After 140 books a short story collection is finally featured!
To be honest I’m not really fond of short stories due to the fact that the consistency varies. I hate reading one fantastic story, wading through a lot of weak ones and then encountering another great story. I was sort of hoping that the collections featured in this list would buck that trend.
Powell is a chronicler of rednecks, no gooders, losers and eccentric characters and furthermore the majority of these stories take place in the south and he captures the accents and mentality (during my sojourns in Canada, I did meet a lot of southerners from all backgrounds). In fact there are a lot of linguistic pyrotechnics here.
However when it comes to short stories I prefer more well-rounded plot based ones. Powell likes to create an atmosphere with his writings and in the case of middle series of pieces in the book this works fine but sometimes it doesn’t work out too well. In most cases I didn’t really enjoy reading them.
There is, however one gold nugget and that’s the title story. The rambling of a redneck. It is brilliant in every way. Other than that if you come from the Guy du Maupassant and Roald Dahl school of writing, do approach with caution.
The Bobsphere 