Here are photos of the cars  (listed by chapter) which appear in Jack Matthews’  1967 novel Hanger Stout, Awake!  The novel is now for sale as an ebook . This page is a reference for readers; it contains  a LOT of photos underneath relevant quotations in the novel, so click the Continue Reading  link to see all the cars. I found these photos from the Internet (Wikipedia, etc), and so I do not own the rights to any of these images; the copyright belongs to the owner.

The 1967 novel Hanger Stout Awake! is  a story about how a teenager grows up and widens his perspective. But on a literal level at least, the story is simply about cars. The teenager Clyde “Hanger” Stout works in a filling station, hangs out at junkyards, can identify cars from 20 years ago  and is always working  on his 1956 Chevy,  which he paints solid black.  Hanger has this knack for noticing every car that whizzes by   and even starts identifying people with whatever car they drive.  Some people (like his ex-girlfriend Penny) hardly pay attention to cars except when it’s the latest  sports car.  But for Hanger cars hint at  personality;  over time they accumulate   dents and scratches, ornaments and used parts to replace the original ones. They become the setting for everyday dramas, and at some point acquire a history closely aligned with its driver.

To an older person, this preoccupation with cars might seem materialistic or  superficial. But as I reread this novel on my ebook reader, I realized that I hadn’t the foggiest idea of what the cars mentioned in the book actually look like!  So I googled around and found an amazing assortment  of styles and colors.  As a person already  habituated to   the slick ergonomic designs of Camry’s and Porsches,  I expected the   cars of Hanger Stout Awake!  to look quaint and old-fashioned.  Instead, I found a lot more variety of styles and customizations than what appears on roads today.    Even more amazing to me was how popular these vintage cars still are. They are still being displayed at shows, bought and sold on ebay, rebuilt and restored…almost to the point where the restored cars look in better shape than   they were when they first  hit the American scene.

Perhaps  over time a character like Hanger might  outgrow his teenage  interest in cars and move onto more important matters — like computers, business, raising a family,  pondering the meaning of life  and dabbling perhaps in the arts. But thanks to the Internet, I see now that there’s  an entire army of Hangers out there still tinkering with the contraptions that once captured their imaginations. Even younger people are messing around with vintage cars, finding in it  both a technical challenge and a way to assert their individuality.  I’m not a car guy — never was, and never will be. At the same time, it’s easy to marvel at the efforts of the dedicated few to make these  machines destined for the scrapheap to  outlast the company that produced it or  even its original human owner.

1956 Chevy black (Hanger’s Car)

I had been wanting to get a rear-vision mirror for my ’56 Chevy, which I painted all black last fall with some lacquer paint I got special from Bert Wilson’s secondhand store.

From the 1956 Chevrolet Story, a promotional book published by Chevrolet.

(From the About Chevy Ads, a blog which reprints a lot of old car ads).

See also: the official 1956 Chevrolet manual (online).

Chapter 1

The tire bell rang and I went out to fill the tank of a ’63 Corvair. Its hood had waves on it, it was so hot.

I look up at the grease rack and see a ’62 Fairlane up there. It was waiting for a lube and oil change.

I shook my head no, and Bo Thompson, who just come in from filling a ’63 Dart with regular, said, How could you tell with Clyde there?

Chapter 2

Then some crazy guy come roaring through the square, doing about sixty in a ’53 Mercury with twin carbs.

Chapter 4

Along about noon, Pete comes to me when I’m checking the spark plugs on a ’61 Buick Special,

Chapter 5

This new T Bird come in, and I see Bo Thompson start to drop his Coke, because he likes to take care of the expensive new cars. But I beat him to this T Bird and I hear Pete laughing at us because he thinks it’s funny the way we fight to get up next to a new car especially if it is a real good one.

And I tell him the only reason he doesn’t laugh at Mr. Comisky is because he’s got a new Caddy instead of a ’56 Chevy, and he’s rich. Pete isn’t the sort of person who laughs at a rich person.

Chapter 6

After a while I come across this ’53 Pontiac that has been sideswiped and there is a side mirror on it, right on the side that has been wrecked, only it don’t seem to be damage at all.

Every time I would tell her something about my Chevy or what Bo was doing with his ’58 Ford, she would take a quick breath like somebody just poured a glass of ice water down her back.

I finished the milk shake and coney and got in my Chevy. I waved at Bo as I turned out into the street and then waited as some old man in a tan ’65 Fairlane up ahead turned into the automatic laundry owned by Bruce Myers, who has a false eye from the war.

Later on, Penny told me about the MG, and I said, I thought you didn’t like cars.
And she said, Oh sometimes I do. And then she just stayed silent, like she didn’t want to tell me any more. So I figured she liked them if they were new and expensive. But what did Charlotte’s boy friend know about that MG of his? I bet I could tear the engine down and put it back together again, and he probably don’t even know where the generator is.

Chapter 7

Jim Boynton pulled up in his ’59 Dodge, and yelled out, Hey Hanger, what you doin boy?

It was a blue ’64 Plymouth. A nice looking car with a stick shift, which you don’t often see a woman driving.

I was on a bad angle, but our old wrecker, which is a ’62 Ford, is heavy duty and can lift just about anything.

Then the tire bell rang, and I said I better hang up because a ’66 Buick has just drove in.

Chapter 8

Last year I fixed the water pump on his ’63 Impala. It’s got a nice pale green color and dark green upholstery.

Chapter 9

There was an old Buick station wagon there that looked like it was big enough to haul pianos. Its rims were sunk in the ground, clear up to the hubs, it had been there so long.

Chapter 11

Just then I hear the tire bell ring, and there is a ’66 Buick coming up to the far pump.

when I got through filling a Volkswagen with about three teaspoonfuls of gas, as Pete is always saying when he puts gas in a VW, I went around in back to see how the racing stripe was drying, which was not too bad.

I saw a blue ’66 Chevy drive up to the far pump, and I went out.

Chapter 13

I was sweeping up the garage with the long push broom when I see a clean ’63 Corvette come in.

Is that yours? I ask.

And he says, What do you think of it?

Pretty nice, I said. I tried to sound kind of bored, but it was an awful nice car. It looked like it had all the extras. And it had been babied, you could tell.

Things were quiet a couple seconds while Jim passed a Rambler station wagon, ’61 or ’62, I’m not sure which, because I was worried about what Jim was going to tell me.

Chapter 15

The next time I saw Phyllis, she was making up a big order of barbecue sandwiches and orange drinks for a stranger who I never saw before. He had his family in a pale green ’67 Buick.

I ask Rigolo if he thought maybe I could put a ’58 Plymouth grill on my Chevy.

Chapter 17

I saw Perry Wilson’s ’47 Ford panel truck, which he says he has put two hundred thousand miles on without changing the oil once.

Chapter 18

Pete got out an egg salad sandwich and a 7-Up out of the cooler, and Bo went over to the Dairy Freeze to kid with Phyllis and I took care of a ’60 Plymouth that come in. Its tailpipe was all rusty and dragging on the cement.

Chapter 19

Rigolo had walked out ahead of me and I saw him go over to his ’62 Dodge and get in. Mrs. Rigolo was in there with him, so I guess there was nobody out watching the junk yard.

Somebody pulled the plug, and there was only this ’64 Dodge pickup, which Bo was filling with gas.

Chapter 21

A ’65 Ford Galaxie come in then, and I went out and filled it with regular. It was somebody from out of town and I didn’t know him.

Chapter 22

When Dean comes back I am just throwing my milk shake carton away and Pete
is putting new plugs in a ’64 Pontiac with mags on the wheels.

Chapter 23

Along about two o’clock, somebody pulled the plug, and right then the phone  rang and it was Pete’s wife, who talked to him about twenty minutes. Only two  cars come in while he was on the phone  –  a new Olds and a ’56 Chevy four  door, not in as good condition as my Chevy was.

Then he walk outside toward the pumps, and a ’64 Dodge come in at the same time, and Bo filled it with regular, looking like he was mad at the whole world, which I guess he was.

Pete said, yes, that wasn’t a bad idea, come to think of it, and he walk out of the door and just then a new Continental come in, but neither Bo or me made  a move toward it, and Pete took care of it.

Later on, Bo took off for the Dairy Freeze, when I had a ’61 Pontiac at the pumps…

and Pete had a DeSoto up on the rack, draining the oil. Then a new Ford comes in, and Pete ask me where Bo is, and I told him. Pete  cusses him again for taking off like that, but a few minutes later, Bo comes   back with milk shakes that he had bought for both of us, and Pete didn’t say  anything.

chapter 24

I go up and sit on the hood of an old Hudson, which they don’t make any more, and look around at all the cars which I practically know by heart.

chapter 25

A few minutes later, Bert Wilderman, the four minute man from Detroit drove up in a battered old ’49 Plymouth. If we had seen a car like that in the station, we would of kicked sand over it, as Pete is always saying. So nobody would see it and get scared away.

chapter 28

After a little bit, a ’66 Fairlane comes in, belonging to a man named
Holzaple, who is a good golfer and has an aunt who is drunk all the time and
really makes a mess out of herself around the town, writing bad checks and
things like that. She lives at Mr. Holzaple’s house sometimes.

When she finished, the two women went over to a ’65 Dodge convertible and
got in and started eating their banana splits, and Phyllis started right in
talking about my horoscope again.

Bo was emptying the oil pan on a ’64 Buick.

I knew all the other cars by heart. So I went up and down the rows, and I
look at them. The birds were chirping and flying all around. I saw a sparrow
fly right through an old Packard. The glass was all out of the windows. It was
a ’36, 1 think Rigolo told me one time when I ask him.

***************************

Chapter 1. 

The first thing I notice was they were driving this Caddy and it was a new one. The big man stood and watch me while I took the flat tire off. He was half a head taller than me and he had sort of blond hair in the back of his head and he was bald in front. He took off his sunglasses and watch me change the tire and I could see two little dents in his nose where the glasses fit. His eyes were real light color.

The other one was over at the cigarette machine, juggling the knob, and he was kind of little. Not as big as me. He wore regular reading glasses with them sunglasses that clip over them. He looked a little bit like a teacher.

The big one kept watching me close while I am changing the tire. But at first I didn’t pay no attention because I was still thinking of Penny, who was away to summer camp, where she was a counselor, and she hadn’t written any letters to me. She had just finished her first year at college, where she is getting all A’s, practically, and naturally I didn’t go to college because I barely made it through high school and didn’t want to go anyway. But Penny and me had been drifting apart ever since high school. It wasn’t my idea, I can tell you that. She thought I wasn’t good enough for her because I was working in a filling station and she was going to college.

Pretty soon, the big one starts to talk to me and I can’t think about Penny no more.

Right before this, I had just bang my knuckle against the tire rack when my hand slipped. It sliced a little of the skin away there, but I have bang and cut my knuckles up so much I do not ever notice little things like that.

But this man noticed it. He said, Didn’t that hurt?

I told him it didn’t. I didn’t even notice such things.

Let me see your hands, he said.

So I stood up and let him look at all the scars on them, plus a few fresh cuts I always got.

You say you don’t notice things like that? he said.

Not so you would notice, I said.

He shook his head sideways once or twice like that made him pause to think. He said, You must have a high threshold of pain, my friend.

I told him I didn’t know about that. And then I got back to work on the tire. I am the sort of person that would rather work than talk, any old day.

You handle tire-changing tools real good, he says.

Yes, I said.

I started pounding the hubcap into place with my hand like I always do, and this man leans over and says, You did that fast. How old are you?

I am eighteen, I told him.

And how much do you weigh, may I ask?

I told him about a 130. Maybe 135.

Very lean, he says, sounding pleased. Very lean. And you’re about five ten, I would say?

I guess so.

About five ten, he says again, like he was really thinking of something else while he was saying it, and awful happy about it, whatever it was.

Are you married, may I ask? he said.

I told him no and then squinted right at his face, which I don’t do very often. I don’t think I ever really once stared in the face of Penny’s father even though Penny and I went together about a year.

You probably want to know why I’m so curious, the big man asked. Well I tell you. How about coming over to that Dairy Freeze across the street and I will buy you a milk shake or whatever you want and I’ll tell you.

I figure this was just his way of giving me a tip, so I wipe my hands off on the grease rag and the two of us wait for a semi-outfit to go by, then we cross over the street and the little guy is about ten feet behind following us.

This here’s Leo Herbert, the big man says, and my name’s Dan Comisky.

When he first said that I thought he said something like Comisky and it wasn’t until I got to know him better that I asked him, That’s some kind of foreign name, isn’t it? and he said, No, it’s Irish. Irish as Paddy’s pig. People frequently think it’s foreign, but it’s Irish.

Anyway when we was walking up to the Dairy Freeze window, I saw Phyllis standing there, all eyes because I was walking up to the window with two rich guys she had seen driving up to the filling station in a Cadillac.

What’s yours today, Clyde? she asked, looking more at the other two men than at me.

Is that your name? Mr. Comisky said, turning to me and smiling so I could see some gold teeth.

Yes, I said.

The treat’s on me, he said to Phyllis. A strawberry milk shake and a Coke for Mr. Herbert and me, and Clyde, he said, turning around slow like he was a big stiff door, you just have anything you like.

I’ll have a milk shake, I said to Phyllis, even though she knows what I have.

What’s your last name, Clyde? Mr. Comisky said.

I got set for a laugh, because sometimes people laugh when I say Clyde Stout, since I am on the thin side.

But Mr. Comisky and Mr. Herbert just nodded seriously when I say this, like they had already figure I would have a name like that, so the three of us go over to the bench on the shady side of the Freeze and sit down. I know Phyllis is breaking her neck watching us, since she has known my mother for years and she don’t miss a thing. I figure she knows the license plate of every car that goes past, she is so nosy. Phyllis is about thirty-five and her husband has had two or three nervous breakdowns, and she supports him.

Clyde, Mr. Comisky says after he’s drained half his strawberry milk shake with one drag, I’d like to talk with you. Do you ever gamble, Clyde?

I thought that one over, and I said, Yes I am always in a football pool, and sometimes I go to Millford and bet on the trotters.

Swell, Mr. Comisky said. That’s just swell. Millford’s where I live.

All this time, Mr. Herbert is just sitting there with his legs crossed in front of him, drinking his Coke without saying nothing and watching the cars go by. I saw Pete, over at the station, get in the Caddy and drive it away from the pump to make room for more cars.

I start in drinking my milk shake so I could get back to work fast. And then I thought of Penny and wondered what she was doing now.

You like this town, Clyde? Mr. Comisky said.

I don’t know how to answer a question like that, so I just said it was okay.

Let me tell you about my business, Clyde, Mr. Comisky said. I’m a gambler.

Is that right? I ask.

Sure that’s right. I gamble for a living and I make a lot of money on it.

What do you bet on? I said.

Well, lots of things. I bet on cards and horses a lot of the time. And then I like to bet on sporting events. You know, like football games and things like that.

Mr. Herbert hit the bottom of his Coke and the straw made a noise. I notice that Mr. Comisky was through a long time ago so I finish up my milk shake and we all throw the cups in the trash barrel. When we walk back to the station I wave to Phyllis, who was just dying out of curiosity, I could tell.

I was trying to figure out why they was talking to me so much. Mr. Comisky paid Pete for me fixing the flat lire. The tire bell rang and I went out to fill the tank of a ’63 Corvair. Its hood had waves on it, it was so hot. When I come back, Mr. Comisky was talking to Pete and then I hey both stop talking and look at me. Pete was kind of grinning and he nodded his head.

Mr. Comisky come up to me then and said, Clyde, I tell you what.

What? I said.

I’ll give you a five-dollar bill if you can hang by your hands from the runner on that grease rack for two minutes.

I look up at the grease rack and see a ’62 Fairlane up there. It was waiting for a lube and oil change.

That’s right, Mr. Comisky said. Your boss said he don’t mind. So if you want to make five easy bucks, it’s yours. You can’t touch your feet or nothing. You got to hang free, with your arms straight. No shoulder shrugging or regripping. No pulling yourself up. Most men can’t hang over thirty or forty seconds in a position like that. Believe it or not. But if you can hang on for two minutes, I’ll give you a five.

Go ahead, Pete said, and he was grinning so hard I knew he couldn’t wait to tell everybody I done it. Pete has got a bad natured wife and he gets in all the kidding he can down here at work. He works about seventy or eighty hours a week. That’s what happens when you’re in business for yourself, he told me.

Well, they wanted me to and I made sure it wasn’t a bet because I didn’t know how long I could hang from that rack. Pete says, Go ahead. I’ll lower the rack and then raise it up and you won’t even have to jump for it. If that’s okay with you, sir, he says, checking with Mr. Comisky.

Mr. Comisky said sure, so Pete lowered the rack and I put my hands around the rim and then I hear the hydraulic lift make a whirring sound and feel my arms pull up and there I am hanging right up in the air, my feet off the cement a couple feet.

A little while later, Mr. Comisky says, Thirty seconds, and right about then I feel like my arms are about to come out of their sockets. It don’t sound like much, but just hanging there like that gets tiring very fast.

I was about to quit when Mr. Comisky says, Forty-five seconds. Then Bo Thompson comes in and says, Clyde, what in the hell you doin up there? Man, you lost your cotton pickin mind?

Pete explains everything to him, and I can tell he’s grinning so hard he can hardly talk. I wish his wife was a nicer temper woman. It would make things a lot easier on us down here at the station sometimes.

Anyway, Bo Thompson is just another attendant. I could hear him chewing and snapping away at his Spearmint gum while Pete explained why I was hanging from the grease rack. Then I smelled cigar smoke. I guess it was Mr. Comisky who had lit up.

Things got a little better, maybe, right about then. I mean, my arms got numb. Another half-minute, I was thinking, and I won’t be able to let go even if I want to because my hands will be curved around that rack like two pieces of hammered iron.

Then things got kind of dreamy. I was hurting all the way down my sides and all I could think about was Penny and why she hadn’t written me a letter and if this was the actual end between her and me. I closed my eyes and saw her face when I did. My arms felt like they was being stretched way out like you see some kid stretch bubble gum out of his mouth. That’s the way my arms felt.

Then Mr. Comisky said, Let him down. He done it.

He sounded happy, like he was glad he lost five bucks in two minutes. Some gambler, I thought.

I felt my body sway a little and then my feet was slapped against the cement and I pried my two hands off of that rim and turned around.

By God, Mr. Comisky said. By God.

He give me the five bucks right there and I almost couldn’t hold on to the bill, but I did.

He’s a natural, Mr. Herbert said, flicking the ash off his cigarette. I hadn’t seen Mr. Herbert smile and he didn’t smile now. But Mr. Comisky was smiling.

You know, Mr. Comisky said, I had a hunch he could do it. He was saying this to Pete, who was about to split his face grinning.

How was that? Pete ask him.

Why, I saw him cut a big gash out of his knuckle when he was changing my tire. Remember, Leo? He said this to Mr. Herbert, who nodded his head with his eyes closed.

I told Leo here, that boy has it. Strong hands and a high threshold of pain.

Is that what it takes? Pete asked, looking interested, even though he didn’t know no more about what this Mr. Comisky was talking about than me.

That’s right, Mr. Comisky said, getting real serious. The thing that brings most men down off that bar they’re hanging from isn’t a loss of strength. No sir. You know what it is?

Pete shook his head.

It’s pain, Mr. Comisky said. It’s the pain they get in their shoulders. Because the shoulder wasn’t meant to stand up under the strain of that constant kind of pulling. Not only that, the blood goes out of the arms. Also the head after awhile, and I’ve seen boys have hallucinations when they are free hanging from a bar. Yes sir.

Did you have any hallucinations, Clyde? Pete ask me.

I shook my head no, and Bo Thompson, who just come in from filling a ’63 Dart with regular, said, How could you tell with Clyde there?

And everyone laughed at that. Even Mr. Comisky, who patted me on the shoulder while he was laughing.

Well, he said, some people can take it. And Clyde here looks to me like he’s a natural.

He turn around to me once more and shook my hand. Yes sir, Clyde, he said, I will be getting in touch with you. Meanwhile, let me give you some friendly advice. Okay?

Okay, I said.

Hang every chance you get, he told me.

Chapter 2. 

Well, I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t think nothing about what he had said. What I did was take that five bucks and get in my ’56 Chevy (which I rebuilt a transmission for and put it in last winter) and go downtown. It was about ten-thirty and a slow night, so Pete got tired of kidding me about hanging from the grease rack and he said, Hanger, you go ahead and take off, because I know that five dollars is burning a hole in your pants.

First thing I thought of was I would buy gas with it because my old Chevy isn’t very good on mileage, but then I got this other idea, so I drove up to Hillary’s Drug Store, which is the only one stays open in this town after nine o’clock. You get sick after nine o’clock in this town and you either go to Hillary’s or else you die or wait til eight the next morning.

Anyway, I go into this store and it smells like face powder and things like that. And it’s empty because they are about to close up at eleven o’clock. After eleven o’clock in our town, it’s every man for himself, sick or not.

I saw this woman who’s about forty or fifty and her first name is Annabelle. I don’t know her last name and she’s always got this kind of make-up on that looks like dried sassafras tea, and she wears great big earrings.

She says hello, Clyde, and I say hello. I can tell the way she talks she’s tired and bored.

I ask her if she hasn’t got any customers, and she says no, she hasn’t.

Then I told her I was looking for a gift for a young lady.

How much do you want to spend? she says.

Oh, about five dollars, I said.

What does your young lady like? Annabelle said.

She likes to read a lot, I said.

Well, Annabelle said, this isn’t a bookstore. And then she laughed, and I did too.

Would you like perfume? she ask me, and I said I didn’t think so.

How about a nice make-up kit. Here’s a nice one selling for $4.95.

I ask her to let me see it and she pulled it out of the glass case and said a bunch of things but I wasn’t listening. I didn’t think Penny would like it.

Maybe I look around some more, Annabelle, I said.

And she said that was all right with her, so I went outside. Some big hairy bug landed right on my arm, and I jumped. Then some crazy guy come roaring through the square, doing about sixty in a ’53 Mercury with twin carbs.

And I went home to bed.

Chapter 3. 

We just got one bookstore in our town and it is in the back of a gift store where they have little cuckoo clocks and ashtrays and cups and things like that. There was a little fat man there, smoking a cigarette in a cigarette holder when I come in the next morning. I don’t know his name, but I seen him around a lot.

May I help you? he asks.

I would like to buy a book, I told him.

Fine. What book would you like?

I would like to look around first and then pick one out, I said.

He said that would be fine too, so I started looking over the books he had in the shelves. First, there was a lot of cooking books, and then there was some books on mending furniture and buying a house and one book of poetry by Edgar A. Guest.

She likes to read, I said when I noticed the man was looking at me.

I see, he said. It’s for a young lady then.

Yes sir, I said.

And she likes literature?

Yes, she does, I said.

Well, then, the man said, let me suggest a nice book of poetry.

I thought he was going to get the book by Edgar A. Guest, because I seen that was poetry, but instead he reach around and got a lot thicker book, called Singing on the Wings of Time, by a man named Farad Karaji.

The little fat man held the book and just stared at it with his eyes almost closed, and then he laid his cigarette down with the holder part on the counter. It was right next to a little ashtray shaped like a Mexican hat, and I wonder why he didn’t put it in the ashtray.

Then he shook his head sideways in little jerks and said, Beautiful. A beautiful, beautiful book.

How much is it? I ask him.

This book is $4.50. So I buy it and walk out of the store, where it has really gotten hot for so early in the day.

(Copyright Jack Matthews, 1967. Book can be bought here).

Publisher’s Book Info & Purchase Page:

Jack Matthews’s fiction has been praised by Eudora Welty, Tim O’Brien, Anthony Burgess, Doris Grumbach, W. P. Kinsella, Walker Percy and a host of other distinguished writers and critics. His novel, Hanger Stout, Awake! (Harcourt Brace, 1967; Hock Hocking Books, 1997) was the only book selected by NBA-Award poet, William Stafford, in an Antaeus series on “Neglected Books Of The 20th Century.” (Matthews says that with luck, it might become one of the neglected books of the millennium.)

In his latest novel, Matthews returns to the 1850s, the time of his novel, Sassafras (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983)–a book “the young Mark Twain might write” if he came back to life, according to James Dickey, author of the best-selling novel, Deliverance. Here, in The Gambler’s Nephew, you will enter a world of slavery, abolitionist passion, murder, hypocrisy, grave-robbery, chicanery, holiness, memory, guilt and plain old-fashioned cussedness.

It’s a politically incorrect world of unrepentant capital punishment, when there were plenty of scoundrels just asking to be hanged by the neck until dead, thus coming as close as they could ever get to being civilized. In contrast, however, the reader will come upon the beauty and grandeur of the old steamboats plying the Ohio River, along with people troubled by such grand irrelevancies as love and tenderness.  In short, The Gambler’s Nephew brings us a world as richly confused as our own–familiar yet different . . . and as alive as living can get.

Other places to purchase: Amazon, BN, Half.com

Reviews on Social Networking Sites: Librarything, Goodreads

Reviews and Criticism

Review by Robert Nagle,  “Matthews doesn’t  pass judgment on beliefs and superstitions which might seem repugnant to the the modern reader. Instead Gambler’s Nephew  shows how people lived with such beliefs while still professing  themselves to be religious and upstanding. ..The key thing, I think, is recognizing the parallels between Nehemiah the abolitionist and the slave owner; both were guided by moral impulses and both were troubled by the guilt of their decisions.”

Review by David Atkinson, Pank Magazine, “This indirect manner of revelation about the characters making up this community pervades the book, providing delightful secretive discovery after another for the reader.  For me, this is one of the most magical aspects of what Matthews has accomplished in this work. “

Review by Claire Blechman, Ploughshares, “For a story focused on morality and rife with violence, The Gambler’s Nephew is surprisingly light-hearted. Many contemporary authors try to make you writhe under the weight of heavy philosophical issues, but Matthews would rather you shake your head and give a small smile.”

Profile and Review by Jim Phillips  in Athens News, “Matthews looks at his people with a clear and merciless eye, laying out all the pettiness, greed and self-absorption that humans are prone to, but he does it without a hint of rancor, and more than a little affection – jaundiced and cynical affection, but real nonetheless.”

“I like it, and warmly admire his sturdy subject and delicately restrained treatment. It seemed to me blessed with honesty, clarity, directness, proportion and a lovely humor. . . .” Eudora Welty

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See also: The Cars in Hanger Stout Awake (vintage car photo gallery), sample  chapter, and The Hanger Stout Discussion & Study Guide.

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Read Reviews:  Librarything, | Goodreads

Book Description.

Clyde Stout is a high school graduate in a small Ohio town; he loves tinkering with cars and dreaming about his girlfriend. He has interests and aspirations, but no definite goals. He is coasting….until he discovers he has a new talent: the ability to hang from a metal bar longer than anybody! Others start calling him “Hanger,” and an out-of-town stranger, trying to help the boy to profit from this talent, organizes various “hanging competitions.” At first, Hanger goes along, but after a while he becomes suspicious of the stranger’s motives; is he for real? Hanger is no longer a boy and not yet an adult – but he finds himself in a world where older adults are constantly offering advice and supervision and alleged wisdom. Until then, Hanger had always been an amiable and trusting sort; now Hanger needs to look at things through adult eyes — can he adapt to a world which seems less safe  or reliable but possibly more profound? This slender 150 page novel was first published by Harcourt in 1967 and reprinted several times. Now it is available as an ebook. Time Magazine described it as a “gentle first novel told with a fine ear for adolescent patois,” and National Book Award winning poet William Stafford called it one of the most neglected works of the 20th century. Southern novelist Eudora Welty said about the book: “I like it, and warmly admire his sturdy subject and delicately restrained treatment. It seemed to me blessed with honesty, clarity, directness, proportion and a lovely humor. . . .” The book is a fun and easy read… Not too much seems to happen in the novel, and the protagonist (we’re sorry to report) is not a werewolf or vampire or time traveler or wizard or superhero; to all appearances, he’s just an ordinary guy, but if you penetrate beneath those appearances, you’ll find that he’s defiantly and unforgettably unique. This book will help you remember how it felt to be a teenager…before you needed to start worrying about more serious matters. Like life, or what passes for life in the world of adults.

About the Author

86 year old author Jack Matthews has not only written more than 15 works of fiction, he was distinguished professor of Fiction Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for over 4 decades. Winner of Guggenheim and several arts grants, Matthews has been anthologized widely, translated into several languages and nominated for a National Book Award. His own books have been praised by Eudora Welty, Anthony Burgess, Shirley Ann Grau, Tim O’Brien, Doris Grumbach, Walker Percy and a host of other famous and highly accomplished authors.  In 2011 he published the novel Gambler’s Nephew (about the accidental killing of a slave by an abolitionist while trying to save him) and a writing guide.

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Keep in mind that a lot of the same information will go on the Facebook group page. But news tends to be drowned out in Facebook; hence this mailing list.

Half the pleasure in the book comes from its resemblance to a huge, shuffling, shaggy-dog story. Every time a new character comes on stage, the narrator – whose identity we don’t learn until the end – wanders off to talk at length about the new person’s history, quirks and kin. He later circles back to the main plot – now a little askew from where we thought it was heading originally. Later on, we learn that the silly, apparently offhand information imparted earlier is important.

Matthews looks at his people with a clear and merciless eye, laying out all the pettiness, greed and self-absorption that humans are prone to, but he does it without a hint of rancor, and more than a little affection – jaundiced and cynical affection, but real nonetheless.

He tries to let his characters have it out among themselves, without coming down on anyone’s side, or imposing some ultimate author’s truth. He cites the notion of men-de from classic Greek rhetoric (he has degrees in English Literature and Classical Greek) – which seems to mean something like, "one the one hand – but on the other hand" The idea, he suggests, is that nobody in the human world has the whole truth, and those who think they do – even if, like Nehemiah Dawes, they’re generally on the right side – end up crazy and mean.

Here is publisher information about the book  and purchase page on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Price is currently $12.

I read this book last month and enjoyed it very much. I’ll be posting a review and analysis at a later date. For now suffice to say that it’s a fascinating story, a well told tale, a relatively fast read, lots of twists and surprises and confronts a time period in America’s past where people operated under different kinds of moral codes than from how we do today.

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Description of Book

Since the early 1990s, Jack Matthews has distributed a photocopied version  of this 75,000 word writing guide to students in his fiction writing classes at Ohio University.  This guide offers insight about how successful writers mold raw  experiences into a story and how language helps you to do that.  It offers lots of  good examples and practical advice for getting a story idea off the ground; it analyzes several stories (including one of  Matthews’ own) and offers several paradigms for understanding how stories work. Erudite, witty, idiosyncratic, serendipitous, mischievous, sesquipedalian, entertaining, introspective and colorful: these are  adjectives  which come to mind when reading this book.

About the Author

86 year old author Jack Matthews has not only written more than 15 works of fiction, he was distinguished  professor of Fiction Writing at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio for over 4 decades.  Winner of Guggenheim and several arts grants, Matthews has been anthologized widely, translated into several languages and nominated for a National Book Award.  His own books  have been praised by Eudora Welty, Anthony Burgess, Shirley Ann Grau, Tim O’Brien, Doris Grumbach, Walker Percy and a host of other famous and highly accomplished authors. NBA-Award poet William Stafford listed Matthews’s novel, HANGER STOUT, AWAKE! as his only title in an ANTAEUS series on “Neglected Books Of The 20th Century.” In July 2011, Estruscan Press published his novel, The Gambler’s Nephew, a dark 19th century tale about slavery, guilt, memory. In Fall 2011 Personville Press will be republishing his 1967 novel Hanger Stout, Awake.

Related Links

• 2009 Interview  (also reprinted at the end of this ebook).
• See also: a brief excerpt from the book about the art of naming characters.
• Audio: 1984 Interview with Don Swaim (mp3), “A Woman of Properties,” (mp3) a short story read by Miette Elm.
• Bibliography and an essay,  Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Untold Talepublished recently in  The Chronicle Review.
• Jack Matthews Fan page on Facebook.  With updates every month or so.
• Some background about how the ebook was published.

Book Preface (Written by Robert Nagle):

Jack Matthews has not only published more than 15 books of fiction, he taught classes in fiction writing to students at Ohio University for over four decades. This book consists of his teachings, insights, ramblings and ruminations about the art of fiction.

Many books have been written about the craft of fiction writing; how is this one different?

First, a Worker’s Writebook: How Language Makes Stories consists of essays and dialogue (called interludes). These interludes punch holes in the rules and pronouncements made in the essays; they also help the book avoid seeming too dogmatic. The two voices in the interludes are not exactly “characters” but the author and a contrarian voice within the author. The comparison to Platonic dialogues is apt; Matthews received his undergraduate degree in classical Greek literature and has always found echoes of the classical age in contemporary art and life. Still, the “poetics” of Writebook is grounded less in Aristotle than Aristophanes.

Writebook touches upon some practical aspects of writing fiction (such as naming characters and writing speech cues). But Writebook focuses on helping the writer write more boldly and with more attention to the linguistic vehicles of thought. For Matthews, most stories fail through under-invention, not because the rules of narrative have been disregarded.

Chapter 2 (Taxonomies) and 3 (Structural Matters) cover various paradigms for plot and character development. These are worthy subjects and Matthews has interesting things to say (especially when he tries to analyze his story Funeral Plots with these same paradigms). At the same time Matthews recognizes that there is no magic paradigm or archetype capable of explaining what makes all stories successful – these are just guides. At some point you just have to trust writerly intuition. Writebook helps the potential storyteller to cultivate this intuition and be flexible enough to bend rules when necessary. Matthews writes, “Anything can be done if it’s done in the right way: with style, panache and cunning.”

Many writing books include a chapter or two listing literary cliches to avoid. For the most part, Writebook doesn’t do that. Instead it goes deeper and analyzes why some metaphors succeed and others do not. The funny Parable of the Indifferent Ear provides a good case study about how linguistic inventiveness doesn’t always translate into effective writing.

Literary insights from Writebook can be applied to drama, novels and poetry; but they are especially applicable to smaller forms like the short story (though Matthews’ claim that a short story of more than 10,000 words rarely succeeds is sure to be controversial). Writebook’s musings on the novel are still interesting (Matthews has written several novels, including Sassafras, a philosophical-satirical work that is every bit as expansive as Dickens or Balzac). But if you are seeking a guide specifically about novel writing, you might check out Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at a Novel, Milan Kundera’s Art of the Novel or even (!) Stephen King’s On Writing.

Similarly, although Writebook includes a few writing exercises – Matthews calls them gimmicks – there are probably better books for that (with Josip Novakovich’s Writing Fiction Step by Step being a notable example).

Writebook introduces lots of new ideas and terminology: the non-sequential time opening, the Swamps of Antecedence, pointedness (which, as I understand it, is how stories gain enough momentum to escape the gravitational pull of the author), linguistic vehicles (the actual words which transport the thought) and why flat characters aren’t always bad. Also, the technique of overcoming writer’s block by trying deliberately to write something bad or meaningless actually works (I’ve tried it).

Matthews wrote Writebook in the mid 1990s (and distributed it to his creative writing students throughout the years). Since then, Matthews has retired and kept busy with various writing projects (described in greater detail in his 2009 interview in Chapter 7). At 85 years old, Jack Matthews is still writing fiction and teaching occasional writing classes. For more information about the life and writings of Jack Matthews, see www.ghostlypopulations.com

I almost forgot; Writebook is wickedly funny. I won’t spoil the jokes; suffice to say that one of his former students said Matthews was “so damn witty” in the classroom that he reminded her of Groucho Marx. Writebook has serious and even lofty aims. But this is fun reading. Matthew’s style is playful and pedantic; Matthews enjoys inventing characters on the fly to illustrate his points and adding qualities to them until you begin to wonder if Writebook is going to veer into becoming a novel. After I finished this book, I still remember snarling black-eyed Greta Hutchins; she is still snarling, and I am wondering what she’s going to try next.

Random  Quotes from A Worker’s Writebook  Ebook

Years ago, a national magazine reported a conversation between Frank Sinatra and Spiro Agnew, who had just fallen from power and glory as Vice-President under Richard Nixon and like many of the idle famous, decided to turn his hand to writing. He and Sinatra debated whether his first undertaking should be “a novel or a serious book,” whereupon Sinatra advised him to write a serious book first.

And yet, most students realize that the same effort expended upon almost any other enterprise would be vastly more profitable. There’s something mystical at work here, and we should think about it. The money you make by having a novel or short story published isn’t like other sorts of money. The cashier at K Mart or your attendant at the local Gulf station may not acknowledge the difference, but you know how that money was earned. It was earned by selling the trophy you brought back from a long and exhausting hunt somewhere in the wilds of your imagination – a place where you ventured, equipped with all the suitable accouterments of craft and guided by your own polestar of inspiration.

***

Ideas belong to writers in secret ways. The instant you draw a circle around a public idea and recreate it in your own language, that idea becomes personal and private. And, as the writer, you alone – and no one else – are responsible for its fulfillment. The story idea becomes intimately your personal possession the instant you begin to work with it. But your function is even greater than this, for you are also the first reader of what you write.

What I do at such times is yell at the little monsters to shut up. I’m not their father, dammit; and I’m certainly not their mother. What am I supposed to do? How much can I claim responsibility for? After all, I have twenty novels in various stages of completion, all abandoned in fits of impatience, or in spasms of deadly insouciance when l simply didn’t care enough about my characters to listen to their yammering any longer. And what sorts of clamor do you suppose they make, when I’ve abandoned them … and when the moon is full and the tree shadows spill like black ink onto the gray sward, etc.?

The problem is, I know better. I know how to save every blessed one of them, stories and novels both. It would all be very easy – a piece of cake, as they say. But do I revive them by means of mouth-to-ear resuscitation? Do I pound their chests until their little febrile hearts start bumping away? Do I bring them around? Absolutely not … at least not yet. Why? Because I’m not in the mood. I’m too shiftless, irresponsible, and lazy. I’m a good-for nothing  who just doesn’t give a damn.

Well, then, how do I know I could save them? It’s easy. I’ve done it. And, unlike real people who are temporarily dead, these characters always come out of their comas without having suffered anything in the way of ischemic brain damage. We all know that real live technically dead persons will begin to suffer brain damage within minutes after the blood stops feeding oxygen to their cerebral cells. But I have brought back characters after a quarter of a century, and they have not only come back alive and kicking, they’ve been far more vital than when I’d tossed them aside in a moment of exasperation all those heartbeats (close to a billion, a little fast arithmetic tells me) ago.

Here’s a random quote:

Mr. Cobb stamped his foot on the porch. “Solid as a rock,” he said. “Solid oak. Double flooring, even out here on the porch. They don’t build them like this anymore. Solid as a rock.”

At that moment, for no apparent reason, Mrs. Groestli was filled with a sudden, wrathful intolerance, and she fastened upon Mr. Cobb’s locution. Why did they always say solid as a rock? a needlessly anguished voice cried out in her head. Why didn’t they say as solid as a noodle? Or as solid as a party hat? Or as solid as a week of Sundays?

Oh, that Mrs. Groestli character is something else.

As usual, Miette brought the story to life; let me recommend some other amazing stories she has read on her site: Lydia Millet’s Sir Henry, Benito Lynch’s The Sorrel Colt, Dino Buzzati’s The Falling Girl, Monica Wood’s Disappearing,  Jean Stafford’s Interior Castle, Jack London’s Adventure in the Upper Sea. (Most of the other titles  are also excellent, but these are the ones whose titles stood out to me). Miette is also reading stories for Iambic Audiobooks, a great source of low-cost audiobooks.

All writing teachers have mixed feelings about trying to teach writing. Some creative writing teachers are better writers than teachers. Some are genuinely inspiring teachers. Some are just entertaining (even though not much teaching or learning is taking place). Some are exotic (or psychotic); take your pick.

I know that over the years former  students of Mr. Matthews will stumble upon this page. Therefore, I ask you to share any  favorite memories from your classes with him. My preference is that your use your real name. However, if you wish to leave a comment anonymously or pseudonymously, please do so.  Don’t be shy. I realize that while  this thread starts out, comments will come very slowly. But over the next few years,  this thread will increase in size.

Finally, if you would prefer not to share your memory in public, I would still appreciate hearing from you. Feel free to drop me a line (idiotprogrammer at gmail.com). I’m writing a book about Jack Matthews as a writer and would welcome hearing any  insights into his life as a writer and teacher.  (Anything you write to me  will be held in confidence unless you specify otherwise).