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    American Salvage: Stories
    American Salvage: Stories
    American Salvage: Stories
    Audiobook6 hours

    American Salvage: Stories

    Written by Bonnie Jo Campbell

    Narrated by Jeffrey Brick, Stevie Ray Dallimore, Andrea Gallo and Ken Marks

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    About this audiobook

    The fiction of Bonnie Jo Campbell has been honored with the Pushcart Prize, the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and Southern Review’s Eudora Welty Prize. In this stunning collection—a National Book Award finalist—Campbell paints unapologetically frank portraits of broken souls striving for redemption.

    In rural Michigan, the American dream, if it ever existed, lies discarded like so much rusty scrap metal. For the inhabitants of Campbell’s tales, the real truth of life can be found in industrial accidents, soul-deadening labor, and the comfort of five drinks too many. But even amid the despair of meth labs and
    empty pocketbooks, Campbell’s characters yearn for something, anything, to raise them above it all—and sometimes, impossibly, they find it.

    “Readers … will feel salvaged and transformed by this gutsy book’s fierce compassion.”—Booklist, starred review
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMay 21, 2010
    ISBN9781449808754
    Author

    Bonnie Jo Campbell

    Bonnie Jo Campbell is the author of three previous books, including ‘American Salvage’, a National Book Award finalist.

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    Reviews for American Salvage

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    • 4/5
      Meth labs, suicides, drinking and drugs, all kinds of abuse -- these are the themes of stories usually set in my adopted state of Missouri rather than my home state of Michigan. But I suppose that desperation and despair have no boundaries of state lines. I don't know how she does it, but Bonnie Jo Campbell makes (most of) these characters sympathetic and yes, even hopeful.My favorite story was about Marylou, the young girl who got revenge on her uncle for raping her by shooting off the tip of his...well, can't go there. You've just got to read these remarkable stories for yourself.
    • 4/5
      (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)I recently found myself with the opportunity to interview revered author Bonnie Jo Campbell for the CCLaP Podcast; and so before doing so, I thought it would be beneficial to read her two most popular books besides the one I've already read (2011's Once Upon a River, that is, considered by many to be a frontrunner for this year's Pulitzer). And indeed, it turned out to be quite important that I read her 1999 breakout novel Q Road before talking with her, because it turns out to be a clever sort of prequel/sequel to the Once Upon a River title we'll mainly be discussing; set on the cusp of the new millennium, it tells the story of the "last hurrah" of sorts for a rural farmland area just outside of Kalamazoo, Michigan before finally succumbing to the capitalist steamroller of exurban subdivisions, chain restaurants and pristine golf courses, an Altmanesque interrelated ensemble character piece in which one of the characters (teenage tomboy and child bride Rachel Crane) just happens to be the daughter of the main character of Once Upon a River (the even more hardcore tomboy Margo Crane), only with the newer novel set in the older 1970s and examining Margo's own teenage years as a tight-lipped, sharpshooting pregnant runaway.And in fact you can look at all three of these books in much the same light (including the slim 2009 story collection American Salvage, the third title in this list); they are all episodic in nature, take a sympathetic and nonjudgemental look at the kinds of characters we would traditionally call dumb white trash, yet can frequently reach a level of poetic harshness and violence akin to a Sam Shepard play, stories that don't excuse the behavior of the meth addicts, racists and uneducated hillbillies that populate her universe but that don't dismiss such characters either, an attitude that I'm sure at least partly stems from Campbell's own background as a willful tomboy in this exact kind of rural Michigan environment (but more on that in the finished podcast episode, coming next week). Powerful and unflinching, yet beautiful and easily readable, it's no surprise after reading these three books that Campbell would have the kind of intensely passionate fanbase that she does, as well as racking up such academic tentpoles as a Pushcart Prize, Eudora Welty Prize, National Book Award nomination and National Book Critics Circle Award nomination; and I wholeheartedly recommend them all to a general audience.Out of 10: Q Road: 9.4American Salvage: 9.0
    • 5/5
      Campbell probes deeply into the minds of the down-on-their-luck characters who inhabit this short-story collection. Using the omniscient third-person point of view, she explores the contradictions of each character’s feelings and shows how people in similar situations can behave so differently from one another. By allowing readers to understand more than one character in such detail, Campbell heightens the tension; in stories such as “King Cole’s American Salvage,” it becomes obvious that their opposing desires must collide.
    • 1/5
      This collection of short stories was purposeless and less than entertaining. Not a single story had a lesson or point of view that could somehow teach you something, about yourself or the characters. While it seems like the stories should be life-like or based on true events, not a single one seems believable.
    • 5/5
      American Salvage is a collection of short stories by author Bonnie Jo Campbell. She writes about rural, working class people of Michigan, people who once thought they could attain the American Dream but have long since given up and become the broken, damaged and discontented who can’t see beyond the downward spiral that their life has taken.Although this was not a comfortable read, the author writes stories that are detailed, heart-felt and peopled with characters that feel authentic and real. This is an author who knows how to explore the lives of the desperate and drug-addicted and in doing so, reaches into the heart of America with some painful truths about what life is like for those who found themselves falling short.As with all short story collections, I found some of these stories resonated a little more strongly with me than others, but overall the depth and richness of her writing, the poignant and painful lives she reveals, and the eye-opening rust belt mentality she describes make American Salvage a riveting and unique read.
    • 5/5
      Every story in this brilliant collection is alive and real. The characters, with all their problems, hopes, and sadness will speak to you no matter who you are. Existence is day-to-day here, as I guess it is for most Americans, and Campbell writes with an insight and clarity that is beautiful and rare. Most impressive are the relationships she depicts between men and women, but the setting and details of each story are also precise and perfect. You owe it to yourself to read this one.
    • 3/5
      A group of short stories that all take place in Michigan. I am sure there are people, maybe a lot of them living this way and they sure don't make you want to live in Michigan. The stories for the most part are about people and ways of life that stopped progressing after the 1970's. Except the wide open use of Meth. The problem with nearly all of the stories, is there is no conclusion to them, they just end. This is fine for a couple of stories but not every one of them.
    • 5/5
      I've read two of Bonnie Jo Campbell's novels ([Once Upon a River] and [Q Road]) and loved them both. But with this collection of short stories, her talent and range are even more evident. The stories are set in Campbell's home state of Michigan, and they provide stark snapshots of criminals and meth addicts, of struggling farmers and washing machine repairmen, of people whose stories usually go untold. The details in these stories will stick with me. The young girl, a victim of sexual assault, aiming her shotgun at the tip of her uncle's penis. The brains seeping from the head of a junkyard owner who was robbed and fell into the snow. The smell of the boar, purchased for $25, on his last legs because the former owners had tried (and failed) to castrate him. These stories were not easy to read, but they made me admire the way that Campbell paints a picture and took me into worlds much different than my own. But even more than these details, I was impressed by the tender and sometimes surprising emotions that the characters exhibited toward one another. Against all odds, there were glimmers of hope, of empathy, of joy, and of love. An excellent collections of stories.
    • 3/5
      I'm surprised this got a National Book award nomination because there is nothing outstanding about it. It's well written, if a little conservative. And the tales are unremittingly grim. I think only two stories Stormy Weather and Boar Taint offer any form of redemption. Most are close third but if there is anything that deserves our attention it is the way she approaches the idea of story since most are more like gloomy slices of a hopeless life, with the last two paragraphs offering a summary. There is no possibility of change or epiphany, recognition won't ease anyone's circumstances so the best we can hope for is a mild shift in perspective. And in that sense they are very modern and very true since they represent a very cohesive world view of Michigan. The first story is the most interesting in that it risks more in terms of structure and approach but again, it is only this bleak continuance of one's life that is noteworthy. The violence is non sensational and no different from the other kind of violence going on.
    • 3/5
      American Salvage is a collection of 14 short stories that was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. All of the stories are set in Michigan, near Kalamazoo or towns close by. (In her acknowledgements, Bonnie Jo Campbell writes "the events and characters depicted in these pages are fictional, but my hometown of Comstock, Michigan, where many of these stories could have taken place, is very real.")

      These are people more than down-on-their-luck; they have, in many cases, been victims of abuse or other crimes. They are meth addicts and alcoholics. In many cases, they are (or were) hard-working and unable to rise above their circumstances, either because of personal fallibles or those of the people in their lives. They're not all that easy to like, and their stories aren't easy ones to listen to.

      I think they are important stories, difficult as they are, because these are the stories of so many people on the edges and fringes of society. These are the stories of the people whom we interact with and encounter in our daily life. While they might not be identical to those of the people and stories in American Salvage, and their circumstances might be different, there are more people in these types of situations than I think many of us realize (or want to realize). And with the way the economy is going, there will be more people in these circumstances.

      Because of the importance of these stories, I really wished that I liked this collection much more than I did. Still, the characters seemed to blend into each other from one story to another, and at times I honestly had to check and see if I wasn't repeating myself listening to a story I'd already heard. Several also ended abruptly; I was listening to this on audio and at times thought something went amiss with the CD.

      That's not to say that there aren't a few gems in this collection. I loved "World of Gas" and "Fuel for the Millennium," which both have the doomsday Y2K preparations as their theme. (They also seem connected.) In "World of Gas," I really enjoyed the character of Susan and could visualize her so easily because Campbell did a wonderful job of making her character so authentic and vivid.

      Another story worth mentioning is "The Solutions to Brian's Problem," which is the matter of Brian's wife being a meth addict and the ravages of her addiction on himself and their child. The entire story is not even four pages long, but it is one of the most poignantly written ones included in American Salvage and an example of tight, precise, high-impact writing.

      I listened to the audio version of American Salvage and appreciated that there were four different narrators, which alternated from each story. That made it easy for me to readily identify where I was when I hadn't been listening for awhile. At times, there did seem to be slightly longer than usual pauses between sentences, but that only occurred on a few stories and was a characteristic of one narrator as opposed to a consistent issue throughout the production.
    • 4/5
      Really good writing, brings to mind a female, slightly more contemporary take on Breece D'J Pancake's territory. Dark stuff -- the characters are all injured in one way or another -- but very well done. It's all classic and not show-offy in the least. The last story, "Boar Taint," called to mind Flannery O'Connor's "Greenleaf," though with an upbeat ending -- probably the most optimistic story in the collection. Now I'm really sorry it didn't win the NBA.
    • 4/5
      This was narrated by Recorded Books “in house troupe” and I don’t know if that is good or bad. Does this troupe perform all of Recorded Books books now? Or maybe this was just a way not pay all the narrators? I’m not sure but it just seemed shady, but before every story the particular reader is named so that is good.Sorry I’m addicted to audiobooks and I’m now obsessed with giving kudos to the readers.As to the stories themselves, they are some fine working class “realist” fiction with a feminist bent. What’s not to like? So they are up my alley, but I require a little more from the language. Anything that can be so neatly pigeon is a little too easy for me, which is funny because I’m pretty most sure people thought these stories were hardcore-Dorothy-Alison-of-the-North-type sh*t. I guess I’m desensitized.Still, the line “I’ve been burned! Badly burned!” has been stuck in my head for weeks. I can’t wait to read Once Upon a River.
    • 5/5
      A book of excellent short stories, subtile yet hard-hitting. These stories concern poor whites in the small-town and rural Midwest. We have tens of millions of these people in America, but their existence is hardly even acknowledged in our time. The stories reveal what difficult lives they often lead, but our country tries to pretend they do not exist or that they themselves should be blamed for their disagreeable, often desperate, circumstances. As we grow ever-more oriented to the wants, desires and ideology of the rich, these peoples' lives become ever worse. Kudus to Bonnie Jo Campbell for giving us such a readable and sympathetic description of them.
    • 3/5
      Bonnie Jo Campbell's American Salvage contains experiments with form, such as "The Solutions to Brian's Problem", but it's the setting that ties all these stories together: the vast stretches of rural America--small one-industry towns, blighted landscapes, poor and desperate people. Campbell skillfully ratchets up the emotional intensity: the intense pain of a serious burn slides into the ecstasy of sex which climbs into Catholic passion; blood features prominently throughout, as does asphalt, and alcohol. Few of these stories have resolution; most often, something is immanent--either action or reaction remains to be resolved just beyond the margins of the text. When there is resolution, it is tentative and provisional. A crack is patched, an excuse found, a life or relationship will hold together for a while longer, perhaps. Most of Campbell's characters have their private sorrows, which define them more clearly than their circumscribed social lives. It's gripping reading, but there's something suspect in the ease with which the reader is drawn into Campbell's world. Race is rarely mentioned, but these stories seem to be about white people's lives; a strange choice when race is so large an issue in rural America. And the characters, no matter how distasteful or unlikeable on the surface, are revealed to be complex and fascinating people. Campbell has taken the much-maligned rural American (the farmer, the factory worker) and rehabilitated--or perhaps redeemed--him. In these stories, he suffers, he yearns, he holds out work-scarred hands, gazes out of wise eyes, and invites the reader to share his sorrow and pain. Campbell has given this cast of characters, so often denigrated or overlooked in the story of America, a voice--but would their real-world counterparts recognize it? In any case, readers who hear that voice will likely find it both moving and memorable.
    • 3/5
      A good collection of short stories. Their central theme seemed to be that life is tough, but if we would just take the time we would find poignancy and meaning where we do not see it at first.
    • 4/5
      This collection of short stories portrays the lives of the poor, struggling underbelly of American life with compassion but honestly. Some stories, particularly "The Yard Man" stick with me.
    • 3/5
      American Salvage, a product of the Made in Michigan Writers Series at Wayne State University Press Detroit, is a collection of fourteen short stories written by Bonnie Jo Campbell. Each of these stories is set in down-and-out rural Michigan. Most of the characters are damaged by poverty. Some of these families are laboring under poverty so exhaustive that it seemingly offers no hope for a better life. Simple things can be a crisis for these families: the gas bill, dinner, school shoes for a child. These things rise to the level of crisis because the characters cannot conceive of the long term because the short term necessarily commands all of their effort and attention. For the most part this is all they have ever known. They believe that they are doing all they can but not gaining any ground. Consequently, they fall into a belief that they are at the mercy of "others," whether it be the family, the boss or the government (Y2K!) They feel powerless against these forces. This is best illustrated by a young girl from The Inventor. "She has long imagined her future spreading out before her, gloriously full of love and discovery; she has been waiting for the future to arrive like a plate full of fancy appetizers in a restaurant, like a lush bunch of roses placed in her arms, like the biggest birthday cake with the brightest candles, baked and lit by people who love her." This is a response and an accommodation of poverty; not imagining she could go out and create a future for herself, difficult as it would surely be. My two favorite things: This is my favorite quote from the collection: "It landed with a resounding clang on the pile of catalytic converters- mostly they were dirty and rusted from the slush and mud and road salt, but each of their bodies contained a core of platinum." This is from King Cole's American Salvage. The character in this scene performs back-breaking labor outside in all types of weather, for little money, in an auto salvage yard, but he has plans and determination and resolve to make a better life for himself. This may sound odd to compare human potential to a catalytic converter but I take the quote as a metaphor. Some of us don't look like much on the outside but there's a valuable core of promise.My favorite character is Jill from Boar Taint. She has discovered a way of coping with her economic circumstances. She indulges herself by buying gourmet chocolate bars one at a time. She keeps them in her underwear drawer and breaks off one square each night until the bar is gone. Then she goes out and buys another. This small act says that Jill still believes she is valuable; that she does indeed have a core of platinum.American Salvage has won an impressive number of awards: 2010 Michigan Notable Awards, 2010 National Book Critic Circle Book Award, Stuart and Venice Gross Award for Excellence in Literature from SVSU, 2009 National Book Award Finalist, and the 2009 ForeWord Book of the Year Award. If you are a fan of realist American regionalism (as I am) and a fan of short stories (ditto) then you may find many things to like in this collection. However, if you are not a fan of these genres then you should probably pass by American Salvage. It is not for the faint of heart.And remember that love does not conquer meth!!
    • 5/5
      While reading this remarkable collection of stories, I thought of shopping for fresh fruit. How, when making your selection, you choose the healthiest, most robust piece, overlooking the mottled, unhealthy ones. The discards. This describes the people in these tales, with their bruised and damaged lives, living on the fringes, in this case rural or small town Michigan. Ex-cons, drug-dealers, struggling families and survivalists, to name a few. Campbell is an exceptional writer, with a fine ear for the rhythms of everyday life. She does not condemn or judge these characters, but gives them an honest, unflinching, sometimes heart-rending examination. Highly recommended!
    • 4/5
      Rural Joyce Carol Oates on meth.
    • 4/5
      The writing here is first class. Campbell is probably one of the few writers today who can portray so accurately the lives of the unemployed, the disheartened and broken-hearted, the redneck and uneducated - in short people who are down on their luck or who've never had a chance for a decent life. There are drug addicts and drunks here, child molesters and rape victims, junk dealers and dirt farmers, and they are all so real you'd swear you might have met them somewhere. Perhaps the most recurrent theme in this slim volume of stories is one of near hopelessness. I guess if I'm gonna be honest here, the only real reason I didn't give this book five stars is because the stories are just too damn depressing. But they say you should write about what you know, and Campbell obviously knows her subjects, these awful characters who live along the margins of our society, in this case in southwest Michigan, where most of the blue collar factory jobs have long gone south. Home cooked meth is the drug of choice here and things in general seem pretty bleak. One wonders what Bonnie Jo Campbell sees in these people or why she chooses to write about them. There are clues to this scattered here and there, however, as in the title story's last line. A junk yard employee who was nearly an accessory to murder is stripping catalytic converters off old cars and throwing them on a pile - "mostly they were dirty and rusted from the slush and the mud and road salt, but each of their bodies contained a core of platinum."Campbell has lived among these people. Hell, probably many of them are friends of hers. And she sees value in these beaten down people consigned to the junkyards of American society. She knows God doesn't make junk. She looks for the core, for the valuable, for the soul. She looks for the salvageable. This will be a hard sell to recommend. The subject is just too blatantly bleak. But this woman can write!
    • 4/5
      Solid craftsmanship, a fearless imagination, and a complete lack of corrosive, cynical piety and pity make this collection of short stories exceptionally enjoyable.I share nothing with these characters except the right to trial by jury, and yet I was enrapt by them. I loved "The Solutions to Brian's Problem" the best, since I never expect to see a male PoV on abuse by women. This book is seething with the rage of characters whose lives turned out bad, as in the TV series "Breaking Bad," and are flat-out irredeemably broken. This same territory was trodden by Barbara Ehrenreich in Nickel and Dimed from the factual PoV...it was revolting to read that book, it hurt me in ways I can't recover from, but Bonnie Jo Campbell has brought home to me the true emotional cost of indifference.I don't thank her for that.But I do recommend the book highly.
    • 2/5
      There is something wrong with this set of stories and it's not the setting, the intention to sorrid detail or the characters themselves. The attempts at "hope" or "honor"--even respect--are bits and pieces that are overwhelmed by the bathos and lost characters. In the title story, the catylitic converter ripped from the Olds is tossed on a heap with others, each with a touch of platinum in it--its touch of value. That's a symbolic trick that is not a way to redeam these characters, this town, these stories. Yet, we don't leave these characters or settings after we close the book--they linger in the mind and heart, ignoble as they are. Skip the clever short story tricks and look at the dirt and pain. Flannery O'Connor of Michigan it is not.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely amazing. These stories of folks living on the lower rungs of the ladder in rural Michigan are full of emotional and literary knock-out punches. Although many of the people populating these stories are physically and emotionally scarred, they all feel genuinely real and knowable. Depicting the dark clouds of poverty, pain, abuse and addiction most of the stories also have a glimmer of a silver lining - hope, love, comfort, connection. Campbell is particularly adept at describing the dark places that love can take us. Unbelievable. I hope that being a National Book Award finalist gets Bonnie Jo Campbell out of obscurity and into the literary limelight she deserves. I could hug the person who brought this book to my attention.
    • 4/5
      American Salvage is "Northern Gothic", Flannery O'Connor transported to rural MI with Finns and Germans and snow and mud (and no religion). Although only 166 pages, the stories are dense with atmosphere and character, and like the best fiction, it leaves a deep impression of a place and people. Most of the characters are on the surface grotesque, discarded bodies in a salvage yard, but underneath there is a "core of platinum" ("King Cole's American Salvage") - survivors in the rough that continue living despite disabilities. Physically injured men, addiction, sexual abuse and emotionally scarred women figure prominent in these stories - it's unpleasant to look; but Campbell usually leaves a bit of light at the end, something to keep us going, too. I look forward to reading more by this wonderful author.
    • 5/5
      In American Salvage, National Book Award finalist Bonnie Jo Campbell sought to portray the lives of America’s working poor in her native Michigan and the timeliness of this story collection is striking. With unemployment still hovering at around 10%, and with Michigan unemployment near 15%, Campbell highlights the unemployed and the underemployed, the down and out, and the practically there, but in doing so she portrays working class characters that don’t give up even with the odds stacked against them and, in the end, she allows them to let hope emerge. Things may seem hopeless here, but these characters prove that just the opposite is true.Each story shows, through its quirky characters and desperate circumstances, the strong character traits needed to survive in the yawning depths of economic disaster. Impossible to put down, each story had me laughing until the circumstances changed on a dime and I was near tears. The settings of each story are littered with rusted cars, camouflage clothes, missing teeth, lack of insurance, methamphetamine, whiskey bottles, busted-up marriages and, just for good measure, the author throws in a large dose of plain old bad luck. In “The Burn” down and out character Jim Lobretto is having what can only be described as a Murphy’s Law kind of day. He picks up a girl at the bowling alley and offers to drive her home only to learn as they pull out of the parking lot that she still lives with her parents twenty miles out of town. On his way back, he stops for gas but only has $3 for gas, $3 for cigarettes and $1 for coffee. In getting the coffee, he drops the cup and splatters coffee all over himself and the woman ahead of him in line. Out at the gas pump, he overfills his tank and gas runs down his right thigh and knee. Back on the road again, he gets pulled over for going through a stop light. As he’s waiting for the policeman, he tries to light a cigarette but the match ignites his pants where the gas spilled. The dialogue up to this point is hysterical but the foreboding language leads you to know something bad is coming down the pike, and the comedy of errors is going to end pretty badly. Campbell skillfully transitions to the painful ending to the story.Along the way, Campbell throws out more than a few gems:“It occurred to Susan that men were always waiting for something cataclysmic—love or war or a giant asteroid. Every man wanted to be a hot-headed Bruce Willis character, fighting against the evil foreign enemy while despising the domestic bureaucracy. Men wanted to focus on just one big thing, leaving the thousands of smaller messes for the women around them to clean up.” (Page 34, “World of Gas”)And from “King Cole’s American Salvage,” Page 129:“Johnny went back to work and started scrapping out a Lincoln Town Car. King was watching him, and it made Johnny conscious of his own breath forming a cloud that hung around him, a cloud that kept him down here on the oily, hard-packed dirt of the salvage yard, down here wearing his greasy clothes, picking through the piles of engines and axles with his filthy hands, down in this neighborhood of ramshackle houses with dogs barking in the torn up yards.”You know you’re in the hands of a master here and she delivers. Highly recommended.