Miracle Boy and Other Stories

by Pinckney Benedict

The story collection Miracle Boy and Other Stories contains fourteen works of short fiction written over the last fifteen years — and published in some of America’s top literary magazines and anthologies — by one of West Virginia’s most established and well-recognized writers of short fiction. The stories, all set in the author’s native Appalachia, concern themselves with the lives of boys and men, all of them in some manner miraculous: from a boy who loses his feet and gains them again to a hunting dog that learns to talk. Though many of the stories contain supernatural or surreal elements, all are grounded in the realities of life in the Appalachian highlands. These are rough-and-tumble stories about a hardscrabble mountain landscape, and they modulate between love and violence, between beauty and abject terror.

Genres: Short Stories

272 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 23, 2010

About the author

Pinckney Benedict (b. 1964) is an American short-story writer and novelist whose work often reflects his Appalachian background.

Benedict grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. He graduated from Princeton University, where he studied primarily with Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986, and from the Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1988.

He has published three collections of short fiction, Miracle Boy and Other Stories, Town Smokes, and The Wrecking Yard and a novel Dogs of God, the last three of which were named Notable Books by The New York Times, and all of which have been published in England, Germany, and France. He has another book, Wild Bleeding Heart (a novel, due out in 2010).

His stories have appeared in, among other magazines and anthologies, Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, StoryQuarterly, Ontario Review, Appalachian Heritage, the O. Henry Award series (twice), the New Stories from the South series (twice), the Pushcart Prize series (three times), and The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Along with his wife, the novelist Laura Benedict, he has edited the poetry and fiction anthology Surreal South (Press 53 2007), which includes work from, among others, Robert Olen Butler, Joyce Carol Oates, William Gay, Ron Rash, and Rodney Jones.

He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Four Days (Cite Amerique 2000), which starred Colm Meaney (The Commitments, television’s Star Trek: The Next Generation), Lolita Davidovich (Blaze), and William Forsythe (The Rock).

Reviews

[Betsy Ashton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pinckney Benedict's Miracle Boy and Other Stories is a collection of short stories that holds nothing sacred except the written word. With his roots in Appalachian culture, Benedict draws on an unusual cast of characters for his stories.

From the opening title story about a young boy whose feet are severed in a tractor accident, the reader knows he's under the control of a master short story writer. A simple tale of a boy with reattached feet who is bullied in school by three classmates, "Miracle Boy" is about one of the bullies rather than the boy with reattached feet. One of the bullies throws miracle boy's shoes over power lines, special shoes he needs to walk as nearly normally as possible. Over the weeks, the shoes hang on the power lines, thereby causing the bully pangs of conscience. The resolution is heart-warming without being sappy. Benedict wouldn't know how to write a sappy ending if his life depended on it.

Benedict's language is strong, almost muscular, yet it is strangely poetic. He takes out his magnifying glass and examines humanity and the hardscrabble lives his characters survive. His stories are best when Pinckney is being Pinckney, letting go of whatever conventions that might restrain him. Fourteen stories, each a gem, combine to present a necklace of images both unexpected and exciting.

[Jennifer Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miracle Boy and Other Stories is a slim book, but it took me a while to read. That is because I had to stop and breathe between stories and regain my balance. There is a compelling and destabilizing strangeness to the world Pinkney Benedict creates, and while every story is outstanding, I couldn't dwell too long in the warped reality he conjured.

The world of Miracle Boy is a bucolic one. It is rural New York, populated by poor country folks and lots of animals. There is plenty of realistic drama you could eek out of that setting, but Benedict doesn't go for it. He opens the door on a sinister and surreal version of Americana, and the story that most bolted me to the floor (and required the longest break after) was one told from the point of view of a farmer's wife, whose husband's dog becomes sentient and begins to speak. The beast is no loyal Fido, but an alpha dog with an agenda, and the hound is set on stealing his master's wife. Over the course of the story the man and dog switch places. Our narrator tells us all with a grim acceptance, which in may ways is the most stomach-churning aspect of the tale.

This is no soft stuff, but it is top drawer all the way. I recommend it, but expect to feel shades of horror you've never known before.

