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My Hard Bargain
My Hard Bargain was hailed as "an impressive debut" by The Wall Street Journal, and "substantial and down to earth" by the New Yorker. The exalted, memorable characters in Kirn's acclaimed debut short story col lection confront the real hard bargains in life that spring up from the business of simply living, and Kirn transforms these hard-luck stories into strapping moral lessons which evoke the bonds that unite us all.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
145 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
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About the author
Walter Kirn
39 books235 followersWalter Kirn is a regular reviewer for The New York Times Book Review, and his work appears in The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Time, New York, GQ and Esquire. He is the author of six previous works of fiction: My Hard Bargain: Stories, She Needed Me, Thumbsucker, Up in the Air, Mission to America and The Unbinding. Kirn is a graduate of Princeton University and attended Oxford on a scholarship from the Keasby Foundation. "
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
June 28, 2007
Are you a lapsed mormon? Hey, me too. And hey, so is Walter Kirn. In the first story in this collection, a group of mormon boys are instructed by their group leader to make a mark on a black cloth with a blacklight marker each time they masturbate. The marks cannot be seen until, at the time when they are all instructed to bring their cloths into the church, their group leader turns on the blacklight. The room glows with the millions of heartbreaking, glowing orbs. The story's title is "Planetarium." A great collection from a fabulous writer -- of fiction, and of some of the best book reviews around.
December 11, 2021
I read a story in the Montana Noir anthology by Walter Kirn that was the best short story in a book full of them. So I took a chance on this collection and henceforth will read any short story by Walter Kirn in perpetuity. He is a master of the form.
December 10, 2007
The first collection of short stories from Walter Kirn, before he went on to pen hit novels like "Thumbsucker." His style here is hard to describe -- some stories are quite realistic, climaxing with Joycean epiphanies. Others are oddly surreal, especially a few that deal directly with religion (Kirn was raised Mormon). The best still linger vividly in my brain, over a decade after I first read them.
June 13, 2022
3.5 stars if that was an option. First book I have read by the author, I have another of his on deck. I have seen the author on tv which led me to read his books. The author also penned "Up in the Air"?, a movie that seemed to do pretty well. And though I did not see it, and will not, the premise sounded interesting enough.
This group of stories reminded me of many of the other books of short stories I have read. The book is short, fast and worth a look.
This group of stories reminded me of many of the other books of short stories I have read. The book is short, fast and worth a look.
October 4, 2011
Short fiction is a dying art, but these are some really strong pieces about the American West and the Mormon culture that has defined it for a lot of people. It's a kinder, fictionalized answer to Krakouer's Under the Banner of Heaven, which tries to find a nobility in the people, even as they struggle within the massive flaws of the society that the LDS church oversees. Good stuff.
October 16, 2019
Kirn’s writing is deceptively mundane. He lets you go on assuming that certain details are inconsequential until you reach the end and it ends up being the cornerstone of the story.
The stories are down to earth and plain, tales of lives you’d hear about while sharing a plane ride or sitting next to someone in a bar. Not quite exciting or thrilling, but vivid and real.
The stories are down to earth and plain, tales of lives you’d hear about while sharing a plane ride or sitting next to someone in a bar. Not quite exciting or thrilling, but vivid and real.
February 1, 2008
Some good stories here and some great ones - particularly "The New Timothy" which is one of the best short stories I've ever read. (Probably helps if you're familiar with Mormonism, but beautifully conceived nonetheless.)
September 7, 2018
These are great short stories. I'd never read any Walter Kirn before finding this collection at a used bookstore. Seems these were written as the beginning of his career and there is a lot more of him out there. I'm anxious to read more from him.
November 6, 2008
This is one of the story collections I love to rediscover on my shelves every few years. What a great writer!
August 28, 2017
Great.
This is his first published work (I believe) so it was fun to see lots of Kirn that I know in seed form.
This is his first published work (I believe) so it was fun to see lots of Kirn that I know in seed form.
August 25, 2023
I know Walter Kirn mostly from the podcast he does with Matt Taibbi, America this Week. I knew he was a writer—and that he has a couple screenplays to his credit, as well—but much more I didn’t know. Still, it was clear hearing him speak that he had a writer’s mind, and had obviously done so much of it that he couldn’t help but compose, even when talking.
I put it off for a while and then finally decided to check out some of his fiction. My Hard Bargain is a solid collection of stories, mostly about Mormons and ex-Mormons, either in the upper Midwest or nearer the Sunbelt. They’re literary stories—meaning not much happens—with the kind of staccato rhythm most MFA writing tended to have after Raymond Carver left his stamp.
Carver is a good comparison not just in terms of technical details, but thematically and in terms of characterization. Many of these characters not only aren’t given to reflection, but regard anything besides honest labor as sinful. Even when they’re not described as drinking you get the feeling that they can knock them back, and do so to suppress feelings and thoughts they regard as unmasculine.
I’d say I enjoyed about seventy-percent of the tales, and a couple of them were truly excellent, though that excellence only made the other stories more wan by comparison. The collection starts strong with Planetarium, a story about some young Mormon athletes whose spiritual leader tries to inspire them to quit masturbating. It goes about as poorly as you would expect, though the story’s turn from the slightly humorous to the slightly beautiful was one I hadn’t expected. The idea of running a blacklight over semen stains is one we all know about (and a temptation we’ll resist, if we’re smart, when at the hotel.) That Kirn takes this idea and turns it into the description of a starry (or at least semen-y) firmament was a kind of masterstroke (no pun intended.)
