{"product_id":"trouble-isbn-9780307275356","title":"Trouble","description":"\u003cb\u003eA VINTAGE ORIGINAL\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this hilarious and wildly inventive debut, including a title story that was nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Patrick Somerville charts the dangerous territories of adolescence and adulthood for the American male. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn “Puberty,” Brandon takes the matter of his reticent hormones into his own hands. In “English Cousin,” Terry’s enigmatic relative arrives, looking to learn about love, stateside. And in “The Future, the Future, the Future,” Dan’s carefully planned life falters when he sees his wife kissing her boss. \u003cb\u003eTrouble\u003c\/b\u003e explodes with wicked humor, exuberant braininess, and unforgettable style.“A darkly comic portrayal of men afraid of their destructive power. . . . Somerville crafts stories that, with equal parts grace and humility, highlight mordant absurdity.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003cb\u003eTrouble\u003c\/b\u003e is a wittily demented and off-beat collection of stories about the peculiar joys and perversions of the ordinary lives of an eclectic group of boys and men. . . . Wildly entertaining and remarkably funny. . . . Reminiscent of such great, dark storytellers as T.C. Boyle and even Ray Carver.” —\u003ci\u003eArtvoice \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Trouble is a great collection of stories, full of the true adventures of life and what it means to be a man.” —Hannah Tinti, author of \u003cb\u003eAnimal Crackers\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“These gorgeous stories, written with wit and precision, are energized by Patrick Somerville’s improvisational humor and the authentic sympathy he brings to the tempest of ordinary lives. It is hard to think of another book quite like this one. Every story is provocative, revelatory, and satisfying.” —Stephanie Vaughn, author of \u003cb\u003eSweet Talk\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Wonderful. Here are stories packed with big-hearted humor, serious compassion, and plenty of loopy narrative thrust to keep you turning the pages. Patrick Somerville’s characters exist in a modern world where love and cruelty are indistinguishable, and he imbues their struggle with real grace. Oddly tender, dementedly funny, this book is a pleasure to read.” —Gabe Hudson, author of \u003cb\u003eDear Mr. President\u003c\/b\u003ePatrick Somerville was born and raised in Wisconsin and attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught English and creative writing at Cornell, where he also earned his MFA. \u003cb\u003eTrouble\u003c\/b\u003e is his first book of fiction. He currently lives in Chicago.\u003cb\u003eFrom \"Puberty\"\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Young Brandon has some problems, but they will be going away shortly.   What will make them go away shortly is a magical process of   physiological, hormonally induced changes to both the body and the   mind, and after these changes, there is a kind of freedom waiting for   him, a vista of unbounded green pastures defined by\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    1. all-around faster running\u003cbr\u003e    2. larger penis\u003cbr\u003e    3. height \u0026gt; 4' 11\"\u003cbr\u003e    4. confidence in the face of danger, danger being\u003cbr\u003e      a. big men\u003cbr\u003e      b. all women\u003cbr\u003e      c. all girls\u003cbr\u003e      d. competitive sports\u003cbr\u003e      e. public speaking\u003cbr\u003e      f. social interaction\u003cbr\u003e      g. physical fitness tests in gym class, which involve mainly\u003cbr\u003e        i. pull-ups\u003cbr\u003e        ii. rope climb\u003cbr\u003e        iii. 50-yard dash\u003cbr\u003e        iv. 1-mile run\u003cbr\u003e      h. going downtown\u003cbr\u003e      i. Kyle Zarnoff\u003cbr\u003e    5. pain-tolerance threshold\u003cbr\u003e    6. basketball dribbling skills\u003cbr\u003e    7. sexual allure, due to\u003cbr\u003e      a. deeper voice\u003cbr\u003e      b. more jawline definition (eliminate doughy face)\u003cbr\u003e      c. winning, cocky smile\u003cbr\u003e      d. other benefits already discussed\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Brandon knows that a change is coming, and he is simply waiting. He   reads about it at the public library after school. Puberty books.   Books about puberty. There is one in particular called \u003cb\u003eWhat's Going   on in Me?\u003c\/b\u003e that he has found to be especially helpful. He looks at an   artist's sketch of the adult male smiling, standing in the nude, huge   peach dick dangling between his legs, well-defined pectoral muscles   glowing in warm, dramatic, perhaps Tuscan light. On the facing page   there is an artist's sketch of a naked adult female. She is also   happy, and she has breasts, which are called mammarian organs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Brandon takes big purple vitamins from a purple bottle. These   vitamins, which he found in the kitchen cupboard above the water   bottles and the plastic coffee mugs from gas stations, purport to   contain over 1,500 percent of nearly every chemical requirement of   the human body. On the label there is a tranquil scene depicting a   lake and a vast blue sky; to Brandon, the lake and the blue sky   represent the peace that comes after a terrible thunderstorm. The   first time he studied the label, holding the bottle so close to his   glasses that he heard a quick \u003ci\u003eclick\u003c\/i\u003e when the plastic touched the   frames, he believed he detected the presence of a thunderhead   receding (its aura, at least) and a certain postrain mist hovering   above the lake. Since this is such a rainy time in his life (the   magic is coming, the magic is in the future), he believes that if he   takes them every day, they will speed nature along. After all, they   are vitamins, and vitamins are natural.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Speed is important. Speed is the most important thing for Brandon.   Other boys at school have already embarked on their magical journeys.   He has lost friends because of his effeminate prepubescent   characteristics and his mediocre sprinting speed, which is symbolic   of his mediocre maturation speed. Typical descriptions of this   turbulent premagical time in a young man's life concentrate on the   confusion, the misunderstanding, the misdirected anger, but the truth   is that Brandon knows exactly what's going on, is completely   conscious of the biology. He knows that this is basically random,   that there is very little he can do, and the vitamins give him a   sense of agency. He remembers waiting seven months to hear back from   Nintendo when he designed an entire video game (Nenderhal's Quest)   from scratch for a kindergarten project and his mother, Shelly,   encouraged him to put it into a high-quality binder and send it off   to \"the real people.\" This was when he first learned that waiting is   horrible. In the months that passed, Brandon imagined what he would   do with the $10 million Nintendo was going to offer him to buy his   game. He was probably going to buy a submarine, which he would take   to the local YMCA and operate in the deep end of the swimming pool.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    When the white envelope from Nintendo finally came in the mail one   summer afternoon and the letter inside said simply, \"Thank you for   your interest in Nintendo,\" Brandon was hurt, but at least the   waiting was over. At least he could get on with his life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He can't get on with his life now because without puberty, he has no   life. It is like he has died along with the twenty or thirty other   kids in his class who still look ten. They are the walking, invisible   dead. If they weren't all so strange and devastated and incomplete,   it would make sense for them to form a club as a way of fighting   back. The club would be called strong potential and would meet in   Brandon's tree house. Of course he would be the leader.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Brandon's father, Ralph, is worried. Just last Tuesday he caught   Brandon measuring his penis in the work shed with his new   one-hundred-foot Stanley measuring tape. Brandon was embarrassed and   surprised, but not nearly so embarrassed and surprised as Ralph would   have liked. Instead of addressing the implications of Brandon's   investigation, and instead of saying a word about the notebook Ralph   saw on the workbench or the pencil-drawn graph Ralph saw on the first   page of the notebook, he tried to explain to Brandon how to use the   Stanley measuring tape responsibly, how to use the safety lock to   make sure the tape did not recoil at dangerous speeds. Afterward   Ralph patted his son on the head and said, \"Do you understand?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    \"I get it,\" Brandon said, and went into the house with his notebook.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Ralph has other reasons to be worried, and cannot spend too much time   worrying about Brandon. His hair, for example, is almost gone. And   yet new hair keeps magically appearing on his shoulders and inside of   his asshole. Usually Ralph appreciates intellectual paradoxes and   inverted meanings; he sometimes even gets out of bed to find a pen to   mark particularly ironic passages in novels. Yet for some reason the   redistribution of hair across his body does not register in Ralph's   mind as ironic. Tragic is the word. All through his twenties and   thirties and even a good part of his forties, Ralph's hair remained   prominent and thick and intimidating atop his head. No longer. Now he   feels as though he is losing some important and deeply personal   battle with his mind; with each poor life decision an important   neuronal hook detaches from the bottom of a hair follicle and one   more strand drops away; there is a sense that beyond what they say   about your mother's father and your levels of testosterone there is   in fact a causal mechanism to hair loss, perhaps even to aging   itself, something having to do with free will, choice, and personal   responsibility. Ralph believes that he is losing an important   existential battle to a dark, nameless knight who has arisen from the   swamp of his own middle-aged and slightly malfunctioning   subconscious, a red-eyed knight who stalks his dreams and lurks in   caverns below his waking thoughts, manipulating, infuriating, and   making a mess: shattering peace. The knight's power source is Ralph's   increasingly frequent and detached appraisals of his own life: his   job is meaningless; his relationship with his wife, once new and   alive and fulfilling, has become a heartbreaking and guilt-ridden   burden; his son is strange and secretive, which makes Ralph paranoid   and suspicious; both of his own parents have dropped into a   semivegetative world orbiting the five o'clock news, kept alive only   by rabid criticisms of the new kinds of coffee that have infiltrated   American society; and the house, the nexus of his family's life for   fourteen years, has started to leak a rusty brown liquid that no   plumber is familiar with. So the dark knight, dormant for many years,   imprisoned in the ice of Ralph's former happiness, has now thawed and   grown strong. The knight never speaks, he only stalks and stares his   red stare, but if he did speak, his voice would be deep, and he would   say something like: \u003ci\u003eyou are an embarrassment to consciousness.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Last night Brandon beat the greatest video game in the universe. The   game was called \u003ci\u003eThe Warriors of Ice Castle\u003c\/i\u003e, and he had been playing   it for four to seven hours every day for the last sixteen weeks. In   the game, Brandon's avatar--his personally designed protagonist--was   a highly intelligent wizard named Gooligan capable of summoning   devastating fireballs at a moment's notice and even seeing into the   future during meditative trances. He was also physically strong,   unusual for a wizard but not unacceptable to the game's electronic   administration. Brandon and Gooligan had traveled thousands of miles   together since he first slid the hard plastic rectangle into the   console; there was the bugbear incident near the Copse of Psychosis,   when Gooligan was reduced to only three hit points and very nearly   made into a harlequin slave. There was the exhausting battle of   magical abilities with the archmage Cladivaxos, Gooligan's longtime   nemesis, so bloody and horrifying that Brandon had been forced to   turn his head many times and pause the game to catch his breath; and   of course there was the finale with Lord Egelbund, the feudal master   of Kendrathiel, whose charmed armor could reject all but the most   powerful of Gooligan's spells, who wielded two war hammers as though   they were plastic baseball bats, who called out humiliating jeers   about Gooligan's orphaned past and diminutive manhood as Gooligan hid   in the closets and hallways of Egelbund's notorious Ice Castle,   shivering. In the end, Brandon and Gooligan had outwitted him by   learning the layout of the castle and engaging in a kind of drawn-out   guerrilla war, using secret passages and arrow slits to take potshots   and then running away to regroup. It was the way of the weaker   combatant. It was intelligent and nuanced. And over time, it had been   too much for Lord Egelbund to resist. In his dying moments, the   fallen demon reached out a charred hand and asked for forgiveness,   which Gooligan and Brandon condescendingly granted.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The problem is that Brandon has nothing to do anymore. Gooligan   protected him from free time--he has a lot of free time--and now he   must field the long evenings alone. During dinner Ralph asks him how   things are going with the video game, and Brandon tells him that he's   finished it. His father nods as though he cares. His mother remembers   aloud how Brandon designed his own game, how he was so creative even   in kindergarten, and Brandon shovels rice into his mouth. He wants to   tell her that it's been a lie, all this talk about the value of   creativity. He's heard it his whole life, and has only recently   realized that his parents have doomed him to irrelevance by forcing   him to care about the wrong things. He sees now that it would have   been much wiser to concentrate on sports and swear words growing up,   that these are the true loci of power. As a retort to his mother's   musings he asks to be excused to go out to the driveway and work on   his basketball-dribbling skills. He knows that this will upset her.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    It is September, and still warm, and the giant moon lights the   concrete driveway in white. Brandon runs back and forth with the   basketball, tentatively dribbling, watching the ball rise up to his   hand with every bounce. He can't dribble without looking, but his   goal is to be able to do precisely that within two weeks. Tomorrow   the basketball unit is starting in gym class, and he is going to do   something spectacular, something that will raise eyebrows and usher   in an age of respect--two or three months, it's all he needs--and   this age of respect will protect him until puberty takes over. After   some attempts at between-the-leg crossovers, Brandon takes a few   shots at the basket Ralph installed above the garage two summers ago.   At the time, Brandon thought it was so stupid. That was back when he   was into art. Now he is happy to have it. After he finally makes a   layup, he dribbles to the center of the driveway and looks at the   house. His parents are both still at the kitchen table. They're not   arguing, but something is happening. Ralph has moved closer to Shelly   and is rubbing her shoulder, saying something. Shelly looks angry and   sad at the same time. She looks like she does when she's standing in   front of one of her paintings, alone and upset with herself, shaken   by not having gotten it right. She has been trying desperately to be   a painter for the last three years. Even Brandon knows that she's no   good.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    She stands up suddenly and starts clearing the table. Brandon   dribbles around in a circle and then walks into the street, bouncing   the ball, listening to the strange hollow high-pitched echo that   seems to emerge from the inner sphere of static air sealed within the   rubber. He is going to dribble all the way around the block without   looking at the ball. That is the plan.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Things don't go according to the plan, but that's okay, this is   practice, and no one is watching. When he dribbles off his foot, he   can chase the ball down the street with no self-consciousness. He can   slow it down and concentrate. He can find out exactly what went   wrong. For fifteen feet he doesn't look once, but he's so scared to   mess things up he stops, just to keep the streak   perfect--accumulation of self-esteem is incremental and delicate. As   he turns right at the corner, ball cradled under his arm, a few cars   roll by. Someone calls out \"Homo\" from a silver Nissan Pulsar.   Brandon starts to dribble again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    He turns right at a street parallel to his own, a dark street called   Terracotta that he has always loved, and he decides that he will run   at top speed while dribbling, just to see if it works. He allows   himself to watch this time, since running makes it so much harder.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    For a while things go okay, but then the bounces get too high, he   loses control, and he dribbles down onto the curb, and the ball   shoots off diagonally. Brandon chases it over freshly cut grass. When   he looks up at the house in front of him he sees, in a glowing window   on the second floor, a naked woman stretching her arms above her   head. Two weeks ago Gooligan was frozen in a giant block of ice by   the magic breath of an angry swamp troll, and now, mouth open,   Brandon feels exactly the same; he knows what Gooligan went through,   how hard it was to look at that dreadful terrible truth straight on   and not be able to turn away, how at certain moments, certain   critical moments, you seize instead of act, how time itself stops   working in the right way. The naked woman is now brushing her hair in   front of a mirror. Gooligan escaped by dropping into a meditative   trance for the night, a religious stasis that slowed down the heart   and put him in touch with the astral plane. When the sun came up, the   ice block melted, and the troll had fallen asleep. Gooligan brained   him with his Mace +4. Some would have called it a cowardly attack,   but Brandon and Gooligan had learned that morality must be   temporarily suspended when dealing with a greater power. The woman sits down at a desk and leans over a piece of paper with a pencil in her hand. She looks like she is writing a letter, but naked. Brandon climbs a maple tree.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300153151717,"sku":"NP9780307275356","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307275356.jpg?v=1767742981","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/trouble-isbn-9780307275356","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}