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Such a Good Man
Dustin M. Hoffman
“There is much to admire in these stories of working-class lives—the fine writing, superb pacing, pitch-perfect dialogue—but what I find most impressive is Hoffman’s refusal to condescend to his characters. They are never mere caricatures but are complex human beings trying to cope with hardships life has dealt them. Such a Good Man is an excellent story collection. I look forward to reading more by this talented writer.”
—Ron Rash, author of The Caretaker
Trying and failing and trying again
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.
Dustin M. Hoffman is the author of the story collections One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize, and No Good for Digging, as well as the fiction chapbook Secrets of the Wild. He spent ten years painting houses in Michigan before earning his MFA in fiction from Bowling Green State University and his PhD in creative writing from Western Michigan University. He lives in South Carolina and teaches creative writing at Winthrop University.
Author's Website - https://dustinmhoffman.com/
Praise
“Dustin M. Hoffman’s brilliant Such a Good Man could easily be titled Such a Good Woman, for the female characters show strength and resilience. These stories of hardworking, usually down-on-their luck, characters bring to mind the stories of Raymond Carver and Larry Brown. What a great, strong collection.”
—George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs
“Hoffman has written an inventive and thrilling collection about everyday working people that stares directly into darkness without ever abandoning his characters’ longing for connection. These wry, expertly crafted stories interrogate labor and masculinity with the skill of a practiced and accomplished writer”
—Marian Crotty, author of Near Strangers
“Hoffman illuminates the world of work in its intricate tools of the trade, its unseen stories of those who make and do all around us, and the hidden heartbreaks that workers both carry and witness. From the realism of the recession to the surrealism of stars falling from the sky, Hoffman’s stories are filled with tenderness and humor and, above all, with heart. I absolutely loved this collection.”
—Anne Valente, author of Our Hearts Will Burn Us Down
“The stories in Such a Good Man are formally inventive, heartbreakingly funny, and always deeply grounded in the lives and struggles of their working-class characters. Reading them, I felt like I was flying as close to the edge as Hoffman’s characters, whipping down the highway atop a cherry picker, one moment from disaster and, because of that, fully alive.”
—Gwen E. Kirby, author of Shit Cassandra Saw
Table of 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
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