{"product_id":"fun-with-problems-isbn-9780547394534","title":"Fun With Problems","description":"In \u003cem\u003eFun with Problems, \u003c\/em\u003eRobert Stone demonstrates once again that he is \"one of our greatest living writers\" (\u003cem\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/em\u003e)\u003cem\u003e.\u003c\/em\u003e The pieces in this new volume vary greatly in length—some are almost novellas, others no more than a page—but all share the signature blend of longing, violence, black humor, sex and drugs that has helped Stone illuminate the dark corners of the human soul. Entire lives are laid out with remarkable precision, in captivating prose: a screenwriter carries on a decades-long affair with a beautiful actress, whose descent into addiction he can neither turn from nor share; a bored husband picks up a mysterious woman only to find that his ego has led him woefully astray; a world-beating Silicon Valley executive receives an unwelcome guest at his mansion in the hills; a scuba dive guides uneasy newlyweds to a point of no return.\u003cem\u003e Fun with Problems\u003c\/em\u003e showcases Stone's great gift: to pinpoint and make real the impulses—by turns violently coercive and quietly seductive—that cause us to conceal, reveal, and betray our very selves. | \u003cp\u003e\"In the long form or the short, American fiction has no greater master than Robert Stone. These stories burn with his dark and incandescent magic.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                         --  Madison Smartt Bell, author of \u003cem\u003eAll Souls Rising \u003c\/em\u003e \"Stone's evocative prose treads through the murky waters of dead dreams and waning hopes, bringing out the pathetic and nasty side of people warped by addiction, sex, violence and time...Stone doesn't just let his wounded characters whimper in the corner. He turns them loose on a world hard enough to knock them down but indifferent enough to not care about them once they're gone.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                        -- \u003cem\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/em\u003e, starred   \"[Stone] mines the depravity of weirdos whose success resides in having not died by the end of the story...The stories are witty and diverse and are all unified by some element of brokenness...Each character comes closer and closer to truth, but heartbreakingly, never quite turns the corner. You know they are on the right track though and that makes suffering with these characters enjoyable.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                       -- \u003cem\u003eBooklist\u003c\/em\u003e \"Once again, Robert Stone displays his tense mastery of narrative, inexplicably fine dialogue, and what is perhaps the most sublime sense of any living writer for beginnings and endings. He is, simply, one of our best.\" \u003cbr\u003e                                                                       --Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things \"Stone's pared, precise lines take on the lyrical authority of morality tales...There's a dark humor at play here, the laughter of the rehab houses implied in the title. Few other writers could use a phrase like civic poetry so conversationally and have it be so cogent.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                      -- Library Journal \"In this ironically titled collection, prize-winning novelist Robert Stone delivers insightful and at times wickedly funny portraits of troubled characters sowing the seeds of their own downfall.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                     -- Shelf Awareness \"Vintage Stone. Enough said.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                     -- Kirkus Reviews, starred \u003cbr\u003e\"Elemental, a matter of life and death in the most literal sense...like all of Stone's most powerful writing, suggest that the answer is available to us only in fragments, if it is available at all.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                     -- Los Angeles Times \"[A] killer collection...Stone is a master at picking apart messy lives in clean, precise language.\"\u003cbr\u003e                                                                     -- Oregonian \"Stark and beautiful...one of the best pieces of fiction Stone has published...it's impossible not to be impressed by Stone's audacity, steel-eyed honesty, and cold and sometimes bizarre sense of humor...an enlightening [read] and hard to forget...[Stone's] an American master\" \u003cbr\u003e                                                                     -- NPR.org \"Robert Stone provides proof positive in his long-awaited story collection Fun With Problems that this master of the heart’s dark matter—boozy onenight stands, sobering moments of grace, volcanic silences, shouted regrets—remains in diabolically good form.\"  \u003cbr\u003e                                                                      -- Elle     \"Stone is a master...No worter today is as grimly polished, as icily adept, and Hemingwayesquely lean and Hawthornely morally infused...impossible not to finish.\"\u003cbr\u003e              \u0026amp;n\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ecco","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44890135265509,"sku":"NP9780547394534","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780547394534.jpg?v=1730232603","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/fun-with-problems-isbn-9780547394534","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}