Ann Patchett, a previous recipient of this honor, was quoted once as saying that an author could excel at writing novels or short stories, but not both. Earley’s an exception, perhaps because he does vastly different things with each medium. His novels Jim the Boy and The Blue Star are elegiac beauties, Mason jars full of lightning bugs: Their language is honed to a spare poetic edge as they accumulate experiential details. His short stories, on the other hand — like those assembled in Mr. Tall, his first new collection in 20 years — turn backflips of tragicomic invention, even as they shift from humor to heartbreak (and occasionally something close to horror). This collection finds him venturing beyond marital deadlock and discomfort into new realms of metafictional gamesmanship. For the merest taste of Earley’s gift for precisely etched mortification, from “Haunted Castles of the Barrier Islands,” here’s a fuming dad meeting his teenage daughter’s humpbuddy (clad in a T-shirt reading “F**K**U”) on an unannounced college visit: “He wanted to yank Kyle’s horny, pimpled little heart out of his chest and shake it at him before cramming it down his throat. Instead he said, ‘Nice asterisks, Slick.’ (Darryl had randomly selected ‘Slick’ from a list of diminutions that included ‘Buddy,’ ‘Chief’ and ‘Sport.’)”
Best Author
Tony Earley