[Vincent Eaton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Been reading this book of short stories since the beginning of the year, as I cannot read one short story after another without characters and events becoming a blur (only two authors I have not had that with concerning short stories are Chevhov and Salinger). I have read all this books (3 ss books and one novel) and enjoyed his gritty, sometimes surreal, always rural observations. An example of this pleasant prose: "He watches the sheep that drift across the field like small clouds heavy with snow."

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal collection of literary short fiction. While the majority are convention, at least one falls within fantasy and the collection concludes with one that could be considered SF. Without exception they are written exquisitely, Benedict has a power with sentences and voice. I believe I first heard of this collection in an interview with an author in an issue of Glimmer Train where they listed this as one of the greatest collections of American short stories, along with The Stories of Breece D'J Pancake. I'll want to return to these for a reread in the future. The opening story that gives the collection its title is likely the most 'touching' of tales, and felt powerful to me for that. The final story (the SF one) I found to be weakest, failing to utilize the genre as well as it could have while simultaneously detracting for a conventional read. Benedict has a whimsy with the naming of his characters (or their nicknames) in ways that bring out the absurdity in the everyday aspects of their rural existences. It took me too long to find a copy of this book (eventually an independent bookstore in New Hope, PA), which is a shame as it deserves broader notice. I could have sat and read it in two sittings probably, but it is best savored with breaks between stories to let them abide a bit.

[John Tipper · Rating 4 out of 5]

Benedict has written a mind-bending, genre-bending collection of short stories. They range from conventional tales, horror, thriller, and science fiction. The title story has the Miracle Boy walking home one day from school. His feet had been cutoff accidentally by his father in a farming incident. Three boys assault Miracle Boy, take off his shoes and clothes, wanting to see his scares on his ankles. His feet had been mended through a lengthy operation. They throw the shoes up across electrical wires. Miracle Boy's dad was angry when he finds out the attack, and calls their homes to complain to their parents. Lizard one night climbs a pole to fetch the shoes. It's an eerie, weird tale. Benedict explores the dark side of human experience. Themes are loss and violence. The tales are set in rural Appalachia. Some pieces are quite successful, while a few are heavy and depressing. Benedict likes the open-ended story, and it makes for the conflict to go unresolved. This can work, but at times the ambiguous result is unsatisfying. Still, this book is an important contribution.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Miracle Boy and Other Stories contains fourteen works of short fiction written over the last fifteen years-and published in some of America's top literary magazines and anthologies-by one of Wesr Virginia's most established and recognised writers of short fiction. The stories, all set in the author's native Appalachia, concern themselves with the lives of boys and men, all of them in some manner miraculous: from a boy who loses his feet and gains them again to a hunting dog that learns to talk. Though many of the stories contain supernatural or surreal elements, all are grounded in the realities of life in the Appalachian highlands. These are rough-and-tumble stories about a hardscrabble mountain landscape, and they modulate between love and violence, between beauty and abject terror." From the backcover of the 2011 Salt Publishing (UK) edition of this book. I thought it a better description of this collection than the one on GR. An even better one would be these lines from 'The Second Coming' by W.B. Yeats:

“Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, / The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned; / The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity”

(I wouldn't want to claim any originality in quoting Yeats see the following: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...)

Having said that I would hate you to go away with an overly dystopian view of these stories, though there is a undercurrent of the dystopian in many just are elements of horror, fantasy, the inexplicable and even science fiction but, the stories are held together by the sheer ordinariness of the people at the centre of these stories (they are not all men and boys). But again ordinary is the least likely word to use about these stories, would you use it with Chekov? Is 'The Lady with a dog' a story of ordinary lives and events? Yes and no, and the same can be said about Pinckney's stories because there is so much in them. Miracle Boy is about a boy who lost his feet but is also about how he loses his shoes and has them returned (I am and will be deliberately opaque in discussing any of the stories because I want you to read them). Is it a story of redemption or the impossibility of redemption? For me the story displays immense and subtle understanding Pinckney Benedict has for the people of Appalachia and for me in rivals the deep penetrating, honest and under standing of the Irish author William Trevor in 'The Hill Bachelors' and many of his other stories.

There is much in the stories which resonate and comment on the 'spirit' of our times in very discerning way, no more so then in the 'apology' for the genocidal destruction of alien planet, its people, ecology and culture in 'Zog 10: A scientific Romance'. That is also extremely funny and moving is also true but impossible to explain without giving away the joy of reading it for the first time.

I thought this collection absolutely wonderful and I will be treating myself to another collection for christmas.

[Emrys Donaldson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some beautiful sentences here, and I loved the melding of the realistic and fantastical, but after the third description of a woman character primarily by her "bosom" (yes, bosom), I called it quits.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird and beautiful. I liked and found the setting familiar even though it wasn't really NC Appalachia (west virginia i think). The story that stuck most in my head was the mudman. i liked best the ones that got a little supernatural.

[Josh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm really hovering between "liked it" and "really liked it" with this one. Pinckney Benedict has written a crazy-good, frustratingly odd bunch of stories. I call frustration only because my brain is split down the middle in its response to these fourteen stories of deep Appalachia. The title story sets the collection's surreal tone in motion, with "Buckeyes," complimenting it nicely, if only briefly. In "Butcher Cock," Benedict's fascination with illegal animal fights first appears, and it is here that I think the collection is most succesful. Not so much in the story of "Butcher Cock" itelf (which, I think, gets so surreal that it starts to trip itself up), but in the desperate, violent, and darkly funny environment of 'Miracle Boy's' fighting dens and surrounding, brokedown homesteads.

I can't remember the last time I read a collection so adeptly and consistently toned in offbeat sadness, so rich in setting and character. Pinckney Benedict has a way of making me (a wimp city boy) at home on the farm, even if that farm is plagued with murderous mudmen, diseased cows, or the ghosts of dead relatives. Benedict's voice falls somewhere between a more adventurous Flannery O'Connor and a slightly less grounded Tim O'Brien. This is a good thing. I guess I would classify these stories as "magical realism," but labeling them so would be a disservice; Bennedict is navigating his own new territory here. In more ways than one, my reaction to 'Miracle Boy and Other Stories' was not unlike my reaction to P.T. Anderson's challenging 'There Will Be Blood,' in that I wasn't always exactly sure what was happening in front of my eyes, though I knew it was something that had never happened before and that it was, most likely, light-years beyond badass.

To me, "Miracle Boy," "Buckeyes," "Pony Car," "Mudman," "Bridge of Sighs," "The Beginnings of Sorrow," "Pig Helmet the Wall of Life," and "The Secret Nature of the Mechanical Rabbit," are the stars of the collection; still, that's eight out of fourteen stories. Not bad. And none of them are "bad," really; it's just that some of them go off the deep end with the surrealism, at least as far as my taste is concerned. "Joe Messinger is Dreaming," is a prime example. Told in the past, present, and future (all at the same time) the story is a bold experiment that gets lost in itself. Benedict's writing is always gorgeous, but it sometimes outstays its welcome. Some of these stories run upwards of forty pages and, when they do, you feel it. I gave up on a couple of them, and, still, liked others without loving them. "The World, the Flesh, and the Devil," is a strange hybrid of survival tale and ghost story that starts strong but ends, I think, with some sort of naked ghoul wandering out into a pack of feral dogs. What the... "Zog-19: A Scientific Romance," steps into Brock Clarke country with its repetive phrasing and incessant puns (a good thing for a short space) but outstays its fifty page welcome. I laughed at the jokes the first time, chuckled the second time, and wrinkled my brow in worry by the twentieth time. However, even in that mammothly weird story, Pinckney Benedict draws some intersting people and puts them down in an interesting place.

In the end, I like Benedict's characters, even if I don't like how long they hang out and what exactly they're doing. To try out a bad metaphor: I liked the runner's high I sometimes experienced with 'Miracle Boy and Other Stories' but I didn't really like running the whole marathon of its pages just to get to these exhilarating, but ultimately fleeting bursts of euphoria. But that's a dumb metaphor. And the book is fantastic. I just wanted less of it. Kind of like how I wanted less ice-cream after I finished eating that entire, delicious pint. You know what I mean?

[Ron Yates · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pinckney Benedict’s Miracle Boy and other Stories is a collection that is difficult to summarize because of its thematic and stylistic variety. The stories, published separately over the last decade or so, have garnered three Pushcart Prizes, two O. Henry Awards, and a variety of “best of” distinctions. During the course of crafting these pieces, the author has mastered multiple facets of the art of storytelling.
The prose is at times as hard-edged and craggy as the West Virginia mountains, where most of the stories are set, or as lyrical and expansive as a hawk soaring high above them. Many of the sections and paragraphs produce the torque—the twisting power—of a V8 engine through the juxtaposition of sentence structures and the images they contain.
The writing throughout the book is lumpy, textured, and fascinating—but not always comfortable. The subject matter involves chicken fights, dogfights, miniature horses, masticating cows, snorting bulls, methane gas, decayed corpses, junkyards, grisly accidents and feral beasts; but most importantly, humans (along with one alien) in a rich tapestry of experience that is fully imagined and beautifully rendered. The characters in these stories are haunted, deformed, cruel, and compassionate; they are bludgeoned by life, changed and redeemed in ways that cause us to question our own comfortable paths, the daily choices we make or may be called upon to make.
But there is also a note of whimsy, a fitting garnish to the prevailing anxious tones of depravity and suffering, an extending of the author’s reach so that no element of human experience is beyond his grasp. This collection is a panorama of modes, genres, settings, and circumstances, from the stark realism of the West Virginia mountains, to the surreal dreamscapes of the tormented minds of the characters, and even to worlds outside our galaxy. Indeed, to read these stories is to be entertained through transportation—to be stretched, challenged, and maybe even turned inside out. The most basic as well as the loftiest goals of literature are achieved within these pages.

[Scott Sanders · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing, eclectic blend of stories that seemingly cover everything possible. Benedict is deft at the perfect turn of phrase at the perfect time, with every story taking the reader on a wild and wonderful adventure. If you don't believe me, just look at the acknowledgments page where nearly every story won some sort of award, including the Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the South, and the O.Henry Awards. A must have for the short story lover.

[Sheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hands down the best collection of stories I own and possibly the best I've ever read. Pinckney Benedict is a genius. It is humbling even to attempt to describe the fiercely imaginative stories in this collection. I can think of no other writer who pulls back the veil of all things scary and strange and heartbreaking and mysterious with more beautiful, humorous, reverent, and often seemingly prophetic prose. I believe every word he writes.

[Susan Henderson]

Just finished the truly magnificent (and often startling) short story collection, MIRACLE BOY, by Pinckney Benedict. The title story is worth the price of the book itself... a young boy's feet are accidentally chopped off by his father in a farming accident, and the story becomes about this boy and his peers trying to figure out how to get along. Very Stand-By-Me, but better.

[Arlene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never would have discovered this author if he had not come to our college as a guest speaker. This collection of short stories was delightful. Maybe it's those years in East Tennessee and the opportunity to visit West virginia a lot that I brought to the book. But, I thought he nailed character and setting very well! I want to read more of his short story collectioins.

[Christa · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a strange collection of stories. They blur the lines between conventional reality and fantasy in an almost "magical realism" kind of way, but it's subtler than that. "Mudman", "Miracle Boy" and "Joe Messinger is Dreaming" stood out for me.

[H.L. Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection helped return me to my writing roots as a mid-30s adult. I credit Benedict as an instructor and his "Mudman" for my first pro-rated story sale. He is undoubtedly a master of the short story form, and is truly one of a kind.

[stacy]

A month-long discussion of this book appears at Emerging Writers Network [ http://www.emergingwriters.typepad.com/ ] during May aka Short Story Month 2010.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

unique, fun, interesting, spiritual. i vote it my most fun read of 2010.

[Kilean · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best collection I've read in years. He can do just about anything and go almost anywhere in only a handful of pages.

[Brendan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some gems in here and some that didn't work. Got sucked in by the stories at the back half of the book.

[Sam Slaughter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The mix of genre stories and literary fiction was unappealing. While sometimes rendered in an interesting way, the horror and sci-fi based stories were just too much, too unbelievable.