Livability: Stories

by Jon Raymond

A collection of rich, powerfully human stories from the author of The Half-Life and the movies Old Joy ("one of the finest American films of the year"—New York Times) and Wendy and Lucy.

A grieving man embarks on a long-imagined affair in the months following his wife's unexpected death. Two old friends attempt to rediscover their lost bond on a trip to remote mountain hot springs. Two teenagers, trapped in a mall after hours, push each other to new levels of honesty and sexual misconduct.

In Jon Raymond's deft, nuanced stories, these and other characters experience the deep longings and sudden insights of life in a modern, middle-sized city—a world of rapidly changing neighborhoods, rising financial pressures, and chance encounters shaped by far-distant forces. Whether kids or carpenters, artists or drifters, all have arrived at a crossroads, seeking what they need to survive and finding what, if necessary, they are willing to live without. With poetic detail and a humane spirit, Livability draws a somber, wryly observed portrait of America now.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Literature

260 pages, Paperback

First published December 23, 2008

About the author

Jonathan Raymond is an American writer living in Portland, Oregon. He is best known for writing the novels The Half-Life and Rain Dragon, and for writing the short stories and screenplays for the films Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy (both directed by Kelly Reichardt). He also wrote the screenplays for Meek's Cutoff and Night Moves, and was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his writing on the HBO miniseries, Mildred Pierce.

Raymond grew up in Lake Grove, Oregon, attended Lake Oswego High School and graduated from Swarthmore College. He received his MFA from New School University in New York.

Reviews

[Harun Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

"livability" এর আক্ষরিক অর্থ হচ্ছে বাসযোগ্যতা। জন রেমন্ডের গল্পে এই বাসযোগ্যতা তার চরিত্রগুলোর শারীরিক, মানসিক অবস্থাকে যেমন নির্দেশ করছে ;তেমনি সরাসরি রাষ্ট্রকেও তার অবস্থা নিয়ে প্রশ্ন করছে কখনো কখনো। রেমন্ডের গল্প চমকবিহীন, ঢেউবিহীন ও প্রায় ক্ষেত্রেই নিস্তেজনাপূর্ণ। একটানা কাহিনি বলে যান তিনি। অধিকাংশ চরিত্র পোড় খাওয়া, জীবনের কাছে নতুন কিছু চাওয়ার নেই ; স্রেফ বেঁচে থাকা এবং নিজের সুস্থতা ধরে রাখাটাই তাদের কাম্য।রেমন্ড গল্প বলতে বলতে মাঝপথে থেমে যান, যেন পেরোনোর কিছু নেই। মার্ক, কার্ট, জোসেফ, ওয়েন্ডি, বেনি, কেন্ড্রা- রেমন্ডের পাত্রপাত্রীরা সাধারণ, বড় বেশি সাধারণ। প্রতিনিয়ত এদের দেখা মেলে আমাদের চারপাশে। আর রেমন্ড তার কাহিনির কুশীলবদের নিয়ে নিদারুণ নির্বিকার, যেন কিছুতেই কিছু যায় আসে না। লেখক শঙ্খ ঘোষকে চেনেন না।চিনলে কবি বিরচিত এই পঙক্তি নির্ঘাৎ বইতে থাকতো,

"শূন্যতাই জানো শুধু? শূন্যতার ভেতর এতো ঢেউ আছে সেকথা জানো না?"

[Toby · Rating 2 out of 5]

My overwhelming reaction to finally finishing this story is a whole new appreciation for the art of Kelly Reichardt. Her film Wendy and Lucy is a small miracle of American cinema and on realising it was adapted from a short story (Train Choir, the final short story from this collection) I had a burning need to read it. It's hard to imagine such a strong, subtle film originally coming from a non visual medium and as a former film student with aspirations of emulating such beauty in his own work, this was an adaptation worth studying.

Turns out that Reichardt made something amazing out of not much at all. The story is all there but it is so underwhelmingly flat, like 90% of this collection. There is very little in the way of interesting character or emotional depth to the stories, the majority of which have already left my mind, destined for obscurity if it hadn't been for a film making seeing something in them to inspire her own art. The highlights for me are two stories that feel the most like Raymond Carver, a story about a middle aged widower making a pilgrimage and a dinner party held by a divorcee. Two stories that move away from the rest of the forgettable hipster lit, and I assume, away from what Jon Raymond actually knows.