Toward the Radical Church is a near-perfect story about a farmer down on his luck, with two adult sons and a plan to go to New York for help. It says a lot pride, shame, pity, fatherhood, modernism, and a dozen other subjects without making its point too loud. A lot of times postmodern writers of the short story are so distrustful of subtext or even meaning that they eschew it altogether, trusting nothing but episodic existentialism. The trick is to make it seem like the stories are just a string of meaningless events while putting the meaning in there. Too often writers succeed too well in the former task, and forget about the latter. Here Kirn gets the equation not just right, but perfectly so.
Also high quality (and very Carver-esque) is Devil of a Curve, about a tow truck driver who’s so lonely that his only companions are the people he rescues on the road. Kirn, like the Coen Brothers or Bob Dylan, grew up in a very cold state, and so knows both the charms and desolations of a long winter all too well. We don’t feel pity for the narrator, but we do feel for him, which makes the story more effective than outright sentimental.
There are a couple of clunkers in the collection, too, though. The eponymous My Hard Bargain is a story about a young man coming to terms with the concept of death by watching his dog die while on a road trip. It’s not exactly maudlin, but it’s too episodic and scattered to really hold together. Continuous Breathing Relief, about an acrimonious relationship between a liberated woman and her boyfriend, also comes off as petulant and annoying, much like its characters. Mutual recriminations between couples who don’t like each other can be grist for all kinds of good stories, from murder mysteries to comedies. But here you just get all the unpleasantness of having to hang out with these people without Kirn quite finding a way to transcend the pettiness of his characters. Rather than extricating them from the muck he just gets pulled down there with them and dirties himself in the process.
All in all, though, it’s a solid collection, well-worth reading for those who like the kinds of short stories that used to appear in The New Yorker and Playboy. Hell, maybe they still do publish such stories in The New Yorker; I wouldn’t know as I haven’t read it for years. As for Playboy, do they even still publish?
I put it off for a while and then finally decided to check out some of his fiction. My Hard Bargain is a solid collection of stories, mostly about Mormons and ex-Mormons, either in the upper Midwest or nearer the Sunbelt. They’re literary stories—meaning not much happens—with the kind of staccato rhythm most MFA writing tended to have after Raymond Carver left his stamp.
Carver is a good comparison not just in terms of technical details, but thematically and in terms of characterization. Many of these characters not only aren’t given to reflection, but regard anything besides honest labor as sinful. Even when they’re not described as drinking you get the feeling that they can knock them back, and do so to suppress feelings and thoughts they regard as unmasculine.
I’d say I enjoyed about seventy-percent of the tales, and a couple of them were truly excellent, though that excellence only made the other stories more wan by comparison. The collection starts strong with Planetarium, a story about some young Mormon athletes whose spiritual leader tries to inspire them to quit masturbating. It goes about as poorly as you would expect, though the story’s turn from the slightly humorous to the slightly beautiful was one I hadn’t expected. The idea of running a blacklight over semen stains is one we all know about (and a temptation we’ll resist, if we’re smart, when at the hotel.) That Kirn takes this idea and turns it into the description of a starry (or at least semen-y) firmament was a kind of masterstroke (no pun intended.)
Toward the Radical Church is a near-perfect story about a farmer down on his luck, with two adult sons and a plan to go to New York for help. It says a lot pride, shame, pity, fatherhood, modernism, and a dozen other subjects without making its point too loud. A lot of times postmodern writers of the short story are so distrustful of subtext or even meaning that they eschew it altogether, trusting nothing but episodic existentialism. The trick is to make it seem like the stories are just a string of meaningless events while putting the meaning in there. Too often writers succeed too well in the former task, and forget about the latter. Here Kirn gets the equation not just right, but perfectly so.
Also high quality (and very Carver-esque) is Devil of a Curve, about a tow truck driver who’s so lonely that his only companions are the people he rescues on the road. Kirn, like the Coen Brothers or Bob Dylan, grew up in a very cold state, and so knows both the charms and desolations of a long winter all too well. We don’t feel pity for the narrator, but we do feel for him, which makes the story more effective than outright sentimental.
There are a couple of clunkers in the collection, too, though. The eponymous My Hard Bargain is a story about a young man coming to terms with the concept of death by watching his dog die while on a road trip. It’s not exactly maudlin, but it’s too episodic and scattered to really hold together. Continuous Breathing Relief, about an acrimonious relationship between a liberated woman and her boyfriend, also comes off as petulant and annoying, much like its characters. Mutual recriminations between couples who don’t like each other can be grist for all kinds of good stories, from murder mysteries to comedies. But here you just get all the unpleasantness of having to hang out with these people without Kirn quite finding a way to transcend the pettiness of his characters. Rather than extricating them from the muck he just gets pulled down there with them and dirties himself in the process.
All in all, though, it’s a solid collection, well-worth reading for those who like the kinds of short stories that used to appear in The New Yorker and Playboy. Hell, maybe they still do publish such stories in The New Yorker; I wouldn’t know as I haven’t read it for years. As for Playboy, do they even still publish?
September 1, 2019
Some stories I enjoyed; others, not so much.
September 25, 2012
Loved it. I read it when it was first published and fell a little bit in love with Walter Kirn. I think I've read everything he's written since, including numerous magazine articles. Maybe it's because he's my age, he's a lapsed Mormon too, and that he has lived in the west-- whatever it is, he speaks to me.
January 23, 2011
I recommend everyone, everyone, read the short story in this called 'Planetarium.' Everyone.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews