. This made it all the more intriguing in my opinion.
One thing is for sure: I need to, more often, try to read authors who are new to me. While this was not 5 stars in the end for me, that does not take away from the great talent of the author. Someone who I had never known about before this.
April 22, 2023
'When the first American edition of Lover Man appeared, in 1959, great pains were taken to make it intelligible to white readership. A line on the dust jacket -- " Stories of Blacks and Whites" -- assured white readers that this collection of stories about Black Americans was also, improbably, about them. And in a foreword, the English poet, novelist, and critic Robert Graves advised fellow white people on how the stories should be read and decoded. Lover Man, he explained, was a work of "judicious signifying" -- in other words, "making a remark about something unremarkable in a situation, and pretending to ignore the main issue." Once you, the white reader, could fathom this diversionary habit, Graves predicted, the observational with of Anderson's prose would be evident, for Lover Man, was "the real deal."
March 9, 2023
For this book to be written decades ago and to appear at the front table of B&N and yet, have close to no reviews, summaries or takes on it anywhere onlineeeee. It was a pretty good read and find.
Consists of many short stories that hold their own but seem layer onto the others thematically and story-wise as well. Also a sense of blantant realism and a "everything's laid out and it's up to you to see what's really happening" type of thangggg.
Surprisingly, even with the compilation if shirt stories, and a complete break off from the characters we get familiar with mid way through the book, it does wrap up quite niceeee!
Consists of many short stories that hold their own but seem layer onto the others thematically and story-wise as well. Also a sense of blantant realism and a "everything's laid out and it's up to you to see what's really happening" type of thangggg.
Surprisingly, even with the compilation if shirt stories, and a complete break off from the characters we get familiar with mid way through the book, it does wrap up quite niceeee!
February 21, 2024
A suite of interconnected stories, starting with a focus on a Black family in small town Alabama, and widening out as the book progresses. The stories are remarkably subtle, capturing the tiniest connections between friends, lovers, acquaintances and strangers, with a deep sensitivity to shifting moods and words not said. Written in the 1950's but the rhythms of the language and openness to unconventional relationships are decades ahead of their time. A gorgeous book that deserves to be better known.
September 13, 2023
These interlinked stories feel ahead of their time, yet rooted in their own first half of the 20th century black milieu. They are meandering and coded as a slow talking Southerner, yet concise and compulsively readable. This while being without conventional plots. They are situational, anecdotal. I imagined Anderson in conversation with Lucia Berlin, eccentric, prickly, and wonderful.
April 9, 2023
Each story starts with what seems like a radical potential. Climbing with this glorious intensity towards the climax. Then suddenly, each just rapidly ends—lacking fulfillment, maturity or depth.
Seems similar to the author’s own personal history. Maybe that’s the most interesting text of it all.
Seems similar to the author’s own personal history. Maybe that’s the most interesting text of it all.
June 8, 2025
"Galán" de Alston Anderson es una de esas colecciones de relatos que son una pintura literaria y un fiel retrato de un época que, pese a estar ya lejos en el tiempo, sigue dejando enseñanzas y reflexiones que se siente cercanas por la manera tan auténtica de su narración.
September 18, 2025
“La maldad empezó en los días de la reconstrucción. El Klux se dedicó a matar y a dar palizas a los negros y la mayoría teníamos más miedo que siete viejas. Los yanquis empezaron actuar también, metiéndoles locuras a los negros en la cabeza.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 23, 2023
i’d never ever come across alston anderson despite having grown up in NC. thanks to mcnally editions for handsomely bringing this unusual book back into print.
August 9, 2023
An amazing discovery, and so glad this book was been put back into print.
December 7, 2023
I’m glad I read this, though I found it uneven. My favorites were Schooldays in North Carolina, Comrade, and Dance of the Infidels
February 15, 2024
Love McNally Editions—this is another great book I wouldn’t have read it hadn’t been reprinted.
February 16, 2024
Excellent. Interwoven stories and perspectives. Highly recommended.
December 30, 2024
I liked all of the essays/books, it was an interesting way to string them together. I loved his style of writing.
February 20, 2025
wish I could give a 3 1/2
August 16, 2025
not the “sioux falls, north dakota” reference
i hate the way men treat women 😔
i hate the way men treat women 😔
August 28, 2025
Un libro sorprendente, con una traducción magnífica.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews