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To Skin a Cat
A collection of thirteen stories of great range, verve, and humor from the highly acclaimed author of Cloudbursts and Ninety-two in the Shade
Thomas McGuane's first short story collection is "a cornucopia of McGuane's grace, humor, gusto, and smarts" ( Philadelphia Inquirer ), and McGuane is a writer who “makes the page, the paragraph, the sentence itself a record of continuous imaginative activity.... [He is] an important as well as a brilliant novelist" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
Includes the
• The Millionaire
• A Man in Louisiana
• Like a Leaf
• Dogs
• A Skirmish
• Two Hours to Kill
• The Rescue
• Sportsmen
• Little Extras
• Partners
• The Road Atlas
• Flight
• To Skin a Cat
Thomas McGuane's first short story collection is "a cornucopia of McGuane's grace, humor, gusto, and smarts" ( Philadelphia Inquirer ), and McGuane is a writer who “makes the page, the paragraph, the sentence itself a record of continuous imaginative activity.... [He is] an important as well as a brilliant novelist" ( The New York Times Book Review ).
Includes the
• The Millionaire
• A Man in Louisiana
• Like a Leaf
• Dogs
• A Skirmish
• Two Hours to Kill
• The Rescue
• Sportsmen
• Little Extras
• Partners
• The Road Atlas
• Flight
• To Skin a Cat
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
11 people are currently reading
165 people want to read
About the author
Thomas McGuane
77 books465 followersThomas Francis McGuane III is an American writer. His work includes ten novels, short fiction and screenplays, as well as three collections of essays devoted to his life in the outdoors. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, National Cutting Horse Association Members Hall of Fame and the Fly-Fishing Hall of Fame.
McGuane's early novels were noted for a comic appreciation for the irrational core of many human endeavors, multiple takes on the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. His later writing reflected an increasing devotion to family relationships and relationships with the natural world in the changing American West, primarily Montana, where he has made his home since 1968, and where his last five novels and many of his essays are set. He has three children, Annie, Maggie and Thomas.
McGuane's early novels were noted for a comic appreciation for the irrational core of many human endeavors, multiple takes on the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. His later writing reflected an increasing devotion to family relationships and relationships with the natural world in the changing American West, primarily Montana, where he has made his home since 1968, and where his last five novels and many of his essays are set. He has three children, Annie, Maggie and Thomas.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
August 7, 2012
This one is a real mixed bag of good, bad and everything in between.
Some of the tales are a bit unsettling, including one that involves a father deciding how to best capitalize on his teenage daughter's pregnancy.
Some were amusing, but bittersweet, like the story about how one man's strange mid-life crisis leads him to steal his friends' dogs.
There was one true standout - The Skirmish, involving a boy's struggles with a trio of unbelievably nasty bullies.
When the slow-moving green-to-brown water of the canal got warm enough, we swam in it. We drifted under fallen trees that stretched over its mirror surface and caught the sunning turtles when they tumbled off. I had five of them, small painted and mud turtles whose cool weight in my hands and striving far-focused eyes thrilled me. The flare of shell, the arrangement of openings for head and legs, their symmetry and gleam of burnished camouflage were aching to comprehend. I took them to school and Dalton Emery, of the safety patrol, tossed them from the bus at forty miles per hour onto the paved road, where they blossomed red for an instant and flew apart. He pointed in his manual to a prohibition of pets on the school bus, an order of the state.
The book loses one star for the author's annoying insistence on using the term "making love" to describe acts that have nothing to do with affection, and for the title story about a loathsome wealthy playboy who decides to become a pimp.
If I want to read about atrocities committed by the idle rich, I can just pick up a newspaper.
Some of the tales are a bit unsettling, including one that involves a father deciding how to best capitalize on his teenage daughter's pregnancy.
Some were amusing, but bittersweet, like the story about how one man's strange mid-life crisis leads him to steal his friends' dogs.
There was one true standout - The Skirmish, involving a boy's struggles with a trio of unbelievably nasty bullies.
When the slow-moving green-to-brown water of the canal got warm enough, we swam in it. We drifted under fallen trees that stretched over its mirror surface and caught the sunning turtles when they tumbled off. I had five of them, small painted and mud turtles whose cool weight in my hands and striving far-focused eyes thrilled me. The flare of shell, the arrangement of openings for head and legs, their symmetry and gleam of burnished camouflage were aching to comprehend. I took them to school and Dalton Emery, of the safety patrol, tossed them from the bus at forty miles per hour onto the paved road, where they blossomed red for an instant and flew apart. He pointed in his manual to a prohibition of pets on the school bus, an order of the state.
The book loses one star for the author's annoying insistence on using the term "making love" to describe acts that have nothing to do with affection, and for the title story about a loathsome wealthy playboy who decides to become a pimp.
If I want to read about atrocities committed by the idle rich, I can just pick up a newspaper.
August 28, 2024
All the stories are four star except the last long (51 pages) and revolting titular story that brought the rating down. Disappointing end to a good collection.
Read
December 30, 2017This is McGuane's first story collection, and though it's not as strong as his later collections Gallatin Canyon and Crow Fair (the latter of which might be his best book), there are still plenty of wonderful turns of phrases and surprising and satisfying plots.
-"Like a Leaf" is my favorite in the collection. As McGuane's career progressed, his writing style became less zany and more restrained, and this story, originally published in Playboy in 1983, is a mean and perfect distillation of his earlier works. It's about a widower who loses his mind and begins a relationship a woman who lives across the street (who is also sleeping with his other neighbor), only to pull her along with him toward the abyss. From the opening things are askew: "I'm underneath my small house in Deadrock...What am I doing here? I'm distributing bottle caps of arsenic for the rats that come up from the river and dispute the cats over trifles. I represent civilization in a small but real way." The narrator delivers amazing lines like this: "When I say that I am okay, I mean that I am happy in the company of most people. What is wrong with me comes from my wife having unexpectedly died and from my having read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson when my doctor and I were boning up on immortality." The story ends with a shocking trip to a prison and moment of violence. It's an unforgettable depiction of loneliness and psychological disturbance.
-"A Man in Louisiana" is more plot-heavy: Barry Seitz, the 30-year-old assistant to the president of Ohio Exploration, is sent to retrieve a pointer in Mississippi for a client. Like many of McGuane's best, it's a great story about a doomed mission.
-"To Skin a Cat": the title story is by far the longest (and is the second-longest story McGuane wrote, after "The Refugee"); it occupies 51 of the book's 212 pages. There are a few departures for McGuane: it opens in London and it's in the present tense. It's about rich 30-year-old Bobby Decatur, who becomes an amateur pimp to Marianne, whom he meets in London. They eventually make it to San Francisco, where Bobby and another pimp, Chino, vie for Marianne, with disastrous results. McGuane has written plenty of stories featuring bad people (see "Like a Leaf" above), but never has he written one so long (the number of characters and shifts in settings makes it feel like a novella) with so many characters (Bobby, Marianne, Chino, a prostitute named Donna) displaying so many varieties of discontent and lost meaning--the sustained darkness and unhappiness makes this a tough read. Nevertheless, I thought it was one of the best stories in the collection--it complexly captures the cost of not knowing what we want, characters acting against their better judgment, and self-destructively heading toward the edge.
-"Like a Leaf" is my favorite in the collection. As McGuane's career progressed, his writing style became less zany and more restrained, and this story, originally published in Playboy in 1983, is a mean and perfect distillation of his earlier works. It's about a widower who loses his mind and begins a relationship a woman who lives across the street (who is also sleeping with his other neighbor), only to pull her along with him toward the abyss. From the opening things are askew: "I'm underneath my small house in Deadrock...What am I doing here? I'm distributing bottle caps of arsenic for the rats that come up from the river and dispute the cats over trifles. I represent civilization in a small but real way." The narrator delivers amazing lines like this: "When I say that I am okay, I mean that I am happy in the company of most people. What is wrong with me comes from my wife having unexpectedly died and from my having read the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson when my doctor and I were boning up on immortality." The story ends with a shocking trip to a prison and moment of violence. It's an unforgettable depiction of loneliness and psychological disturbance.
-"A Man in Louisiana" is more plot-heavy: Barry Seitz, the 30-year-old assistant to the president of Ohio Exploration, is sent to retrieve a pointer in Mississippi for a client. Like many of McGuane's best, it's a great story about a doomed mission.
-"To Skin a Cat": the title story is by far the longest (and is the second-longest story McGuane wrote, after "The Refugee"); it occupies 51 of the book's 212 pages. There are a few departures for McGuane: it opens in London and it's in the present tense. It's about rich 30-year-old Bobby Decatur, who becomes an amateur pimp to Marianne, whom he meets in London. They eventually make it to San Francisco, where Bobby and another pimp, Chino, vie for Marianne, with disastrous results. McGuane has written plenty of stories featuring bad people (see "Like a Leaf" above), but never has he written one so long (the number of characters and shifts in settings makes it feel like a novella) with so many characters (Bobby, Marianne, Chino, a prostitute named Donna) displaying so many varieties of discontent and lost meaning--the sustained darkness and unhappiness makes this a tough read. Nevertheless, I thought it was one of the best stories in the collection--it complexly captures the cost of not knowing what we want, characters acting against their better judgment, and self-destructively heading toward the edge.
