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WORK TITLE: The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: https://www.ian-stansel.com/
CITY:
STATE: KY
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
http://louisville.edu/english/people/current-faculty-new/ian-stansel * https://www.ian-stansel.com/team/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
| LC control no.: | n 2017011072 |
|---|---|
| LCCN Permalink: | https://lccn.loc.gov/n2017011072 |
| HEADING: | Stansel, Ian |
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| 001 | 10386982 |
| 005 | 20170227145202.0 |
| 008 | 170227n| azannaabn |n aaa |
| 010 | __ |a n 2017011072 |
| 040 | __ |a DLC |b eng |e rda |c DLC |
| 053 | _0 |a PS3619.T3664 |
| 100 | 1_ |a Stansel, Ian |
| 670 | __ |a The last cowboys of San Geronimo, 2017: |b CIP t.p. (Ian Stansel) data view (“IAN STANSEL’s story collection, Everybody’s Irish, was a finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for debut fiction. His writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Salon, and elsewhere. He has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville”) |
PERSONAL
Married Sarah Strickley; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:Iowa Writers’ Workshop, M.F.A.; University of Houston, Ph.D.
ADDRESS
CAREER
University of Louisville, assistant professor of creative writing; Memorious, fiction editor.
WRITINGS
Contributor of fiction to periodicals, including Ploughshares, Cincinnati Review, Ecotone, Joyland, Antioch Review, CutBank, Good Men Project, and Salon.
SIDELIGHTS
A native of the Chicago area, fiction writer Ian Stansel has published the short story collection Everybody’s Irish, the western novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, and short fiction in literary journals, including Ploughshares, Antioch Review, and Salon. He holds a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, where he edited Gulf Coast. He is also fiction editor for Memorious, an online literary journal. At the University of Louisville, he is assistant professor of creative writing focusing on twentieth-century and contemporary American novels.
Everybody’s Irish
A finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for debut fiction, Stansel’s 2013 Everybody’s Irish collects nine stories about the Midwest American experience, mainly placed in Illinois and Houston, Texas, that are reminiscent of the works of Jonathan Franzen and Stuart Dybek. The stories dig into the heart and resonate humanity, invoking emotion and compassion. Stansel reveals people as diverse as a student learning about Anne Frank, Occupy Wall Street protesters, and a middle-age computer salesman.
Online at Banshee Boardwalk, a reviewer commented: “Stansel shows with deftness the possible implications of a single gesture and how quickly, and sometimes slowly, things can change for people battling to maintain their lives.” The reviewer acknowledged how the stories’ protagonists are often cripplingly self-aware, operating with selfish motives, yet at the same time hoping for spontaneous connections with others. In the end, the characters suffer from the results of their own selfishness. “Any happiness characters gain at the end of a story is well-earned throughout the narrative,” said the reviewer.
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
In 2017, Stansel published The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, a contemporary Western set in northern California. Successful horse trainer Silas Van Loy has just murdered his own elder brother, Frank, and flees on horseback through the wilds of affluent Marin County. Chasing him are the police as well as Frank’s wife, Lena, who has a long-held hatred of Silas, and Lena’s stable assistant. Through the book, Stansel reveals the origins of that brotherly animosity and feud, which began over a Stetson hat, their business dealings as horse trainers and English riding instructors, and the incident that led up to the murder, all culminating with a final showdown between Lena and Silas. “Stansel writes well and moves effortlessly from past to present and from the perspectives of Silas and Frank to that of Lena,” noted a Kirkus Reviews contributor who called the book a stirring narrative of hostility and desire for vengeance.
Having spent part of his childhood in northern California, Stansel decided to place his story there to show its contradictions. He explained to Sara Havens on the Insider Louisville website: “It is west, yes, but it isn’t quite the capital-W West. The wildness of the region is balanced with the culturally progressive Bay Area. And this was just the sort of thing I wanted in the book. I wanted the expectations of a Western to be undercut by the realities of 20th/21st century California.” Setting a story of violence, rivalry, and revenge in such a beautiful location “makes for an unusual but captivating crime story infused with western tropes,” according to Thomas Gaughan in Booklist.
Praising the book for both its traditional themes of justice and revenge, but also for the chase through contemporary California terrain and a meditation on partnership and regret, a writer in Publishers Weekly commented: “Stansel’s debut is a moving exploration of the complicated and fateful bonds of brotherhood.” Barbara Hoffert in Library Journal called the book forthright and a beautifully rendered first novel, even though some scenes are over extended, but added: “Yet Stansel has written a captivating novel, elegantly spare in language but big in purpose.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, May 15, 2017, review of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, p 21.
Kirkus Reviews, May 1, 2017, review of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo.
Publishers Weekly, May 29, 2017, review of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, p. 42.
ONLINE
Banshee Boardwalk, https://bansheeboardwalk.wordpress.com/ (October 29, 2013), review of Everybody’s Irish.
Insider Louisville, https://insiderlouisville.com/ (July 5, 2017), Sara Havens, review of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo.
Library Journal, https://reviews.libraryjournal.com/ (May 9, 2017), Barbara Hoffert, review of The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo.
Ian Stansel is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) and the short story collection Everybody’s Irish (FiveChapters, 2013), a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous venues such as Ploughshares, Salon, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. A native of the Chicago area, he holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of Houston. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, the writer Sarah Strickley, and their two daughters.
Ian Stansel
Assistant Professor
Photo
HM 312A
502-852-5921
irstan01@louisville.edu
About
Ian Stansel is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, which was published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in 2017. He is also the author of the short story collection Everybody’s Irish (Five Chapters Books), a finalist for the PEN/Bingham prize for debut fiction. His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Joyland, Ecotone, Cincinnati Review, and Antioch Review, as well as in several anthologies. His nonfiction has appeared in CutBank, Salon and The Good Men Project. He holds an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, where his critical work focused on the 20th Century and contemporary American novel.
Education
M.F.A., Iowa Writers' Workshop
Ph.D., University of Houston
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
Everybody's Irish (Five Chapters, 2013).
Ian Stansel
Ian StanselIan Stansel is the author of the story collection Everybody’s Irish (FiveChapters 2013). His work has appeared in Ploughshares, Salon, Cincinnati Review, Ecotone, Antioch Review and elsewhere. He is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and holds a doctorate in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston, where he was the editor of Gulf Coast. He currently serves as fiction editor for the online literary journal Memorious and lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.
Stansel, Ian: THE LAST COWBOYS OF SAN GERONIMO
Kirkus Reviews.
(May 1, 2017): From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Stansel, Ian THE LAST COWBOYS OF SAN GERONIMO Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Adult Fiction) $23.00 7, 4 ISBN: 978-0-544-96339-9
A contemporary tale of two brothers, both horse trainers and rivals, and the tragedy that ensues when one kills the other.Silas and Frank Van Loy have a complicated relationship. They're both a bit wild, a bit co-dependent, and more than a bit antagonistic toward each other. The novel opens immediately after Silas, the younger brother, has shot and killed Frank. He flees on horseback, for him a natural mode of transportation, over the landscape of Marin County in northern California. At least two issues complicate the psychology, the ethics, and the logistics of this fraternal relationship and murder. First, Frank was married to Lena, who hates Silas. When she finds out what happened, she takes off in pursuit, also on horseback, with the intent to kill him. Second, when we finally see Frank and Silas' final confrontation, toward the end of the book, the shooting turns out to have been less vengeful than it seemed. The narrative moves briskly on a number of levels. While we follow Lena's pursuit of Silas, we also get generous flashbacks into the brothers' lives, especially their rivalry in the world of horse training (Silas' career was thriving while Frank's was declining) and the almost unaccountable depth of their hatred (earlier Frank had shot Silas, and on the surface, their argument had been about a Stetson hat). Stansel writes well and moves effortlessly from past to present and from the perspectives of Silas and Frank to that of Lena. A stirring narrative of hostility, pursuit, and the desire for vengeance.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Stansel, Ian: THE LAST COWBOYS OF SAN GERONIMO." Kirkus Reviews, 1 May 2017.
Book Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A491002920 /GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS&xid=949bb0bd. Accessed 21 Mar. 2018.
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Gale Document Number: GALE|A491002920
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The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
Thomas Gaughan
Booklist.
113.18 (May 15, 2017): p21. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo. By Ian Stansel. July 2017. 208p. HMH, $23 (9780544963399).
After killing his older brother, Frank, Silas Van Loy looks at the lifeless body and notes his "clean heart shot." Aside from remembering that Frank once shot him, too, Silas makes no effort to justify his action. He simply saddles his favorite horse to make his getaway-without the "foggiest notion" of where he'll go. When Franks wife, Lena, learns of his death, she, too, saddles up and rides off, determined to kill her brother-in-law. It's a classic tale of murder and revenge in the Old West, but this one is set in affluent, sophisticated, present-day Marin County, California. Flight and pursuit on horseback is a contemplative enterprise, and Stansel lets Silas and Lena recall their lives. Both recall the brothers' inheriting a ramshackle stable and how Frank turned the stable from western to English riding to appeal to Marin's horsey set. Both acknowledge that Silas' understanding of horses and horsemanship was superior to his brother's. And both recall the fistfights and rivalry that spanned decades. Stansel's portrayal of violence and loopiness in one of the world's most beautiful places makes for an unusual but captivating crime story infused with western tropes.--Thomas Gaughan
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Gaughan, Thomas. "The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo." Booklist, 15 May 2017, p. 21. Book
Review Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A496084755/GPS?u=schlager& sid=GPS&xid=ce478cba. Accessed 21 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A496084755
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The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
Publishers Weekly.
264.22 (May 29, 2017): p42. From Book Review Index Plus. COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
Ian Stansel. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $23 (208) ISBN 978-0-544-96339-9
After murdering his brother, Silas Van Loy gets on his horse and heads north, followed closely by Lena Van Loy, his brother's wife. Lena (and the faithful stable assistant who accompanies her) seeks justice, and as they chase Silas through the mountainous landscape of present day Northern California, Stansel's rhapsodic debut novel reveals the history of the Van Loy family--the rise and fall of their renowned horse training business, the rivalry that simultaneously binds the brothers together and pushes them apart, and Lena's powerlessness to control or end the relentless feud. The book draws upon many of the western genre's finest traditions: a bitter and inescapable rivalry, a narrative propelled by the pursuit of justice, a reverence for the powerful relationship between horse and rider. But in many other ways, the story stands apart: Silas and Lena's travels through the rugged Californian terrain are punctuated not by shoot-outs or high-speed chases, but powerful memories and meditations on partnership, rivalry, regret, and redemption. Stansel's debut is a moving exploration of the complicated and fateful bonds of brotherhood. Agent: Richard Abate, 3 Arts Entertainment. (July)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo." Publishers Weekly, 29 May 2017, p. 42. Book Review
Index Plus, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A494500690/GPS?u=schlager&sid=GPS& xid=8adc2743. Accessed 21 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A494500690
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UofL professor Ian Stansel pens a contemporary Western novel
By Sara Havens | July 5, 2017 11:22 am
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Ian Stansel teaches creative writing at UofL. | Courtesy of Ian Stansel
When University of Louisville creative writing professor Ian Stansel sat down to write his second book, “The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo,” he didn’t know exactly where the story would lead. His only goal with the contemporary Western was to pen a story his sister would have enjoyed. She died three years ago.
“She was a lifelong horseback rider and teacher. I’d written a bit about the horse world in the past, but I wanted this to be a far deeper exploration of, among other things, the relationships between rider and horse,” Stansel tells Insider. “Mostly, though, I wanted to write a book my sister would have loved.”
The story is a contemporary Western.
The book was released this week, and it already has garnered glowing reviews from the likes of Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews and Library Journal, the latter of which praised it as “a captivating novel, elegantly spare in language but big in purpose.”
The author, who spent some of his childhood in northern California, says he chose to set the story in the West because it was an area he knew well and it was the opposite terrain of where he set his first book, “Everybody’s Irish,” which took place in the Midwest.
“It is about as different from the flat cornfields of Illinois as you can get. But more so, it’s a place nicely full of contradictions,” explains Stansel. “It is west, yes, but it isn’t quite the capital-W West. The wildness of the region is balanced with the culturally progressive Bay Area. And this was just the sort of thing I wanted in the book. I wanted the expectations of a Western to be undercut by the realities of 20th/21st century California.”
The story centers around two brothers who are entrenched in a lifelong and ultimately fatal feud. One brother’s widow sets out on horseback on a manhunt to find her husband’s murderer (aka the other brother) through the rough backwoods of northern California.
Stansel, who has taught at UofL for two years, says when he started the story, he had no idea how it would end — which is typical for a writer’s process. It’s a process that is anxiety-inducing to be sure, but it’s an important lesson he imparts to his students.
“I say to my students again and again that writing is a process of discovery,” he says. “That’s the exciting part, the discovery. If you know exactly what is going to happen in a story and why and how, then it probably won’t end up being that interesting of a story. That excitement and magic that comes in the moments of discovery translate to the reader. It’s those moments that get you through and make the work of writing worth it.”
“Everybody’s Irish” came out in 2013.
Another important lesson he teaches is time management. Stansel has two young daughters, a wife, several classes, books he’d like to read, and shows piling up in his Netflix queue. So how did he find the time to write? He took advantage of those less-than-perfect moments.
“I remember one draft of the last chapter I wrote sitting next to my older daughter while she watched ‘Curious George.’ That was the moment I had to write that day. It wasn’t perfect, but it was what I had,” he says.
Ultimately, Stansel hopes readers of “The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo” connect with the characters and enjoy the journey. If a story is complex and honest, it can take you to new places — and that experience is priceless for an author.
“A story allows the reader to be in two worlds at the same time. You’re sitting in your chair or bed, but you’re also off wherever the book takes you. And I hope this book takes readers to some interesting places,” says Stansel. “Plus, I believe the act of engaging with a character — of allowing yourself to understand that character as a human being — helps build our capacity to empathize with other people in the real world.”
Stansel will be reading from and signing copies of “The Last Cowboys” at Carmichael’s Bookstore in Crescent Hill on Thursday, July 6, at 7 p.m. Carmichael’s is located at 2720 Frankfort Ave.
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Carmichael's Bookstore, Ian Stansel, University of Louisville
Sara Havens
Sara Havens is the Culture Editor at Insider Louisville. She's known around town as the Bar Belle and updates her blog (barbelleblog.com) daily. She's a former editor of LEO Weekly and has written for Playboy and The Alcohol Professor. Havens is the author of two books: "The Bar Belle" and "The Bar Belle Vol. 2."
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
Rivalries and racehorses
BookPage review by G. Robert Frazier
A long-simmering feud between brothers boils over with the death of one brother at the other’s hand, prompting the wife of the deceased to hunt his killer and seek revenge. If it sounds like the plot of an Old West showdown, you wouldn’t be far off—except this adventure takes place in modern-day California.
So begins a contemporary Western tale of sibling rivalry, vengeance and family loyalty by debut novelist Ian Stansel in The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo. A finalist for the PEN/Bingham Prize for his short fiction collection, Everybody’s Irish, Stansel updates the age-old family feud in a surprisingly poignant way.
While the brothers—Silas and Frank Van Loy—and their decades-long jealousies provide the impetus of the story, Frank’s wife, Lena, proves to be one of the book’s most fascinating characters. Lena endures years of bickering between the two over the operation of their respective horse training operations, but through it all remains steadfastly loyal to her husband. As she pursues Silas in a cross-country horse race through largely untouched Northern California wilderness, Lena ponders why the two behave the way they do and ultimately comes to understand the answer is as simple as blood: “Because we’re brothers.”
Stansel’s powerful narrative alternates between Lena and Silas, allowing readers to glimpse and sympathize with each perspective. In a blood feud, there is no right or wrong, no black and white, good and bad. Each side stubbornly clings to their own beliefs, faults and assumptions. As such, the novel deviates from the straightforward revenge storyline to explore the deeper relationships between brothers and the women in their lives.
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo is a fast-paced, moving narrative in which family loyalty is tested, broken and redeemed in unexpected ways.
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
by Ian Stansel
[Buy this book at IndieBound]
[Buy this book at Amazon]
[Buy this book at Barnes and Noble]
San Geronimo may sound like a fictitious name for a locale, but is in fact a real place. It is a little over 50 miles northwest of and a world away from somewhat better known San Francisco and is the setting for THE LAST COWBOYS OF SAN GERONIMO, Ian Stansel’s extremely impressive and eminently readable new novel. Set in the northern California of right now, it is one of those rare books that is relatively short (under 200 pages) yet seems much deeper and longer in all the best possible ways.
Stansel is known primarily for his short fiction, and his ability to set scenes and develop characters with a sterling economy of memorable prose serves him well in this story of the rough and ultimately fatal rivalry between two brothers. They would be Frank and Silas Van Loy, who, as a team running a horse boarding and riding business, were greater than the sum of their parts. The book opens with Frank dead by Silas’ hand, and Silas fleeing the scene on horseback, traversing the California woodland in what is little more than an ill-planned mad dash. Law enforcement is after him, but so is newly widowed Lena, Frank’s wife, who is intent on getting her own measure of revenge as she is accompanied by Rain, a young woman who has been the Van Loys’ trusted and revered stable assistant.
"You will read longer books than THE LAST COWBOYS OF SAN GERONIMO this year, but you will encounter few with characters, situations and prose that will stay with you the way that Frank, Silas and Lena, and their interactions, do from first page to last."
A series of flashbacks interspersed with the events of the present --- almost all of which alternate between Silas’ and Lena’s points of view and memories --- tell the reader what has gone before and where the parties are now, going non-linearly from Frank’s and Silas’ boyhood days through the present, as well as the courtship and marriage of Frank and Lena. It’s a dark tale, though not entirely so, until the uneasy partnership of the brothers is rendered asunder and made irrevocably so by reciprocal acts of all but unforgettable treachery.
Stansel sets the novel in front of the backdrop of the majestic northern California coast, letting the scenery function almost as a supporting character without interrupting the flow of the narrative. I was put in the mind of John Steinbeck’s “Flight,” not so much topically as stylistically. One senses almost from the first page that the book is going to end badly, but the story is full of surprises as we slowly learn how, and why, one brother came to murder another.
You will read longer books than THE LAST COWBOYS OF SAN GERONIMO this year, but you will encounter few with characters, situations and prose that will stay with you the way that Frank, Silas and Lena, and their interactions, do from first page to last. Even the incidental characters who weave their way into and out of the narrative will stand well within the edges of your peripheral consciousness once this tale is told. It’s a grim joy to read from beginning to end.
Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub on July 7, 2017
[Buy this book at IndieBound] [Buy this book at Amazon] [Buy this book at Barnes and Noble]
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
by Ian Stansel
Publication Date: July 4, 2017
Genres: Fiction, Western
Hardcover: 208 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-10: 0544963393
ISBN-13: 9780544963399
‘The Last Cowboys’ is rich reading
Jul 05 2017
By T.E. Lyons
“The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo” by Ian Stansel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 194 pgs., $23)
Do you want a book about how a hopeless pursuit in the modern American West tests the best and worst in the pursued party?
You don’t need to go back to Harry W. Lawton’s 1960 book, “Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here” — there have been plenty since then, with as many or as few idiosyncrasies as you could ask for. Looking for great tales of brotherly conflict? No end to ‘em. Just break open your family Bible and there’s a keeper. If you’d like something a bit less formal, pick up George Steinbeck’s 1952 “East of Eden.”
Now, how about combining these two storytelling traditions? It’s been done before, too.
But this has rarely been done as well as in “The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo,” the first novel by UofL creative writing teacher Ian Stansel.
Exactly how he has developed such a rich reading experience is worth considering. After all, this book doesn’t go far past novella length. And it’s managing to squeeze in enough precise geographic referencing to let you produce a pretty good map of Marin County, California.
So what is there room for? Character delineation and narrative choices that are practically flawless. The pursuer in the novel’s big chase is a middle-aged woman who keeps her confidence and her doubts near the surface. She has also been the referee — and alternately buffer and accelerant — in a decades-long familial conflict that explodes right at page one. Her husband, Frank Van Loy, is dead. Frank has been killed by his brother Silas, who has mounted a horse and begun a quixotic getaway into national forests, fenced meadows and the vicinity of the Pacific Coast Highway.
The woman grabs a gun, mounts her horse and gives chase. But the novel’s truly made in the flashback chapters and sections that delve into the brothers’ past.
Full disclosure: Like Silas, I have an older brother who’s ambitious, keeps some of his cards hidden and takes unilateral control of communal resources. My hard-learned reaction is to accept a peripheral role with accomplishments made through intuition and so-called soft skills. Only at my best can I leave behind a sense of unfairness.
Stansel’s brothers function in the exact same manner — uncannily so. The author ingeniously works the fraternal contrast while guiding readers through an often symbiotic pair of courses through life — and toward a shared tragedy. The alpha brother’s entrepreneurial spirit and his manipulation of those around him (including the wife who’ll seek to avenge him) are trimmed just enough so we know something of Frank Van Loy’s heart. The clipped, passive-aggressive commands in his dialogue reinforce the role he’s chosen. The younger brother, meanwhile, charms horses and lady riders and is more obviously self-destructive — and so the author gives Silas more word-count, reflecting and reinforcing his side of the brotherly pas de deux.
Yet the brothers are very similar — West Coast ranchers who adapted to become teachers of the more-fussy (and more profitable) style of English riding, while keeping their Stetsons close by. They fight ferociously while pouring each other’s drinks. They eventually learn to live at a surly distance — but something is going to bring them back in each other’s orbit and guns will go off.
The author’s style is sparse, though hardly Hemingway-esque. Stansel’s economical language seems less effective when in the elite horse-riding world the brothers invade and conquer. Some terms and descriptions stick out without seeming to find a comfortable place in the narrative. But then, the memorable characters don’t get to feel they’ve won a comfortable place they can keep — try as they might. •
Author reading
“The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo” by Ian Stansel
Thursday, July 6
Carmichael’s Bookstore
2720 Frankfort Ave.
Free | 7 p.m.
Published under Arts, Arts, Book
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MY BIG LITTLE BREAK: IAN STANSEL ON HIS FIRST PUBLICATION
July 11, 2017 in Series
A BARRELHOUSE INTERVIEW WITH IAN STANSEL
In My Big Little Break, we ask authors to talk about the first piece they ever had published, how it felt to finally break through, and what they’ve learned since then. This week, writer Ian Stansel, author of the recently released novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo, shares his answers.
cowboys.jpg
What was the title and genre of your first-ever published piece?
The first thing I published was a long story (33 pages, I believe) called “All We Have.”
Who published it? Are they still around?
It was published by the Antioch Review. They’re still around as far as I know. They’ve been at it for something like 70 years.
Give us some context: how old were you? How long had you been writing and submitting? How many times had the piece been rejected? Anything else we're missing.
I was thirty-one, I think. Or something like that. I’d finished my MFA maybe a year before. I’d been writing for a few years, but had just recently started sending work out. Couldn’t say how many rejections I’d received on it. Probably a couple more than a couple. Not so many that I gave up, not so few that I felt arrogant.
Did getting that acceptance feel as triumphant as you'd always hoped? Walk us through the moment when you found out.
Getting that publication was something of a life-line. I was working a job writing about the stock market, helping rich people get richer. I had to write things like “Such-and-such company just laid off 1,500 workers—here’s how you can profit from it!” I’m not sure I believe in a soul, but something sure as shit was getting crushed.
A little context: some years before I was working at a bookstore and my car broke down in the parking lot. I was so poor that some days I would have to make it until dinner on just an apple and a hardboiled egg. Obviously I didn’t have money to get the car fixed, so it just sat there. I had to be at work at 7 am, but the only bus I could take dropped me off at 6:15. It was January in northern Illinois, the early-morning temperatures sometimes ticking down towards zero. I would sit in my broken-down car in a dark parking lot waiting for the store to open, my whole body shivering, my empty stomach grumbling. And one of those mornings, in a small moment of clarity, I thought, “This seems to be a low point for me.”
The stock market job was way fucking worse.
I worked there about a year and didn’t write a thing. Every morning I would sit on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands until I could force myself to drive to work. Every night I would drink beer and watch network television. Dark times.
But while at that terrible, terrible job one day, I got a voicemail on my cell phone. It was the editor of the Antioch Review. I don’t know how many journal editors still call contributors to notify them of acceptances (not many—I know I never did when I was editing), but it was a great thing: to hear the voice of a person saying that you did something good. I listened to it a few times and then went outside and called him back and we talked for maybe five minutes. It reminded me of what I was supposed to be doing. Soon after I decided to go back to school, to get a Ph.D. The Antioch publication probably helped me get accepted.
The story also ended up being listed in the “notables” section of Best American Short Stories. And another journal solicited work from me (my second publication) based on that story. At the time I thought, “Holy shit, this is easy!” I was wrong. To this day I have never again been noticed by Best American, nor have I been solicited by another journal. Maybe I peaked too early.
Are you still proud of that piece? Have you re-read it recently?
I think it is a good story, though, no, I haven’t read it recently. It was the only decent story I wrote in grad school—the only one from my thesis that ended up in my first book. One thing I was proud of at the time, and I guess I still am proud of, is that the story was in no way autobiographical. Even when I was in my twenties, I didn’t want to write about people in their twenties. This story was about a couple in their fifties getting a divorce. I think as a budding fiction writer I felt proud that I pulled that off. There is nothing wrong with writing autobiographical fiction (though there are a few hidden challenges to it that some young writers may not anticipate), but I do feel that at some point it is helpful to begin imagining and trying to understand people who are not living through your circumstances. It just gives you more options and more places to go in your work. I wanted to do that, to one extent or another, right from the start.
Now that you've been doing this for a while, collecting plenty of rejections and acceptances along the way, what advice do you wish you could give your younger self?
Don’t write in order to get published. Write hoping this story is a tiny bit better than your last.
Ian Stansel is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) and the short story collection Everybody’s Irish (FiveChapters, 2013), a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous venues such as Ploughshares, Salon, Joyland, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD from the University of Houston. He currently teaches creative writing at the University of Louisville. He lives in Kentucky with his wife, the writer Sarah Strickley, and their two daughters.
Tags: My Big Little Break, Ian Stansel, Interview
Newer / Older https://www.barrelhousemag.com/onlinelit/2017/7/11/my-big-little-break-ian-stansel-on-his-first-publication
Stansel Pens Contemporary Western
September 1, 2017
Written by Ellen Birkett Morris
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Last Cowboys of San Geronimo by Ian Stansel
Stansel Pens Contemporary Western
An exclusive Authorlink interview
By Columnist Ellen Birkett Morris
September 2017
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo
by Ian Stansel
Buy this Book
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Ian Stansel had been working on a novel for two and a half years when he decided to lay that project aside to write what would become his debut novel, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo.
“I was halfway through the story (on page three hundred) and I just got bored of it.”
—STANSEL
“I was halfway through the story (on page three hundred) and I just got bored of it. The novel felt bloated and baggy, and I didn’t want to finish it,” he said.
Stansel turned his attention to a story of feuding brother set in modern day Marin County, California. He wrote the first draft of The Last Cowboys in eighteen months.
“I never had any interest in a traditional Western, but I grew up around horses. My mom and sister rode, and my sister became a trainer. I found horses to be gorgeous, but I was also afraid of them. I was suspicious of the horse world, which is full of rich people. This seemed like fertile ground to till,” said Stansel.
The book begins with the murder of Frank by his brother Silas, who flees on horseback, and follows Frank’s widow Lena as she pursues him, also on horseback. While the reader is privy to the chase, the brother’s rivalry and bond is explored in a series of flashbacks.
“I wanted a strong female presence in the book,” said Stansel. “The world doesn’t need another story about feuding cowboy brothers. My knowledge of horses and the horse world comes from the women in my life. It made sense to me to have a female co-protagonist.”
The book is dedicated to Stansel’s sister Kelly, who passed away three years ago. “After she passed away, I decided to write a book that Kelly would like,” said Stansel.
“The book itself is in love with horses. Hopefully, it is unpretentious, fun, and exciting in parts. For all the horses and chasing in the book, it is a book about grief—Lena’s grief in losing her husband.”
“I thought, what will happen if I try to write a traditionally-plotted western set in the contemporary world?”
—STANSEL
Stansel was also driven by a desire to play with the conventions of the Western form.
“I thought, what will happen if I try to write a traditionally-plotted western set in the contemporary world? Can there be a western any more with technology? With mapping? With lawns and everything that seems antithetical to the lone cowboy in the west? I put it in a place, Marin County, California, that is full of rich people and hippies. I asked, how can I interrupt the cowboy narrative?”
He meets this objective in Silas, a wealthy, wine drinking cowboy, who is more impulsive than noble, and Lena, a smart widow who is bent on vengeance, but imbued with compassion.
Stansel begins the book immediately after Silas murders Frank.
“I started after the murder because I didn’t know yet why the murder happened. The reader doesn’t know because I didn’t know. I discovered why in the process of writing backstory.”
Exploring the why of the narrative is an important part of developing a compelling novel, according to Stansel.
“What I set up in the book was a binary. She will catch him or she won’t. The question of what is going to happen in a story isn’t very interesting. A more interesting question is why and how. In Donna Tart’s The Secret History she gives away the end in the prologue. The question is not, do they kill their friend. You already know they do. The questions of why and how are so much more interesting because there are infinite possibilities.”
Stansel describes the brothers as classic sibling rivals.
“There is the older brother who is confident and overbearing. There is the younger brother who is insecure about the shadow he is living under. The way I wanted to make it different was by coming back to the idea that even this hatred that they have for one another isn’t born out of nothing. Their feud is born out of this passion they have for one another. That is something Lena comes to understand at the very end of the book. They are connected in a way that they don’t understand. They are fated to one another, these brothers. Even the anger and strife that they experience comes out of this core love for one another.”
His greatest challenge was trying to write authentically about horses, not being a rider himself. “I did a lot of toggling back and forth between the document and Goggle finding out how to spell different kind of tack. I kept thinking if I could only call Kelly I could get this paragraph finished. It was a hard book to write, trying not to sound like I am making things up and dealing with the emotional turmoil that would pop up when I least expected it.”
“The book really came together when I figured out the structure, alternating between Silas and Lena and covering the past and present in almost every chapter.”
—STANSEL
He worked his agent Richard Abate of 3Arts and, later, Houghton Mifflin editor Naomi Gibbs to ready the book for publication.
“The book really came together when I figured out the structure, alternating between Silas and Lena and covering the past and present in almost every chapter. It was a matter of editing and enhancing what was already there.”
Stansel, who has an MFA from Iowa Writers Workshop and a PhD from University of Houston, teaches creative writing at University of Louisville. He cautions students that they can’t game the market by writing what they think will be popular.
“You can’t write in order to get published, and this doesn’t change as you gain experience.”
—STANSEL
“You can’t write in order to get published, and this doesn’t change as you gain experience. Every time I write a new story I don’t think I am going to get this in the New Yorker. I am thinking hopefully this is a little bit better than the last one. If it is, that is all you can ask for.”
With his debut novel on the shelves, Stansel is in the early stages of beginning a new novel.
“I have an idea for a novel that I just started putting on paper. Who knows if that will pan out or if it will be something that will hold my attention?”
About the Author
Ian Stansel is the author of the novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo and the short story collection Everybody’s Irish, a finalist for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction.
His fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Ploughshares, Ecotone, Cincinnati Review, Memorious, Antioch Review, and others.
For more information see: http://www.hmhco.com/shop/books/The-Last-Cowboys-of-San-Geronimo/9780544963399
About Regular Contributor
Ellen Birkett Morris Ellen Birkett Morris is an award-winning journalist whose interviews and reviews have appeared in Authorlink, Prairie Schooner Online, The Louisville Courier-Journal, and reprinted in the reader’s guides to The Receptionist and Clever Girl. Her fiction has appeared in journals including Antioch Review, South Caroline Review and Notre Dame Review. Ellen is a regular contributor to Authorlink.
Categorised in: Interviews, Written
This post was written by Ellen Birkett Morris
Ian Stansel’s debut dives headlong into the anachronism of the modern cowboy–a beautiful and brutal novel about time: the expanse of it, the burden of it, but, more than anything, the crushing realization when it grows short.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Just finished The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo by Ian Stansel. This is a debut novel and it is a modern western.
Frank and Silas are brothers. They inherited a horse business from their Father and they train horses and riders for equestrian contests. There is a terrible sibling rivalry here that has slowly developed into one of violence. And now Frank lies dead, shot down, and Silas is on his horse and on the run.
Frank’s wife Lena is on a horse also. She wants to exact revenge and kill Silas before he is apprehended by the police.
This is a short novel, very well written. It is so reminiscent of the old western novels, of the hunted being tracked down until the inevitable ending.
I won’t spoil it for you but there are some twists here that make it a little different than the usual for this genre.
Highly recommended.
Reviewed by:
Richard Franco
Added 10th September 201http://forreadingaddicts.co.uk/book-reviews/ian-stansel-last-cowboys-san-geronimo
redstarStansel, Ian. The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo. Houghton Harcourt. Jul. 2017. 208p. ISBN 9780544963399. $23; ebk. ISBN 9780544963412. F
In his forthright, beautifully rendered first novel, following the PEN/Bingham Prize–winning story collection Everyone’s Irish, Stansel limns the murderous tension between two brothers, showing how families can fracture for mysterious reasons. Frank and Silas Van Loy grow up on their father’s Northern California ranch, but while Silas is the true horseman, arrogant Frank has the head for business and takes over as their father slowly succumbs to cancer, successfully turning the ranch to English riding. The novel opens with Silas shooting Frank to death, then leaping on a horse and escaping into the wilderness, furiously pursued by Frank’s wife, Lena. As the novel unfolds, we learn how the brothers have sought to undermine each other, often coming violently to blows. Yet they remain tightly bound, and though we gain some sympathy for sour Silas as the taut relationship is revealed in flashback, his reason for shooting Frank comes as an affecting and effective surprise. VERDICT The occasional scene seems extended, and readers will anxiously wonder whether these horse-loving fools would hurt their charges for revenge, yet Stansel has written a captivating novel, elegantly spare in language but big in purpose. [See Prepub Alert, 2/13/17.]
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Fiction Spotlight: Contributor and former Memorious Fiction Editor Ian Stansel
Posted by btrapperkeeper on August 12, 2017
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Ian Stansel’s debut novel, The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), is fire, smoke, and bursts of illumination against the open sky. It’s classically American—a Western with some serious literary chops—and it’s everything it should be considering the July 4th, 2017 publication date. Critics and readers alike have showered the novel with praise, which is a follow-up to his 2013 PEN/Bingham Prize–nominated collection of short stories, Everyone’s Irish. Stansel has published stories in Ploughshares, Ecotone, Cincinnati Review, and many anthologies, and his nonfiction has appeared in Cutbank, Salon, and The Good Men Project. Memorious had the honor of publishing the title story from Everything’s Irish in Memorious 19. Stansel also later served as Memorious Fiction Editor. Suffice it to say, we jumped at the chance to talk to Ian about his new novel, alternate endings, reader appeal, and willfully committing the biggest writing sins.
The alternating point of view is a driving narrative force, an unlikely dance between predator and prey. It generates tension and deepens characterization—the kind of win-win that’s hard to come by. Most importantly, perhaps, seeing this landscape from the perspectives of both Silas and Lena affords the reader a greater understanding of the Van Loy brothers’ relationship. Did you begin the novel with this structure, and how hard was it to pull this off?
First of all, thanks for taking the time to read the book. As far as structure, etc. goes, something I’ve said many times to my students is that story, plot, character, and structure are really indistinguishable. We separate them for the sake of workshop conversations, but when it comes down to writing a novel, these things are so overlapped that you can’t say one is doing this and another is doing that. In the case of this book, I came up with the Lena character and the idea of an alternating structure and the overall story of the chase simultaneously. Without the alternating structure (or something like it) there is no Lena, and without Lena there is no story, just a situation.
The alternating POV allows a certain level of dramatic irony because the audience is aware of things that the characters are not, but the narrative also does not reveal everything to its reader. This is something I struggled with. I was trained to front-load everything. To withhold information is about the biggest sin a writer can commit. But at some point you have to say, Okay, I’ve internalized all the workshop training I can retain—now which rules do I need to follow and which might I need to break in order to tell this story most effectively? Whenever I see rules that say don’t do this or don’t do that, I always imagine a little asterisk next to each one with a note that says, “Unless it works.”
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo comes in at a slim 200 pages, and this reader got the sense that you wouldn’t dare waste a word. Tell us about the words you had to scrap; for example, what was the hardest scene to lose?
The only major deletion was the original ending, which was very different and very weird. It was a strange experiment that didn’t really fit with the rest of the book. My agent rightly pointed this out and it was not too difficult to cut it and write an ending that makes more sense. Other than this, the revision process was more about adding and clarifying. This is largely due to the fact that I wasn’t envisioning this as a novel through most of the writing process. I had set out to write a novella, aiming at seventy or so pages. This, I suppose, goes to show that you need to be open to what the story you’re writing wants to become.
In 1993, I gave a book report on The Red Pony. Since, I’ve had little-to-no experience with horses, literary or otherwise; even still, your novel never made my lack of equine knowledge an impediment to connecting and engaging. What challenges did you and your human characters face in sharing the page with their animal companions?
The specifics about horses and horse life are, I suppose, a bit about establishing the world and some semblance of authority for the narrative. But they are more about being true to the characters and their passion and expertise. I was aware, though, that I was not writing solely for horsey people, and that there was a balance I needed to strike. I don’t expect the average reader to know every particular term—horse breeds or uses for pieces of tack—but hopefully those moments of detail, one, don’t distract or confuse, and two, serve to communicate how deep into this world the characters are and how much they care about the animals.
The other challenge I faced was how to make the horses feel like actual characters, albeit secondary ones. I think I succeeded most with the horse called Disco, who carries Silas. Their relationship evolved on the page mainly because through a large chunk of the book, Silas and the horse are alone. Lena has her riding companion, Rain, to talk to, but Silas has only Disco, so their bond needed to be a bigger part of the narrative than the bonds between the women and their horses.
How did you so deftly balance literary and commercial/genre appeal?
I wasn’t thinking so much about commercial appeal as reader appeal. That might sound like I’m splitting hairs, but what I mean is that I did (and generally do) think a good deal about how a reader would engage with the book, but I didn’t think about how a potential editor would. I think this is the way to go. After all, editors are first and foremost readers, right? So you might as well just write for readers. That said, I did understand that I was writing something with a lot more “plot” than previous projects, and plot, in general, is more commercial. I wrote a novel in grad school that never even got to the point of being “shopped around” because everyone who saw it said the same thing: love the writing, love the characters, but there’s no story. I did not want that to happen again. And, honestly, the older I get the less tolerance I have for plotlessness. I love stories and I wanted to write one that readers could really get into. You know those moments when you’re reading and the story is really running along and you’re so wrapped up you kind of forget that you’re in a chair in your living room or whatever? Hopefully there are a couple moments in this book that do that.
What overlapping obsessions, themes, similarities between The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo and your PEN/Bingham Prize-nominated story collection, Everyone’s Irish (the title story appears in Memorious 19), most surprised you? (I love, for example, the way you incorporate landscape—whether it’s the lapping of the Chicago River or the “shush of the wind purling over the grass.” I also noticed your characters’ yearnings for justice despite the overdetermined nature of blame and the strained choice between solitude and distraction. What, if any, would you say are the constants in your writing?
I don’t generally think of my writing as being that concerned with landscape, but I do spend a lot of time on it, probably because I’m insecure about my ability to fully convey this place or that. So in my collection, most of which takes place in Illinois, I did labor over ways to show the flatness of the cornfields or the river running through Chicago. I tend to focus on what I feel are my deficiencies, and I don’t think that’s a terrible habit for a writer. With the novel, so much of it depends on the landscape that I spent even more time obsessing over phrasing.
I think the most direct connections would be between the novel and the last story I wrote for the collection, “Introduction by the Author.” Both stories involve two brothers, betrayal, and an overabundance of ambition. I find ambition fascinating and dangerous—which are two good starting points for a story. I also find myself coming back again and again to sibling relationships. And grief. And betrayal. And regret.
Some people have asked me what writers I felt were influences on this novel and many assume I’ll say Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry—Western writers. And they’re right. I was influenced by them, as well as a number of other Western writers (Paulette Jiles, for instance). But it was just as influenced—perhaps even more so—by books like James Salter’s Light Years and Michael Cunningham’s The Hours and others that tackle the inner turmoil associated with those themes I just mentioned: grief, betrayal, regret.
Would you be willing to tell us a little about what you’re working on now?
I have a number of things started, but nothing I can say is my “new project.” I’m confident there will be another book in the not-too-distant future. I just couldn’t say right now what it’ll be.
We’re grateful for the work you did as a former Fiction Editor for Memorious; you have a history of supporting writers and championing new writing. What great work have you recently read, and what’s in your reading queue. Are there fellow debut novelists you think our readers should be looking out for?
Honestly, I’m often woefully unaware of what is coming around the bend. The vast majority of my reading is determined by whatever I’m working on or teaching or just obsessing over. So I just bought a book about oyster farming because I like oysters. And I’m reworking my advanced fiction workshop wherein we read linked stories, so I’m reading books like Nami Mun’s incredible Miles Form Nowhere. I am excited to read N.J. Campbell’s Found Audio, which just came out. And Impossible Views of the World by Lucy Ives looks cool. So, yeah, those and the oyster book.
Assistant Editor Wendy Oleson is the author of Our Daughter and Other Stories, which won the 2017 Rachel Wetzsteon Chapbook Award (Map Literary). Her stories, poems, and hybrid text have appeared recently in Cimarron Review, Calyx, Copper Nickel, and elsewhere. She teaches for the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the WSU-TriCities English department. Wendy lives in Eastern Washington with her wife and their irrepressibly-delightful dog, Winston.
For original poetry, fiction, art song and art, please visit our magazine at www.memorious.org.
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Book Review: ‘The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo’
July 5, 2017Kristen KovatchKristen Kovatch#BOOK REVIEWLeave a comment
A novel by Ian Stansel.
In the admittedly small but happily growing genre of horse fiction, the perfect balance of a gripping plot set in an equestrian’s world is hard to find. There seem to be plenty of books about equestrian-specific struggles — finding one’s way in the show world, saving a troubled horse, the classic underdog story or sentimental foray into the therapeutic power of horses to heal all of our injuries. There is a time and place for all of these tropes, however well-worn they might be — but to find a story set in the horse world, entwined with horses and horse people, yet without reading like the typical “horse book”? That’s a rare thing indeed.
That’s exactly the balance that Ian Stansel has struck with care in his novel The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo. The novel tells the story of brothers Frank and Silas Van Loy and Frank’s newly-widowed wife Lena: Frank’s already dead on the first page, felled by Silas’ gun. What follows is Silas’ flight into the hills of Marin County, California on the back of his mare Disco, pursued by Lena, also on horseback; each thread of these characters’ stories is intertwined with memories and reflections on the brothers’ rivalry that developed over the years into a dangerous feud, played out in the equestrian scene of San Geronimo.
The novel is widely hailed as an updated or contemporary Western and does contain most of the key elements — a cowboy figure with his trusty steed and gun, flight into wilderness and, of course, revenge. A few noted choices in setting — the brothers turn their family horse ranch into one of the finest hunt seat establishments in Marin County in order to compete with the times — prevent The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo from slipping into the overbearing fatalistic themes that are so common in many modern westerns.
The horses, especially Silas’ mare Disco, are key characters but not over-emotionalized; Stansel clearly knows his way around a horse but avoids using the animals as emotional mirrors or dumping grounds for each of the human character’s personalities and personal drama, successfully avoiding a quagmire that seems to bog down a lot of equine fiction. At its heart, the novel tackles the themes of sibling rivalry and brotherly love, and the motivations of revenge.
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo is one of the most riveting books I’ve picked up in a long time: I could have easily sat down and read the entire novel cover to cover in the course of a single afternoon without feeling like any time had gone by at all. Stansel’s novel is the perfect horse book for a reader who doesn’t want to read a typical “horse book,” but a gripping plot set in the equestrian world.
The Last Cowboys of San Geronimo is available at Amazon.
Banshee Boardwalk
Impressions of Ian Stansel’s Everybody’s Irish
Posted on October 29, 2013by AAH
(Spoilers are talked around)
[Lengthy Disclaimer: I met Ian while interning for Gulf Coast Literary Journal when he was a fiction PHD and the journal’s editor and I was a fiction undergrad at the University of Houston, looking to drop something onto the ole CV. I remember being struck at our first meeting by Ian’s guyness. Here was a person who didn’t ornament himself with the baubles that tended to overwhelm my closet at the time. Normally dressed in a natural-toned button up shirt and plain jeans with his hair tussled, Ian was impressive in how little concern he had about impressing anyone.
Over the next two years during my weekly 2-hour shifts with Ian, we sometimes had the opportunity to talk about writing and although he may not agree, I feel I gained more from those talks than I did in many of my workshops. I also remember Ian for being a rigorous editor, having me repeatedly revise even the shortest of work-related email blasts until it achieved clarity and concision. As a rule, I think the more a person talks about their writing, the less writing they’re doing. Ian rarely spoke about his writing, so I always assumed he was getting a lot of it done.]
I say all this so that you can judge me as you may when I start gushing over how much I loved Ian’s debut short story collection, Everybody’s Irish. For the most part taking place in Illinois and Houston, TX, the book’s nine stories excel in the many ways a short story can. Stansel shows with deftness the possible implications of a single gesture and how quickly, and sometimes slowly, things can change for people battling to maintain their lives.
One commonality between the stories’ protagonists is their own, often crippling, self-awareness. Characters, such as the pilot in the titular second-person narrative “Everybody’s Irish,” operate with the knowledge of the selfish motives of their actions while hoping for spontaneous connections with the closest warm body exemplified by the aforementioned pilot’s hope that “these two groups [young Occupy protesters and middle-aged computer salesman] might merge, that you are all the same in good, drunken basic ways” (187).
Ian read one of my stories when I was applying to MFA programs and remarked on a particular sentence for how much it revealed about the character and how my job should be to elevate the rest of my writing to that level. Reading through his stories, it’s amazing to read example after example of him doing just that, like in my favorite story of the collection (coincidentally the only story to not have been previously published and shows Stansel playing with form) “Introduction to the Author” where we get a clear image of the narrator’s mother when he says that she has “a heart that pumped like a hydrant.” Reviewing the notes from my reading, it’s astonishing how frequently Stansel manages to craft potent sentences that function as micro stories in and of themselves.
The stories’ characters reside in their own heads more often than they would like and suffer for what they often know is a result of their own selfishness. Any happiness characters gain at the end of a story is well-earned throughout the narrative. When Steven, the young boy of “The Ridiculous Future” describes his inability to understand the horror of Anne Frank’s life in a class full of apathetic students, I felt a strong compulsion to reach into the book, strangle his teacher, and present him with a bit of empathy and maybe some My Chemical Romance.
Read this book if you’re a fan of the word microcosm.
Do not read this book if you are prone to crying when books concern themselves with father-son relationships because you will cry [even if you’re at a park and kids are playing on the monkey bars while ducks quack in unison a mere three feet away