Full Description
In these inventive and formally daring stories, Dustin M. Hoffman shines a light into the dark corners of American suburbia. The housepainters, contractors, formerly incarcerated carnival workers, and fathers that populate these pages are doing their best to overcome life's brutal indifference. Characters sometimes face unusual situations: one plays infinite games of Monopoly with God, while the Man in the Yellow Hat must decide how to react when a window washer is hospitalized with serious injuries. Mostly, though, they navigate the challenges of grief, poverty, and arguments with siblings that many of us will find all too familiar.
With brilliance and perception, Hoffman interrogates the intersections of labor and masculinity, peeling back the spackled facades of class, family, and domesticity. Such a Good Man depicts darkness, cruelty, and absurdity without flinching—and reveals the eternal human desire for intimacy, especially when it remains just out of reach.
Contents
In Darkness Floating
Dad Died in Denim
Such a Good Man
Essentials
Too Bad for Marcel Ronk
The Man with the Yellow Hat
The Whites
Retainer
Smoke at the End of the World
Eat Fire
Orville Killen: Lifetime Stats
Mistint
God Chooses the Wheelbarrow
Privy
Bicuspid
The First Woman
Work from Home
This Picture of Your House
Every Number Albert Knows
The Salesmen Approach
The Night the Stars Fell
Acknowledgments
