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Pure Hollywood: And Other Stories
In 11 captivating tales, Pure Hollywood brings us into private worlds of corrupt familial love, intimacy, longing, and danger. From an alcoholic widowed actress living in desert seclusion, to a young mother whose rejection of her child has terrible consequences, a newlywed couple who ignore the violent warnings of a painter burned by love, to an eerie portrait of erotic obsession, each story in Pure Hollywood is an imagistic snapshot of what it means to live and learn love and hurt.
Schutt gives us sharply suspenseful and masterfully dark interior portraits of ordinary lives, infused with her signature observation and surprise.
Schutt gives us sharply suspenseful and masterfully dark interior portraits of ordinary lives, infused with her signature observation and surprise.
144 pages, Hardcover
First published March 13, 2018
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February 12, 2020
Pure Hollywood proved to be a collection plagued by a wide spectrum of dullness. There were moments, mostly at the start of the collection, where overwrought prose ran rampant in a way that made no sense whatsoever. It was as if the author, Christine Schutt, had her trusty Word thesaurus immediately on hand, ready to whip out at any moment to form absurd sentences instead of creating readable literature—as if her way of being “creative” was to write so evasively and nonsensically as to confuse the reader into thinking, “Damn, this MUST be the newest form of erudite art; I’ve got to HAVE it!” purely (sure, why not?—pun intended) because they don’t get it at all.
As many readers and writers know, Ernest Hemingway is famously quoted as saying: “If a writer knows enough about what he is writing, he may omit things that he knows, and the reader … will feel those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” I’m confident that this is not what you’ll find in Schutt’s Pure Hollywood. All of the stories seemed incomplete and covered in a blanket of gray soot. They were all a bit dreary in atmosphere (I found that to be fine if that's the mood she was going for) and very unfinished. There was very little shock factor in this collection at all, and what little there was wasn’t followed-up on, so the few moments of revelation turned out to be aimless, pointless, near-powerless punches that slipped off the skin like water, non-scathing and unmemorable.
The first story in the collection took up one-third of the space of the entire anthology and had literally only one moment of pure interest. You’ll know that moment when you get to it. I left “Pure Hollywood” behind feeling that moments of my life had been squandered in reading it. But, I pressed on.
The second story in this collection, “The Hedges,” begins as such:
The woman who had just been identified as attached to Dick Hedge looked pained by the clotted, green sound of her little boy’s breathing, an unwell honk that did not blend in with the sashaying plants and beachy-wet breeze of the island.
*raising hand* Umm, did you just try to say that a woman’s son was sick on the beach? I had to read that line at least three times just to extract some meaning from that sludge of words, almost senseless when mixed in that formula. That opening line alone was enough to make me say “Pass” on that story. BUT I pressed forward again. I ended up liking “The Hedges”—the story of a strangely unhappy young couple on vacation with their fussy toddler and the events on that vacation that led to an unfortunate event—far more than I liked any of the other stories. Still, it read like an adult version of Fun with Dick and Jane (and the husband is even named Dick). If that was Schutt’s intent, it fell just short of being clever because it was somehow never fully realized. It read like an outline of a story with none of the goods filled in, and because of that I didn’t especially care about the family, particularly that toddler.
“The Duchess of Albany” was the absolute epitome of the word WASP(y) and held no interest for me whatsoever. It read easily, sometimes even jauntily, but in the end left absolutely no impact.
“Family Man” was a dull flash fiction about a dull man. Literally. That is all.
“Where You Live, When You Need Me” warranted only an annoyed side-eye glance and a curt flipping of the page. As far as I can tell, it said nothing about anything but still managed to be rather snobbishly WASPy. Are these people seriously hiring a homeless woman, whose full name they don’t even care to know, to help them out around the homes they’re renting in “the Berkshires,” then contemplating their belief in God (ironic, sure, I see it. But too haughty for me to even care)? The nerve. Nothing else to be said about this one.
“The Dot Sisters”—what for??
“Oh, the Obvious” drew me in because of the potential for irony implied in the title. There was some irony in the end that was tolerably well done.
In the end, Christine Schutt’s Pure Hollywood is a collection I’m sure most people can live without. This compilation of stories added nothing to the dialogue about anything, unless you are the kind of reader who enjoys a dry read of literary content the likes of which is sure to make future readers inexperienced with the genre cringe away from it. I get the feeling that Schutt may have been going for dry, witty, ironic and possibly socially commentating fiction, but I do feel that I very well might be stretching for benefit of the doubt because it just never got there. For me, it was mostly fiction without a soul, which, I’ve noticed, is almost always what you get from Grove Atlantic/Grove Press. (This is an unfortunate, but accurate observation, in my personal opinion.) To give the best and most accurate analogy I can think of, this entire collection was written for and about extremely uptight Protestant-esque people of coin (probably family money) who would wear cardigans buttoned at the neck and drone on and on about the troubles with “the help.” Picture that person and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the audience for this short story collection. I struggled with what rating to give Pure Hollywood. In the end, 2 stars seemed fair enough, and I’ll move on with my life thinking no more about it. **
*I received an advance-read copy of the book from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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As many readers and writers know, Ernest Hemingway is famously quoted as saying: “If a writer knows enough about what he is writing, he may omit things that he knows, and the reader … will feel those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.” I’m confident that this is not what you’ll find in Schutt’s Pure Hollywood. All of the stories seemed incomplete and covered in a blanket of gray soot. They were all a bit dreary in atmosphere (I found that to be fine if that's the mood she was going for) and very unfinished. There was very little shock factor in this collection at all, and what little there was wasn’t followed-up on, so the few moments of revelation turned out to be aimless, pointless, near-powerless punches that slipped off the skin like water, non-scathing and unmemorable.
The first story in the collection took up one-third of the space of the entire anthology and had literally only one moment of pure interest. You’ll know that moment when you get to it. I left “Pure Hollywood” behind feeling that moments of my life had been squandered in reading it. But, I pressed on.
The second story in this collection, “The Hedges,” begins as such:
The woman who had just been identified as attached to Dick Hedge looked pained by the clotted, green sound of her little boy’s breathing, an unwell honk that did not blend in with the sashaying plants and beachy-wet breeze of the island.
*raising hand* Umm, did you just try to say that a woman’s son was sick on the beach? I had to read that line at least three times just to extract some meaning from that sludge of words, almost senseless when mixed in that formula. That opening line alone was enough to make me say “Pass” on that story. BUT I pressed forward again. I ended up liking “The Hedges”—the story of a strangely unhappy young couple on vacation with their fussy toddler and the events on that vacation that led to an unfortunate event—far more than I liked any of the other stories. Still, it read like an adult version of Fun with Dick and Jane (and the husband is even named Dick). If that was Schutt’s intent, it fell just short of being clever because it was somehow never fully realized. It read like an outline of a story with none of the goods filled in, and because of that I didn’t especially care about the family, particularly that toddler.
“The Duchess of Albany” was the absolute epitome of the word WASP(y) and held no interest for me whatsoever. It read easily, sometimes even jauntily, but in the end left absolutely no impact.
“Family Man” was a dull flash fiction about a dull man. Literally. That is all.
“Where You Live, When You Need Me” warranted only an annoyed side-eye glance and a curt flipping of the page. As far as I can tell, it said nothing about anything but still managed to be rather snobbishly WASPy. Are these people seriously hiring a homeless woman, whose full name they don’t even care to know, to help them out around the homes they’re renting in “the Berkshires,” then contemplating their belief in God (ironic, sure, I see it. But too haughty for me to even care)? The nerve. Nothing else to be said about this one.
“The Dot Sisters”—what for??
“Oh, the Obvious” drew me in because of the potential for irony implied in the title. There was some irony in the end that was tolerably well done.
In the end, Christine Schutt’s Pure Hollywood is a collection I’m sure most people can live without. This compilation of stories added nothing to the dialogue about anything, unless you are the kind of reader who enjoys a dry read of literary content the likes of which is sure to make future readers inexperienced with the genre cringe away from it. I get the feeling that Schutt may have been going for dry, witty, ironic and possibly socially commentating fiction, but I do feel that I very well might be stretching for benefit of the doubt because it just never got there. For me, it was mostly fiction without a soul, which, I’ve noticed, is almost always what you get from Grove Atlantic/Grove Press. (This is an unfortunate, but accurate observation, in my personal opinion.) To give the best and most accurate analogy I can think of, this entire collection was written for and about extremely uptight Protestant-esque people of coin (probably family money) who would wear cardigans buttoned at the neck and drone on and on about the troubles with “the help.” Picture that person and you’ve got a pretty good idea of the audience for this short story collection. I struggled with what rating to give Pure Hollywood. In the end, 2 stars seemed fair enough, and I’ll move on with my life thinking no more about it. **
*I received an advance-read copy of the book from the publisher, Grove Atlantic, via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
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January 8, 2019
These are a very specific kind of story—highly mannered, odd, witty. All about white people of a certain class. Nearly every story features a death and something about gardening. The title story is the strongest. I did enjoy these stories but they don’t make for comfortable reading. That’s not a bad thing unless, of course, you are looking for comfort while reading.
September 2, 2017
It's ironic that one of the reasons I never used to like short stories, the fact that I had only a short time to build relationships with the characters, is one of the things I like most now. When stories are done right, it's amazing how complex characters can be, how complicated their journeys, and how deeply you can feel about them, in just a small number of pages.
I didn't really feel that way about Christine Schutt's new collection, Pure Hollywood: And Other Stories . She's definitely a talented writer, and her use of imagery is tremendously poetic. But I found her writing style a bit evasive, so it was difficult for me to understand the characters' motivations, what was happening to them and why, and, at times, whether or not I should sympathize with them.
In the title story, a brother and a sister with a rather complicated (and perhaps inappropriately close) relationship come together after the death of the sister's much-older husband, once a renowned comedian. As often happens in this type of relationship, her husband's adult children quickly ensure she is left with virtually nothing, so she needs to figure out where her life went wrong, and how to get it back on the right path, while ensuring her brother is nearby. (Or at least I think that's what the story was trying to say, because it meandered between their childhood, her relationship with her husband, an incident that happened after he died, and present time, sometime without any real signal as to when the scene or reminiscence took place.)
In "The Hedges," an unlikable and unhappy couple goes on vacation with their sick and cranky toddler. Very little is told about them except that they are unhappy with each other yet they still are trying to enjoy their vacation despite the demands of their child, and so they employ numerous coping strategies. The entire story foreshadows an incident, so when it occurs, you're unsure of how to feel, and given what happened, I felt badly that I didn't care enough about the characters to care.
"Species of Special Concern" tells of a man and his ill wife, and the man who seems to be infatuated with her, and definitely feels like he would be a better and more responsive (and responsible) husband to her. Yet the story is so short, there is not enough time to understand why the man thinks that way beyond jealousy, and whether the man cares for his wife, or whether the besotted man has reason to be covetous.
As the collection winds to a close, many of the stories get even shorter, so I found it even more difficult to get hold of them emotionally. I had a great deal of hope for this collection, but it just didn't work for me, so I hope it does for others. It's certainly possible I missed something in reading this book.
NetGalley and Grove Atlantic provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
I didn't really feel that way about Christine Schutt's new collection, Pure Hollywood: And Other Stories . She's definitely a talented writer, and her use of imagery is tremendously poetic. But I found her writing style a bit evasive, so it was difficult for me to understand the characters' motivations, what was happening to them and why, and, at times, whether or not I should sympathize with them.
In the title story, a brother and a sister with a rather complicated (and perhaps inappropriately close) relationship come together after the death of the sister's much-older husband, once a renowned comedian. As often happens in this type of relationship, her husband's adult children quickly ensure she is left with virtually nothing, so she needs to figure out where her life went wrong, and how to get it back on the right path, while ensuring her brother is nearby. (Or at least I think that's what the story was trying to say, because it meandered between their childhood, her relationship with her husband, an incident that happened after he died, and present time, sometime without any real signal as to when the scene or reminiscence took place.)
In "The Hedges," an unlikable and unhappy couple goes on vacation with their sick and cranky toddler. Very little is told about them except that they are unhappy with each other yet they still are trying to enjoy their vacation despite the demands of their child, and so they employ numerous coping strategies. The entire story foreshadows an incident, so when it occurs, you're unsure of how to feel, and given what happened, I felt badly that I didn't care enough about the characters to care.
"Species of Special Concern" tells of a man and his ill wife, and the man who seems to be infatuated with her, and definitely feels like he would be a better and more responsive (and responsible) husband to her. Yet the story is so short, there is not enough time to understand why the man thinks that way beyond jealousy, and whether the man cares for his wife, or whether the besotted man has reason to be covetous.
As the collection winds to a close, many of the stories get even shorter, so I found it even more difficult to get hold of them emotionally. I had a great deal of hope for this collection, but it just didn't work for me, so I hope it does for others. It's certainly possible I missed something in reading this book.
NetGalley and Grove Atlantic provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!
See all of my reviews at http://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blo....
July 11, 2018
3.5★ rounded up to 4 (reviewed Dec 2017)
“His daughter hoped something would happen and it did in the shape of a man blued by symbols that crinkled when he tensed his arms.”
And of course, a tattooed fella isn’t quite the change that Dad was hoping for. Schutt has a nice way with words and has created some interesting characters, from this girl to a crazy lady in the desert, to a mother who just can’t be bothered with the nuisance of having a toddler.
“But the cost of things did not interest Lolly. What she wanted to know was how long did motherhood last?”
She has NO idea! And it doesn’t augur well for the family’s future.
A colourful character is Bob Cork, who meets the dancing challenge.
“. . . the Cajun-style rhythm two-step, newer to the repertoire, was a challenge, but Bob Cork liked to say, ’It ain’t whatcha do, it’s the way that you do it,’ a platitude that left him a lot of room on the dance floor.”
An older woman mourns the loss of her husband, while another is stumbling home in the dark, slightly the worse for wear with drink and tripping into a ditch. I love Schutt’s description here.
“. . . the ditch, which isn’t a ditch so much as a broad rut filled with fallen leaves and broken branches, fieldstone and mist rising over a landscape pieced as quaintly as a quilt, and the lady from Connecticut, a loose stitch in it.”
I like the writing, I like the characters, and some of the stories I enjoyed very much. There were a few that felt unfinished or incomplete. I find that hard to explain, since short stories are, by definition, short. But I like ones that give me a sense of what came before and a feeling for what might come after. Without that, I don’t care.
Schutt is a prize-winning author and was nominated in the past for the Pulitzer Prize, so now I must hunt down her other work to see why. I enjoyed these, but not enough to suggest a prize.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.
This is due out in March.
[read Dec 2017]
“His daughter hoped something would happen and it did in the shape of a man blued by symbols that crinkled when he tensed his arms.”
And of course, a tattooed fella isn’t quite the change that Dad was hoping for. Schutt has a nice way with words and has created some interesting characters, from this girl to a crazy lady in the desert, to a mother who just can’t be bothered with the nuisance of having a toddler.
“But the cost of things did not interest Lolly. What she wanted to know was how long did motherhood last?”
She has NO idea! And it doesn’t augur well for the family’s future.
A colourful character is Bob Cork, who meets the dancing challenge.
“. . . the Cajun-style rhythm two-step, newer to the repertoire, was a challenge, but Bob Cork liked to say, ’It ain’t whatcha do, it’s the way that you do it,’ a platitude that left him a lot of room on the dance floor.”
An older woman mourns the loss of her husband, while another is stumbling home in the dark, slightly the worse for wear with drink and tripping into a ditch. I love Schutt’s description here.
“. . . the ditch, which isn’t a ditch so much as a broad rut filled with fallen leaves and broken branches, fieldstone and mist rising over a landscape pieced as quaintly as a quilt, and the lady from Connecticut, a loose stitch in it.”
I like the writing, I like the characters, and some of the stories I enjoyed very much. There were a few that felt unfinished or incomplete. I find that hard to explain, since short stories are, by definition, short. But I like ones that give me a sense of what came before and a feeling for what might come after. Without that, I don’t care.
Schutt is a prize-winning author and was nominated in the past for the Pulitzer Prize, so now I must hunt down her other work to see why. I enjoyed these, but not enough to suggest a prize.
Thanks to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.
This is due out in March.
[read Dec 2017]
July 23, 2018
Pure Hollywood is kind of amazing. As is often the case with short stories, each one in this collection is a snapshot of a particular moment in time, with the reader coming into a situation that's already begun and leaving before it's totally ended. What makes this collection different is that, without being obvious about it, Schutt provides enough detail that you can truly imagine an entire past and an entire future for her characters. And the thing is, you want to. The situations and the people are so intriguing, and you can feel an entire past stretching back behind them and and an entire future stretching out in front of them. Entire novels could be imagined with just the details Schutt provides here, whether the stories are one page or 40 pages or (most often) 10 pages—in fact, the most evocative story for me, "The Dot Sisters," is a little less than one page, but I'm still thinking about it and wondering what happened to these girls when they were younger and how their lives might look moving forward. Lots of authors can write a one-page story, but how many can write one you don't forget about ten minutes after reading, much less weeks later?
Some stories in this collection were a bit Gatsby-esque and some of them were quirky enough to remind me of Ali Smith, and I enjoyed them all, but I have to knock off a star for how tragic most of them ultimately were. Every story in this collection is somehow spiraling toward death. I can appreciate that as a theme—all of life is actually spiraling toward death, after all—but I don't really need to be reminded of it all the time. So I'm not sure I'll read another book by Christine Schutt, but I'm very glad I read this one. She does things with short fiction I've never quite seen before.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher.
Some stories in this collection were a bit Gatsby-esque and some of them were quirky enough to remind me of Ali Smith, and I enjoyed them all, but I have to knock off a star for how tragic most of them ultimately were. Every story in this collection is somehow spiraling toward death. I can appreciate that as a theme—all of life is actually spiraling toward death, after all—but I don't really need to be reminded of it all the time. So I'm not sure I'll read another book by Christine Schutt, but I'm very glad I read this one. She does things with short fiction I've never quite seen before.
I won this book in a Goodreads giveaway. Thank you to the publisher.
February 27, 2018
Genre: General Fiction
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Pub. Date: March 13, 2018
I was in the mood for something light and fluffy. I didn’t even read the book blurb before I began reading the story since the title sounds like a celebrity movie-star type of easy read. I was way off. Nevertheless, I am so glad that I found this author, Christine Schutt, and read this short story collection. She writes eleven captivating tales portraying the darkness that the reader will find in the souls of her characters. I am using the word “soul” for that is just what came to mind. After I finished this collection, I googled the author and learned that her 2009 book, “All Souls” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I sure did stumble into good luck discovering Christine Schutt.
“Pure Hollywood” is the title story. It is more a novella than a short story. A brother comes to aid his sister after the death of her much older husband. Her stepchildren, who are her age, ensure that she will not inherit a cent. The story goes back and forth in time between their dysfunctional childhood and the present. It is very sad and telling to read that the brother actually calls the sister’s (for now) showy mansion as frosty as when they were children and living in their mothers’ car. The siblings have a complicated relationship. If I say more it would be a spoiler. Creepy read.
“Lucinda’s Garden” features a self-absorbed young couple. They are lucky enough to be house-sitting a seaside cottage. All day long they lay in the sun, swim in the ocean, smoke joints and are very much in love with themselves, more so than with each other. They feel invincible, so they take many dangerous risks. I disliked this couple till I liked them and repeated these thoughts throughout the tale.
“The Hedges" is the story that chilled me the most. A young married couple vacations at a swanky beach resort. They bring along their toddler son. The other guests notice that the mother goes out of her way to ignore and not be around her child. She leaves all vacation parenting to her husband while she sunbathes. We know that the boy is sick, which makes him cranky. Still, this does not excuse her to the others. This reviewer thinks that although she loves her son, she does not possess maternal instincts. She is not a frigid mother. She is simply not a natural mom. Maybe it is the mother in me that I found this one so very hard to read.
Schutt has a knack for creating unexpected plot twists. More importantly, she will scare the bejesus out of you by bringing you inside the minds of her toxic characters. You will recoil from their disturbing passions. Some of the stories are extremely short. Still, they carry a big punch, assaulting the reader. I may not have read this author before, but I most certainly will be reading her again.
I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.
Find all my book reviews at:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list
Leave Me Alone I am Reading & Reviewing: https://books6259.wordpress.com/
Twitter: Martie’s Book Reviews: https://twitter.com/NeesRecord
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Pub. Date: March 13, 2018
I was in the mood for something light and fluffy. I didn’t even read the book blurb before I began reading the story since the title sounds like a celebrity movie-star type of easy read. I was way off. Nevertheless, I am so glad that I found this author, Christine Schutt, and read this short story collection. She writes eleven captivating tales portraying the darkness that the reader will find in the souls of her characters. I am using the word “soul” for that is just what came to mind. After I finished this collection, I googled the author and learned that her 2009 book, “All Souls” was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I sure did stumble into good luck discovering Christine Schutt.
