Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Amistad HarperCollins), (First Amistad Edition)
Pages
241
Description
"Original and arresting....[Jones's] stories will touch chords of empathy and recognition in all readers." --Washington Post "These 14 stories of African-American life...affirm humanity as only good literature can." --Los Angeles Times A magnificent collection of short fiction focusing on the lives of African-American men and women in Washington, D.C., Lost in the City is the book that first brought author Edward P. Jones to national attention. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and numerous other honors for his novel The Known World, Jones made his literary debut with these powerful tales of ordinary people who live in the shadows in this metropolis of great monuments and rich history. Lost in the City received the Pen/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction and was a National Book Award Finalist. This beautiful 20th Anniversary Edition features a new introduction by the author, and is a wonderful companion piece to Jones's masterful novel and his second acclaimed collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar's Children.… (more)
Description
A magnificent collection of short fiction focusing on the lives of African-American men and women in Washington, D.C., Lost in the City is the book that first brought author Edward P. Jones to national attention. Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and numerous other honors for his novel The Known World, Jones made his literary debut with these powerful tales of ordinary people who live in the shadows in this metropolis of great monuments and rich history. Lost in the City received the Pen/Hemingway Award for Best First Fiction and was a National Book Award Finalist. This beautiful 20th Anniversary Edition features a new introduction by the author, and is a wonderful companion piece to Jones’s masterful novel and his second acclaimed collection of stories, All Aunt Hagar’s Children.
Collection
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1992
Physical description
241 p.; 8 inches
ISBN
0060566280 / 9780060566289
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User reviews
LibraryThing member louisu
This book was actually read surprisingly quick after it was purchased. Within a few days, actually, miracles do happen on occasion. In fact that is what i felt when i read this book. Once again based on the writer's advent of winning awards like a Pulitzer I was encouraged to start buying his
This book is a beautiful as a window into the ordinary movement and day to day motions of life. The stories range from the innocence of raising birds to a mother knowingly taking advantage of her sons new found fortune selling drugs on the street. A character appears in the story that mimics the actions of a child and yet commands the presence and respect of a adults through money and poison. At times it deals with the loneliness of life, friendship, and adrupt actions that can cahnge our daily existence.
Never once in the reading of this book did I feel that the characters were fiction. The lives pictured moved past the story and if your imagination moved foward you could see the person age and grow along the way. In fact one character does seem to move foward in the book ever so slightly and makes two appearances, the first with no name. It deals with being black in America, something that many people don't understand or fail to comprehend. Growing up in places that mirror this existence gave me a better appreciation and understanding of the stories.
This a book to be read slowly and more than once to make sure that the tapestry the writer presents can be fully understood. I may have to wait a while before i read it again to fully register it again.
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books. I had recently read the Dubblinners and was in the mood for short story book which are perfect for a train ride. I like the idea of finishing a story within the time and movements of a train ride through the El of Chicago are appealing to a book addict like myself.This book is a beautiful as a window into the ordinary movement and day to day motions of life. The stories range from the innocence of raising birds to a mother knowingly taking advantage of her sons new found fortune selling drugs on the street. A character appears in the story that mimics the actions of a child and yet commands the presence and respect of a adults through money and poison. At times it deals with the loneliness of life, friendship, and adrupt actions that can cahnge our daily existence.
Never once in the reading of this book did I feel that the characters were fiction. The lives pictured moved past the story and if your imagination moved foward you could see the person age and grow along the way. In fact one character does seem to move foward in the book ever so slightly and makes two appearances, the first with no name. It deals with being black in America, something that many people don't understand or fail to comprehend. Growing up in places that mirror this existence gave me a better appreciation and understanding of the stories.
This a book to be read slowly and more than once to make sure that the tapestry the writer presents can be fully understood. I may have to wait a while before i read it again to fully register it again.
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LibraryThing member AnneliM
Stories set in black D.C. many in the 50s and 60s. Especially good "The Store". Author is a Washington native and his descriptions are wonderful and accurate.
LibraryThing member Stbalbach
Lost in the City - a collection of short stories - is Edward P. Jones' first book, followed by the Pulitzer Price winning novel The Known World (2003), and All Aunt Hagar's Children (2006), a second collection of short stories. Both Lost and Aunt Hagar are about blacks in Washington, DC where Jones
My favorite story is in the middle of the book, "The Store", it is the most uplifting and optimistic surrounded by stories of tragedy and sadness. It is about a poor boy done good by hard work and honesty. Other stories I thought were excellent include "The Sunday Following Mother's Day" about a husband who kills his wife for no reason, and the resulting years of failed relationships with his son and daughter. It's epic scope crosses generations of multiple people, but it is also grassroots, concerning people who are invisible to society. "His Mother's House" is about a street drug dealer and his relations with his family, it helped me better understand how families (mothers, fathers, sons) and the drug culture can intermingle ."A New Man" is a heartbreaking story of a 15 year-old girl who runs away from home and is never heard from again. Overall I would say I thought the stories in Aunt Haggar are better, more fully realized, longer, however these are still excellent.
The stories have a common theme surrounding an old colloquial saying "Don't get lost in the city". The word "lost" means having no direction, aimless, with no intention, and the stories are about people in that sort of jail-like state of mind, simply doing time with no direction home. It also means alienation, being lost is the opposite of family and home, all of the stories involve broken and dysfunctional families, coldness. Charles Dickens wrote about London and the poor of the 19th century, but his stories were the opposite of Jones. Instead of that "coming home to family" Christmas time spirit of Dickens, Jones invokes coldness, alienation, purposelessness. I hesitate to call Jones "anthropological" because it is also very aesthetically pleasing, but like Balzac did for Paris in the early 19th century and Dickens for London, Jones invokes the spirit of a time and place that, while not full of good feelings and happy endings, does speak truthfully. The last story of the book, "Marie", ends with an old woman listening to an audio oral-history and I think Jones is telling the reader how he sees his own work, a history of a people and place.
Truman Capote in his masterpiece In Cold Blood (1960) has the following quote (an actual quote from a sister to her brother who is in jail) which I think sums up Jones' stories:
"Your confinement is nothing to be proud of.. You are a human being with a free will. Which puts you above the animal level. But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman - you are as an animal - "an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth" & happiness & peace of mind is not attained by living thus."
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grew up in the neighborhoods he writes about. His stories are like mini novels with lush detail, multiple fully evolved characters and densely colloquial prose. My favorite story is in the middle of the book, "The Store", it is the most uplifting and optimistic surrounded by stories of tragedy and sadness. It is about a poor boy done good by hard work and honesty. Other stories I thought were excellent include "The Sunday Following Mother's Day" about a husband who kills his wife for no reason, and the resulting years of failed relationships with his son and daughter. It's epic scope crosses generations of multiple people, but it is also grassroots, concerning people who are invisible to society. "His Mother's House" is about a street drug dealer and his relations with his family, it helped me better understand how families (mothers, fathers, sons) and the drug culture can intermingle ."A New Man" is a heartbreaking story of a 15 year-old girl who runs away from home and is never heard from again. Overall I would say I thought the stories in Aunt Haggar are better, more fully realized, longer, however these are still excellent.
The stories have a common theme surrounding an old colloquial saying "Don't get lost in the city". The word "lost" means having no direction, aimless, with no intention, and the stories are about people in that sort of jail-like state of mind, simply doing time with no direction home. It also means alienation, being lost is the opposite of family and home, all of the stories involve broken and dysfunctional families, coldness. Charles Dickens wrote about London and the poor of the 19th century, but his stories were the opposite of Jones. Instead of that "coming home to family" Christmas time spirit of Dickens, Jones invokes coldness, alienation, purposelessness. I hesitate to call Jones "anthropological" because it is also very aesthetically pleasing, but like Balzac did for Paris in the early 19th century and Dickens for London, Jones invokes the spirit of a time and place that, while not full of good feelings and happy endings, does speak truthfully. The last story of the book, "Marie", ends with an old woman listening to an audio oral-history and I think Jones is telling the reader how he sees his own work, a history of a people and place.
Truman Capote in his masterpiece In Cold Blood (1960) has the following quote (an actual quote from a sister to her brother who is in jail) which I think sums up Jones' stories:
"Your confinement is nothing to be proud of.. You are a human being with a free will. Which puts you above the animal level. But if you live your life without feeling and compassion for your fellowman - you are as an animal - "an eye for eye, a tooth for a tooth" & happiness & peace of mind is not attained by living thus."
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LibraryThing member snash
Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones is just an excellent collection of short stories set in Washington DC during the 50's to 70's. The characters are black, many elderly. Jones captures a mood and situation brilliantly. The stories reverberate with humanity struggling with the effort of making
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sense of life. Show Less
LibraryThing member evanroskos
Very good collection. I can't wait to have some time to finish reading it. Strong voices, strong characterization, a variety of thoughts and feelings. I'm glad Jones is not just another flavor of the minute. I'll happily read more of his work.
LibraryThing member larryerick
This book caught me a bit by surprise. First, it gets promoted as a collection of stories about black Washington, DC. It is that, but, especially in the early stories, it is very subtle about making that an obvious part of the setting. This is no Manchild in the Promised Land, oozing with black
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urban milieu. A Beltway resident may catch some of the street references, but the rest of us will not see any typical DC tourist locations. These are regular folks living "regular" black urban lives. Secondly, the author is quite restrained in his narratives. There are no linguistic gymnastics embellishing what is happening. He describes people and situations very clearly, letting "behavior speak louder than words." Finally, and it took me a while, but I found the stories quite female-centric, coming from a male author, as they do. All but a small number of the stories center on female characters, and even the ones that concentrate on a male character, have extremely important connections with key female roles. The author is obviously very in tune with the central role that women play in the urban black community. He doesn't criticize. He doesn't praise. His women -- and in some cases, young girls -- are nuanced personalities holding the community together in the only ways they know. Sadly, if this collection was about white soccer moms in the suburbs, it would be an easy best seller, but it's not. It's about people lost in the city and lost in American society. Show Less
LibraryThing member squealermusic
Amazingly good.
LibraryThing member suesbooks
The characters in this book are very accessible and well defined. The white gaze is not present, and the subject of race is a constant identifier. It is easy to see the difficulties many of these characters face and the adaptations necessary for them to make. All of these stories took place in
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Washington, D.C. or nearby, a city the author knows well.Most of Jones' characters are parts of communities that are there to help and to look out for each other. Show Less
Awards
National Book Award (Finalist — Fiction — 1992)
PEN/Hemingway Award (Winner — 1993)
Call number
FIC J Jon