Stories from the Attic

by William Gay

From a celebrated master of the Southern Gothic comes a last collection
of hard-hitting short fiction, his final posthumous work




Beloved for his novels Twilight, The Long Home, and The Lost Country
and his groundbreaking collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down ,
William Gay returns with one final posthumous collection of short stories, adapted
from the archive found after his death in February 2012. In addition to previously
unpublished short stories, Stories from the Attic includes fragments
from two of the unpublished novels that were works in progress at the time of
his death.



Marked by his signature skill and bare-knuckled insight, this collection is
a must-read for William Gay devotees and fans of Southern short fiction.

Genres: Short Stories, Southern Gothic, Southern, Memoir, Gothic, Literature

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 17, 2022

About the author

William Elbert Gay was the author of the novels Provinces of Night, The Long Home, and Twilight and the short story collection I Hate to See That Evening Sun Go Down. He was the winner of the 1999 William Peden Award and the 1999 James A. Michener Memorial Prize and the recipient of a 2002 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Reviews

[Still · Rating 5 out of 5]

This posthumous collection of short stories, literary critiques and fragments isn’t for newcomers to the William Gay oeuvre. The author only had published three (3!) novels while he was alive. Everything else published posthumously was meticulously assembled by devotees, friends and fans.

William Gay began writing as a teenager. His first attempts at getting his work published started in his thirties and yet he failed to realize success until his late fifties. Asshole agents in New York rejected his submissions as being too flowery or references too arcane.

This collection is very special and consists of the final writings we’ll ever have of William Gay. For that we have J. M. White to thank. And a legion of loyalists.

Just want to quote a passage by Randy Macklin before I do pass on:

…We’ll have very little unpublished material from William after these words are in print. Like true addicts, we’ll crave another fix. I’m glad to see all these final words - fully formed short stories, fragments, meanderings, whatever they might be - finding a home between the covers of a book. Are these posthumous works in their entirety as good as the books published during William’s life? Some, yes; others, no. But they are essential and need to be published because these words are all we have.
Here, the concern of editors is the reading public, those out there who won’t be sated until they have access to all of William’s words. It is for them, I think, these remaining pages need to be in print.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

When William Gay died, his family found a trove of unpublished writing, both short stories and memoirs, and fragments of what might have been great works. This book is that collection, and it typifies Gay’s style and usual subject matter. No one that I know of can reach as far into the psyche and reality of the underbelly of humanity as William Gay. He paints the most despicable humans, but he makes you sad for their existence, for their failure, for their luckless lives. You would be afraid to meet any of them in an alley, and chances are good you would not emerge unscathed, but there is also this nagging feeling that they are pushed into this place they are in, that they are as captive in the alley as you are, that they are perhaps, deep inside themselves, even more afraid.

No one in William Gay’s stories gets what they deserve and yet all of them seem to deserve what they get.

I enjoyed every word of this book. The prose is, at times, almost poetry, which is understandable because William Gay was a man who wrote everything realistically and packed it with heart and emotion.

In the shady quiet of the woods, peace flowed over him like soothing balm. No creditors assailed him here and the old woman did not have the breath for the hills. In hollows grown chest high with briars he sometimes came upon the remains of houses, like falling ruins of some forgotten race. He wandered through them, kicking aside ancient rubbish, passing through shades of lives lived out long hence.

My favorite of the short stories was Nighttime Awakening. Herschel Clay is such a complex and fascinating character. He is a piece of crap for a human being, but it is evident that he has not encountered much in the way of kindness or understanding in the community that has harbored him all of his life. He is inexcusable, but Gay’s portrayal is so even-handed that you cannot help feeling a kind of compassion for him.

The memoirs section contains a grippingly real narrative entitled The Wreck on the Highway which might be the clearest picture of every parent’s greatest fear that I have ever read.

Vestal believed you had to take responsibility for everything you did, all the commissions and omissions, the deeds and undeeds. Everything was accounting, everything went into columns marked profit or loss, there was no column marked good intentions, none for holding your own.

And, his essay on Faulkner is so true of that great writer, and yet it is equally true of Gay himself. He surely learned the master’s craft.

Though Faulkner has written at times about depraved people doing depraved things, he never denies his characters their basic humanity. He does not condescend to them and he always allows them whatever modicum of dignity they are entitled to; his humor and compassion are always in evidence.

The third section of this book is titled, Fragments. These are incomplete stories and novels, which might sound as if they would have little or no interest for anyone other than a scholar, but the only thing disappointing about them is that they leave you itching to know where Gay might have gone next. One, particularly, The Trace has all the makings of another unforgettable Gay novel. I literally screamed “NO” when I reached the end of the writing, which was not at all the end of the story.

My thanks, once again, to the On Southern Literary Trail group for making me stop and smell the roses, uh, human sweat. A touch of sadness to know William Gay is gone; and a huge thank you to God for the talent he possessed and shared while he was here.

[John Warner · Rating 4 out of 5]

William Gay was a Southern writer standing neck and shoulders with other luminaries including William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor. This collection of short stories and partial novels were found after his death in February 2012. The stories are ingrained with what denotes great Southern writing - the land, its people, its culture. Most of the stories depict individuals or families trying to eke a living from the fertile, but challenging, land. His words flow from the pages like much of the water that cross its landscape. As one blurb from Heavy Feather Review stated on the rear cover, "William Gay could write a grocery list and make it sing and burn off the pages in equal measure."

One of my favorite short stories was entitled, "Up to Bat with the Bases Loaded." It is a story about how a gas attendant's life is changed and challenged when he meets the Liskus twins, Carmie and Cathy. The latter was the safe choice to marry while the former one is the wild one who "literally took [the narrator's] breath. The writing was so filled with Southern amosphere and passion, I could feel the heat emanating from its pages.

The only drawback to reading this book is some of the writing is partial books and regreted not having more. However, if you are a fan of Southern fiction, you should include this book as a must read.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great read with a lot of variety. It’s so sad that he’s not more well known as a brilliant southern author.

[Nils · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first encounter with the author and have enjoyed the short story experience well enough to want to explore the novels, which are now on my reading list.

[Daniel Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

Let me say at the outset, I have not found the posthumous publications of William Gay to be on a par with those edited and published during his lifetime. The latter comprises three novels, The Long Home, Provinces of Night and Twilight, and three short story collections, I Hate to See that Evening Sun Go Down, Wittgenstein's Lolita and the Iceman, and Time Done Been Won't Be No More. The former comprises three novels, The Lost Country, Stoneburner (crime detective) and Little Sister Death (horror) and Stories from the Attic, the subject of this review.

Stories from the Attic has four sections: Short Stories, Memoirs, Fragments, and Postscript.

The SFTA Short Stories do not compare favorably with those in IHTSTESGD, which are excellently crafted, and masterfully put the reader "in scene." (I cannot comment on WLATI or TDBWBNM, I have not read them.)

The SFTA Memoirs are pretty good. The Wreck on the Highway (of life?) seems the start of a good novel. Fumbling for the Keys to the Doors of Perception is autobiographical, like why he was more compelled to write than work. Reading the South (Paperback Edition) discusses the books like Thomas Wolfe's Look Homeward Angel that influenced him. Reading the South Part II (Faulkner's As I Lay Dying) is an excellent, unique review by a writer deeply influenced by Faulkner's works.

The SFTA Fragments are starts on stories or novels that Gay probably intended to complete. The Trace (set in the Natchez Trace) spins off of As I Lay Dying--there is a handcrafted casket and a death watch, and a horse-drawn wagon river crossing at flood stage. Stoneburner in Love may be included in the posthumous Stoneburner. (I don't know, I haven't read it.) My Brother's Keeper seems to be two stories missing the connecting piece. The Wreck of the Tennessee Gravy Train is excellent and unique, it looks to me like it could have been published as a completed short story.

The SFTA Postscripts are snippets by literary friends who knew, admired and loved William Gay, and who turned three tubs of Gay's unpublished writings into three posthumous novels and this book I am reviewing.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am often reluctant to read books compiled by an author's estate, as I can never get enough assurance the author actually wanted the pieces at issue to be published, whether finished or in-process. So I went into this wary, but after reading the Preface and doing some investigating on the interweb I was sufficiently settled enough to proceed. The short stories and semi-autobiographical pieces were seemingly complete or quite near completion, and were truncated versions, mini-parables as it were, of his novels. The same eloquently down-to-earth style, powerfully drawn characters, and place-capsules of locations I have never been but felt like I happened by in a dream. I didn't read the unfinished novels as I saw no point in doing so. Only Gay would know what would come of them upon completion, and while I love his writing, it felt improper to steal into these fictions unasked. Overall, a beautiful snapshot of Gay's work and thought processes about writing. Even so, I would not recommend starting here, but with one of his novels instead. Save this for last.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent posthumous collection of short stories by the great southern gothic author William Gay.
A mixed bag of fiction. It is an apt title since some of the stories actually were recovered from his attic after his death. Short stories and memoirs. Gay's stories usually feature someone searching for something inaccessible, and this book is no exception.
I can't say any stood out, and some were incomplete, as would be expected. But the vocabulary, descriptions, and characters include some of the best writing of this author.

[Hunter Gossett · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very cool collection, but only for the most diehard William Gay fans. It feels like an appropriate farewell - what we get here is a small collection of stories, some essays that themselves read a bit like short stories, and a few fragments of stories. I'm leaving some of the fragments to come back to when I really get an itch for his excellent writing.

It doesn't feel like a posthumous milking, but a true tribute to one of the most underrated writers.

[D.H. Schleicher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another posthumous work from William Gay, Stories from the Attic provides much to treasure if you are a fan of his work. The casual reader might get lost, as many of the pieces here are fragments and incomplete. As an admirer of his consummate Southern Gothic style, I appreciated all of it, even if some of it was undercooked compared to his classics.

There are some outstanding, fully formed short stories, however. I loved The Wreck on the Highway the most.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok. Intro was helpful for context. This is a prose style which makes me work at trying to embed with the characters and locales. So my enjoyment is minimal and very mixed. Just not very interesting for great portions either. Often sad and sometimes pitiable.

I never read Gay for hours lengths. Too tedious. These became just so, as much as novel lengths I've tried.

[Grace Tenkay · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection of Gay's stories, gathered from archives of never published material..
Some of the stories were incomplete, but that did not diminish the enjoyment.
Gay created some memorable villains, and unforgettable protagonists in the hill country of
Southern Tennessee. The notes from the compilers and editors of his tales were interesting as well.

[CA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Savored this one. Many of the pieces here rank as good as anything Gay ever wrote, and the fragments are pretty fascinating. The section detailing the undertaking of compiling and editing Gay’s unpublished material was worth the price of admission alone. Thanks to all the folks who worked on it.

[NC Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of these stories, but since they were assembled from manuscripts and notes after the author's death, there were a few not so great. Overall, a worthwhile read.

[John Williams · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars