Jack Matthews (1)Critiques

Interview with the Sphynx is a gem if you understand the source material. The play by Jack Matthews follows a one-act structure following a man sitting in the dark attempting to interview a woman who won't give a straight answer to any questions. The woman is the Sphynx. The man is, well, that's a secret.
This is a great play for mythological history buffs, with plenty of jokes, references, and an amusing reveal at the end that can only be described as the purest form of tragic comedy. Lovers of wordplay will appreciate some of the arguments, and the voice cast does a good job as well. As described, or forewarned, if you prefer, the play is deeply irritating and I really appreciate the effort that went into making it so.
Thanks to Robert Nagle with Personville Press for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review, it was very much appreciated.

I received an e-copy of the "Second Death of E. A. Poe and Other Stories" by Jack Matthews as part of the Early Reviewers offerings. Matthews has a clever way of writing each of these short stories and pulling the reader into them. Each story stands on its own; therefore the reader can enjoy these adventures in any order desired.

In the model of philosophy posing as fiction, two people sit in the dark and argue about the meaning of words. A sphinx and an interviewer (who is no more a real person than the sphinx) debate the meaning of truth, reality and perception without ever doing anything more than turn on the lights. "All riddles are questions, but not all questions are riddles." I've waded through several of these - Daniel Quinn's Ishmael, Ichiro Kishimi's The Courage to Be Disliked - both come to mind. This might be better than those because it is shorter and more contentious. At least this one sets aside the 'wise teacher'-'eager student' dynamic. There's conflict aplenty here (which undercuts what we're supposed to believe that the interviewer is an experienced professional from nearly the first exchange). But what I want from a play is characters who are strongly drawn, who are really people with lives and backgrounds that brought them to this moment. I want them to interact, come into conflict, and to be changed by the resolution.

This was far more amusing than I could have imagined. The Sphinx kept giving convoluted, nonsense answers, much to the annoyance of the interviewer. When he’d try to do it back, she’d just shrug it off, which made it even more hilarious. I couldn’t stop laughing the entire time.

A big selling point of this audio play is easily the narrators. They did a superb job, it really is like listening to a real play, just without the visual aspect. I recommend this to anybody who wants a good laugh.

NOTE: This copy was provided to me free of charge as a digital review copy. The opinions stated in this review are mine and mine alone, I was not paid or requested to give this book a certain rating, suggestion, or approval.

Honestly I really couldn't get into this collection. I only read the first few stories and it was hard to get through them. There really wasn't any plot to the stories I read. They read like someone telling a story to their friends; it was a basic retelling of events with no depth to it. The title and description also implied that the stories would be inspired by Poe's style of writing, with gothic elements, but they weren't at all. It was disappointing, and in my opinion not worth the time to finish it.

This was an interesting one act play about an interviewer (Oedipus) interviewing the Sphinx about her life and times. The Sphinx is an enigma, she answers questions with questions and lists of words but never a solid answer. As the poor interviewer becomes more and more frustrated with her word play it is revealed to the audience that he is actually Oedipus although he is self unaware of this. He bristles at the Sphinx for calling him 'Eddie'. It is a very funny and clever play with lots of jaunty, fast paced dialog. If you like intellectual word play you will enjoy this listen. I would recommend checking out the wikipedia page on Oedipus before listening for a quick refresher on the greek myth this play is loosely based on. Recommended.

I thoroughly enjoyed these stories! Several were striking and thought provoking. I found the title story to live up to the promise and I'm still wondering "what if..". A fun read. Give it a try.

Matthews was a prolific writer with a somewhat skewed and whimsical bent.

The included photo shows him with the endearing smile of someone both amused and bemused by the twists and turns of life, and one senses he must have had some personal experience of those as well.

The works included here are very mixed in character and quality, from little domestic pieces to war yarns. The title story is the most striking and the best worked-out, though as the editor himself notes, the ending is a bit disappointing. Another humorous piece reflects Matthews' apparent sideline as a collector of rare books.

There is a sweet sympathetic quality overall, though many of the stories have not aged well at all, and about a couple of them, the less said the better. Matthews has a peculiar over-the-top style which sometimes works, but at other times falls flat. He indulges in the striking metaphor and oblique turns of phrase, and again, he sometimes overindulges.

The editor and publisher both seem to have a fan's devotion to making his works available, an admirable quality. Unfortunately a few of the stories need to be read with mental auto-correct engaged due to some bad automated conversion minus proofreading -- e.g. "devotional writhing" in place of "devotional writing".

At best, the stories are slight but entertaining. One imagines Matthews would be a good companion for exchanging shaggy dog stories at a bar. But again, too long in his company and one might begin to look for an escape. He is always inventive and the range of materials is in fact refreshing, given how constricted in their range of subjects many more recent authors feel they need to be. Matthews is inventive and surprising; he doesn't hesitate to plunge in, and plunge ahead.


Postscript: I received the following in a note from the published (Robert Nagle), regarding my review, and thought it worthwhile to add this here:


"I wouldn't be surprised if there's a random typo or two in the text, but let me assure you 'devotional writhing' was probably intentional. (Can't say with 100% certainty). Matthews liked to mix up words on purpose throughout his books and sometimes misspell them. I remember spotting that phrase as a typo and then realizing it was probably exactly what he wanted. (I would have confirmed it with him if I could, but he passed away in 2013). Of course, the hard part of editing the prose of Mr. Matthews is trying to figure out which mistakes were deliberate and which were just the result of bad typing. Regardless of whether it was intentional, "devotional writhing" is (I think) a very funny phrase."

[Disclaimer: I got this book via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program]

I find it funny that some reviewers say that the title of this book is a bit of a fraud because its ten short stories are not in the style of Poe. After all, it should be about his (second) death... Actually, this collection contains works in different styles: the story which gives the title to the book is actually Poe-like, but for example the first two (Trophy for an Earnest Boy and Stop Killing the Innocence remind me more of Roald Dahl. What I however found is that most of the stories end in an anticlimax. Matthews was really good in setting up an environment which carries the reader on... until there is an end which comes not with a bang but a whimper. The Waitress and the Relic is probably the best example of this, while A Story Not About Richardson just wanders nowhere. I confess that I did not understand the ending of Delusional Gymnosis, but this could be due to my imperfect command of English. Indispensable Ghosts also ends in a minor tone, but this time it's rather ok, while The Kiss made me think of a kiss of death.
The best story is certainly the longest one, Dark Machinery, even if I would have excised the first part which does not have any relation with the second one, besides both being placed in IIWW.

I received a free copy of this book from LibraryThing's Early Reviewers program, in exchange for a review.

My basic reaction was that the stories in this collection were very well written, but dated, and that the "feel" of the presentation suffered a bit from spelling errors and other issues that should get picked up in another proofreading scan. The Poe story and the tale about a German/American standoff during the last gasps of WWII were easily the most engaging. I don't read a lot of short story collections, so some of my lack of engagement by the characters/plots might have a bit to do with that. As I say -- this author writes well. I just wasn't able to care much about his characters.

First, be aware that only one story in this collection is Poe-like, and while it is very good, I can see why some reviewers have been disappointed when they discover this.

Pros:
- Stories span time periods and genres
- Relatable characters, mostly set in small towns
- Engaging writing style kept me interested

Cons:
- Some misspellings and missing quotation marks or parentheses
- Most of the stories are "slice of life" style with no satisfying conclusion (may not be a con depending on your reading preferences)

Conclusions:
This is a strange collection of stories that are all very well-written. Each one drops you into the life of the characters for a finite period (some stories hours or days, some stories months) and just observes life as it happens to the characters. For most of the stories, it feels like the author is recounting his own observations of people he has known, and to great effect.

Be aware, however, that many of the stories feel like they belong in the Honeymooners era, where a casual reference to hitting your wife was acceptable. This may be a factor of the author's age and the time in which he wrote the stories, but is still strange. Along these lines, one aspect of the stories I was not fond of is that almost all of the men in the book are jerks to the others in their lives (wives, children, friends). Taken in context - that some of the stories were written decades ago - this style is understandable, but still jarring for a modern reader.

Very few of the stories take place in a defined time or place, which can make it hard to put the stories in context. The author lived from 1925-2013, so the stories could take place in the 40s or the 90s, which makes a big difference in context and can lead to confusion. An example is “Indispensable Ghosts,” a story about a book collector. The narrator’s wife is an actress who constantly mimics actresses from 1920s-30s Hollywood and the narrator tries to guess who she is imitating. I thought this story was taking place in the 1950s at the latest based on the cultural references, so it was very surprising when I read the line, “Cell phones were an alien technology to me, as befitted a collector of 16th century rarities.” This doesn't exactly detract from the story, but the book is filled with weird experiences like this, where the reader is in the dark about when and where the story is taking place.

On the other hand, one story that does have a defined time and place is the story “Dark Machinery” and it is worth the price of the book on its own. The story takes place during WWII in the Italian mountains and is told by an American artillery officer. It chronicles an unspoken truce between two small groups of American and German forces and the consequences that follow. It is tragic, filled with tension, and extremely well-written.

While this genre is not usually my first choice for reading, I am glad I read these interesting and challenging stories. Mr. Matthews is clearly an excellent writer and I am glad to see Personville Press releasing them.

It took me a while to get through this book because I really didn’t enjoy reading it. There are ten short stories, but none of them were of much interest to me. The Poe story was probably the best but even that story fell short due to repetitive conversations. Several of the stories were crude with disparaging remarks toward certain types of people. There were no stories that were uplifting, mysterious, dramatic, humorous, exciting or poetic. Just because the book failed to catch my attention doesn't mean it may not be of interest to others.

Jack Matthews’s The Second Death of E.A. Poe and Other Stories is largely a collection of rather bland short stories. But the imaginative title story, which deftly incorporates Poe’s fascination with cryptograms, is certainly a well-told tale. The remaining stories, however, largely in the “slice-of-life” realm, proved far less intriguing.

This looked interesting on Early Reviewers, so I checked Amazon, and finding that the kindle ebook was free there at the moment, I took it. The first story I found a bit dull, the ending telegraphed by the title ("Trophy for an Earnest Boy"). Moreover, since the story was set in 1940, it seemed odd that the brilliant 19-year-old narrator was so concerned with avoiding a football trophy while World War II was raging in Europe and Pearl Harbor was less than 2 years ahead. (My father would have been 19 that year; he subsequently joined the Air Force and fought in China with the Flying Tigers.) I decided to try the title story ("The Second Death of E. A. Poe"), but stopped reading after a few pages - certainly it is told in a period style, but that's not my thing at all. I doubt I'll bother with the rest of the collection - disappointing. (Nice cover, though.)

I did not finish this collection. The title implies that if you are a Poe fan that these stories will be to your liking. And maybe for some Poe fans, they are. But, for this Poe fan, I was left wondering what any of it had to do with Poe or his style. The couple stories that I did read before shelving the book were just stories. Just fiction. There was nothing gothic. There was nothing horror. There was nothing mysterious. There was nothing Poe about them. Supposedly the one that gives it's title to the book, is about Poe and a doctor of the time, but I didn't bother after the ones before it.

A Collection of short stories that for me didn't hit the spot. I guess we all have a different view on what makes a good short story and I like mine to have a sting in the tail, you know, a bit of a twist.

These are more like essays so didn't have the final payoff I was craving.

Don't let me put you off - these are not badly written, just not my thing.

All told this is a thought provoking collection of tales that will appeal to a wide audience - just not me

I enjoyed the compilation of the wide variety of stories, some funny, some silly, some even a little off-key, but all unique and surprising in some way or another. Before this I had never thought about the style, but I like it and it seems a good way for someone not nearly ready for the epic novel to begin to write almost "off the top of his/her head" with surprisingly good results. I might try it myself.

This is a collection of 32 examples of that peculiar cousin of the short story, commonly called flash fiction. The genres of each segment vary, but range from historical fiction to contemporary, fantasy to philosophical, and scientific to sci-fi. There are usually two commonalities, however: they are all thought-provoking (some more than others), and they are almost entirely very, very strange.

I thought that the collection was pretty good, but not the best. Too many of the stories were much too strange, and while all of the stories give the impression of having underlying meanings, some of the stories are so bizarre that the meanings become entangled in the meaninglessness of the rest of it. Also, some of the stories talk about witchcraft, which I detest, as well as some other un-Christian activities.

Not all of the mini-stories were bad, however, and there were a handful that I really, really enjoyed. I have five favorites from this collection: "Unknown Selves" (which is almost identical to "There, In That Far Land"), "Crazy Uncle", "The Character Actor", "House Inside Glass", and "The Dawn of a New Species".

Abruptions: 3 Minute Stories to Awaken the Mind.
There you have it. Not all of them take 3 minutes to read, though they surely awaken your mind! What was I thinking? To read those stories in bed? Sleep did not always come, that I can say!
Now it's not the case that certain subjects would keep you up, but it's so easy to wind up walking other paths. Perhaps I could compare it with ending up in "the weird corner of youtube"? But then with thoughts!
Interesting read!

I received this book in exchange for an honest review. I read half of it, which for me was enough to know I did not want to read the remaining half. It just wasn't holding my interest. I forced myself to read the first half so I could give the honest review. This was another book that read like it was random ramblings to me.

These extremely short stories are satisfying and often thought provoking, despite their brevity. I particularly enjoyed a story about disappearance (or replacement) of self on marrying; this enjoyment was heightened by a repeat of the story later in the book: same beginning and slightly different ending intrigued me. I received this as a LibraryThing Member GiveAway. Thank you.

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is a book of very short stories (approximately three minutes duration) that end abruptly. I really enjoyed reading them!

Many writers do their best work early in their careers, people like Joseph Heller or Thomas Wolfe, for example. Others don't strike gold until middle age. Consider Vladimir Nabokov, who was in his mid-50s when "Lolita" was published. You can read a fascinating account of why some artists peak early and some later in life in the "Late Bloomers" chapter of Malcolm Gladwell's "What the Dog Saw." But what do you make of a writer like Jack Matthews?

I took two creative writing classes taught by Matthews when I was a journalism student at Ohio University in the mid-1960s. He was about 40 then and had a book of short stories, "Bitter Knowledge," and a book of poetry, "An Almanac for Twilight," under his belt. Soon he was turning out novels like "Hanger Stout, Awake!," "Beyond the Bridge" and "The Charisma Campaigns," a favorite of mine. These were good novels, but not great, and despite a nomination for a National Book Award (for "The Charisma Campaigns"), he never achieved the literary big time. After 1983, although he continued to write both fiction and nonfiction books, these were published mostly by small presses and university presses.

Matthews died three years ago at the age of 88. His last novel, "The Gambler's Nephew" (Etruscan Press) was published in 2011, just two years before his death. So I didn't expect much when I started reading it a few days ago, yet I was blown away. This is an incredible novel that deserves more attention than it probably will ever receive.

The story begins in the 1850s in the Ohio River town of Brackenport, where a businessman named Nehemiah Dawes has such strong views about slavery and grave robbery that people tend to avoid him even if they agree with him. One day Dawes sees two men force a runaway slave into a boat to take him back to the other side of the river. Dawes has his gun with him and decides to back up his big talk by shooting one of the slavers. Instead he kills the young black man, yet doesn't receive as much as a stern talking to for his act. But when Dawes himself is found murdered, authorities are quick to hang a former employee, despite scant evidence of guilt.

Who is the protagonist in this novel? Matthews keeps us guessing. Until his death, it seems to be Nehemiah Dawes. Then the focus switches to his brother, to a young doctor and on and on to others, as main characters fade into the background. Much later we realize that the runaway slave, the "gambler's nephew" of the title, is the true protagonist, even though we never actually meet him in the story. Everything revolves around him, even when it doesn't seem to.

The novel, because of the voice of the mysterious narrator, seems lighter than it really is. We are tempted to read it with a smile, then may feel a trifle guilty when we realize where Matthews is taking us.

Whether or not "The Gambler's Nephew" is Jack Matthews's masterpiece, I will leave to the literary experts, if any of them bother to consider the question. But I will say that for a man in his 80s to produce a novel of such depth, power and grace is something amazing.

This is a collection of nine short stories taking place during the Civil War, all written by author Jack Matthews. The author's stories are unbiased, not favoring either North or South, which is admirable. I like the way that many of his stories "lapse into philosophy", often touching on some very interesting and thought-provoking subjects. The book also includes a preface, Jack Matthew's obituary, a section on further readings in Civil War fiction, and a couple pages about the author in the back. My personal favorite is "Lamp in the Window". The stories included within are as follows:

Requiem on the Rappahannock: A young man is sent to deliver the message to a certain general that his wife died in birthing a dead baby, but when he gets there his order is countermanded by a different superior officer, and he is told NOT to deliver the message. Whose order should he follow?

End of Whiskey: During a drunken brawl, soldier Mike Lynch brutally beats up fellow soldier Elias Briggs, who will never be the same again. The people want a hero to take on Lynch and give him a dose of his own medicine, and ex-farm boy Jesse Tattersall is elected. Jesse is strong, but he doesn't know if he could do it. Who will win the fight?

Conroy's Ghost: Two brothers join the Confederate army, the older brother vowing to take care of his younger brother Conroy if things get tough. In the first battle, the promise is neglected, and Conroy is wounded. The wound turns gangrenous, and it doesn't look good for Conroy. Will the older sibling ever be able to forgive himself if Conroy dies?

Lamp in the Window: An old man now, Charles Kennerly recounts a battle during his youth when he was a Confederate captain, lying wounded and bleeding on a battlefield. What comes out in his scrawled handwriting is a fantastical and unbelievable story that will provoke thoughts rendered otherwise unthinkable by their astounding audacity.

Here Lies Billy Talbert, Dead and Gone: A Union soldier, Billy Talbert, is fixated on the idea that his death is near, and worries about what his tombstone should say. Simple minded, he repeats each epitaph that comes to him over and over to all who will listen, bringing down everybody's morale and driving everyone crazy. What can the officers do to stop this madness?

The Silver Link: A young Confederate private and a maid are sweethearts, and are both illiterate. The private asks a lieutenant to write his letters for him, and the maid asks her mistress (Miss Tilden) to read them for her and write back. As they continue corresponding, the lieutenant and Miss Tilden start to feel an affinity towards each other, and fall in love.

Johnny Kincaid: Gus and his older brother join the Union. Measles plagues the camp, and a man dies. When they go to bury him, they find men digging a hole for somebody else. Gus dumps the body in the hole and thinks nothing of it... until Gus gets very ill, and in his delusion the man's ghost who's grave he stole comes back to haunt him.

Stop Thine Ear Against the Singer: A young Union soldier is severely wounded in an explosion, and is left only half a man. A kindly Southern lady takes him in, takes good care of him, reads to him, and helps him heal. But is there an ulterior motive for her helping a soldier fighting for the opposite side?

The Killing of Old Mortality: When the hero of this story is given the duty of finding and killing a sniper hidden in the hills who was picking them off one by one, he is told to pick one man to come with him. He picks the one man nobody thought he would: a hypochondriac who never stopped talking, and who everybody disliked. Did he make the right choice?½

As a big fan of Civil War Era history, I LOVED this collection of stories. It doesn't show the battle part of the war, but rather, the non-battle portion, where the soldiers mingle with each other and the happenings that would go on in the encampments. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who loves history, of any kind!