May 14, 2020
McGuane can set up a good scene and can deliver a soft but effective emotional punch. Nothing too overwrought. But I felt myself muttering "that was okay, I guess". My favorites were Millionaires, Flight, and Two hours to kill. Quite frankly, I found myself feeling that each story began to have the same repetitive qualities a la Murakami. An emotionally off balanced character interacting with those around him. There was some good characterization and writing but its just not my style.
February 25, 2023
I read and enjoyed most of McGuane's novels back in the day. He's a master stylist with a sharp, bitter sense of humor that works well and that talent is on full display in the best of these stories, most of them about people whose lives are becoming untethered.
I found this book on a neglected shelf in our guest room. I'm pretty sure it came out of the abandoned belongings of an old friend who moved away long ago. Reading it made me wonder what he's up to these days. Prospering, I hope.
Recommended.
I found this book on a neglected shelf in our guest room. I'm pretty sure it came out of the abandoned belongings of an old friend who moved away long ago. Reading it made me wonder what he's up to these days. Prospering, I hope.
Recommended.
December 29, 2023
Ha! I loved all of these stories. I’m not precisely sure what happened in any of them. I’m going to go back in now and see. But definitely more McGuane for me. (also loved Crow Fair)
November 20, 2017
Um contito sobre um moço que ambiciona ser chulo. Uma profissão difícil e muito perigosa...
December 20, 2015
i love thomas mcguane!!!
October 28, 2025
This is an older short story collection (all the stories were originally individually published in the 80s) which has been in my TBR piles for about a decade. Several stories are what I consider absurdist fiction, where the actions of the characters make no sense, the plots are rather random, even silly, and the author often seemingly had some deeper meaning in mind. Sometimes this works for me and sometimes it doesn’t.
The Millionaire: The interactions between a pregnant teen and her parents as they wait out her delivery date at a rented cottage. 2/5
A Man in Loiusianna: A personal assistant to an Oil Exploration exec deals with frustrating tasks. 4/5
Like a Leaf: A widower spies on his neighbors. Started out interesting but went off the rails too much. 1.5/5
Dogs: A man recounts how a friend began acting strange after being hit in the head playing softball.2.5/5
A Skirmish: A boy has to deal with three bully brothers. 2/5
Two Hours to Kill: A man heads out horseback to hunt his family farm while waiting for an ambulance response for his deceased mother. 2/5
The Rescue: A man deals with a drunk friend. It has some interesting elements but just didn’t get anywhere. 2/5
Sportsmen: Two teens are obsessed with the outdoors even as hood culture takes over their town. 5/5
Little Extras: A nonsensical story of two blue collqr bad luck newlyweds who get taken advantage of. 1/5
Partners: A new partner at a law firm runs into an old girlfriend. This story turned out better than I expected. 4/5
The Road Atlas: A depressed man ruminates on his business relationship with his brothers, and a friendship with a widowed ranch neighbor. 2.5/5
Flight: A man goes birdhunting with a sick friend. 4/5
To Skin a Cat: Much longer than the rest of the stories (many of which are single digit in pages), not sure of the word count but probably not quite a novella. An absurdist story of a wild destructive rich young man and girl who hooks up with him. A hard core version of an Ethan Hawke vibe. 3/5
Overall it was the straight up, non absurdist stories, that worked the best for me. Absurdist fiction overwhelms me, it is ok in small doses like reading one in a magazine, or a varied anthology, but here it was too much. There is also a thematic pattern where the straight stories generally relate to men doing outdoors activities, and several of the absurdist stories included women sexually debased.
2.5/5 stars, I guess I’ll round up for the better stories, there are some good ones for sure but they probably stood out a little more than they deserved because I was underwhelmed by others.
The Millionaire: The interactions between a pregnant teen and her parents as they wait out her delivery date at a rented cottage. 2/5
A Man in Loiusianna: A personal assistant to an Oil Exploration exec deals with frustrating tasks. 4/5
Like a Leaf: A widower spies on his neighbors. Started out interesting but went off the rails too much. 1.5/5
Dogs: A man recounts how a friend began acting strange after being hit in the head playing softball.2.5/5
A Skirmish: A boy has to deal with three bully brothers. 2/5
Two Hours to Kill: A man heads out horseback to hunt his family farm while waiting for an ambulance response for his deceased mother. 2/5
The Rescue: A man deals with a drunk friend. It has some interesting elements but just didn’t get anywhere. 2/5
Sportsmen: Two teens are obsessed with the outdoors even as hood culture takes over their town. 5/5
Little Extras: A nonsensical story of two blue collqr bad luck newlyweds who get taken advantage of. 1/5
Partners: A new partner at a law firm runs into an old girlfriend. This story turned out better than I expected. 4/5
The Road Atlas: A depressed man ruminates on his business relationship with his brothers, and a friendship with a widowed ranch neighbor. 2.5/5
Flight: A man goes birdhunting with a sick friend. 4/5
To Skin a Cat: Much longer than the rest of the stories (many of which are single digit in pages), not sure of the word count but probably not quite a novella. An absurdist story of a wild destructive rich young man and girl who hooks up with him. A hard core version of an Ethan Hawke vibe. 3/5
Overall it was the straight up, non absurdist stories, that worked the best for me. Absurdist fiction overwhelms me, it is ok in small doses like reading one in a magazine, or a varied anthology, but here it was too much. There is also a thematic pattern where the straight stories generally relate to men doing outdoors activities, and several of the absurdist stories included women sexually debased.
2.5/5 stars, I guess I’ll round up for the better stories, there are some good ones for sure but they probably stood out a little more than they deserved because I was underwhelmed by others.
January 15, 2021
Vintage McGuane - his first story collection, and a fascinating view into the development of one of our finest writers of short fiction. This was before McGuane had settled on, and perfected, his wry, terse, often hilarious style, with its quick-blooming lyricism and taste for the bizarre. Here, a couple of stabs at a more sweeping approach, coupled with a kind of bleakness that feels dated - very much of the 80s - are less successful, but still of interest to fans. Or they were to me, anyway.
March 24, 2021
Most of these stories I enjoyed a lot, the title story was so-so. But honestly I would read a 600 page novel just to get a glimpse of one finely-crafted sentence like this.
(A little context...3 brothers were at an impasse over a business deal)
“Bill saw himself as Jefferson while John and Walter were the twin halves of Hamilton’s brain.”
I read that and instantly ordered another McGuane.
(A little context...3 brothers were at an impasse over a business deal)
“Bill saw himself as Jefferson while John and Walter were the twin halves of Hamilton’s brain.”
I read that and instantly ordered another McGuane.
October 19, 2021
“...where it had grown brushy, the hedgerows were laced up shut with vines and brambles of kudzu and wild honeysuckle.”
Notes: A little uneven, but my god, there's some staggering writing here. A few stories hummed, like Montanan Ray Carver. I’ve heard that his second and third collections (published decades after this one) are more consistent, can’t wait to read 'em!
Notes: A little uneven, but my god, there's some staggering writing here. A few stories hummed, like Montanan Ray Carver. I’ve heard that his second and third collections (published decades after this one) are more consistent, can’t wait to read 'em!
March 17, 2022
Nothing of his will ever again rise to the high echelon that is The Bushwhacked Piano. But this is a fun collection anyway.
Some of the stories are actually really good stories, with "Sportsmen" being my favorite. Gruesome, funny, sad.
Recommended for people who don't quite give up on authors . . . yet.
Some of the stories are actually really good stories, with "Sportsmen" being my favorite. Gruesome, funny, sad.
Recommended for people who don't quite give up on authors . . . yet.
July 3, 2022
honestly not too many good stories that don’t involve overly explicit images
April 4, 2023
p78 "Passing away in your sleep or passing as a pain-crazed, human balloon on a greasy garage floor produces the same result year after year."
May 20, 2025
A great introduction to McGuane's work, these stories will catch you out and keep you guessing, with the last one, To Skin a Cat, an unpredictable, walloping roller coaster set in San Francisco. McGuane writes cowboy culture into literary fiction.
June 7, 2020
Wow! Brilliant. What a collection of stories loosely outlined below.
1. A married couple with designs on selling their daughter's baby
2. A lackey sent to fetch a rich assholes recently purchased world class bird dog, how he loses the dog, and how the dog finds its way back home
3. A lonely voyeur and a slutty exhibitionist pinned in a small town sordidly connected to a prison yard gang bang
4. A touched kleptomaniac, hit by a line drive in the town softball game, who nabs town folk's dogs
5. A skirmish, arson, and kidnapping against the backdrop of adolescence, yankee and rebels, blue vs. grey
6. A death in the midst of an evening bird hunt by horseback with a brace of Pointers
7. A drunken buffoon that humps a CPR dummy in front of his friends, later has a heart attack and reconciles with his embarrassed wife
8. Two adolescents who love to hunt and fish surrounded by hoods (hipsters) in a small town, their tragic accident and the healing of a duck hunt
9. A newly married cuntish beauty queen (Miss Montana Runner-Up) her hardworking husband and how money and supposed prestige always buys the weak minded
10. A newly made partner in a swinging-dick lawfirm, an aging lawyer/mentor, an old flame that still burns and her husband; who happens to be the law firms most pricey client, betrayal
11. Three brothers and how one lets true love go in order to impress his kin and to make more money
12. Two good friends, two world class Pointer bitches, a hunting trip, the most unusual exchanging of a gift, and heartfelt goodbye by suicide
13. A pretty and charismatic trust fund baby who wants to become a pimp, finds the love of his life, turns her out, and loses everything to a rival pimp and his stable of hookers.
What a ride - McGuane at the top of his game - notwithstanding his fishing books of course. :)
1. A married couple with designs on selling their daughter's baby
2. A lackey sent to fetch a rich assholes recently purchased world class bird dog, how he loses the dog, and how the dog finds its way back home
3. A lonely voyeur and a slutty exhibitionist pinned in a small town sordidly connected to a prison yard gang bang
4. A touched kleptomaniac, hit by a line drive in the town softball game, who nabs town folk's dogs
5. A skirmish, arson, and kidnapping against the backdrop of adolescence, yankee and rebels, blue vs. grey
6. A death in the midst of an evening bird hunt by horseback with a brace of Pointers
7. A drunken buffoon that humps a CPR dummy in front of his friends, later has a heart attack and reconciles with his embarrassed wife
8. Two adolescents who love to hunt and fish surrounded by hoods (hipsters) in a small town, their tragic accident and the healing of a duck hunt
9. A newly married cuntish beauty queen (Miss Montana Runner-Up) her hardworking husband and how money and supposed prestige always buys the weak minded
10. A newly made partner in a swinging-dick lawfirm, an aging lawyer/mentor, an old flame that still burns and her husband; who happens to be the law firms most pricey client, betrayal
11. Three brothers and how one lets true love go in order to impress his kin and to make more money
12. Two good friends, two world class Pointer bitches, a hunting trip, the most unusual exchanging of a gift, and heartfelt goodbye by suicide
13. A pretty and charismatic trust fund baby who wants to become a pimp, finds the love of his life, turns her out, and loses everything to a rival pimp and his stable of hookers.
What a ride - McGuane at the top of his game - notwithstanding his fishing books of course. :)
July 11, 2015
Infectious. Lines like knife-stabs. But half the time, McGuane's characters are beyond comprehension. Maybe it's my blind spot. I'm pretty picky on matters of masculinity in characters. Why that is--is an essay begging to be written. Don Delillo strikes this nerve with me, as does Denis Johnson at times. Anyway, I bailed on two stories in this collection, one of which was the longest, title piece. Regardless, I was inspired to write about some rough and tumble types and to try galloping through a story at a trot. It's a hell of a lot off fun--and so is reading McGuane at his best.
October 20, 2014
The tone of some of these stories, as conveyed thru the dialogue between oddly motivated characters, is so peculiar! Interesting, mostly, because you're a little bit haunted by how much you may be forced to examine your own choices in life. Or reconcile a bit how you judge others. I think McGuane created here at least one to moon over. And at least one to pity and dismiss.
Want to read
March 28, 2008My first introduction to Mcguane, it is a collection of short stories. Most were interesting reading but sometimes with a hard to interpret twist. "To Skin a Cat" was the most lengthy of all and by far the most entertaining read.
May 12, 2010
as a collection I would give this book a 3 star rating, but there are a couple of specific stories - "dogs" and "flight" that are simply so moving and well written that it makes picking up the whole collection extremely worth it.
Want to read
November 2, 2007I've heard a lot about this guy. Any recommendations?
January 29, 2008
I've read some of McGuane's earlier work (60s-70s) and found it over written. By the 80s he seemed to mellow out a bit. I really enjoyed the short stories in here.
July 31, 2008
I had high hopes for this book, but it disappointed. Maybe his 'Gallitan Canyon' will be better...
March 23, 2014
Achieved the impossible: made the Midwest even more boring than it really is.
November 11, 2024
3 1/2 stars
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews