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    McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
    Unavailable
    McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
    Unavailable
    McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
    Audiobook (abridged)7 hours

    McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

    Written by Michael Chabon

    Narrated by Kevin Gray

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A Vintage Contemporaries Original

    Includes:
    Jim Shepard's "Tedford and the Megalodon"

    Glen David Gold's "The Tears of Squonk, and What Happened Thereafter"

    Dan Chaon's "The Bees"

    Kelly Link's "Catskin"

    Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman"

    Carol Emshwiller's "The General"

    Neil Gaiman's "Closing Time"

    Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium"

    Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick"

    Michael Crichton's "Blood Doesn't Come Out"

    Laurie King's "Weaving the Dark"

    Chris Offutt's "Chuck's Bucket"

    Dave Eggers's "Up the Mountain Coming Down Slowly"

    Michael Moorcock's "The Case of the Nazi Canary"

    Aimee Bender's "The Case of the Salt and Pepper Shakers"

    Harlan Ellison's "Goodbye to All That"

    Karen Joy Fowler's "Private Grave 9"

    Rick Moody's "The Albertine Notes"

    Michael Chabon's "The Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance"

    Sherman Alexie's "Ghost Dance"


    From the Trade Paperback edition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 29, 2003
    ISBN9780739304884
    Unavailable
    McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales
    Author

    Michael Chabon

    Michael Chabon is the bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Moonglow and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, among many others. He lives in Berkeley, California with his wife, the novelist Ayelet Waldman, and their children.

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    Reviews for McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales

    3.5/5

    227 ratings16 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A very decent selection of short stories. My favorites: "Closing Time" by Neil Gaiman, "Otherwise Pandemonium" by Nick Hornby, Laurie King's "Weaving the Dark," and Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick."
    • 3/5
      Good collection with lots of amazing authors! "Closing Time" by Neil Gaiman is pretty creepy, and I very much enjoyed "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name To Carl And Became A Famous Oklahoma Lawman" by Elmore Leonard, even if the title is too long! Stephen King's "The Tale of Gray Dick" was cool to read as it reappears later as part of his Dark Tower series, plus I love the throwing plates action! Nice group of stories here!
    • 5/5
      My first McSweeney's issue and still one of my favorites. Guest Editor Michael Chabon hit it out of the park with this collection of adventure stories by contemporary masters such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, Dan Chaon, and Chabon and Eggers themselves. Definitely McSweeney's largest issue by page count at nearly 500 with a throwback cover and clever reproductions of ads and offers from mid-century pulp magazines. Chabon's goal was to show that at it's best, pulp adventure writing belongs alongside great short stories and is certainly more entertaining. I'd say this collection more than succeeds.
    • 5/5
      Stories meant to entertain...pure and simple. Just the thing when you're curled up in bed on a dark and stormy night, with feet well-tucked under the covers and a candle flickering on the night stand.
    • 3/5
      A mixed bag of enjoyable and bearable stories.
    • 5/5
      This is indeed a mammoth treasury of tales, and quite a read, with themes of adventure, fantasy, mystery, the supernatural, action, and altered history – so ‘thrilling’ is an appropriate adjective. This edition of McSweeney’s featured a star-studded cast of authors – Chabon (who also edited), Crichton, Eggers, Gaiman, Hornby, Laurie King, Stephen King, and many others. Consistency is quite high across the 20 stories, with only one or maybe two subpar efforts in the whole book. My favorites:Catskin, by Kelly LinkClosing Time, by Neil GaimanOtherwise Pandemonium, by Nick HornbyWeaving the Dark, by Laurie KingUp the Mountain Coming Down Slowly, by Dave Eggers (later published in How We Are Hungry, but well worth reading again)The Case of the Nazi Canary, by Michael MoorcockGoodbye to All That, by Harlan EllisonThe Martian Agent, a Planetary Romance, by Michael Chabon (although this one was an exception to the claim in the table of contents that all tales were ‘original and complete’, in the sense that it is not finished, and carried over into the net installment of ‘Thrilling Tales’)When I counted 8 of these as favorites and considered the overall quality, I bumped my original review score of 4 stars up half a point. Certainly worth picking up and reading from cover to cover, or a story at random.Lastly, a note on the random connection discovered to the book I read previously, which was Thornton Wilder’s ‘Our Town’ – a common reference to Charles Lindbergh. In ‘How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman’ by Elmore Leonard: “…riding a streetcar for the first time, and being sworn in as a Deputy United States Marshal; while Lindbergh was being honored in New York City, tons of ticker tape dumped on the Lone Eagle for flying across the ocean…”In ‘Our Town’: “So I’m going to have a copy of this play put in the cornerstone and the people a thousand years from now’ll know a few simple facts about us – more than the Treaty of Versailles and the Lindbergh flight.”
    • 3/5
      McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales has a coherent rationale: recruit a bunch of authors of literary fiction, and charge them to produce rollicking tales of adventure. From Chabon's introduction: "Whether the experiment has been a success, I leave to the reader to judge. I will say, however, that while they were working on their stories, a number of the writers found within these covers reported to me, via giddy emails, that they had forgotten how much fun writing a short story could be."Unfortunately, the collection as a whole is pretty uneven. A bunch of the authors aren't literary authors -- Elmore Leonard, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Laurie King, Harlan Ellison --and inviting them to participate in this collection didn't invite them to step outside their conventional bounds. One highlight of the collection is Chris Offut's metafiction about himself as a time-traveler trying to write his short story. It's clever in a literary way, and a terrible adventure story. Chabon's own contribution, the last story, captures the essence of the collection. 'The Martian Agent, A Planetary Romance', set in a beautifully drawn alternate history, subjects both its protagonists and its readers to a bait-and-switch, implying an exciting voyage into space while instead delivering a gritty portion of dashed hopes.
    • 4/5
      It was a story about the genesis of this collection that reeled me in.It seems that Michael Chabon and Dave Eggers often argued about what Chabon perceived as a tendency towards a certain uniformity in contemporary short fiction. A trend that he comically (and perhaps aptly) analogizes to a scenario whereby the only novels published since the 1950s are those that strictly follow the basic plot of a "Nurse Romance". In order to put an end to the bickering, Eggers allowed Chabon to guest-edit an edition of McSweeney's and this collection is the result. Being a fan of short 'genre'-style stories I was excited to see what he came up with.Obviously not all of the tales contained in this volume were as 'Thrilling' as the title would have you believe and I shamefully admit to skipping one of the stories after the first pages failed to engage me (et tu? Stephen King. Phoned it in, did you?). Other stories promised, but failed to deliver. This is not to say that the original premise of the venture failed or had no merit. On the contrary, I think it's a wonderful idea, and will no doubt be ordering the second volume of tales in this series.However, it was no surprise to me that the best moments, twists and ideas in this collection came from authors who are already well-established masters of imaginative fiction. Authors who regularly mine the seams of older genre fiction to furnish their longer work with authenticity. In no particular order: Elmore Leonard, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman and, of course, Michael Chabon.Nonetheless, I would like to heap a pile of elegantly-perfumed praise on Jim Shepard, an author I had not come across before. His gripping tale of one man's quest to find an Antarctic-dwelling beast read like distilled Conan-Doyle with extra teeth, and preceded the most terrifying, life-like, and at the same time, most creative and inspiring nightmare I can remember.It was clever of Chabon to use this tale as the opener to the collection, with his 'boy's-own' steampunk adventure (part 1 only... the bastard!) at the end. I am willing to forgive the occasional misses. Ideal reading conditions: By flashlight under your duvet, or better still, in the library of an old creaking house, in front of a roaring fire on a stormy night, seated in a comfortable leather chair with a ready supply of single-malt by your side.
    • 3/5
      I have started cataloging my daughter's books on Library Thing (having done all my own) and came across this..now wonder...how did I miss these great short stories. The Amazon reviewers before me are carping about selection of authors, plots, the stories themselves....I dipped into it and was instantly facinated by just the characters...not in the stories but standing alone..and together. This is America like it is. I feel like I could walk down the street of any US city and hear snippets of conversations...just like these..whatever the story author. Great.
    • 3/5
      This is an anthology of science fiction/fantasy/bizarre stories. I thought I'd like them more than I did because of the great list of authors this book contains. There were Stephen King, Dan Chaon, Michael Crichton, Neil Gaiman, Nick Hornby, and Elmore Leonard among others. The two best stories were by two authors I'd never read before. One story I especially liked was "Chuck's Bucket" by Chris Offutt. In this science fiction tale, a man is immersed in a professor's time machine and enters multiple tongue-in-cheek and often hilarious realities. This was a very clever story and told in a delightful way.My favorite story, though, was "The Albertine Notes" by Rick Moody in which a news reporter is working on an article about Albertine, a memory-boosting substance. This was a convoluted tale but terrifically engaging and imaginative. Even though I tend to shy away from sci-fi material, this is actually a story I'd enjoy reading over again at a later date.
    • 3/5
      Some good ones here--Laurie King's, Chabon's own, Leonard Elmore. But Chabon doesn't carry through on his promise to revive pulp fiction, the kind of plot-driven stories that once ran in magazines such as Black Mask, Argosy and Collier's. I had a fuzzy notion of what those stories were like (Dashiell Hammett? Jim Thompson? Field & Stream? James Elroy). Now it's even fuzzier.
    • 3/5
      A nice round of applause should be given to Mr. Chabon for successfully throwing together a fine attempt at adventure-pulp pastiche--the kind of fantastic works that the cover so sharply recalls.But given the breadth of authors coming into the project, the whole is uneven. The real gems: Kelly Link's "Catskin," Elmore Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman," and David Eggers' "Up a Mountain Coming Down Slowly."Not so strong? Chris Offutt's "Chuck's Bucket," Nick Hornby's "Otherwise Pandemonium," and Karen Joy Fowler's "Private Grave 9."Ups and downs, but still an interesting collection of almost slipstream tales from mainstream writers.
    • 4/5
      A good collection of off-beat writing.
    • 4/5
      Mostly fun stories by top rate authors. Some are working a bit beyond their abilities, but you can tell they are having fun doing it. A very good airplane book.
    • 3/5
      Is plot dead? That's the question Michael Chabon poses in his introduction to McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales, the latest issue of the hip, irreverent literary magazine founded by Dave Eggers (MMTTT may be a magazine, but it's being marketed and packaged as a book with a cover price to match). A short while ago, Eggers and Chabon decided to put together a "fun" issue of the magazine ("fun" translated as "something which is more accessible than the average issue of McSweeney's and loaded with popular writers who'll draw in a wider audience"). Why not produce an anthology of plot-driven, action-heavy stories which will recall the good old days when readers got their tales served on reams of pulp? Chabon hoped to collect stories which were an antidote to most of the short stories flooding the literary market these days—the (as he calls it) fiction that's "plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew." He longs for the yarns of yesteryear when magazines like Black Mask, Argosy, Collier's and The Saturday Evening Post were filled with tales of bloodthirsty pirates, rock-jawed detectives, prowling werewolves and nurses whose knees buckled at the sight of the handsome young doctor. Somewhere along the line, Chabon postulates, short stories went from lurid to languid (perhaps when serious scribes like John Cheever, Saul Bellow and John Updike started appearing in the pages of The New Yorker). His line of demarcation is set arbitrarily at 1950—right around the time the last issues of Black Mask were rolling off the presses. Genre and plot were sacrificed for mostly inert stories that climaxed with a "moment of truth." Well, wouldn't it be fun to shake off the epiphanic dew and get back to the roots of genre fiction? That's Chabon's goal here in this wobbly collection of tales which mostly glisten with the dewy sweat of effort. McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales gathers marquee names (Stephen King, Elmore Leonard, Michael Crichton) alongside names which are decidedly less than household (Dan Chaon, Aimee Bender, Glen David Gold, Chris Offutt), all with the purpose of writing stories that are, Chabon insists, "fun." With a capital F. Trouble is, some of them are downright dreary. With a capital D. The two weakest stories come from the two biggest names: King and Crichton. King's contribution is nothing more than a first draft of a chapter from his next Dark Tower novel, and Crichton's blessedly short tale of a hardboiled private eye with a nagging mother needs another five revisions like its main character needs another five shots of whiskey. For all of editor Chabon's chipper promises that these tales have thrilling, tingling blood running through their veins—amazing stories that climax with a cymbal crash—most are about as rousing as a tired marching band in the third quarter of a losing Homecoming game. The limpest ones of the bunch just dissipate into thin air, not even strong enough to produce a symbol crash. Others, however, have the salty tang of adrenaline and while they don't exactly recreate the era of pulp fiction, they stick to the formula of conflict-rising action-climax and avoid narcissistic navel-gazing as much as possible. Leonard's "How Carlos Webster Changed His Name to Carl and Became a Famous Oklahoma Lawman" crackles with all the energy and dialogue of a Bogart-Cagney movie in the story of a deputy hunting down bank robbers. Chaon's "The Bees" is a haunting, psychological horror story about a man trying to exorcise the ghosts of his first, bad marriage. In "Otherwise Pandemonium," Nick Hornby gives us something straight out of The Twilight Zone when a teenager buys a VCR that records the future, showing TV broadcasts right up until the day the world ends in nuclear holocaust. As the kid, a typical hormone-heavy teen, explains: Let's say this is the story of how I ended up getting laid—a story with a beginning, and a weird middle, and a happy ending. Otherwise I'd have to tell you a Stephen King-type story, with a beginning and a weird middle and really fucking scary ending, and I don't want to do that. It wouldn't help me right now. Not coincidentally, Hornby's story is followed by King's "The Tale of Grey Dick" which, as it turns out, is really fucking boring. But that's okay—skip ahead 40 pages and slide into what is perhaps the collection's best offering: a tense, character-rich story from Mr. McSweeney's himself, Dave Eggers. His "Up the Mountain, Coming Down Slowly" is the story of one woman's quest for self-confidence as she climbs Kilimanjaro with a group of other tourists and faces hardship and death on the slopes of the unforgiving mountain. Eggers excels at descriptions like this of a fellow traveler: She knows he comes from Montana, and knows his voice is like an older man's, weaker than it should be, wheezy and prone to cracking. He is not handsome; his nose is almost piggish and his teeth are chipped in front, leaving a triangular gap, as if he'd tried to bite a tiny pyramid. He's not attractive in any kind of way she would call sexual, but she still wants to be with him and not the others. Eggers and Chabon don't exactly herald the renaissance of pulp fiction with the publication of McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales— there are too many effete tales which meander into nothingness—but every so often, they manage to quicken the pulse, reminding us that once upon a time stories didn't spend so much time gazing at their dewy navels.
    • 4/5
      Mine is actually the McSweeney's original edition rather than the Vintage reprint.