[Jim Laczkowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

once in awhile, a book comes into your life. like connecting with a new friend or discovering a new cuisine or hearing a band that makes you feel grateful for being alive. Livability is that book for me. not since I read Rudy Rucker (my kind of humor) or Joseph Brodsky (my philosophy/outlook on things), has something spoken directly to my taste and sensibility so perfectly, that it made me cry.

stories like "Old Joy" and "Train Choir" are exactly everything I want from a book, but they were also adapted into two of my favorite movies by the same author. his stories are minimal, simple, earnest, pure... and they paint a beautiful portrait of the towns each character lives in. i can't say enough good things about how he captures adolescence in "The Wind," in which a boy prepares to fight the town bully, while his dying grandfather tells him about the importance of nature and how it lacks control. i fell in love with every passage, every character, every story. i would say that every single story had a moment that spoke to me, and not always in a personal, identifiable way. this book will forever resonate with me, and jon raymond has become one of all my all-time favorite writers. i can't wait to read his novel next!

[Art · Rating 4 out of 5]

i was interested in this book due to the film adaptations of a few of the stories, that being "old joy" and "wendy and lucy" (in the book as "train choir"). the stories tend to be quiet, considered, and heavy in atmosphere and environment. the stories are really varied with a number of different types of characters and perspectives, and it also happens to be the first book in which i have found someone using the word "boosh". reading the book on the bus to and from the other portland (the one in maine versus oregon) during and after a snowstorm seemed to be the perfect conditions to get into these stories.

[Kilean · Rating 4 out of 5]

Superb. Although there's plenty of movement among the characters in these stories each one has a deep, ruminative quality to it. It was hard not to think about Will Oldham when reading "Old Joy" but that by no means overshadows the effect of that particular story. All of these are gems, through and through. And I didn't for once get the sense, as I've had of late whenever I pick up a new collection and skim it whilst standing in a bookstore, that these tales were scribed by some trustafarian with an oversized navel. A fine collection here.

[Knut André Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

"What is sorrow? I thought. What is sorrow but old, worn-out joy?"

To me, this really is the gold standard of modern short fiction.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like his latest novel, God + Sex (2025; reviewed by me), these 2009 stories evoke the teller's firsthand scenarios. Teachers in middle age, creative classes on the Left Coast with plenty of either trust funds or cushy gigs, rougher types lurking off the highway in forests or campsites, introspective types quite articulate who watch their loutish neighbors or lumbering acquaintances bereft of college degrees. It's undoubtedly Raymond's Portland sensibility, distilled into narratives redolent of a campus workshop.

As I'm familiar with these settings, I admit his talents lie in illustrating the Pacific Northwest milieu. No wonder the first and last entries were adapted for arthouse audiences, and the "hippie diaspora." Let's blame it on the "Californians" yoga-peddling, boutique enterprise which displaced the faux-Western joints. If both demographics share joints of a chemically enhanced nature. As for Nature Herself, she looms in shadows and crannies, where sorrow...which is "old joy" experienced past its shelf life...lingers and summons loss. Animals wait for self-aggrandizing, hubristic humans to rot.

Moods, then, stick. Although forlorn plots wander. Raymond sketches recognizable characters, but as with an apparently Native American family (crosshatched rather than boldfaced), he stumbles into a stereotype of coming of age full of fisticuffs and laden with Deep Wisdom from Noble Dying Elder...I think he's on firmer grounds with his deracinated, secularist, and New Age-addled seekers as vegan spenders and weekend getaway brooding liberal arts grads. But he's not bad on gentrification in PDX.

Both "Benny" about a tweaker buddy (see also "Old Joy") and "The Suckling Pig" on class distinctions in affluent Lake Oswego share insights into the overlap among disparate arrivals to America, and how the new century ruthlessly divided the successful sporting Porsches from the despairing who hang out at Plaid Pantry. Raymond observes his city with a knowledgeable eye towards displacement and drugs.

Yet the pacing slows. Conversation echoes those we join. The savvier, successful, worldier types try to take advantage of their less sophisticated, less capable counterparts. Real-time seems to pass as long stretches of small talk, flirtation, banter, reconciliation, and avoidance alternate; this accuracy attests to Raymond's ear for convincing exchanges on a page, mirroring his screenplay credentials: but they don't enliven his resigned alter ego of "New Shoes" effectively; febrile "Young Bodies" better catches consumer-driven, mall-encompassing, monoculture's last retail gasp under G.W. Bush's realpolitik.

So, the fidelity to style reveals mixed results. He's comfortable with gradual revelations of truth, even if the elapsed drama doesn't always pay off with stunning conclusions or thrilling episodes in print. In the final tale, "Train Choir," Raymond's able to master the genre. It's clear why this became a choice for Kelly Reichardt to film as "Wendy + Lucy," as entering into the protagonist, here named Verna, on her fumbled journey halfway between Muncie, Indiana, and a fish-processing Alaskan gig, we witness her frustration, hopes, and weariness as her itinerant fate drags her down into the underclass, trying to survive by sleeping in parking lots and hobo camps. It's a rewarding conclusion showing his best.

[Ryan Acosta-Fox · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really really good. I had not heard of Jon Raymond before seeing Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy, both of which are masterful and both of which are based on stories from this book. The highest of recommendations.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of short stories set in and around Portland, Oregon, I found this one to be a bit of a mixed bag. Having read and enjoyed The Half-Life recently, which I thought was flawed but with a ton of potential given it was his first novel, I had high hopes for this one, but the book never really shined in the way I wanted it to, and in many ways was a lesser experience than Raymond's previous work.

The stories themselves are all of a form I really like when done well. There's no grand obstacle to be overcome or great revelations about the human condition, it's just a glimpse into someone's life. This type of subdued, realist storytelling can be utterly spellbinding, and is a genre I absolutely adore, but unless expertly done can easily slip from profundity into tedium.

Livability treads very close to that line at multiple points, but I think there are enough glimpses of something great in here to prevent it tipping over, and a couple of the stories I can recommend without reservation. Train Choir in particular is a fantastic, albeit particularly miserable, tale in a book which is extremely melancholic to begin with.

Raymond's real talent, as in his previous work, is his ability to evoke a sense of time and place, and unfortunately many of the stories, especially the shorter ones, don't allow him to play to this strength as much as he did in The Half-Life or the longer entries in this collection.

The real problem with the book is that two of the strongest stories in it, Train Choir and Old Joy, have both been adapted to film by Kelly Reichardt, and I would struggle to recommend reading either of them over watching the film versions instead. Although both are good, certainly stronger than many of the other stories in here, Reichardt finds such incredible new depths within them that are simply not there on the page. Wendy and Lucy, an adapation of Train Choir, in particular is one of the finest films I've ever had the pleasure of seeing.

Unfortunately at the end of this book I was in much the same position I was when I started it. There's absolutely something about Raymond's work that grips me and the potential here is undeniable, but much like after finishing The Half-Life I still don't feel like he's delivered on that potential.

There's definitely more to recommend this book than there is to complain about, but in many ways that makes it all the more frustrating to me than if it had just been bad. A bad book you can simply dismiss and forget about, but there's nothing more frustrating than a good book that you can sense just needed the slightest push to become great.

[Gray Lindsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Train Choir, Suckling Pig and Old Joy are all quite exceptional in my opinion, and a few of the other stories have their moments, but I wish the wealth was spread more equally throughout. Raymond is pretty great at opening his stories in a way immediately grabs you; a situation or a character that is just slightly out of the ordinary. “Young Bodies,” for instance, grabbed me immediately. A mall clothing store cashier who has been stealing from the register returning to the scene of the crime?? Uh, sign me up. But where do we go from there? Certainly to some interesting places that earn the stories title, and the ending is effective in a thematic sense. But I also think Raymond - in an arch and very literary way - kind of refuses to pay off the sizable potential his premise sets up and it becomes much more about the cynical sexual worldview of the protagonist. Not at all a bad place for things to go, but also not a fully satisfying place either.

What he does excel at is painting these characters who feel like people you know. Verna in Train Choir (who became Wendy in Kelly Reichardt’s movie “Wendy And Lucy”) exemplifies this. We don’t know everything about her, but we know enough. She lost everything in a flood. Only has $632 dollars to get to Alaska - sort of promise land of sorts. She looks around at the homeless people she encounters and realizes for the first time in her life, she is thinking of these people as her competition. This story is so rich with details and little morsels of context that the simple story - drifting woman losing her dog in a random town - feels both big and small at the same time.

Not sure if I’d read more of his work - unless I can be assured it stays at the level of train choir - but I’m happy to have read this collection because who does give me some insight into the work of K.R - who for my money is one of America’s best filmmakers!

[Bucket · Rating 4 out of 5]

These stories have a very strong sense of place - and that place happens to be Portland, Oregon, where I live. I found it almost a little distracting, just because I'm so familiar with the place names and descriptions that came up. A reader less familiar might not be taken out of the stories by this as much as I was.

The stories were hit and miss for me, but a couple made it worth the four stars I'm giving. Train Choir, the final story, is the standout. It's quiet and a slow build, like all of the stories, but gut-wrenching. The Wind was also wonderful.

I was also moved by Young Bodies and The Suckling Pig, though both fell short at the end for me.

Weakest were New Shoes, and Words and Things. Both are a bit too overt in putting their message across and a bit melodramatic -- New Shoes in particular.

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmmm the thing is, Raymond is a great writer, and has the ability to truly draw a person into a story. His character building is solid, and his details are intense.

The issue, however, is that none of these stories ever came together. The booked lacked connection. He failed to create a sense of purpose around the stories, and that left the book flat. I left several of the stories wishing I had the option to know more of not only the plot, but also the characters. And perhaps that was the point, just a glimpse.

While I enjoyed the stories, I equally feel disappointed- like something is missing.

I don’t think I would recommend this particular book, although I would explore more of Raymond’s work.

[Paul Jellinek · Rating 5 out of 5]

A knock-out set of short stories that made me think of Joyce's "The Dubliners" transposed to hip 21st century Portland, Oregon. It took me a few pages of deceptively casual prose to realize just how good his writing really is, but by the end of the first story ("Old Joy"), Jon Raymond totally had me. I'd seen the movie of "Old Joy" when it first came out about ten years ago, and it was a very good movie, but nowhere near as good as the short story. This is hands down some of the best writing to come out of the great Northwest since Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff.

[Hannah Schumann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book for several reasons. One reason is because of the way its set up in short stories. Someone who gets bored easily like me would enjoy this book because of how often the story changes, which keeps it exciting and new, especially when the story you're on is starting to get a little boring. I also liked this book because the stories are all within Oregon and it was interesting hearing another perspective on different places throughout the state and hearing a little more about places I didn't know much about. Although its a quite simple book, I never got tired of it.

[Finn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few of the stories in the first half were a little weaker but overall really well observed short fiction. I was worried Train Choir specifically would have trouble living up to how much I love the Kelly Reichardt film that adapts it, Wendy & Lucy, but both stand really strongly alongside each other IMO. My other favorite stories were: Suckling Pig, Words and Things, and Young Bodies.

[pickle nickel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Little snippets of life. Well written. Heartbreaking at times, but not dramatized. Snapshots of life as it rolls by us, sometimes lazily, sometimes breakneck. Will look into other Jon Raymond books now.

[Lucien Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

redeems multiple duds with some of the most calming and well observed fiction about young people i've read. often a little too portland. always takes its time. love "young bodies" and "the wind"!!! and of course the great "old joy".

[Rob Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories have a kinship to Raymond Carver, certainly. But he's his own writer. Everything in this book is superb.

[Jenna Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Train Choir was terrific; the other stories were pretty blah.

[Christopher McQuain · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5

[MilesTeller Shirtless · Rating 1 out of 5]

Written & told like a homework assignment. Where's the fun? Where's the anything?

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to like this a little more than I did

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

A 3.5

A solid set of short stories. There is a directness to the writing; things happen quickly, and there you are in the midst of a complex situation.

[Scott Trinkle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reichardt definitely chose the best stories here and made them better.

[Jason Trevino · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite book of short stories

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kelly Reichardt led me here. A solid collection of short stories, moving and well written. Some better than others. Raymond has a fine eye for detail.

[Nina ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚ · Rating 5 out of 5]

gut-wrenching. incredibly raw and human.

[Josh Kahn · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO GOOD! Go read!!!!

[Putnam Harper · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the Old Joy movie was better, but it may have been good. I should read another, Raymond is clearly a good-competent writer.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes after reading the first in this collection of short stories. The first is about two hippie friends trying to reconnect who take an overnight hiking trip to some hot springs in Oregon. But the rest of the stories featured characters who had no business having stories written about them. There is one story called "The Suckling Pig" about an Asian guy who picks up 2 Hispanic workers, Diego and Javier, outside of a Home Depot and has them do some work on his property while he prepares an elaborate, upscale dinner of shark fin's soup and a suckling pig. Then when 2 of his dinner guests cancel, he asks Diego and Javier to stay to dinner. His other dinner guests turn up and they end up getting really drunk, playing poker, and Javier ends up sleeping with one of the dinner guests (whose husband is one of the poker players). It's all very odd and weird and I never read a story where all of the characters were so fundamentally unlikable.