All Things, All at Once

New and Selected Stories

Lee K. Abbott

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9780393343199
• Subtopic: Literature General

The long-awaited new collection from Lee K. Abbott, "Cheever's true heir, our major American short story writer" (William Harrison).

Here are stories about fathers and sons, stories about men and women, and stories about the relationships between men by one of our most gifted story writers. The narrator of "The Who, the What and the Why," begins breaking into his own house as a sort of therapy after his daughter dies. In "The Human Use of Inhuman Beings," the main character realizes that his closest relationship is to an angel, who appears to him only to announce the death of loved ones. All Things, All at Once reminds us why Lee K. Abbott is to be treasured: his perfect pitch for tales of hapless Southwesterners, his way with sympathetic irony, his eye that skillfully notes the awkward humiliations—common heartbreak, fractured families—and records it all in lyrical, affectionate language. In tales new and from previous collections Abbott examines lived life and the lies we necessarily tell about it.

Table of contents

• COVER
• OTHER WORKS
• TITLE
• DEDICATION
• CONTENTS
• EPIGRAPH
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• NINETY NIGHTS ON MERCURY
• AS FATE WOULD HAVE IT
• CATEGORY Z
• DREAMS OF DISTANT LIVES
• GRAVITY
• HOW LOVE IS LIVED 
IN PARADISE
• LOVE IS THE CROOKED THING
• MARTIANS
• MEN OF ROUGH PERSUASION
• ONE OF STAR WARS, 
ONE OF DOOM
• REVOLUTIONARIES
• SWEET CHEEKS
• THE ELDEST OF THINGS
• THE END OF GRIEF
• THE FINAL PROOF OF FATE 
AND CIRCUMSTANCE
• THE TALK 
TALKED BETWEEN WORMS
• THE HUMAN USE 
OF INHUMAN BEINGS
• THE VALLEY OF SIN
• THE VIEW OF ME FROM MARS
• THE WAY SIN IS SAID IN
 WONDERLAND
• THE WHO, THE WHAT, AND 
THE WHY
• WHAT Y WAS
• WHEN OUR DREAM WORLD
 FINDS US, AND THESE 
HARD TIMES ARE GONE
• X
• ABOUT THE AUTHOR
• PRAISE
• COPYRIGHT