{"product_id":"honored-guest-isbn-9781400095520","title":"Honored Guest","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn short stories \"so vibrant and alive they have heartbeats, the prose so electric and dazzling it makes the pulse race\" (\u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e), Joy Williams explores the various ways we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss, offering a rich examination of our capacity for transformation and salvation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Beautiful.... Unsettling.... [Contains] among the best American short stories.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer landscapes reach from Maine and Nantucket to the Southwest and into Mexico and Guatemala, while the events cover a range of human travail, from children confronting the death of a parent to parents instead burying their own young, and the various ways–comic, tragic, unnerving–we seek to accommodate diminishment and loss. And all of her characters are richly, idiosyncratically alive, in circumstances at once supremely peculiar and strangely like our own.\u003cp\u003e\"Beautiful.... Unsettling.... [Contains] among the best American short stories  of the past two decades.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Atlantic Monthly\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"The short stories in Joy Williams's\u003ci\u003e Honored Guest\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003eare so vibrant and alive they have heartbeats, the prose so electric  and dazzling it makes the pulse race.\" —\u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"By all means read, and re-read,  these subtle and touching and deceptively funny and sometimes darkly magical stories.\" —\u003ci\u003eSt. Louis Post-Dispatch\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"A brilliant spawn of Raymond Carver and Flannery O'Connor,  Joy Williams blends mordant wit, uncanny characters, and weirdly familiar landscapes  and locales.... By turns these narratives soothe, then surprise, then shock with  jolts of recognition, recoil, and naked redemption.\" —\u003ci\u003eElle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Joy Williams wastes  not a word in the stories that she tells.... Phenomenally interesting.... Miraculously  and intelligently weird.\" —\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"In wonderful, stark relief, Williams  gives us a glimpse into this pliability of the human heart, its marvelous ability  to withstand adversity and accommodate whatever comes next.\" —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book  Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"If Joy Williams's publisher made cigarettes rather than story collections  it would be required to slap a consumer warning on her latest collection, \u003ci\u003eHonored  Guest\u003c\/i\u003e.... [It's] narcotic–alluring precisely because it is toxic, dangerous. And  Williams is so good she merely has to wave her characters' melancholia under our  noses and we crave more.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Philadelphia Inquirer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Darkly enticing and intuitive.... In Williams's hands, the inevitability of death is both poignant and, at times,  comfortably humorous.\" —\u003ci\u003eRocky Mountain News\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"The unexpected is the only thing that  can be counted on—other than the author's brilliant prose, acerbic humor and implicit  biting commentary on the state of our world today.\" —\u003ci\u003eSanta Fe New Mexican\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Captur[es]  the casual brutality of everyday life with a combination of grim humor, macabre incident  and an ironic eye.... There's a thrilling appeal, a perverse pleasure, in reading  Williams' cold take on things.... Fascinating.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Oregonian\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Each [story]  spins with the searing comedy and blunt drama of the gallows.... Williams is a  deeply compassionate writer, and in these luminous, feeling moments, the specter  of another writer from another century and another country rises: Anton Chekhov,  the book's honored ghost.\" —\u003ci\u003eTime Out New York\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Joy Williams's collection is an engrossing  and perceptive work.\" —\u003ci\u003eRichmond Times-Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[Williams] balances horror and humor  with uncanny skill and laces her stories with compassion.... Her stories stick  in the mind like burrs.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Columbus Dispatch\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"[A] darkly humorous, potent collection.\" —\u003ci\u003eAnniston Star\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"There is much artistry to be found in the short story.... Especially  when it is in the hands of an artist like Joy Williams.\" —\u003ci\u003eTulsa World\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Of the many  qualities of her prose–clarity, economy, intelligence, complete mastery of the sentence–the  most conspicuous is authority.... Joy Williams's stories are illuminating, burning,  intelligent and large.\" —\u003ci\u003eBooks and Culture\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eJoy Williams is the author of four novels–the most recent, \u003ci\u003eThe Quick and the Dead, \u003c\/i\u003ewas a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001–and three other collections of stories,  as well as \u003ci\u003eIll Nature,\u003c\/i\u003e a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book  Critics Circle Award for criticism. Among her many honors are the Rea Award for the  short story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.  She lives in Key West, Florida, and Tucson, Arizona.She had been having a rough time of it and thought about suicide  sometimes, but suicide was so corny and you had to be careful in this  milieu which was eleventh grade because two of her classmates had  committed suicide the year before and between them they left  twenty-four suicide notes and had become just a joke. They had left  the notes everywhere and they were full of misspellings and  pretensions. Theirs had been a false show. Then this year a girl had  taken an overdose of Tylenol which of course did nothing at all, but  word of it got out and when she came back to school her locker had  been broken into and was full of Tylenol, just jammed with it. Like,  you moron. Under the circumstances, it was amazing that Helen thought  of suicide at all. It was just not cool. You only made a fool of  yourself. And the parents of these people were mocked too. They were  considered to be suicide-enhancing, evil and weak, and they were  ignored and barely tolerated. This was a small town. Helen didn't  want to make it any harder on her mother than circumstances already  had.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer mother was dying and she wanted to die at home, which Helen could  understand, she understood it perfectly, she'd say, but actually she  understood it less well than that and it had become clear it wasn't  even what needed to be understood. Nothing needed to be understood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was a little brass bell on her mother's bedside table. It was  the same little brass bell that had been placed at Helen's command  when she had been a little girl, sick with some harmless little kid's  sickness. She had just to reach out her hand and ring the bell and  her mother would come or even her father. Her mother never used the  bell now and kept it there as sort of a joke, actually. Her mother  was not utterly confined to bed. She moved around a bit at night and  placed herself, or was placed by others, in other rooms during the  day. Occasionally one of the women who had been hired to care forher  during the day would even take her for a drive, out to see the  icicles or go to the bank window. Her mother's name was Lenore and  sometimes in the night her mother would call out this name, her own,  \"Lenore!\" in a strong, urgent voice and Helen in her own room would  shudder and cry a little.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis had been going on for a while. In the summer Lenore had been  diagnosed and condemned but she kept bouncing back, as the doctors  put it, until recently. The daisies that bloomed in the fall down by  the storm-split elm had come and gone, even the little kids at  Halloween. Thanksgiving had passed without comment and it would be  Christmas soon. Lenore was ignoring it. The boxes of balls and lights  were in the cellar, buried deep. Helen had made the horrible mistake  of asking her what she wanted for Christmas one nightand Lenore had  said, \"Are you stupid?\" Then she said, \"Oh, I don't mean to be so  impatient, it's the medicine, my voice doesn't even sound right. Does  my voice sound right? Get me something you'll want later. A piece of  jewelry or something. Do you want the money for it?\" She meant this  sincerely.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the beginning they had talked eagerly like equals. This was more  important than a wedding, this preparation. They even laughed like  girls together remembering things. They remembered when Helen was a  little girl before the divorce and they were all driving somewhere  and Helen's father was stopped for speeding and Lenore wanted her  picture taken with the policeman and Helen had taken it. \"Wasn't that  mean!\" Lenore said to Helen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Lenore died, Helen would go down to Florida and live with her  father. \"I've never had the slightest desire to visit Florida,\"  Lenore would say. \"You can have it.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt the beginning, death was giving them the opportunity to be  interesting. This was something special. There was only one crack at  this. But then they lost sight of it somehow. It became a lesser  thing, more terrible. Its meaning crumbled. They began waiting for  it. Terrible, terrible. Lenore had friends but they called now, they  didn't come over so much. \"Don't come over,\" Lenore would tell them,  \"it wears me out.\" Little things started to go wrong with the house,  leaks and lights. The bulb in the kitchen would flutter when the  water was turned on. Helen grew fat for some reason. The dog, their  dog, began to change. He grew shy. \"Do you think he's acting funny?\"  Lenore asked Helen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe did not tell Helen that the dog had begun to growl at her. It was  a secret growl, he never did it in front of anyone else. He had taken  to carrying one of her slippers around with him. He was almost never  without it. He cherished her slipper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Do you remember when I put Grecian Formula on his muzzle because he  turned gray so young?\" Lenore said. \"He was only about a year old and  began to turn gray? The things I used to do. The way I spent my time.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut now she did not know what to do with time at all. It seemed more  expectant than ever. One couldn't satisfy it, one could never do  enough for it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe was so uneasy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLenore had a dream in which she wasn't dying at all. Someone else had  died. People had told her this over and over again. And now they were  getting tired of reminding her, impatient.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had a dream of eating bread and dying. Two large loaves. Pounds  of it, still warm from the oven. She ate it all, she was so hungry,  starving! But then she died. It was the bread. It was too hot, was  the explanation. There were people in her room but she was not among  them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen she woke, she could feel the hot, gummy, almost liquid bread in  her throat, scalding it. She lay in bed on her side, her dark eyes  open. It was four o'clock in the morning. She swung her legs to the  floor. The dog growled at her. He slept in her room with her slipper  but he growled as she made her way past him. Sometimes self-pity  would rise within her and she would stare at the dog, tears in her  eyes, listening to him growl. The more she stared, the more sustained  was his soft growl.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eShe had a dream about a tattoo. This was a pleasant dream. She was  walking away and she had the most beautiful tattoo covering her  shoulders and back, even the back of her legs. It was unspeakably  fine.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHelen had a dream that her mother wanted a tattoo. She wanted to be  tattooed all over, a full custom bodysuit, but no one would do it.  Helen woke protesting this, grunting and cold. She had kicked off her  blankets. She pulled them up and curled tightly beneath them. There  was a boy at school who had gotten a tattoo and now they wouldn't let  him play basketball.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the morning Lenore said, \"Would you get a tattoo with me? We could  do this together. I don't think it's creepy,\" she added. \"I think  you'll be glad later. A pretty one, just small somewhere. What do you  think?\" The more she considered it, the more it seemed the perfect  thing to do. What else could be done? She'd already given Helen her  wedding ring.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I'll get him to come over here, to the house. I'll arrange it,\"  Lenore said. Helen couldn't defend herself against this notion. She  still felt sleepy, she was always sleepy. There was something wrong  with her mother's idea but not much.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut Lenore could not arrange it. When Helen returned from school, her  mother said, \"It can't be done. I'm so upset and I've lost interest  so I'll give you the short version. I called...I must have made  twenty calls. At last I got someone to speak to me. His name was  Smokin' Joe and he was a hundred miles away but sounded as though  he'd do it. And I asked him if there was any place he didn't tattoo,  and he said faces, dicks and hands.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mom!\" Helen said. Her face reddened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"And I asked him if there was anyone he wouldn't tattoo, and he said  drunks and the dying. So that was that.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"But you didn't have to tell him. You won't have to tell him,\" Helen said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"That's true,\" Lenore said dispiritedly. Then she looked angrily at  Helen. \"Are you crazy? Sometimes I think you're crazy!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mom!\" Helen said, crying. \"I want you to do what you want.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"This was my idea, mine!\" Lenore said. The dog gave a high nervous  bark. \"Oh dear,\" Lenore said, \"I'm speaking too loudly.\" She smiled  at him as if to say how clever both of them were to realize this.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThat night Lenore could not sleep. There were no dreams, nothing.  High clouds swept slowly past the window. She got up and went into  the living room, to the desk there. She looked with distaste at all  the objects in this room. There wasn't one thing here she'd want to  take with her to the grave, not one. The dog had shuffled out of the  bedroom with her and now lay at her feet, a slipper in his mouth, a  red one with a little bow. She wanted to make note of a few things,  clarify some things. She took out a piece of paper. The furnace  turned on and she heard something moving behind the walls. \"Enjoy it  while you can,\" she said. She sat at the desk, her back very  straight, waiting for something. After a while she looked at the dog.  \"Give me that,\" she said. \"Give me that slipper.\" He growled but did  not leave her side. She took a pen and wrote on the paper, When I go,  the dog goes. Promise me this. She left it out for Helen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen she thought, That dog is the dumbest one I've ever had. I don't  want him with me. She was amazed she could still think like this. She  tore up the piece of paper. \"Lenore!\" she cried, and wrung her hands.  She wanted herself. Her mind ran stumbling, panting, through dark  twisted woods.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Helen got up she would ask her to make some toast. Toast would  taste good. Helen would press the Good Morning letters on the bread.  It was a gadget, like a cookie cutter. When the bread was toasted,  the words were pressed down into it and you dribbled honey into them.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the morning Helen did this carefully, as she always had. They sat  together at the kitchen table and ate the toast. Sleet struck the  windows. Helen looked at her toast dreamily, the golden letters  against the almost black. They both liked their toast almost black.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLenore felt peaceful. She even felt a little better. But it was a  cruelty to feel a little better, a cruelty to Helen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Turn on the radio,\" Lenore said, \"and find out if they're going to  cancel school.\" If Helen stayed home today she would talk to her.  Important things would be said. Things that would still matter years  and years from now.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCallers on a talk show were speaking about wolves. \"There should be  wolf control,\" someone said, \"not wolf worship.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh, I hate these people,\" Helen said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Are you a wolf worshipper?\" her mother asked. \"Watch out.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I believe they have the right to live too,\" Helen said fervently.  Then she was sorry. Everything she said was wrong. She moved the dial  on the radio. School would not be canceled. They never canceled it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There's a stain on that blouse,\" her mother said. \"Why do your  clothes always look so dingy? You should buy some new clothes.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I don't want any new clothes,\" Helen said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"You can't wear mine, that's not the way to think. I've got to get  rid of them. Maybe that's what I'll do today. I'll go through them  with Jean. It's Jean who comes today, isn't it?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I don't want your clothes!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Why not? Not even the sweaters?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHelen's mouth trembled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Oh, what are we going to do!\" Lenore said. She clawed at her cheeks.  The dog barked.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Mom, Mom,\" Helen said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We've got to talk, I want to talk,\" Lenore said. What would happen  to Helen, her little girl...\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHelen saw the stain her mother had noticed on the blouse. Where had  it come from? It had just appeared. She would change if she had time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"When I die, I'm going to forget you,\" Lenore began. This was so  obvious, this wasn't what she meant. \"The dead just forget you. The  most important things, all the loving things, everything we...\" She  closed her eyes, then opened them with effort. \"I want to put on some  lipstick today,\" she said. \"If I don't, tell me when you come home.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHelen left just in time to catch the bus. Some of her classmates  stood by the curb, hooded, hunched. It was bitter out.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the house, Lenore looked at the dog. There were only so many dogs  in a person's life and this was the last one in hers. She'd like to  kick him. But he had changed when she'd gotten sick, he hadn't been  like this before. He was bewildered. He didn't like  it--death--either. She felt sorry for him. She went back into her  bedroom and he followed her with the slipper.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt nine, the first in a number of nurse's aides and companions  arrived. By three it was growing dark again. Helen returned before  four.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The dog needs a walk,\" her mother said.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"It's so icy out, Mom, he'll cut the pads of his feet.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"He needs to go out!\" her mother screamed. She wore a little lipstick  and sat in a chair wringing her hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHelen found the leash and coaxed the dog to the door. He looked out  uneasily into the wet cold blackness. They moved out into it a few  yards to a bush he had killed long before and he dribbled a few drops  of urine onto it. They walked a little farther, across the dully  shining yard toward the street. It was still, windless. The air made  a hissing sound. \"Come on,\" Helen said, \"don't you want to do  something?\" The dog walked stoically along. Helen's eyes began to  water with the cold. Her mother had said, \"I want Verdi played at the  service, Scriabin, no hymns.\" Helen had sent away for some  recordings. How else could it be accomplished, the Verdi, the  Scriabin...Once she had called her father and said, \"What should we  do for Mom?\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Where have you been!\" her mother said when they got back. \"My God, I  thought you'd been hit by a truck.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey ate supper, macaroni and cheese, something one of the women had  prepared. Lenore ate without speaking and then looked at the empty  plate.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThis excerpt is a portion of the first story in the collection.\u003c\/i\u003eStories","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300820766949,"sku":"NP9781400095520","price":22.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400095520.jpg?v=1767729195","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/honored-guest-isbn-9781400095520","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}