“Pure Hollywood” is the title story. It is more a novella than a short story. A brother comes to aid his sister after the death of her much older husband. Her stepchildren, who are her age, ensure that she will not inherit a cent. The story goes back and forth in time between their dysfunctional childhood and the present. It is very sad and telling to read that the brother actually calls the sister’s (for now) showy mansion as frosty as when they were children and living in their mothers’ car. The siblings have a complicated relationship. If I say more it would be a spoiler. Creepy read.
“Lucinda’s Garden” features a self-absorbed young couple. They are lucky enough to be house-sitting a seaside cottage. All day long they lay in the sun, swim in the ocean, smoke joints and are very much in love with themselves, more so than with each other. They feel invincible, so they take many dangerous risks. I disliked this couple till I liked them and repeated these thoughts throughout the tale.
“The Hedges" is the story that chilled me the most. A young married couple vacations at a swanky beach resort. They bring along their toddler son. The other guests notice that the mother goes out of her way to ignore and not be around her child. She leaves all vacation parenting to her husband while she sunbathes. We know that the boy is sick, which makes him cranky. Still, this does not excuse her to the others. This reviewer thinks that although she loves her son, she does not possess maternal instincts. She is not a frigid mother. She is simply not a natural mom. Maybe it is the mother in me that I found this one so very hard to read.
Schutt has a knack for creating unexpected plot twists. More importantly, she will scare the bejesus out of you by bringing you inside the minds of her toxic characters. You will recoil from their disturbing passions. Some of the stories are extremely short. Still, they carry a big punch, assaulting the reader. I may not have read this author before, but I most certainly will be reading her again.
I received this Advance Review Copy (ARC) novel from the publisher at no cost in exchange for an honest review.
Find all my book reviews at:
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list
Leave Me Alone I am Reading & Reviewing: https://books6259.wordpress.com/
Twitter: Martie’s Book Reviews: https://twitter.com/NeesRecord
December 30, 2021
I not only devoured this book, I deep-throated it, so it’s safe to say my first meeting with Schutt was a success. Her prose, these stories, are definitely an acquired taste, shall we say. Her ‘deliciously off-kilter perspective’ will leave many readers unsatisfied who need their narratives to be more direct, to have a firm grip on the characters, for the substance of the stories to be closer to the surface. We’re not getting that from these fictions.
I love these kind of oblique, stylistic short stories that are focused on the sentences. I’m a lover of Lydia Davis, Joy Williams, Amy Hempel, Robert Walser, David Means, and I’ve enjoyed the even harder-to-capture stories of Diane Williams. So this wasn’t new territory for me – I embraced Schutt’s odd phrasing, weird sensibility, deadly serious mischief and elusiveness. And as expected the tight meticulous writing, loaded, chiseled sentences, were excellent.
Because here’s the thing with these writers: the characters are there, the heart and compassion is there. The wit and drama is there. The STORIES are there, at least for me, and I feel them. They are not just exercises in style. I wouldn’t be into them if they were. But like I said, acquired taste etc. My favourite ones by far were the title story Pure Hollywood, The Hedges, Species of Special Concern, and A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda’s Garden.
I hope but I’m not hopeful that Schutt’s earlier story collections and novels will get a little more printing and find their way onto shelves, because I would love to read her again.
The vibe is depressing moods out in pretty gardens, black comedy, loss and death in gorgeous pink dusks and modern architectural homes. I loved Schutt’s energy.
I love these kind of oblique, stylistic short stories that are focused on the sentences. I’m a lover of Lydia Davis, Joy Williams, Amy Hempel, Robert Walser, David Means, and I’ve enjoyed the even harder-to-capture stories of Diane Williams. So this wasn’t new territory for me – I embraced Schutt’s odd phrasing, weird sensibility, deadly serious mischief and elusiveness. And as expected the tight meticulous writing, loaded, chiseled sentences, were excellent.
Because here’s the thing with these writers: the characters are there, the heart and compassion is there. The wit and drama is there. The STORIES are there, at least for me, and I feel them. They are not just exercises in style. I wouldn’t be into them if they were. But like I said, acquired taste etc. My favourite ones by far were the title story Pure Hollywood, The Hedges, Species of Special Concern, and A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda’s Garden.
I hope but I’m not hopeful that Schutt’s earlier story collections and novels will get a little more printing and find their way onto shelves, because I would love to read her again.
The vibe is depressing moods out in pretty gardens, black comedy, loss and death in gorgeous pink dusks and modern architectural homes. I loved Schutt’s energy.
April 6, 2018
Schutt's craft is immaculate. She deploys language and details with a precision economy down to how variations in sentence structure can hone a meaning or allow a story to hinge on a single word into something unexpected. Within those constructions, her stories tend towards portraiture, often of basically bourgeois American lives, not a mode I typically chase, but there's a raw current of despair and dislocation running through these that resists dismissal.
I notice that Diane Williams gets an acknowledgement, and a bit of a similar punchy unpredictability shows in the more flash-length pieces later in the collection, which is a pleasant variation in the rhythm here.
I almost want to give this an extra star just to spite all those netgalley advance readers who balked at the mechanics of Schutt's writing, when that's really the best part here. But ultimately I didn't love the book as a whole so much as that, I just recognize the skill that went into it.
I notice that Diane Williams gets an acknowledgement, and a bit of a similar punchy unpredictability shows in the more flash-length pieces later in the collection, which is a pleasant variation in the rhythm here.
I almost want to give this an extra star just to spite all those netgalley advance readers who balked at the mechanics of Schutt's writing, when that's really the best part here. But ultimately I didn't love the book as a whole so much as that, I just recognize the skill that went into it.
April 16, 2018
Pure Hollywood is published by And Other Stories. They have 11 commandments for book selection of which number one is:
"We publish writing that is mind-blowing, often 'challenging' (Maureen Freely) and 'shamelessly literary' (Stuart Evers) – opening a space for exploration and discovery. It’s up for debate. Look at the authors we’ve read and published to get a feel for And Other Stories' tastes."
I've read seven other books that have been published by And Other Stories, but this is the first one that has my name at the back as one of their subscribers. Cue warm glow.
Pure Hollywood is a collection of one eponymous novella and 10 short stories which are linked by a general sense of foreboding. Many of the stories are slightly disorientating as they flit around in a dream-like fashion. There is wit: in the first story, a man asks his stepmother a question:
"What did you and my dad ever have in common?"
"He didn’t really like his kids and neither do I."
And this sort of gives you a feel for the kind of people you will meet. You might not choose many of them as your friends, but they say what they think and Schutt has a way with words that captures the heartbreak and vulnerability of her protagonists, even though we only get to spend a few pages with most of them. In the background, there is a constant eerie sense of menace and there are hints that something has gone wrong (sometimes what that is is revealed late in the story, sometimes it just leaves you feeling uncomfortable).
