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Fast Lanes
Jayne Anne Phillips has always been a master of portraiture, both in her widely acclaimed novels and in her short fiction. The stories in Fast Lanes demonstrated the breadth of her talent in a tour de force of voices, offering elegantly rendered views into the lives of characters torn between the liberation of detachment and the desire to connect.
Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia. Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes--each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances--these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.
Three stories are collected in this edition for the first time: in "Alma," and adolescent daughter is made the confidante of her lonely mother; "Counting" traces the history of a dommed love affair; and "Callie" evokes memories of the haunting death of a child in 1920's West Virginia. Along with the original seven stories from Fast Lanes--each told in extraordinary first person narratives that have been hailed by critics as virtuoso performances--these incandescent portraits offer windows into the lives of an entire generation of Americans, demonstrating again and again why Jayne Anne Phillips remains one of our most powerful writers.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
January 31, 2009
I find the most fascinating figure of this collection to be a small blue bird egg, delicately painted in gold Chinese characters. It is set in the center of a mandala - radiating steak tags and framed by white pebbles - that is arranged over raw meat at a Bonanza steakhouse. The characters etched on the egg translate as "banquet."
Fast Lanes takes the themes of fragmentation, desparation, and yearning that manifests in shapes of sex or violence or truncated transcendence and gives them a kind of delicate and exotic figuration: derringer pistols, rings inlaid with pearl, dancers reading Zola, a hundred high school girls moving lighted candles in a choreographed routine. The language too, tends to the achingly delicate and exotic, as in:
She fingers absently a spray of forsythia arched from a vase by the bed. It is the waxy deep yellow of butter melted to a puddle and then frozen. He feels it is violent.
or, better, what i take to be one of the highlights of all fast lanes:
Hello my little bluegill, little shark face. Fanged one, sucker, hermaphrodite. Rose, bloom in the fog of the body; see how the gulls arch over us, singing their raucous squalls. They bring you sweetmeats, tiny mice, spiders with clasped legs. In their old claws, claws of eons, reptilian sleep, they cradle shiny rocks and bits of glass. Boat in my blood, I dream you furred and sharp toothed, loping in snow mist on a tundra far from the sea...
Rayme, the story of a strange, dislocated girl who floats with the community housing set of the narrator's student days, is my favorite here. It is some of the very best of Phillips' mix of odd and poignant and painful and beautiful, that kind of "dream in jagged pieces." Rayme, so far gone yet so endearing, is the one who arranged the mandala, painted the perfect blue egg with gold Chinese characters. She was celebrating the feast, but Bonanza steakhouses don't much take to rituals of gratitude and spiritual connection.
Once she cooked soup. For an hour, she stood by the stove, stirring the soup in a large dented kettle. I looked into the pot and saw a jagged object floating among the vegetables. I pulled it out, holding the hot, thin edge; it was a large fragment of blackened linoleum from the buckling kitchen floor.
I asked Rayme how a piece of floor got in the soup.
"I put it there," Rayme said.
I didn't answer.
"It's clean," Rayme said. "I washed it first," and then, angrily, "if you're not going to eat my food, don't look at it."
That was her worst summer. She told me she didn't want to take the Thorazine because it made her into someone else. Men were the sky and women were the earth; she liked books about Indians. She said cats were good and dogs were bad; she hated the lower half of her body. She didn't have lovers but quietly adored men from her past - relatives, boyfriends, men she saw in magazines or on the street. Her high school boyfriend was Krishna, a later one Jesus, her father "Buddha with a black heart." She built an altar in her room out of planks and cement blocks, burned candles and incense, arranged pine needles and pebbles in patterns. She changed costumes often and moved the furniture in her room several times a day, usually shifting it just a few inches. She taped pictures on her wall: blue Krishna riding his white pony, Shiva dancing with all her gold arms adorned, Lyndon Johnson in a glossy cover from Newsweek , cutouts of kittens from a toilet paper advertisement.
Fast Lanes takes the themes of fragmentation, desparation, and yearning that manifests in shapes of sex or violence or truncated transcendence and gives them a kind of delicate and exotic figuration: derringer pistols, rings inlaid with pearl, dancers reading Zola, a hundred high school girls moving lighted candles in a choreographed routine. The language too, tends to the achingly delicate and exotic, as in:
She fingers absently a spray of forsythia arched from a vase by the bed. It is the waxy deep yellow of butter melted to a puddle and then frozen. He feels it is violent.
or, better, what i take to be one of the highlights of all fast lanes:
Hello my little bluegill, little shark face. Fanged one, sucker, hermaphrodite. Rose, bloom in the fog of the body; see how the gulls arch over us, singing their raucous squalls. They bring you sweetmeats, tiny mice, spiders with clasped legs. In their old claws, claws of eons, reptilian sleep, they cradle shiny rocks and bits of glass. Boat in my blood, I dream you furred and sharp toothed, loping in snow mist on a tundra far from the sea...
Rayme, the story of a strange, dislocated girl who floats with the community housing set of the narrator's student days, is my favorite here. It is some of the very best of Phillips' mix of odd and poignant and painful and beautiful, that kind of "dream in jagged pieces." Rayme, so far gone yet so endearing, is the one who arranged the mandala, painted the perfect blue egg with gold Chinese characters. She was celebrating the feast, but Bonanza steakhouses don't much take to rituals of gratitude and spiritual connection.
Once she cooked soup. For an hour, she stood by the stove, stirring the soup in a large dented kettle. I looked into the pot and saw a jagged object floating among the vegetables. I pulled it out, holding the hot, thin edge; it was a large fragment of blackened linoleum from the buckling kitchen floor.
I asked Rayme how a piece of floor got in the soup.
"I put it there," Rayme said.
I didn't answer.
"It's clean," Rayme said. "I washed it first," and then, angrily, "if you're not going to eat my food, don't look at it."
That was her worst summer. She told me she didn't want to take the Thorazine because it made her into someone else. Men were the sky and women were the earth; she liked books about Indians. She said cats were good and dogs were bad; she hated the lower half of her body. She didn't have lovers but quietly adored men from her past - relatives, boyfriends, men she saw in magazines or on the street. Her high school boyfriend was Krishna, a later one Jesus, her father "Buddha with a black heart." She built an altar in her room out of planks and cement blocks, burned candles and incense, arranged pine needles and pebbles in patterns. She changed costumes often and moved the furniture in her room several times a day, usually shifting it just a few inches. She taped pictures on her wall: blue Krishna riding his white pony, Shiva dancing with all her gold arms adorned, Lyndon Johnson in a glossy cover from Newsweek , cutouts of kittens from a toilet paper advertisement.
November 3, 2016
Like finding a rare gem in a out-of-the-way antique store.
While I don't quite feel this book deserves the 'heartbreaking work of staggering genius' style reviews slathering the back cover, the stories in it are excellent. Though the first, 'How Mickey Made It,' is a bit overwritten, the subsequent tales make their mark in amazingly few words. To me, the stand out story is 'Rayme,' a curious but wrenching tale about the bond a collection of commune-loving misfits have with an emotionally damaged young girl. The unusual backward plotting in that piece, making the revelation of the narrator's 1974 abortion and Ramey's suicidal thoughts so affecting, typifies what is terrific about Phillips' technique--the climax in these stories is always a surprise.
Some may not care for the intensity of passion in this book, something that has fallen out of fashion in this age of cool (read: cold) literary minimalism. But that's the other quality here that makes Fast Lanes compelling--the author has created believable people, not just characters.
While I don't quite feel this book deserves the 'heartbreaking work of staggering genius' style reviews slathering the back cover, the stories in it are excellent. Though the first, 'How Mickey Made It,' is a bit overwritten, the subsequent tales make their mark in amazingly few words. To me, the stand out story is 'Rayme,' a curious but wrenching tale about the bond a collection of commune-loving misfits have with an emotionally damaged young girl. The unusual backward plotting in that piece, making the revelation of the narrator's 1974 abortion and Ramey's suicidal thoughts so affecting, typifies what is terrific about Phillips' technique--the climax in these stories is always a surprise.
Some may not care for the intensity of passion in this book, something that has fallen out of fashion in this age of cool (read: cold) literary minimalism. But that's the other quality here that makes Fast Lanes compelling--the author has created believable people, not just characters.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 2, 2016
Loved the short story Fast Lanes. Not everything was amazing in here, but worth it--SO WORTH IT--to read.
December 17, 2024
3.75⭐
"Bluegill" is such an unusual story and really isn't one. so impressionistic and experimental, and also typical JAP: not quite sure where I am or where this is going but it's so interesting to process. Also liked "Bess."
"Bluegill" is such an unusual story and really isn't one. so impressionistic and experimental, and also typical JAP: not quite sure where I am or where this is going but it's so interesting to process. Also liked "Bess."
November 13, 2018
Födelsedagspresent från Helène Nilsson på min 24-års dag!
December 7, 2009
This is a collection of short stories. Most of them are rather relentless in their dark cast of despairing humans. While the writing is spot on in capturing this, I would have liked to see just a little glimmer of hope or humor, even sardonically, just to relieve the darkness a bit. The last story, "Bess" is my favorite of these as it gives a fuller portrayal of the two main characters, a brother and sister, Bess and Warwick.
Currently reading
November 28, 2010 Jayne Anne Phillips has an incredible way with words and describing the concept of 'dislocation' with an understanding.The short stories work with one another to create the full picture of an American wanderer.If you are looking for a book about 'belonging to an American society', then this is the one you should turn to.
February 9, 2008
Hypnotically good prose in these seven stories. The Vietnam-era coming-of-age story "Blue Moon" was expanded into her novel Machine Dreams, but this version (the longest story in the collection) is more engaging in its focus, I think.
September 15, 2008
Challenging ...
May 27, 2009
loved these
Read
March 8, 2011I think This Book Is Interesting Because I Learned Alot from This book & I would Like To Recommend This Book To My Friends.
December 29, 2015
Wow--masterful writer. This are all early stories and I can only imagine she's gotten better. Makes me want to read all her short stories.
December 10, 2016
Short stories so it was a fast read. Only the last was very good.
February 26, 2021
I greatly enjoyed the artistry in this 150-page collection of
the author's short stories. My favorites were "Blue Moon"
and the title story, "Fast Lanes." The portrayal of relationships
in these stories impressed me, as well as Phillips' great
talent for description.
I'll be re-reading this book, to see how Phillips accomplished
the magic she did.
the author's short stories. My favorites were "Blue Moon"
and the title story, "Fast Lanes." The portrayal of relationships
in these stories impressed me, as well as Phillips' great
talent for description.
I'll be re-reading this book, to see how Phillips accomplished
the magic she did.
December 21, 2023
É um livro de conto com uma pesada carga da ideologia do fim dos anos 70 e início dos oitenta.
Dito isso, pode-se esperar uma pesada carga de fatalismo romântico, mesmo nas histórias voltadas aos estudos de personagens.
Não há traços de humor ou romantismo por ele mesmo, a ideia de Phillips voltou-se totalmente para a algo que beirava a contra-cultura, mas sem muito sucesso.
Dito isso, pode-se esperar uma pesada carga de fatalismo romântico, mesmo nas histórias voltadas aos estudos de personagens.
Não há traços de humor ou romantismo por ele mesmo, a ideia de Phillips voltou-se totalmente para a algo que beirava a contra-cultura, mas sem muito sucesso.
May 8, 2025
This is a collection of short stories, which are not linked. While Phillips is clearly an extremely good writer, able to write in a variety of styles, i didn’t really enjoy most of the seven stories contained in this book.
Of them all, ‘Blue Moon’ and to a lesser degree ‘Bess’ were the only ones I found enjoyable or interesting.
The common themes of the stories seem to be otherness, people who are or feel like they are on the edge of society or their communities.
Of them all, ‘Blue Moon’ and to a lesser degree ‘Bess’ were the only ones I found enjoyable or interesting.
The common themes of the stories seem to be otherness, people who are or feel like they are on the edge of society or their communities.
September 24, 2023
I enjoyed most of the stories in this collection. Namely “How Mickey Made It”, “Bluegill”, “Alma”, “Blue Moon”, and “Bessie.” My favorite was “Bluegill” for its lyricism and incantation-like prose. It felt like reading a chant in a dream that keeps circling on and on.
December 18, 2024
Some of the stories were interesting and had plausible characters. Others were a tough read due to the formatting. No paragraphs, or breaks. One long dense block of text, that just did not draw me in.
February 13, 2025
3.6/5. I would rate this a bit higher if the stories Rayme & Bluegill were not a part of this collection. I found the writing of both of these stories to be absolutely terrible and obnoxious. Stand Outs: How Mickey Made It, Fast Lanes, Blue Moon, Bess.
January 31, 2022
Possibly the best thing I’ve read in a while
March 28, 2024
she never ever ever misses
February 23, 2025
“Bess” is phenomenal
August 25, 2025
Slides under the skin like a needle.
October 7, 2025
Amazing short story
December 8, 2025
Vacker men några storys var tråkiga, väldigt unik bok.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews