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Critical Praise for Sometimes It's New York

• .. at times outstanding.... The opening story, "New York, New York" tells the tale of a young writer witnessing the rise and fall of his friend's writing career; its concise prose, detached narrator and overall sense of mankind's powerlessness will remind readers, favorably, of Hemingway.... The next story, "Bishop O'Hara," also showcases Stanush's ability to draw compelling, flesh-and-blood characters... Stanush has a winning, wise way with the human condition....

  — Publishers Weekly

• There's no preaching in this collection, but there are parables, ones informed by the journalist's eye, by the intimate detail that propels the narrative.

  — Bill Minutaglio, Austin American Statesman, June 3, 2007

• Stanush's stories run the stylistic gamut, from the slow and meditative ... to absurd, stream-of-consciousness humor. It's been quite a while since I encountered a collection by a single author in which each piece seemed truly distinct from the others; reading these works, I felt Stanush stretching in new directions every time I entered a new story. Iwas always intrigued by the question of where the author would take me next. Sometimes It's New York is filled with a rare breed of stories. Stanush engages difficult questions and dares the reader to continue thinking about them even after closing the covers of the book.

  — Pam Johnston, San Antonio Express-News, May 6, 2007
  Professor, Texas Lutheran University

• Sometimes It's New York is remarkable for its variety. Six stories are set in New York, the others out in the country somewhere, and every one of the 12 stories reads as if it could have been written by a different writer. Stanush is proud of that. The tie that binds the stories is the writer's deep concern for people, his ability to understand human motivations and their ramifications with great compassion.

  — Steve Bennett, Book Editor, San Antonio Express-News

• Claude Stanush is equally at home in an urban heartland or wild countryside. His prose is clean and clear; his meaning profound. The mood is often gentle and compassionate, yet there is always an underlying edge. Human nature, stretched taut, is revealed by a master's hand. There's no loose change lying around here: every word counts.

  — John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

• Claude Stanush is a deep, wise and kind man. His writing is the same. These stories will be treasured by all those lucky enough to find them.

  — Ethan Hawke, actor, writer and director

• Great book! Ecstasies, inner demons, epiphanies – Claude Stanush's short stories reveal the inner life of an aspiring writer, a lovelorn doctor, a rejected would-be nun, and spirited souls ranging the landscape between New York and Texas. Sometimes It's New York is a moving literary voyage into the American heart.

  — Robert Drew, internationally known filmmaker; founder of American Cinéma Vérité

Reviews

• Once the chief of correspondents for LIFE Magazine in Washington, D.C., Claude Stanush has covered everything from alfalfa farms to space science to the national government. But as he puts it in his preface, "even with such extensive experience, there was something missing. As a reporter, I was telling about life, not as a participant, but as an observer, a witness from the outside." In this, his second collection of short stories, Stanush delves into the interior lives of an array of characters – a New York bishop, artists, office workers, college professor, an aspiring novelist, the Mother Superior of a Catholic convent, a drug addict, a street drunk, a pioneer blacksmith – the doomed and the blessed. About half of the stories are set in New York, but this book is, more than anything else, a rich collection of unforgettable characters.

• ". . .he brings to life an almost forgotten rhythm of life."

  Mental Health.net (Volume 11, Number 33)August 14, 2007

  Review by Tony O'Brien

  The title of this collection refers to the fact that thirteen of the stories are set in New York. The remainder are set in a variety of US cities, in periods from the 19th to the 21st century. Several stories have been previously published in literary journals, and the author Claude Stanush has a long history of mainly journalistic writing. The age of a writer is not usually a consideration in reviewing a book, but the fact that Stanush is a tick off 90 years of age is remarkable. The cover notes and an afterword provide some explanation about how Stanush became attracted to fiction writing late in his life. This has to do with his dissatisfaction with the power of journalism to convey the truth. There is some irony in using fiction as a vehicle for truth, and Stanush is well aware of that. He regards the term "fiction" as misleading, citing a Latin origin meaning "to deceive". Fiction, Stanush believes, should be "truthful" in a way that journalism cannot. It should offer a means of understanding human experiences that can barely be appreciated, perhaps something in the manner of Forster's "truth of mood".