So, we have stories of an actress whose (much older) husband has died and who tries to revisit her past (it doesn’t end well), of a couple on holiday with their young son who seems to be ill: there are hints that it will not end well. And it doesn’t. Those are the first two stories, but you get the idea.
With recommendations on the cover from George Saunders, Ottessa Moshfegh and David Hayden, all of whom I have read, and John Ashbery whom I have not read, I was perhaps expecting a bit more than I feel I got. The stories are all interesting and the writing is effective as you read it, but I found that several of the stories slipped away from me very quickly.
Overall, this is an eerily quirky collection of stories that is engaging as you read it. How many stars you give it will depend on what stays with you after you finish it and my rating reflects my disappointment in that regard, although I am not ruling out a re-read at some point.
"We publish writing that is mind-blowing, often 'challenging' (Maureen Freely) and 'shamelessly literary' (Stuart Evers) – opening a space for exploration and discovery. It’s up for debate. Look at the authors we’ve read and published to get a feel for And Other Stories' tastes."
I've read seven other books that have been published by And Other Stories, but this is the first one that has my name at the back as one of their subscribers. Cue warm glow.
Pure Hollywood is a collection of one eponymous novella and 10 short stories which are linked by a general sense of foreboding. Many of the stories are slightly disorientating as they flit around in a dream-like fashion. There is wit: in the first story, a man asks his stepmother a question:
"What did you and my dad ever have in common?"
"He didn’t really like his kids and neither do I."
And this sort of gives you a feel for the kind of people you will meet. You might not choose many of them as your friends, but they say what they think and Schutt has a way with words that captures the heartbreak and vulnerability of her protagonists, even though we only get to spend a few pages with most of them. In the background, there is a constant eerie sense of menace and there are hints that something has gone wrong (sometimes what that is is revealed late in the story, sometimes it just leaves you feeling uncomfortable).
So, we have stories of an actress whose (much older) husband has died and who tries to revisit her past (it doesn’t end well), of a couple on holiday with their young son who seems to be ill: there are hints that it will not end well. And it doesn’t. Those are the first two stories, but you get the idea.
With recommendations on the cover from George Saunders, Ottessa Moshfegh and David Hayden, all of whom I have read, and John Ashbery whom I have not read, I was perhaps expecting a bit more than I feel I got. The stories are all interesting and the writing is effective as you read it, but I found that several of the stories slipped away from me very quickly.
Overall, this is an eerily quirky collection of stories that is engaging as you read it. How many stars you give it will depend on what stays with you after you finish it and my rating reflects my disappointment in that regard, although I am not ruling out a re-read at some point.
July 22, 2019
I read these stories over and over for the sentence level goodness and the surprises that always come (even though second/third time around they weren't surprises). Although a slim volume I've probably spent more time reading it than novels three times the size: always the mark of something special.
December 28, 2021
2.98 average Goodreads rating (as of this writing, 12/27/21) and I’m over here breathlessly tearing through this collection in a few hours and hungry for more… to each their own, I suppose.
I really wasn’t planning to take on another Christine Schutt book right now, so close in proximity to my reading Nightwork and Florida, but I went to sample the title story in Pure Hollywood and next thing I knew, I was three stories deep. (Oops.) That damn prose again. When will I learn my lesson?
Highlights for me were the title story, “The Hedges,” “Species of Special Concern,” “Duchess of Albany,” “Where You Live? When You Need Me?,” and the tiny but quite chilling “The Dot Sisters.”
I don’t know what the rest of Goodreads is smoking, but Pure Hollywood really hit the spot for me. Stunning prose, darkness in abundance, sudden brutal violence and strange humor. All killer, no filler.
It’s official, I’m converted, Schutt is marvelous and I’m obsessed.
Highly recommended.
I really wasn’t planning to take on another Christine Schutt book right now, so close in proximity to my reading Nightwork and Florida, but I went to sample the title story in Pure Hollywood and next thing I knew, I was three stories deep. (Oops.) That damn prose again. When will I learn my lesson?
Highlights for me were the title story, “The Hedges,” “Species of Special Concern,” “Duchess of Albany,” “Where You Live? When You Need Me?,” and the tiny but quite chilling “The Dot Sisters.”
I don’t know what the rest of Goodreads is smoking, but Pure Hollywood really hit the spot for me. Stunning prose, darkness in abundance, sudden brutal violence and strange humor. All killer, no filler.
It’s official, I’m converted, Schutt is marvelous and I’m obsessed.
Highly recommended.
January 8, 2018
Pure Hollywood
The story of a 28-year-old actress, Mimi married to a 69-year-old businessman Arnie. Arnie dies of a heart attack and Mimi finds herself in midst of a chaos, created by her own heart. She has difficulty coping up with Arnie’S death. The story also exploits the complicated and almost intimate relationship which she shares with her brother. Mimi tries to revisit her past but faces strange situations which push her further into the darkness.
The Hedges
Dick and Lolly are on a vacation with their two-year-old son. But all is not well. Jonathan stays sick most of the time and Lolly is a terrible mother. She complains about everything and only cares about herself. Dick, on the other hand, tries really hard to be a father and a husband. This is a tragic story written along extremely simple and bland lines. I was surprised by the plot twist and the sudden realization that the situation just went south.
Species of special concern
Nancy cork, a woman passionate about a multitude of things such as the accordion, dogs and her plants-which mean the world to her. Present day scenario-Nancy is bedridden and her husband Cork, tries to take care of plants just like she used to. He is loving, caring and doesn’t want a life without her. But that’s not a choice he can make.
He was ready and however hesitantly he might have added to go back to Boston, he was ready but for the going back itself.The return trip meant driving away in the dark, well before dawn, so as not to see what he was leaving behind in Maine, which was his garden, a pride, a comfort, a habit—an obsession.
A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda’s Garden
Nick and Pie are newly married. They are happy together, or at least that’s what they claim until one day Pie is missing and no one has any clue about her whereabouts. A short story about love, loss and a mysterious man.
The Duchess of Albany
Grieving over her dead husband, the protagonist finds it hard to live with her old, pet dog ‘Pink’. she has a constant fear resonating around her, a fear of outliving everyone. Her children, twins, haven’t visited her in years and they call her once in a while, only to ask her to stop living. But ‘Pink’ is her companion now, in sickness and in health and she doesn’t want to lose him, but on some days, she wants him dead.
Family Man
Mass stands by the window of his cottage and revisits the hard days of the past, and compares it with the life he has built for himself, This is more of a passing thought rather than a story.
Where you live, When you need me?
The story of Ella and murdered babies. I have no idea what happened in between.
Burst Pods, Gone-By, Tangled Aster
And that's where I gave up
The most distinct feature of the author’s writing is the bland way she presents her facts. There’s no engagement with the characters. even if you thought you did, the ending is so flat that it’s very difficult to imagine the complex situations and events. This happens with every story in this anthology. The plots are extremely unpredictable and there’s no justification for anything. Each story looks likes they have been abruptly taken out of the respective characters lives.
This particular bunch is so immature, and childish. I love the author’s knack for creating usual plot twists, and I would definitely read something else by the author before passing a verdict on her or her work. But this collection was more of a drunk teenager trying to write. There’s no beginning, and there’s certainly no conclusion to the stories.
The story of a 28-year-old actress, Mimi married to a 69-year-old businessman Arnie. Arnie dies of a heart attack and Mimi finds herself in midst of a chaos, created by her own heart. She has difficulty coping up with Arnie’S death. The story also exploits the complicated and almost intimate relationship which she shares with her brother. Mimi tries to revisit her past but faces strange situations which push her further into the darkness.
The Hedges
Dick and Lolly are on a vacation with their two-year-old son. But all is not well. Jonathan stays sick most of the time and Lolly is a terrible mother. She complains about everything and only cares about herself. Dick, on the other hand, tries really hard to be a father and a husband. This is a tragic story written along extremely simple and bland lines. I was surprised by the plot twist and the sudden realization that the situation just went south.
Species of special concern
Nancy cork, a woman passionate about a multitude of things such as the accordion, dogs and her plants-which mean the world to her. Present day scenario-Nancy is bedridden and her husband Cork, tries to take care of plants just like she used to. He is loving, caring and doesn’t want a life without her. But that’s not a choice he can make.
He was ready and however hesitantly he might have added to go back to Boston, he was ready but for the going back itself.The return trip meant driving away in the dark, well before dawn, so as not to see what he was leaving behind in Maine, which was his garden, a pride, a comfort, a habit—an obsession.
A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda’s Garden
Nick and Pie are newly married. They are happy together, or at least that’s what they claim until one day Pie is missing and no one has any clue about her whereabouts. A short story about love, loss and a mysterious man.
The Duchess of Albany
Grieving over her dead husband, the protagonist finds it hard to live with her old, pet dog ‘Pink’. she has a constant fear resonating around her, a fear of outliving everyone. Her children, twins, haven’t visited her in years and they call her once in a while, only to ask her to stop living. But ‘Pink’ is her companion now, in sickness and in health and she doesn’t want to lose him, but on some days, she wants him dead.
Family Man
Mass stands by the window of his cottage and revisits the hard days of the past, and compares it with the life he has built for himself, This is more of a passing thought rather than a story.
Where you live, When you need me?
The story of Ella and murdered babies. I have no idea what happened in between.
Burst Pods, Gone-By, Tangled Aster
And that's where I gave up
The most distinct feature of the author’s writing is the bland way she presents her facts. There’s no engagement with the characters. even if you thought you did, the ending is so flat that it’s very difficult to imagine the complex situations and events. This happens with every story in this anthology. The plots are extremely unpredictable and there’s no justification for anything. Each story looks likes they have been abruptly taken out of the respective characters lives.
This particular bunch is so immature, and childish. I love the author’s knack for creating usual plot twists, and I would definitely read something else by the author before passing a verdict on her or her work. But this collection was more of a drunk teenager trying to write. There’s no beginning, and there’s certainly no conclusion to the stories.
January 8, 2018
I won this in a Goodreads giveaway and was excited about the premise - sometimes short stories are great to dive into between heavier reads. The cover is beautiful and I love LA settings.
It was problematic for me because most of the time I felt like I didn’t even know what I was reading. There was never a point of connection and they didn’t seem to tie together. When a publisher is bold enough to quote this as “In league with JD Salinger” then I’m going to hold it against a high bar, which it fails. Lastly, I can’t believe this 144 page book (rather novella) is going to be printed in hardback with a list price of $23. That’s just crazy.
It was problematic for me because most of the time I felt like I didn’t even know what I was reading. There was never a point of connection and they didn’t seem to tie together. When a publisher is bold enough to quote this as “In league with JD Salinger” then I’m going to hold it against a high bar, which it fails. Lastly, I can’t believe this 144 page book (rather novella) is going to be printed in hardback with a list price of $23. That’s just crazy.
January 26, 2019
Thank you to NetGalley and Grove Atlantic for a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
These tales were interesting, but not my cup of tea. I think that half of me went along with the words in these stories, but the other half was confused by the writing. Some sentences I had to go back and read again because I was thinking that I had the wrong word. To me, it looked like some words maybe were repetitive so the author had to use a synonym to make sure it didn't repeat too much. I think that these actions caused the writing to simply not flow for me. If I have a hard time with a flow of a book, it's almost always a do not finish situation. However, I just powered through this one to see what each story entailed.
Some of the stories were alright, some of them were just plain dull. I think that this dullness was a contributing factor of the flow of the writing. If there's nothing interesting going on, and the words don't make sense, it seems that the dullness would be escalating per story. It was sometimes a struggle to get through. I hate to be so brutally honest, but I was glad that the stories were so short that I could finish them quickly.
I hope next time Christine Schutt just puts her thoughts out on paper without having to change her wording. It was confusing and just difficult to read. I would definitely give her another chance in the future to see if there are differences on how it could be better.
These tales were interesting, but not my cup of tea. I think that half of me went along with the words in these stories, but the other half was confused by the writing. Some sentences I had to go back and read again because I was thinking that I had the wrong word. To me, it looked like some words maybe were repetitive so the author had to use a synonym to make sure it didn't repeat too much. I think that these actions caused the writing to simply not flow for me. If I have a hard time with a flow of a book, it's almost always a do not finish situation. However, I just powered through this one to see what each story entailed.
Some of the stories were alright, some of them were just plain dull. I think that this dullness was a contributing factor of the flow of the writing. If there's nothing interesting going on, and the words don't make sense, it seems that the dullness would be escalating per story. It was sometimes a struggle to get through. I hate to be so brutally honest, but I was glad that the stories were so short that I could finish them quickly.
I hope next time Christine Schutt just puts her thoughts out on paper without having to change her wording. It was confusing and just difficult to read. I would definitely give her another chance in the future to see if there are differences on how it could be better.
Read
January 13, 2018DNF at 11%
I can't connect with the writing style.
***ARC provided kindly by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***
I can't connect with the writing style.
***ARC provided kindly by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.***
May 15, 2018
This is the first time I’ve read a book by acclaimed novelist and short story writer Christine Schutt, but she has a disarming and fascinating way of writing about self-consciousness, family and the passage of time. In “Pure Hollywood” the opening title story is also the longest tale in this collection. It’s an impressionistic story of a brother and sister after the sister’s much older husband dies. He was a wealthy famous comedian, but she soon finds she’s shut out of any substantial inheritance and she’s forced to vacate the modernist home she inhabited like an abstract painting. The odd series of events which make up her life feel as if they’ve been crafted in a Hollywood film script so she forms an odd emotional distance from her own sense of being. This is a feeling that recurs throughout many of the stories in this book where the enormity of characters’ loves and losses have a sense of being scripted and so they are abstracted out of the personal. What’s left is the sordid and grimy reality that they inhabit like bemused spectators blinking in the sunlight after spending too long in a dark movie theatre.
Read my full review of Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt on LonesomeReader
March 15, 2018
I just finished this anthology a week ago and literally can’t remember anything I read. To be honest, I basically forgot the whole thing as soon as I finished. None of the stories really stuck with me, and I couldn’t empathize or relate to any of the characters. The anthology was well written and well edited, just didn’t turn out to be even remotely my cuppa.
Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
Received via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.
July 22, 2020
The entire collection felt a bit distanced. A bit grim. An unease. A quick swipe at something ungilded.
I am generally not a fan of short stories. Stylistically, these were fine. Mostly I felt neutral about the collection.
I am generally not a fan of short stories. Stylistically, these were fine. Mostly I felt neutral about the collection.
March 16, 2018
This is the type of book that has no middle ground: you either love it or you hate it. Unfortunately, Pure Hollywood wasn’t for me, but I can see why people would enjoy this short story collection.
The stories had a lot of potential, and this book requires a lot of reading between the lines, which is something that I love about short stories.
However, the writing style is what really made this book difficult for me to read. Christine Schutt's style was overly repetitive to the point where the stories were difficult to follow and understand.
Most of these short stories were originally published in literary magazines, and I see how her stories could stand out and do really well in that medium. However, having to read all of the stories in her collection in the same writing style got to be too much. (If you are interested in reading this book, I recommend reading it over the course of several months.)
The way scenes were described made everything feel on the same level. For example, in the story A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden, one of the main characters hits an animal with her car, but the writing makes this feel like the most mundane thing in the world.
Additionally, all the characters seem to meander through life with little to no feelings. Each story gets progressively shorter, which gave me even less time to get to know and understand the characters.
My favorite story in the collection was the title story that follows a young female whose older rich husband has died. She's faced with the reality that all of his money is going to his children, and she has to figure out what to do with her life.
While I thought the book would focus on different characters living in Hollywood, it more so focuses on this theme of gardeners and gardening. Each story kept on bring up this idea of gardening as a metaphor for the ideal life and something just out of the characters' reach. And that's something I did enjoy about Schutt's collection.
Overall, this book had a lot of potential to be wonderful, but the writing style felt too abrasive, and therefore, I couldn't get into the stories as much as I wanted.
I received this book form Grove Atlantic via Netgalley in return for an honest review.
The stories had a lot of potential, and this book requires a lot of reading between the lines, which is something that I love about short stories.
However, the writing style is what really made this book difficult for me to read. Christine Schutt's style was overly repetitive to the point where the stories were difficult to follow and understand.
Most of these short stories were originally published in literary magazines, and I see how her stories could stand out and do really well in that medium. However, having to read all of the stories in her collection in the same writing style got to be too much. (If you are interested in reading this book, I recommend reading it over the course of several months.)
The way scenes were described made everything feel on the same level. For example, in the story A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden, one of the main characters hits an animal with her car, but the writing makes this feel like the most mundane thing in the world.
Additionally, all the characters seem to meander through life with little to no feelings. Each story gets progressively shorter, which gave me even less time to get to know and understand the characters.
My favorite story in the collection was the title story that follows a young female whose older rich husband has died. She's faced with the reality that all of his money is going to his children, and she has to figure out what to do with her life.
While I thought the book would focus on different characters living in Hollywood, it more so focuses on this theme of gardeners and gardening. Each story kept on bring up this idea of gardening as a metaphor for the ideal life and something just out of the characters' reach. And that's something I did enjoy about Schutt's collection.
Overall, this book had a lot of potential to be wonderful, but the writing style felt too abrasive, and therefore, I couldn't get into the stories as much as I wanted.
I received this book form Grove Atlantic via Netgalley in return for an honest review.
November 29, 2023
students of the John Ashbery school of prose are incapable of writing bad stories even when they resemble plotless photographs of people whose ordinariness is uncannily real, and whose past (like those heroines of Salinger) only portends future misery. The first 4-5 stories are unforgettable. Schutt gives “mosaics unexpected and unfitted yet shellacked together and made to glow alike in recollection so that all she had known of love and the end of love could be summoned and summed up in a ceiling pinked in sulfurous light.”
November 27, 2025
I REALLY enjoyed these stories. They sit perfectly equipoised between Deborah Eisenberg and Amy Hempel in how they’re written.
I do feel like this is a slightly too ultraviolet approach to storytelling - too high exposure - there’s no “fat”, or filler, or breathing room, which sometimes made the reading experience quite disorientating, or detracted from its legibility as a story about human people. But be so for real. The book is called “Pure Hollywood”. I think we can grant that that’s a stylistic thing with an aesthetic purpose. But if Schutt could turn down the brightness a tad this might have been perfect for me.
I do feel like this is a slightly too ultraviolet approach to storytelling - too high exposure - there’s no “fat”, or filler, or breathing room, which sometimes made the reading experience quite disorientating, or detracted from its legibility as a story about human people. But be so for real. The book is called “Pure Hollywood”. I think we can grant that that’s a stylistic thing with an aesthetic purpose. But if Schutt could turn down the brightness a tad this might have been perfect for me.
May 3, 2018
Ill, ill, ill. Oh, to be not ill. I'm sorry Ms Schutt. These were quite good stories, really, but through illness they sort of bled a bit. Maybe on a better week. Arbitary stars: ***.*
Ill.
Ill.
June 24, 2018
Review to follow.
September 17, 2017
The blurb on this book’s home page on Netgalley described Christine Schutt as an original and exciting voice, and that she is returning to the format that catapulted her to worldwide fame.
I was intrigued. I requested the book, and it was very kindly made available.
The style of Schutt’s prose made it a little hard for me to follow, too many interruptions and segues make it a difficult read.
It took me a while to truly get in synch with her style, and once that was accomplished, I loved, with a capital ‘L’, the first two of the stories that deal with the overarching theme of loss.
Told from a woman’s perspective, the first story is about an aspiring actress dealing with the loss of her husband, her lifestyle, her mother (from when she was younger), while another story deals with a woman’s loss of independence and quality ‘me time’, the result of which is shocking.
The next story deals with a man living in denial over the passing of his wife.
The novelty of the writing style and the theme wore off as I went deeper into the book. After a point, it was a source of annoyance to have to go back every few lines to re-read an entire paragraph. Now I’m someone who reads for pleasure, and this book is anything but.
That said, I’m sure this style of prose has its share of admirers, and for them, I’d recommend this.
But it’s not for me.
A serviceable 3/5
I was intrigued. I requested the book, and it was very kindly made available.
The style of Schutt’s prose made it a little hard for me to follow, too many interruptions and segues make it a difficult read.
It took me a while to truly get in synch with her style, and once that was accomplished, I loved, with a capital ‘L’, the first two of the stories that deal with the overarching theme of loss.
Told from a woman’s perspective, the first story is about an aspiring actress dealing with the loss of her husband, her lifestyle, her mother (from when she was younger), while another story deals with a woman’s loss of independence and quality ‘me time’, the result of which is shocking.
The next story deals with a man living in denial over the passing of his wife.
The novelty of the writing style and the theme wore off as I went deeper into the book. After a point, it was a source of annoyance to have to go back every few lines to re-read an entire paragraph. Now I’m someone who reads for pleasure, and this book is anything but.
