Took me back to scenes from my own childhood in a predominantly Polish neighborhood that was full of taverns and changing fast with the times (born in Chicago, grew up in Cicero). I enjoyed the honesty of scenes such as the one where "alkies" fighting is good for kids because change invariably flies from their pockets, or how a son, an 8th grader at the time, is alarmed by his father's "general obliviousness to gang etiquette in the neighborhood." Such vivid detail creates a strong sense of time and place, one that isn't exactly nostalgic, but is also not full of rage at the past (but there is some of both). Wonderful relationship depictions, too--friends, family, young lovers. Good male coming of age stuff here. I plan on reading more from Dybek.

I have to agree with what is printed on the back of this book, courtesy of the LA Times: "Dybek's gift - a considerable one - is a sorcerer's ability to comix the commonplace and the grotesque..." Dybek can very much do that. He takes a simple day, and mixes into it the mystical, imaginary, fantastical... the grotesque. Everything. And he still makes it tangible, real, accessible. Maybe even more so. His description is spot on, in the way that things so specific are.

My only trouble with the stories here (these stories being the only ones of Dybek's I've read) is that they tend to go on a little bit. The stories have multiple plot lines, which is appropriate for novels, but loses me a bit in stories. What is most important sometimes gets buried in tangets - albeit very well-written tangents, but tangents all the same. I think if these stories were half as long, they might be even more successful than they are now.

These are the stories that everyone in the creative writing classes I took in college was trying to write. Every one was excellent.

Dybek's stories are so lovely, dark, and deep. I never got tired of Perry or Lefty or Sir or Joe and his ghostly girlfriends. I need more, please.

overall great, dreamy dybek. here dybek is nearly always writing about the difficulties of becoming an adult, either by translating childhood memories from their native language or through the agonies of early adulthood. these stories feel heavy, humid, densely minor key, but not overdone. the book wilts a bit at the end, drooping into sentiment and losing some of the sharp, almost pointy brilliance of dybek's descriptions. i wondered reading "the coast of chicago" whether the book reads the same if you're not at least passingly familiar with the neighborhoods of chicago. i think this book asks the same question but ultimately i can't read it without seeing little village/my old apartment on marshall.

best stories: "breasts," "blue boy," "orchids" -- all of which approach novella length.

this was a slow read -- lot to appreciate and dream on in each story.

also, fact check corner: the baseball game on the radio at the zip inn in "breasts" is apocryphal. i checked baseball reference's game logs for the pitching matchup.

Interconnected stories about Chicago. sometimes I didn't totally understand how the stories connected. All in one neighborhood or one family in the neighborhood - I guess.

I think I heard Dybek speak at a ALA program in Chicago which would have been appropriate and also would explain why one story seemed very familiar.

My favorite story was "We Didn't" which may be the one that was read to us.

Worth reading if you like short stories - much of it was serious, but there were definitely some funny bits. And the two brothers were great characters.

Read this one for class, it's so hard for me to rate anything lower than 2 stars but I genuinely disliked this one. The stories didn't connect, I couldn't see a point, and the only reason I got through it was because it was mandatory. The stories were so slow, too many unnecessary words and it took forever for it to make it's point. The chapters were too long and that only works if you REALLY want more of that story, which I don't. I was 75% into this book and by then I should've already been captured by this story and by then the reader should WANT to learn more, but I just really dreaded picking this one up. My favorite chapter is Live From Dreamsville, that chapter was beautiful and I deeply enjoyed it so much; However, I don't think your favorite chapter is supposed to be 2 chapters in because then the rest of the book can't and doesn't live up to that. Overall, I didn't really enjoy this one.

After reading of Dybek's collection of novel-in-stories, I Sailed with Magellan, it is hard to resist the sense that contested dreams, memories and what remains unspoken between us are what most deepen the love we have for others and for ourselves. These dreams, memories, and secret thoughts and feelings may fuel our greatest creations; may turn us into endearing fools; or bring us luck; may make possible living on for another day; or grant us a long circuitous lifetime. Even if these memories and dreams and hidden lives drive us mad; even if they kill us: even if they lead us on to countless other forms of destruction, Dybek shows us how they can still deepen our love for one other and for the beauty of our minuscule existence as it is lived in narrow alleyways, unclean waters, and a vast cosmos.

Dybek's stories are full of digressions that are as perfectly shaped as the finest cut pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Each digression, its own right, is a tale worth savoring. Together, they contribute to the richly symphonic whole collection of stories. Thus, while rendering an extraordinarily particular (sometimes humorous, sometimes brutal) portrait of life in the Polish immigrant community in the 1950s and 1960s Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods of Chicago, Dybek gives the reader so much more than a warm and nuanced reminiscence of time and place: he gives us access to dreams, story structures, and histories that draw us beyond that place, time, and particular community, toward what can make us fully human.