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A review by lucasmiller
Honored Guest by Joy Williams
5.0
I'm not sure when I started scanning the shelves of used bookstores for Joy Williams. This might be another product of a year or so of close reading of Tao Lin's old blog in 2005-2006. A strange episode in my literary life. I remember becoming obsessed with the K-Mart Realists. I had a group of friends the first year of college who would pass around Amy Hempel's collected stories talking about it in hushed tones. I read Anne Beattie's Chilly Scenes of Winter. I discovered Lorrie Moore. I had pretended to be more familiar with Donald Barthelme for awhile, but started reading Frederick Barthelme in earnest. All of these writers cover many different micro genres, few of which are actually considered "dirty realism" or "Kmart realists" but they are all closely linked in my mind, still. Extremely affecting short stories where not much happens. My favorite genre.
I read Breaking and Entering and Taking Care in undergrad. A novel and a short story collection that seemed intertwined, similar settings and characters. My favorite story in the collection is a chapter in the novel. I reread the stories often. The rest of Williams books seemed hard to find or mysterious. I never bought books online at this point. If I couldn't find it at used bookstores, I didn't read it. This was part of the reason why it was so exciting to come across Honored Guest. A brand new hardback edition for cheap. At the time, a more talented friend of mine had started a blog, and inspired me to try and write more. I decided I would read each story in this collection and write (not on the internet) a summary/review, and eventually cobble together an essay on Joy Williams. This must have been in 2008-2009.
I cam home last week and saw the book mark still there, sitting between the fifth and sixth stories in the collection. I still have the abandoned essay on my computer."she has pioneered the profound statement wrapped in the mundane facts of day to day life, touched with desperation." It runs to a grand total of 496 words. It only mentions the first story in the collection. I did not go back and reread, I marched through. and finished the remaining seven stories in my parents basement.
I love Joy Williams writing. She writes like people think. Strange connections, meandering thoughts. Plots that are just set upon the table and left unexamined. Often stories end with a harrowing or shocking event that evokes tender emotions in the narrator of the story. People seem damaged in these stories, attempted suicides, long term illnesses, cancer, but there is a strain of humor that really resonates all of the place. The uncomfortableness of dealing with other people. Eccentricity as deeply disturbing and funny. These short stories never make me feel sad, even though so many of them are about deeply sad people and situations. I have still never read another author who can evoke these contradictory and complex feelings as easily as Joy Williams. I've been trying to figure them out for years now.
I read Breaking and Entering and Taking Care in undergrad. A novel and a short story collection that seemed intertwined, similar settings and characters. My favorite story in the collection is a chapter in the novel. I reread the stories often. The rest of Williams books seemed hard to find or mysterious. I never bought books online at this point. If I couldn't find it at used bookstores, I didn't read it. This was part of the reason why it was so exciting to come across Honored Guest. A brand new hardback edition for cheap. At the time, a more talented friend of mine had started a blog, and inspired me to try and write more. I decided I would read each story in this collection and write (not on the internet) a summary/review, and eventually cobble together an essay on Joy Williams. This must have been in 2008-2009.
I cam home last week and saw the book mark still there, sitting between the fifth and sixth stories in the collection. I still have the abandoned essay on my computer."she has pioneered the profound statement wrapped in the mundane facts of day to day life, touched with desperation." It runs to a grand total of 496 words. It only mentions the first story in the collection. I did not go back and reread, I marched through. and finished the remaining seven stories in my parents basement.
I love Joy Williams writing. She writes like people think. Strange connections, meandering thoughts. Plots that are just set upon the table and left unexamined. Often stories end with a harrowing or shocking event that evokes tender emotions in the narrator of the story. People seem damaged in these stories, attempted suicides, long term illnesses, cancer, but there is a strain of humor that really resonates all of the place. The uncomfortableness of dealing with other people. Eccentricity as deeply disturbing and funny. These short stories never make me feel sad, even though so many of them are about deeply sad people and situations. I have still never read another author who can evoke these contradictory and complex feelings as easily as Joy Williams. I've been trying to figure them out for years now.