Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry audiobook

Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry by Elizabeth. McCracken is a brilliant novel or collection of short stories; feel free to choose your label. It is an Amazon five-star plus read, and I highly recommend it to readers who might be in a reading slump. Elizabeth McCracken defines creativity by examples so diverse it is difficult to believe they were all created by the same author. There is a parenthetical note McCracken makes to the story. It looks like this. (Art of the Story). I didn’t find a note or reference to this note anywhere in the stories, but a reader should get a sense of what the author meant by reading the Introduction. Do not skip the Introduction. It is brilliant all by itself, but in that the author describes personal experiences in provoking “the muse,” it is not fiction and should stand separate from the collection.I like to highlight sentences and phrases that impress me, but with this collection, I would have to highlight more than half the texts. In other words, a review is almost impossible without revealing a lot of spoilers. I will attempt a brief comment on each story followed by a quoted sentence or two that I thought especially good, entertaining, weird, or unique in the context of the story but is not a spoiler.It’s Bad Luck to Die***** “Maybe you wonder how a Jewish girl from Des Moines got Jesus Christ tattooed on her three times: ascending on one thigh, crucified on the other, and conducting a miniature apocalypse beneath the right shoulder.” (p. 5). How do you walk away from a first line like that? If you did, still on page five we find this “I met Tiny the summer I graduated high school, 1965, when I was eighteen and he was forty-nine.” I am going to stick around and see where this is going. No more quotes but a comment. This story has one of the best last paragraphs which ends with one of the best last sentences that I have read in the past several years. Will I copy the paragraph and sentence here? Nope. Read this excellent first story to appreciate the build-up to great endings (there is more than one). Some Have Entertained Angels, Unaware***** This is a complex story with many moving parts, all the parts are characters. I will start with the conclusion of the story; this tale has a perfect last paragraph. It is the only possible end to this story. Of all the many, many, observations I highlighted, here is my pick from this story. “Suzanne was least cheerful. She got along well with Dad, was formal and polite to Bobby, barely tolerated Mike, ignored Gert, and hated Kenneth Graves with an intensity that I only realized years later comes of having slept with a person.” (p.35). The “intensity” comment struck me because it seems to condemn all marriages, inevitably. The character descriptions in this story will lead many readers to agree with the story’s perfect conclusion.Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry*****Everyone loves the surprise that comes with the arrival of a long-unseen relative. Right? And Aunt Helen Beck loved to surprise her relatives. A remark attributed to Winston Churchill (Guests and fish begin to smell after three days) might have hurt Aunt Helen Beck’s feelings. Three days were just the beginning of Helen’s visits to any of her relatives. She was not a freeloader; she contributed much during her stay, much of it in the form of stories. My favorite lines: “Aunt Helen Beck had many intentions about her death. She was about being dead the way some people are about being British—she wasn’t, and it seemed she never would be, but it was clearly something she aspired to, since all the people she respected were.” (p.58).The Bar of Our Recent Unhappiness ***** Jake describes a bit of his life with wife Barbara to his good friend, George. When not doing so he muses alone about his life with Barbara. They are in a perfect symbiotic marriage. Jake likes feeling needed by Barbara. He also knows that he needs her. His life before meeting her gives me a quote I liked. “I am a man of many small mistakes. I am not competent. This is not harsh self-judgment; it is a fact. I have burned food all my life; I wear spotted clothing without noticing; I botch household jobs. I can’t fill out a check right the first time. I am not an expert at day-to-day living. This can’t be turned into anything good—you can’t say I’m being cautious or that I’m thinking deep thoughts—there’s no excuse for why I do things this way. I never learn.” (p. 94). But Barbara is sick now. Will Jake survive? What will be the driving force necessary to keep him alive? Mercedes Kane ***** Ruthie lived with her mom, Ellen, and heard many stories about Mercedes Kane. Mom knew Mercedes as a whiz kid who had achieved fame by demonstrating her genius on quiz shows. Who would have thought that mom would one day meet Mercedes casually in a shop and invite her home? Mercedes would live an extended stay with mom and Ruthie as Ellen tried to encourage Mercedes to tell stories and reveal the secret of her genius. Ellen was in love with genius and the idea of being a genius which led me to highlight this passage: “You can’t be a genius, she (Ellen) told me (Ruthie) once, if you forget what it is you’re geniusing, and if you’re stupid, you might as well be absentminded.” (p. 105). Her recollections of Mercedes Kane may have been faulty.What We Know About the Lost Aztec Children ***** Steven was not pleased when his father gave him the task of watching out for Uncle Plazo, an uncle who had come to visit his mother, a former circus performer who had headlined as the Armless Wonder for obvious reasons. Plazo was old going on ancient and might have been approaching dementia, hence the need for a watcher. But why Steven? At least Plazo was good for a lot of stories which were amusing except when acted out in public. Telling Steven about a former fellow circus performer, Plazo noted: “The man from Mars,” he said to me outside, “was from Kentucky. I always liked him.” (p. 133).June ***** Phoebe met a new friend soon after moving into a new neighborhood. But it soon became apparent that the two were from different backgrounds and would likely have different adult outcomes. Describing her new friend, Phoebe observed: “She had other things I lacked: cowlicks, cavities, Barbie dolls, a number of relatives who lived with her, a record player and some glossy 45s, and her period. I, she explained to me, had these advantages: long hair, a resident father, my own room. June told me I was lucky in a voice that made me sure I was not.” (p. 149). I found a twist at the end of the story very sad.Secretary of State ***** Should loyalty to one’s birth family ever supersede loyalty to a family one creates through marriage? That is a central question in this story. Sophie, a child, had to witness the battle for the control of her father’s soul between the Barron family and her father. Her mother, a Barron, was in the enemy camp. In later life, Sophie will reflect on the pressures that made up such a family. Sophie recalled: “Every older Barron had a younger Barron to take care of. Ida, a fretter even as a child, would once a month get up in the middle of the night and dress my mother before leading her out to the lawn. It wasn’t that she’d smelled smoke, exactly: it was just that she’d remembered a fire. (p. 168)The Goings-On of the World ***** “One morning in the last week of May I got up, got dressed, and killed my wife. I remember an argument the night before about oranges, and Rosie threatening to leave.” (p. 197). These are the second and third sentences beginning this story. Joseph Green had remorse for much of his life, both in and out of prison, for what he had done. When contemplating suicide, he thought: “I imagined undoing my body as if it were a machine, unscrewing first my feet, then calves, opening my torso like a cabinet and clattering around in there, untightening kidneys.” (p. 198).The novel is such a good collection of stories; words fail me in trying to describe them. Luckily for readers of this collection, words did not fail the author.

Elizabeth McCracken is one of my favorite writers, and this collection did not disappoint. There are characters in this story so quirky and weird (and wonderful) that I felt almost normal reading about them during this global quarantine. Proving once again the power of books to calm and provide a necessary escape.

God, Elizabeth McCracken is good. Her aesthetic and her stories themselves are so firmly rooted in the past but in such an authentic way. The title story here was a standout, as was the final story, the name of which I can't remember, all of a sudden. But every story here is excellent, and there are a couple of stories which feel repetitive in their themes, but it doesn't really matter because McCracken writes what she knows very well, and it's a pleasure to read in any iteration.

Wonderfully quirky and highly original stories. I particularly liked the title story “Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry” where the visiting Aunt Helen Beck turns out to be nobody’s aunt. The little boy Mercury is unforgettable. Other stellar tales are “June”, a touching coming-of-age story and “Secretary of State” with the remarkable Barron family. McCracken’s stories while extraordinarily imaginative are also believable—a rare combination.

I really enjoyed these stories, though "stories" seems almost the wrong word. "Stories" implies plots, and these are more like extended character sketches. Nothing much HAPPENS, but you get a peek into a person, or a place, or a time, and you find yourself wanting to know what happened before or after. What WAS the whole story? Elizabeth McCracken is something of a new author to me (though this is far from a new book) and I've enjoyed everything I've read so far.

This is such a solid collection of stories, and though there are definitely a few that particularly stand out, I enjoyed all of them. I appreciate that so many of them have an unusual element to them, oftentimes revealed subtly and with indifference—a woman who opens her body as a canvas for a tattoo artist, a former circus performer who decides to take into her family's home one of her old circus friends, a wayward older woman who works her way into distant family members' homes. But they all are grounded in reality and mundaneness and touch on universal truths, which give them a human element I felt I could connect with.Here are some thoughts on the ones that stood out for me (will add more):It's Bad Luck To DieThis is one of my favorites from the collection because it's humorous and also touches on a theme that I feel I can connect with pretty well—finding acceptance and love for a body that you feel uncomfortable in. Sometimes that means defining your own vision of beauty, even if it's forged from the beauty someone else recognizes in you and guides you to see.Favorite quotesLike all good mothers, she always knew the worst was going to happen and was disappointed and relieved when it finally did.All she wanted was for me to become miraculously blank.My mother was wrong. I never felt like a freak because of my height: I felt like a ghost haunting too much space... It's like when you move into a new place, and despite the lease and despite the rent you've paid, the place doesn't feel like home and you're not sure you want to stay... Well, getting a tattoo—it's like hanging drapes, or laying carpet, or driving that first nail into the fresh plaster: it's deciding you've moved in....I am not a museum, not yet, I'm a love letter, a love letter.

I requested this one through interlibrary loan because I ran across someone glowingly praising Elizabeth McCracken’s writing. I keep attempting to understand and value short stories and I’m still not quite there. This collection showcases McCracken’s writing, which is impressively good. Her descriptions and characterizations are so sharp, making me pause from time to time to just savor the way she made me think about the world differently for just a moment. But I still struggle with short stories in that they’re a bit like islands, isolated and meant to be complete and unconnected to a longer, larger story. And this was not the soul-crushing kind of Literature where the banality of humanity is exposed and explored, but I definitely came away from each story feeling and little sadder and a little warier. I guess I prefer longer stories that make me feel happy when I’m done reading, which maybe makes me uncultured, but whatever. In summary, lovely writing, but I continue not to appreciate short stories or Literature.

Since the 1970's the American literary short story has become drier, denser, and less interesting on the surface. Don't mistake me— a lot of very good writing has emerged from these trends. But... It often seems as if the short story writers have been secretly competing with poets to produce more and more obfuscation. Amid this, Elizabeth McCracken's stories are exciting and surprising, like finding a package on your porch when you don't remember ordering one. The stories in this collection are full of characters you want to meet, hug, maybe be related to. Or, if not that, you want to shake their hands and walk away secretly thrilled to call them friends going forward. I am adding this book, like "The Collected Stories of John Cheever," to the list of short-story books which I will revisit every 5 to 10 years.

Elizabeth McCracken has lurked on the edge of my bookish awareness for a while, praised by other readers whose opinion I trust. But my aversion to short stories has always steered me away until. Now that I’ve finished Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry: Stories, I’m a little miffed at my past self for not diving in earlier. These thoughtful, often funny stories all feature cuckoos, people who either don’t fit into their families or who are made to feel as though they don’t belong...Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.

I don't know if I will ever want to REREAD these stories but "Here's Your Hat What's Your Hurry" was incredibly entertaining to get through the first time. McCracken's writing is an example of the way whimsy and eccentricity can work in a short story without being over-the-top and exaggerated. It's what made every story real yet simultaneously somehow fantastical and it's McCracken's ability to make the everyday feel like a kaleidoscope of the extraordinary that made me enjoy these short stories so much.

An excellent collection of fun stories. Many of them take place quite some time ago, and there are interesting themes in multiple stories, like doing homework assignments, cutting hair, and Waltham, MA. My favorites were probably “Here’s Your Hat, What’s Your Hurry”, "Secretary of State" and "The Bar of our Recent Unhappiness". But none of them were bad. The first story, "It's bad luck to die", was probably my least favorite. And "June" was a little too heavy for me.

Must be one of her first efforts - from 1993. Even if it's 26 years old, the prose is as fresh as her current books. I came to her through the magic of her latest novel, Bowlaway. This is the second story collection I've read. I just can't get enough of her bright, crackling, surprising prose, and her rich, layered, interesting characters.

I felt like I was reading Diane Arbus photos come to life. These stories are vivid and character driven. McCracken beautifully writes as if in a cinematic filter where eccentric people are in sad situations, but themselves are not sad.

A wonderful book of short stories by the author of “The Giant’s House.” Stories were well written, often wry, and they offered wry perceptions of real life. Great use of language throughout. For example, her description of a family get together: “an organized brawl with refreshments.” Recommend!