  The notes in the afterword provides a partial explanation of why some of these stories seem incomplete. It does not seem to be Stanush's intention to round out his fictions through revealing the effect of key events on the characters. Any change that a key character undergoes is only hinted at; change is only a possibility; it is not assured. In some cases this creates a sense that these are not stories at all, but observations about passing lives, imagined or real. Conversations are recounted and observed, events are linked in the form of a plot, but Stanush's task is not always to achieve narrative coherence. Understanding, for this author may not be possible, a point of view shared by several of his protagonists, who argue that understanding is not given to mere mortals, and we should not presume to abrogate this from the almighty. Other protagonists protest this existential agnosticism, but are confounded in their quest for truth.

  Many of the stories are set in the 1950s or 60s when Stanush was a mere forty-something. In these pieces he brings to life an almost forgotten rhythm of life, when people were more self contained, yet still with a belief, even a need for, ultimate answers. From the viewpoint of the twenty-first century some of this seems quaint, but we might also look with envy on less complicated lives without cell phones, without the Internet, without the sorts of highly pressured routines that leave little time for the sort of contemplative writing Stanush offers.

  The strongest story is "A Pair of Shoes", and it is no coincidence that when Stanush approaches his subject indirectly it is more revealing in terms of the internal struggles of the protagonists. "A Pair of Shoes" differs from most of the other stories in that none of the three main characters is well educated, hence they don't have the intellectual apparatus that can obfuscate rather than clarify issues. The policeman, the man walking home on a freezing New York morning, and the wino huddling in the shelter of a building encounter life with an immediacy that gives readers a clear insight into the moral dilemmas of the story. In the afterword Stanush tells us that he was moved to write by the humanity of Chekov's short stories. In "A Pair of Shoes" that influence is apparent, both in the deceptive simplicity of the plot, and the way that everyday events, rather than philosophical or religious texts, provide compelling moral challenges. The characters, too, are everyday people.

  "Bishop O'Hara" is another warm and engaging story in which readers are invited to engage in the moral and personal struggles of the main protagonist, the delightfully named and very believable Gerty Gallagher. Gerty desperately wants to lose weight, and to cut down her drinking. But these mutually compatible and laudable goals are severely challenged by the conviviality of Paddy McClairty's Irish Pub on a hot New York evening. Bishop O'Hara doesn't help either. His televised sermon on sin provides moral support for her decision not to drink, but sows the seed of doubt that the desire to lose weight is simply vanity, another sin. Enter a man with a gun and the moral tension is accentuated by real and present danger. Truth of mood? This story has it in buckets.

  Other stories show characters engaged in struggles of their own. Some like those of the long dead Daniel Josiah Williams and preacher Brother Ben in "Peace and Joy" take on old testament proportions, others such as those of the husband and wife of "The Butterfly" are more mundane. "Some People Can" explores grief and loss, "Live and Let Live" is a moral tale in which fear of snakes is replaced by respect for the natural order of the animal world. "The Artist" is something of a fable, set over a lifetime in which the woman at the centre of the story paints a series of self portraits as her life meanders along its unsatisfactory course. This story owes something to The Picture of Dorian Gray. One of the longer stories, "New York, New York" also follows a life that flowers, initially, as a young man develops his talent for writing, only to unravel, perhaps the victim of its own success. This story is mainly set in the 1950s observed by a narrator, who concludes by resuming his own ambitions to write. This story introduces the collection, and appears to have a strong autobiographical component.

  Overall this is an interesting collection of work. As stories, the standouts of "A Pair of Shoes" and "Bishop O'Hara" are overshadowed by stories in which there is more told than revealed, or where Stanush has seen something he wants to tell us about, but which fall a little flat. The writing is generally economical, and the characters well evoked. There is a wide range of settings, so each story is something of a mystery, at least initially. Rewarding reading.

  © 2007 Tony O'Brien Tony O'Brien is a short story writer and lecturer in mental health nursing at the University of Auckland, New Zealand: a.obrien@auckland.ac.nz