You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton

You Want More: Selected Stories of George Singleton

"People always ask what’s the one book you’d take to a deserted island. For me, it might be this one." ―David Joy, author of When These Mountains Burn

With his signature darkly acerbic and sharp-witted humor, George Singleton has built a reputation as one of the most astute and wise observers of the South. Now Tom Franklin introduces this master of the form with a compilation of acclaimed and prize-winning short fiction spanning twenty years and eight collections, including stories originally published in outlets like the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, Playboy, the Georgia Review, the Southern Review, and many more. These stories bear the influence of Flannery O’Connor and Raymond Carver, at other times Barry Hannah and Donald Barthelme, and touch on the mysteries of childhood, the complexities of human relationships, and the absurdity of everyday life, with its inexorable defeats and small triumphs. Assembled here for the very first time, You Want More represents a body of work that showcases the incisive talent that earned George Singleton’s place among "the great pillars of Southern literature.” (New York Times)

“Singleton (Calloustown) brings together his best work along with one new story in this smashing collection that combines satire, tragicomic premises, and small-town South Carolina locales. Items as innocuous as caulk or a VHS tape become the focus of droll yet moving meditations on the foibles of modern life or the misery of a marriage’s disintegration. Dogs are as ever-present as bumbling, misfit divorced men spouting barnyard humor. Hilarious character studies, Singleton’s crowning achievement, shine in such stories as “Show-and-Tell,” in which a single father clumsily attempts to woo his son’s teacher, who also happens to be his original high school sweetheart; or the hapless husband who records “Bonanza” over his wife’s sonogram, then attempts to find a substitute tape from a local barfly; or the former child actor in “This Itches, Y’all” who is haunted by an instructional film he’d starred in about head lice. The college professor who fools everyone by teaching a semester of “The Novels of Raymond Carver,” despite the author having never written one, also delights. The charismatic dialogue consistently adds depth and identity to the characters (“I said, ‘Are you a drinking man, Mr. Mack Morris Murray? Let’s you and me go inside and partake of some schnapps I got holed up for a special occasion. I like your style, man’”). Fans and newcomers alike will rejoice in reading these highlights from a Southern literary master.” Publishers Weekly