That said, I’m sure this style of prose has its share of admirers, and for them, I’d recommend this.
But it’s not for me.
A serviceable 3/5
October 17, 2017
I had a lot of trouble connecting to these stories, and the narrative felt just too wandering for me to follow it all feel like I was understanding the point. I enjoyed the first one, until it just kept going and going and going, then I think it went back or forward in time? I'm not sure, but it lost me. So I tried the next one, and while it was shorter, it still didn't bring me in. I will say that these stories had an overarching feeling of melancholy about them, though I'm not exactly sure why. Fleeting time? Dimming light? Beach days sped up until the nostalgia of beach vacations with too much sun and chilling sand after a long day seep in. So there was some feeling transmitted on the whole, but not enough for me to want to recommend the collection, unfortunately. There's something there, but just not enough for me.
July 28, 2018
Stylish and technically assured, these stories somehow failed to connect with me and I found myself bored through much of this very brief book. Only the final story, "The Lady from Connecticut", which reminded me greatly of the work of Diane Williams, felt emotionally inhabited and fully imagined; the others lack this depth and seem all surface: polished to a high gloss but too slippery to offer a reader anywhere to grab on or linger.
January 28, 2022
Of the Lish/NOON writers (that I have read: Williams, Lutz, Holland, Lish) Schutt's sentences are the most subtle, fading into the background at times. But the characteristic gauziness and rhythm remain and dominate throughout.
A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden was the most striking story in the collection, personally.
While reading I was struck by a single sentence, analyzed it a bit and put this mini-essay up on twitter:
A startling sentence by Christine Schutt: "The next morning, he bolts a split birch trunk together and it bleeds." from 'Family Man' out of Pure Hollywood. What is the source of its impact? The obvious starting place is the rapid jukes of the 'b's and 't's. They stop the reader in their tracks. This is a 13 word sentence but it slows the prose down as if it were an entire paragraph. The fireworks only start at the fifth word, nearly halfway through the sentence, so the reader is going along at their regular pace, then hits a maze of pronunciation. In its midst (the play is roughly symmetrical) the deployment of this mysterious, moderate 'birch' a slight (but illusory) respite. Schutt is a big cat playing with her prey: the reader. In spite of this, the focus on language does not call attention to itself, not unduly. It slips in silently and the reader realizes what is occurring (then: has occurred) only as the sentence closes.Having spent so much mental energy to just parse out the language, the broader meaning has slipped right by. The reader, now aware of the tactic, goes back again with the intention of really focusing on the meaning. But even with this knowledge again the language catches them up, sinks the reader. Again, reading with focus, again tripped up, though a little less so. Three, five, seven reads. Finally, once the footwork of the languages has sunk into the unconscious, the reader can anticipate it and follow along, and the meaning (poetic, challenging, but utterly coherent) comes together. Having devoted so much close attention to the sentence the reader releases it and the rest of the story floods back into their mind. Like a wound spring (each reading a turn) suddenly loosed the broader implications of the sentence spin out, gathering layers as it applies retroactively to the prior narrative. After all this the sentence has the effortless feeling of being totally off the cuff, dashed out without thought.
A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden was the most striking story in the collection, personally.
While reading I was struck by a single sentence, analyzed it a bit and put this mini-essay up on twitter:
A startling sentence by Christine Schutt: "The next morning, he bolts a split birch trunk together and it bleeds." from 'Family Man' out of Pure Hollywood. What is the source of its impact? The obvious starting place is the rapid jukes of the 'b's and 't's. They stop the reader in their tracks. This is a 13 word sentence but it slows the prose down as if it were an entire paragraph. The fireworks only start at the fifth word, nearly halfway through the sentence, so the reader is going along at their regular pace, then hits a maze of pronunciation. In its midst (the play is roughly symmetrical) the deployment of this mysterious, moderate 'birch' a slight (but illusory) respite. Schutt is a big cat playing with her prey: the reader. In spite of this, the focus on language does not call attention to itself, not unduly. It slips in silently and the reader realizes what is occurring (then: has occurred) only as the sentence closes.Having spent so much mental energy to just parse out the language, the broader meaning has slipped right by. The reader, now aware of the tactic, goes back again with the intention of really focusing on the meaning. But even with this knowledge again the language catches them up, sinks the reader. Again, reading with focus, again tripped up, though a little less so. Three, five, seven reads. Finally, once the footwork of the languages has sunk into the unconscious, the reader can anticipate it and follow along, and the meaning (poetic, challenging, but utterly coherent) comes together. Having devoted so much close attention to the sentence the reader releases it and the rest of the story floods back into their mind. Like a wound spring (each reading a turn) suddenly loosed the broader implications of the sentence spin out, gathering layers as it applies retroactively to the prior narrative. After all this the sentence has the effortless feeling of being totally off the cuff, dashed out without thought.
September 25, 2018
I really liked these dark short stories. Maybe it’s because I’m from LA and am used to the sort of devastating endings that sell. They’re beautifully crafted and the prose is top notch. However, they’re so sharp and hurtful that I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone who is easily upset. Overall, I breezed through it, cried through multiple stories and felt a sense of relief a million times over when I was done. Schutt has a real knack for a sort of sing songy pacing that made me fly through this book.
I almost wonder if how startlingly real these stories are is what people really disagree with. My neighbor held me hostage when I was a kid and then a few months later a separate neighbor murder suicided his wife in the front window while we were playing in the front yard. For me and my experiences these stories were so horribly realistic that they were perfect.
I almost wonder if how startlingly real these stories are is what people really disagree with. My neighbor held me hostage when I was a kid and then a few months later a separate neighbor murder suicided his wife in the front window while we were playing in the front yard. For me and my experiences these stories were so horribly realistic that they were perfect.
May 19, 2018
Pure Hollywood by Christine Schutt is such a unique collection. Not all of the stories were 100% in my wheelhouse; however, Schutt can write beautiful prose & encapsulate a broad number of themes in a matter of 10 pages with her eccentric stories. Themes of dysfunctional families, motherhood, grief and love are just a few of the topics covered in these 144 pages of experimental literature.
This collection would be great to read on the tube or the train, or a plane flight. It would be great for those wanting to broaden their literary reading tastes and dive into something experimental but still accessible, and this would be good for those who just thoroughly enjoy well written, literary short stories.
I didn’t love it, but that doesn’t mean you won’t!
May 6, 2018
3.5 starts. As Ottessa Moshfegh said in her review, 'Come for the art of her exquisitely weird writing and stay for the human drama.' Dark and unsettling slice of life stories written in spare prose. Interior lives are explored at individuals most fragile times. Women feel burdened by others and want to escape while men are indifferent. There is a feeling of danger, disconnection, and loss bubbling just below the surface.
I loved the stories and they have now put me in the mood to go and read Ottessa Moshfegh's own 'exquisitely weird writing' in her book of short stories Homesick for Another World.
I loved the stories and they have now put me in the mood to go and read Ottessa Moshfegh's own 'exquisitely weird writing' in her book of short stories Homesick for Another World.
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