The Coast of Chicago Stories

The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A child's collection of bottle caps becomes the tombstones of a graveyard. A lowly rightfielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. Combining homely detail and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination,The Coast of Chicagois a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers. Stuart Dybekis the award-winning author ofI Sailed with Magellan, Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, andBrass Knuckles, a volume of poetry. A professor of English at Western Michigan University, he lives in Kalamazoo. The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A lowly right fielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. An El train at rush hour becomes a crucible of memory and desire. Combining homely detailed and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination,The Coast of Chicagois a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers. The stolid landscape of Chicago suddenly turns dreamlike and otherworldly in Stuart Dybek's classic story collection. A lowly right fielder's inexplicable death turns him into a martyr to baseball. Strains of Chopin floating down the tenement airshaft are transformed into a mysterious anthem of loss. An El train at rush hour becomes a crucible of memory and desire. Combining homely detailed and heartbreakingly familiar voices with grand leaps of imagination,The Coast of Chicagois a masterpiece from one of America's most highly regarded writers. "Has claim to comparison with Anderson'sWinesburg, Ohioand Joyce'sDubliners. . . Dybek's energetic prose produces dazzling effects."--Chicago Sun-Times "Moving and real and often brilliantly ambitious."--Los Angeles Times "A fictional world that is both ordinary and amazing."--The New York Times "Irresistible . . . Mr. Dreiser, Mr. Farrell, Mr. Bellow, Mr. Algren, please say hello to Stuart Dybek. He's one of yours."--The Village Voice "Establishes [Dybek] not merely as a talent but as a magician comparable to Eudora Welty and Joy Williams."--Chicago Tribune "Tender and unforgiving . . . No matter where you grew up, after reading these stories you'll have found the coast of Chicago"--San Francisco Chronicle "The stories inCoast of Chicago. . . are fluently rendered scenes and dreams of a youth spent in the projects of Chicago . . . Dybek's use of language [is] imaginative and precise . . . a collection greater than the sum of its parts."--The Philadelphia Inquirer "Now and then a collection of stories achieves the virtues of both organic form and conciseness . . . Dybek's book in fact stretches the definition of short-story collection, reaching a kind of wholeness that gives it the feel of a novel."--The Seattle Times "His vision is every inch his own."--USA Today "Dybek uses a luminous writing style to conjure up life in the Windy City . . . His stories have a universal quality, imaginatively touching on the joys and mysteries of childhood, the inevitability of change, and the salubrious properties of love and friendship."--The Plain Dealer(Cleveland) "These wonderful tales have a beautiful, stark, and haunted qual

Stuart Dybek is the award-winning author of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods, I Sailed with Magellan, and Brass Knuckles, a volume of poetry. A professor of English at Western Michigan University, he lives in Kalamazoo.