American Falls: The Collected Short Stories

by Barry Gifford

American Falls is the first major collection of short stories from Barry Gifford, master of the dark side of the American reality. These stories range widely in style and period, from the 1950s to the present, from absurdist exercises to romantic tales, from stories about childhood innocence to novellas of murder and revenge.
In the title story, a Japanese-American motel operator chooses not give up a total stranger, a black man wanted for murder, when the police come searching for him. In "Room 584, The Starr Hotel," a man rants his outrage at an amorous couple in the room next door before he himself is arrested for having committed multiple murders. "The Unspoken" recounts the confessions of a man without a mouth who tells about the woman who loved him. And in this collection’s longest fiction, a novella called "The Lonely and the Lost," a small town’s talented and colorful inhabitants solve their problems as best they can until it comes time for the devil to reap what they have sown.
Dark and light intermix in masterful chiaroscuro, dark becoming light, light revealing sinister or brooding complexity. No simple endings, only happy beginnings.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 5, 2002

About the author

Barry Gifford is an American author, poet, and screenwriter known for his distinctive mix of American landscapes and film noir- and Beat Generation-influenced literary madness.

He is described by Patrick Beach as being "like if John Updike had an evil twin that grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wrote funny..."He is best known for his series of novels about Sailor and Lula, two sex-driven, star-crossed protagonists on the road. The first of the series, Wild at Heart, was adapted by director David Lynch for the 1990 film of the same title. Gifford went on to write the screenplay for Lost Highway with Lynch. Much of Gifford's work is nonfiction.

Reviews

[Josh Sherman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gifford does it again. He has never disappointed me, and I guess I'm about 10 books of his deep by now. I tell people his stuff — particularly his stuff like the novella that ends this collection — is like a combination of the Faulkner who wrote "Sanctuary" and Quentin Tarantino.

[Guy Salvidge · Rating 2 out of 5]

A mixed bag of apparently early work.

[J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mostly forgettable stories, with a few solid ones interspersed. The redeeming factor in this book was the novella at the end, The Lonely and the Lost.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

A slightly uneven collection of shorts; while not every story matches the crystalline perfection of "Cat Women of Rome", "The Old Days", or "The Winner" (my faves), they are all soaked in Gifford's strange hot/cold brew of acute awareness, streamlined poetry, and a bit of the grotesque, just in case you're feeling too comfortable.
Singular, sharp, and perceptive.