18. American Falls the collected short stories by Barry Gifford

I'm a big fan of Barry Gifford's life work, especially for his resurrection of the pulp/noir genres with Black Lizard Press and very specifically his book The Devil Thumbs a Ride.  Other than watching Wild at Heart (which I did not love for various reasons), I have never consumed any of his fiction.  I found this one at the interesting Vancouver used bookstore The Paper Hound and I suspect I bought it from the really nice and inviting way the books were laid out.  It is not my usual custom to pick up literary fiction short story anthologies!  I feared I would never finish it, but once I started, I found the stories quite readable and got through it pretty quickly and quite enjoyed it.

Interestingly, there is really only one story here, the final novella, that I would have recognized as coming from Barry Gifford.  I had expected lots of American neo-noir and interesting lowlifes, but actually many of the stories were more "high culture", including ones imagining a trip to North Africa by some famous artists (whose names I have forgotten).  Apologies for lack of a more thorough review, but I am writing this weeks after having read it and have already put the book into free library circulation.  None of the stories blew my mind and some were too slight, but I did enjoy reading it and learning that Gifford's fiction covers a wide range of styles and subjects.