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At the Jim Bridger: Stories
In this taut, focused collection, veteran short story writer Carlson (The Hotel Eden) captures the ordinary occurrences that define our lives. Sharing graceful, unadorned prose and elegant metaphors, the nine stories and two brief sketches collected here portray characters at moments when the solid ground of reality slips out from under them. High school figures prominently: for Carlson, the teenage years offer the perfect transitional moments, when minor incidents are writ large. Fortunately, he depicts these mundane experiences a boy's first date ("The Potato Gun"), his first fistfight ("At Copper View"), his first car ("The Ordinary Son") with neither condescension nor irony, but a mixture of serious reflection and naive wonder. In "The Ordinary Son," Reed's average intelligence in a family of geniuses makes him its only distinctive member; he amazes his young brother, who is practicing quantum physics with crayons, with the simple pleasure of his brand-new car. Elsewhere, the teenager's unique sense of alienation is a chronic condition: in "Towel Season," Edison's absorbing interest in a highly theoretical engineering project separates him from the neighborhood husbands and wives; in the title story, Donner's recounting of a near-death incident on a camping trip leads to a brief connection between him and a woman who is not his wife. With a precision and consistency rarely achieved in similar collections, this volume should earn Carlson continued, well-deserved recognition. National advertising; author tour.
--Publishers Weekly
In his collection At the Jim Bridger, Ron Carlson exhibits an old-fashioned humanity. He not only believes in the self, he believes that it's a good thing. The men and boys in these stories stumble into quietly critical moments that invite them to surrender their integrity. Some succumb, some don't, but the author himself is clearly never in doubt that integrity exists and that it matters. The problem is brought up most explicitly in the exquisite, funny opening story, "Towel Season." Edison is a theoretical engineer who lives with his young family in a chummy suburb. Over the course of one summer--one "towel season"--Edison pursues a slippery engineering problem by day and socializes with his neighbors by night. The other dads all work in applied engineering, and they exert a gentle pressure on Edison to get his head out of the clouds. Normal life tugs at Edison, tempting him. His resistance turns the piece into an oddly resonant love story.
--Amazon.com
This collection of short stories could be used as a how-to manual for budding writers. Each of the 11 pieces is crafted to perfection, without a misplaced word or thought. There is even a three-page story that is contained in a single sentence, but, surprisingly and delightfully, it never loses its power. "Towel Season" finds a mathematical genius who tries to become one of the crowd and loses the path of his equation. "Evil Eye Allen" is a coming-of-age story with a surreal twist. And "The Potato Gun" combines humor, pathos, and risk taking into a lovely tale of father-son bonding. Each of the stories will leave the reader wanting more, but eminently satisfied with what is there. Librarians finding themselves facing a short-story hungry readership will certainly want to consider this collection for purchase.
--Elizabeth Dickie, Booklist, American Library Association
The subtle excellence of these stories makes it easy to lose oneself in them and, more impressively, to recall them later with such clarity and emotion that they seem like one's own memories.
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
Trying to sum up a Ron Carlson story is like trying to hold sparkling spring water in your bare hands—no matter how you cup your fingers, some of the magical stuff leaks out.... At the Jim Bridger shows us a real master at work.
--The Seattle Times
The stories in At the Jim Bridger— eleven exquisite tales of men and women...do the work of true art. Ordinary things, which never before seemed wonderful, suddenly, gracefully, are.
--Esquire
Carlson [has] written an accomplished, open-hearted book, full of good, grown-up humor and fierce intelligence. Writer's writer or reader's writer, Carlson and the stories of At the Jim Bridger deserve all the attention they can get.
--The Boston Globe
This collection of stories about people in the uncertain moral terrain of the American West consistently surprises and delights.
--Anthony Day, Los Angeles Times
Carlson...has remained true to the literary form he seems to love best and at which he excels...
--Charles May, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Short-fiction fans have likely bumped into "The Ordinary Son" in one anthology or another. It's the unforgettably comic story of the only nongenius in a family of geniuses: "I was hanging out sitting around my bare room, reading books, the History of This, the History of That, dry stuff, waiting for my genius to kick in." At the Jim Bridger is a convention of just such fascinating, ordinary characters.
--Claire Dederer
At the Jim Bridger
Picador 2002
Picador paperback 2003
Goldmann Verlag German edition 2005
Featured on NPR's Summer Reading List 2002
More reviews & praise coming soon