Jonathan Franzen said of David Means, “Means’s stories are harrowing and funny and full-blooded, consistently satisfying in their narrative twists, and lyrical in a way that makes most contemporary literary ‘lyricism’ sound greeting cards.”

I couldnÂ’t agree more, which made it all the more difficult to move on to another book after finishing MeansÂ’s latest collection, Instructions for a Funeral.

The stories in this collection are gritty and visceral. The authenticity in some make them seem autobiographical, while others read lores or tales around a campfire.

In each story, as Franzen said, there is a peerless lyricism - poetic, intelligent, and adroit. MeansÂ’s sentences are winding mountain paths, full of life, treacherous and massed.

“Farewell, My Brother,” one of my favorites, imagines the narrator seeing this brother talking to a group of men at the edge of a parking lot at a substance abuse treatment facility. He imagines what they might be saying and how their evening (and life) will culminate. The narrator acts as a sort of director filming a scene, but by the story’s end, the camera is turned on him. I read this story, and then read it again. And again, its power increasing with each try.

MeansÂ’s writing is full of wisdom and a confident clarity of voice that only comes from a life truly lived.

Perhaps IÂ’m overly sensitive to injustice, but nothing provokes me to write a review more than seeing a dazzling book groundlessly disparaged (or even worse, disregarded) on Goodreads.

Many of the on here are quite simply wrong, the one-star , criminally.

Instructions for a Funeral is masterfully written by a writer on par with Carver or Denis Johnson or even Chekhov.

I suspect this will be my favorite collection of short stories this year, a year in which I read Cortazar and Munro.best-of-2019 underrated-reads20 s Bandit4,746 530

Where do I even start with this one? All that praise, all the accoladesÂ…and yet the bookÂ’s barely readable. There are too many puns one can make in relation to the title, suffice it to say Means certainly doesnÂ’t put fun in the funeral. There are meant to be slice of life stories, blue collar to no collar, very realistic sort of thing, low on plot and heavy on details. Yes, you get the ideaÂ…but the execution is soporific at best. Rambling protracted sentences, paragraph free, more often than not dialogue free, stream of consciousness tedium. This is actually exactly the sort of thing literary prizes drool over, Means even managed a Man Booker nomination ones, albeit long listed, but as far as sheer reading enjoyment goes thereÂ’s none here to be found. Longwinded dreary monotony posing as literature. If read aloud this would produce limp finger snaps instead of a rousing applause. Then again this is probably exactly the sort of thing some readers go crazy for and it just didnÂ’t work for me. Who knows. I can definitely understand what the author was going for, the grace of ordinary an all that, but there are different and considerably superior , not to mention infinitely more readable, ways of getting there. I started this, got fifth or so of the way in and had to put it down, picked it back up two days later determined to finish, completist , and at no time were there any redeeming qualities discovered for this reading experience. The only good thing about it was its brevity, although it still manages to read long due to dense text and lack of any kind of excitement or reader engagement or pleasure. My only instructions for this book would be avoid at all costs. Thanks Netgalley.18 s Aimee Dars1,035 93

David Mean's short story collection, Instructions for a Funeral, contains provocative and heart-wrenching stories about fatherhood, relationships, addiction, and regret. The title story, "Instructions for a Funeral" finds William Kenner delineating his last wishes to his lawyer and in so doing relating a betrayal by a friend and an encounter with organized crime. In "Terminal Artist," the narrator learns that a friend he thought had died from complications from surgery during cancer treatment might have instead been the victim of an "angel of mercy." After challenging a rich town boy to a fight for saying he hated Okies, ranch hand Frankie catches the eye of Sarah Breeland who saw in him a complicated kindness.

Two sets of stories are interconnected; the rest stand alone. However, the stories share common themes, one being a sense of fate, destiny, or premonition and how memory can retroactively give certain events or moments significance. For example, one character considers the time immediately before learning his wife had an affair: "On the penultimate day, as I now think of it, the point through which the rest of my life with Sharon would seem to bow, or, rather, bend, so that everything that transpired after that afternoon seemed to lead to the day when Sharon confessed to me, admitted that, yes, she had been seeing X, but that she had broken it off with him, let go of him, was how she put it." Forgiveness also appeared in multiple stories as did the creation of stories. Ultimately, all the stories seemed to have thematic cohesion with the exception of El Morro which didn't fit as well in the collection.

Overall, I d the writing style, but I did find some devices the author used to be distracting at best, at worst, irritating. In multiple stories, the phrase "I thought, I think" or a close variation is used a total of ten times. Although it points to the fallibility of memory and furthers the theme, the sheer volume of the phrase made it lose meaning. Another frequent device was a parenthetical comment followed by an exclamation point (e.g., "I still despise that phrase!" or "Yes, fucking navels!") which I found off-putting. Finally, the sentences and the paragraphs were unduly long. I found myself frequently rereading because I'd get lost in the prose. As I progressed through the book, I got more accustomed to the style, but it did make for a challenging reading experience.

I wasn't sure if we were to assume the same person narrated all the stories, but in any case, in many stories, the narrator was a writer and meditated on the art of writing (with two stories explicitly about writing). In "Terminal Artist," for example, the narrator reflects, "IÂ’d never be able to use her death in a story. IÂ’d have to find some other way, I thought." Several times, this idea of using the events in the narrative in a story arises. On the one hand, it is interesting to think of how stories are constructed from real-life events and then are manipulated and reformed by the author, but the idea came up so often, it felt overdone and lost effectiveness.

That said, I enjoyed the collection and came away feeling touched. Ultimately, it was through the stories and the retelling that the events gained meaning or, as Means describes it, provides a state of "deeper grace."

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an advance readerÂ’s copy in exchange for an honest review.netgalley short-stories14 s Miranda Dorothy2 1 follower

If you're looking for something easy, some of the other reviewers here, then perhaps head to the beach read section. But if you're willing to put in the work that a great author demands, David Means is the author for you. Each of his stories is carefully crafted, with each sentence he is meticulous in his word choice and structure. This book is a pleasure for those who care about writing as a craft. The New Yorker calls him a "radical among radicals." This reader couldn't have said it better.11 s Patrizia506 147

Racconti, riflessioni sulla scrittura, storie in embrione e progetti si uniscono in questa raccolta permettendoci di curiosare nel mondo di David Means. Di giocare col tempo come fa lui, che in poche righe concentra passato presente e futuro in un gioco di descrizioni dettagliate, azioni scomposte in fotogrammi, rivelando i pensieri e i sogni dei protagonisti e delle persone che li circondano.
Assistiamo così, ad esempio, al nascere di una storia d’amore, vissuta come possibilità futura e come passato, immortalando e aggiungendo particolari e sensazioni al ricordo condiviso anni dopo quando, un lungo matrimonio ormai consolidato, i due avrebbero superato la necessità di parlare a ogni costo, comprendendo che quel silenzio che prima li metteva a disagio era
“Ciò che diventava l’amore, una volta sedimentatosi nella storia, quando i giorni uno dopo l’altro erano scivolati alle spalle, perché la sensazione condivisa di avere un destino, iniziata quella notte durante la scazzottata, non se ne sarebbe mai andata”.racconti7 s Cherise WolasAuthor 4 books281

The second story collection by Means that I've read. Empathetic, attention to the small details in lives sometimes on the cusp, with temporal swerves. There is, as with the collection Two Nurses, Smoking, characters that seem to reappear in various of the stories, or the settings recur, across the collections. Also, as I found with the Two Nurses, the author appears in some of the stories, raising questions about his ability or the ability in general for literature to transform. All the stories here are intriguing, though not all interested me uniformly, but his work is so special and worthwhile. 2022-reading-challenge literary story-collections5 s Tonstant Weader1,252 74

Instructions for a Funeral is an extraordinary collection of fourteen short stories by David Means. In “Fistfight, Sacramento, August 1950”, a simple fistfight turns out to be fraught with history and symbolism. In “The Terminal Artist” a grieving family learns their beloved mother may not die a natural death but perhaps was killed by an overly enthusiastic mercy killer. The description of her loss after surgery was so perfect, “What was hoped for and what happened were at odds.” A story that will break your heart is “Farewell, My Brother” that begins and ends with five men smoking outside a halfway house in Brooklyn.

The title story “Instructions for a Funeral” struck me as hilarious, an angry man planning a vengeful funeral with terrific music. I also loved the superstitious gamblers in “The Ice Committee.” The artistry of “The Tree Line, Kansas, 1934” was in all it did not say and in the clever twists of phrasing such as “A hunch twists inside the sinews and bones, integrating itself into the physicality of the moment, whereas a gut feeling can only struggle to become a hunch, and, once it does, is recognized in retrospect as a gut feeling.” The final story “Two Ruminations on a Homeless Brother” broke my heart.


David Means manages to write sentences and paragraphs that run on for a page or more. In a way, he reminds me of Gabriel García Márquez in his ability to weave a sentence far longer than anyone should be able and not lose himself or the reader. I love the way he concretizes emotion into something corporeal. When we remember grief, we don’t remember the concept of grief, we remember the bodily pain and tension of grief. He understands that emotions are expressed in our bodies, not just on the surface..

“ It’s not just that no matter how often you sort and pick through the story, alongside your parents and your sister and everyone else, you can’t help but find yourself, against your better nature, feeling the big sway and spin of the cosmos—the dark eternal matter of the stars, which, however isotropic or evenly balanced, seem, when you think of him, to be moving in a circular pattern that reminds you that the nurse explained, each time, during each pre-visit orientation, that part of the healing process was to step off the merry-go-round and never step back on.”

I loved this book. I re-read every story.

I received a copy of Instructions for a Funeral from the publisher through NetGalley

Instructions for a Funeral at Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Macmillan
David Means interview on NPR


https://tonstantweader.wordpre...5 s Grace (9racereads)66 53

Full review here: https://9thstreetbooks.com/blog/two-m...

Overall, I d Instructions for a Funeral enough to finish it, but it was not in any means an easy read. At times I found myself skimming over sentences that, although beautifully crafted, seemed superfluous to the story. His writing felt stagnant at points, in some stories more than others, and I struggled at times to grasp what was happening, having to go back several times to reorient myself.
However, I emphasized with Means as a writer myself — lines such as “if I could get even a fraction of this down in some kind of pure form, I would be able to lean back, rest, and simply live in the world,” were poignant — and I felt as if I could grasp at least one of the reasons he was writing this collection.
Instructions for a Funeral had several great stories in it (“The Terminal Artist” being my personal favorite), though it was interspersed with sections that felt more Means’ own personal musings rather than stories, which slowed things down quite a bit. Maybe I will try reading this again when it is published and I am in a bit of a different mindset. I think that dedicating some more time to it in a reread would add some value.gifted5 s Mientras Leo1,569 184

Altibajos, como suele pasar4 s Mark1,466 126

“The problem is, my son sees the man I am now and not the men I was before I became the man I am now. The man I am now is a result of his presence in my life and therefore I'm not even close to being the man I was before he existed...”

“You get intense heat at the bottom of a very large pile of bullshit, you see, and in the smithy of that heat a few of the words congeal and solidify and become diamonds of truth, bright enough to send shafts of light through the cracks.”

I love a good story collection, especially by an author I have never read and [Instructions for a Funeral: Stories], fits that bill. It is so smart, introspective and beautifully written. He takes hard and tender looks, at fatherhood, marriage, addiction and murder. I can not recommend it high enough. It might be my favorite collection of the year...so far, anyway. Oh, yeah- That last quote is dedicated to our Commander in Chief.

story-collection4 s Bobbie530 75

These stories are bizarre but quite interesting. I'm still reading them, but so far my favorite is "The Terminal Artist" which puts a new spin on the Doctor Death (Kavorkian) tale. It's fiction yes,but it's so chilling you forget that it That story reads more an account straight from the newspapers, and reminded me also of The Tylenol Killer who I don't think they ever caught. Though some say he's the same person that was later the Una Bomber. Anyway, I enjoyed all of these stories; however, the one I d least was Frankie, My Brother I think.3 s Mircalla649 92

istruzioni e decostruzioni

Means torna al racconto, tiene la linea precedente, ma senza i picchi del romanzo che al momento è una delle cose più originali che siano state scritte negli ultimi anni, tra tutti spicca un racconto puro Carver, infatti si intitola Carver e Cobain (lui, Kurt) gli altri più o meno all'altezza, menzione speciale per Il Lamento del maggiordomo
nel complesso merita, in special modo per gli appassionati del racconto postmoderno, sia pure in scia di quelli che lo hanno preceduto, ma pur sempre abbastanza da farsi ricordarepostmoderni3 s AlanAuthor 12 books176

Not the sort of fiction I would normally go for I would have thought - the writer addresses the reader, writes about writing, and there are parentheses within parentheses within parentheses. Yet once I got going I was fully absorbed in them, so much so I didn't want the train to arrive on time as it meant I had to stop reading (with a page to go on the story!). Through the blizzard of wordiness comes a true clarity of vision, focusing on the tribulations of fatherhood, death, adultery, drugs, addiction, mental health. They truly dazzle.short-stories3 s Lolly K Dandeneau1,893 246

via my blog: https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/
'The problem is, my son sees the man I am now and not the men I was before I became the man I am not.'

I have conflicted feelings about this collection of stories. The best of it for me is in Fatherhood, The Problematic Father, “…the fact that my father was highly problematic at times came in part from that fact that he was dealing with me.” Have any truer words ever been spoken? We also don’t see all the versions of our fathers, who they were before they became simply, Dad. I think sometimes in reading we expect men to express the way they feel about their children and fatherhood in the same way mothers do and fault them for their genuine thoughts. How do you explain how it feels being a man, particularly a father, one who can “bear up under certain responsibilities”, about the limitations.

In Farewell, My Brother there is a line about a man named Frankie, ‘he’s one of those who came lumbering out of the vapor, his sway and his sea-dog talk marking him as an anomaly.’ What a gorgeous way to paint the picture for readers, David Means can certainly give life to his characters. His is a keen eye into decline, ruin. I feel a deep sense of detachment moving through so many of the characters, that hopeless feeling of pointlessness. There is suffering, sure, anyone alive suffers but even meeting the pulsing source, the cause which so much of the time is the life we’re living, doesn’t change much for us. Life can feel a mystery illness sometimes.

Carver and Cobain… “his mind is impenetrable, untraceable step by step through those last moments”, which makes me think, in many ways, our minds are always that, because we never can really express our pain, nor our joy whether we’re an award-winning author or ill-fated grunge star, can we? For Cobain it’s the end… the end… the end, isn’t it? Chronic pain, addiction only those living inside of it can understand the compulsion to obliterate it all. Is there a moment of regret at the very end, shocked awake when it’s too late?

It’s not that the writing is too intelligent for most readers, and there are depths to explore, but not all stories flowed, and I hate saying that because there is serious storytelling in here. In Rockland, the senseless ache, the realization that no amount of ‘humiliation’ will necessarily be a cure. You want to fuel that hope for your loved one, but it’s dying, a brother is trapped in a loop of his own addiction, and how do you find joy in the possibility of ‘flight’ as a means to an end to all that suffering. Some of us will never find our path, are fated to be lost in ourselves be it addiction or mental illness, even worse a combination of the two. For all the upbeat talk, the centers, the group homes, the medications and therapies, promises of salvation, for the moments light seems to return to our loved ones, outside in the real world the limitations of reality are waiting for our beloved to break themselves against all over again. The writing is astute but some readers may find the delivery difficult to follow.

Publication Date: March 5, 2019

Farrar, Straus and Giroux3 s Marybeth48 4

I very much enjoyed these stories. The collection seems to be part philosophy - very meta (a writer writing about writing or a narrator narrating about thinking about past thoughts) and part psychological - the characters process their own thoughts and actions in an interestingly developed way. The sentences are long and sometimes labyrinthine, but they are plenty descriptive. Means does a great job getting into the minds of the characters to dissect motivations and desires, whether positive or negative, and is unbiased in their portrayals.

Some stories have repetitive phrases that initially turned me off (I think I thought, So to speak, etc). It was distracting at first but as I kept reading I realized it was pretty much isolated to their own stories. I was also turned off by the style of writing at first, but I became accustomed after the third story and found it enjoyable through the end.

The Mighty Shannon, The Butler's Lament, and The Terminal Artist were my top three.

Thank you to Netgalley and Farrar, Straus and Giroux for providing an advance readerÂ’s copy in exchange for an honest review.?arc3 s Baz271 352

Worlds seen inside a glimpse. Means uses the short story to pause on a single frame, look closely at a moment. He makes time stand still while his narrators search for understanding, speculate about the past that led to it, and the future it designed, a future that was perhaps already present in it. And in these moments in the lives of desperate people, working class, often criminals and drug addicts, drifters, traumatized people who make bad choices, who fail and succumb to violence, Means finds grace and redemption. He writes these long, flowing, casually lyrical sentences that suck me in to their silent powerful vortex, and at their best the stories are exquisite. He writes about people on the margins of society with generosity and compassion, saying they are you and me, and gives them their rightful place in the cosmos.2 s Robert WechslerAuthor 13 books131

This was almost reading a first-rate story anthology, there is so much variety. The one aspect that characterizes most of the stories is a post-modern fascination with levels of thinking and remembering, where uncertainty and time differences prevail. Only the final two stories didnÂ’t work for me. Fine writing throughout.american-lit stories2 s Anthony Fagbore6 20

David Means,in my opinion is a master shirt stories writer.
Here,he pushes into a new territory writing with tenderness
about fatherhood,marriage,a homeless brother,nature of addiction,and the death of a friend at the hands of a serial -killer nurse.
Means stories evokes thinking and feeling. He present consciousness than ordinarily appears.2 s Robert Morgan Fisher600 16

Means really pushes himself here in ways not seen in his previous collections (I mean, masterpieces). All the stories here are informed by mortality--and humor, one of his grand gifts. I don't think any author inhabits the interiority of characters Means. "Tweeze apart" is a phrase one often reads in David's stories, and that's it, right there. He's the brain surgeon of short stories with an eye an electron microscope.

One other thing: Means is a secret poet. He wrote his thesis on Whitman. He's Denis Johnson in that way: he has the soul of a poet and he's not afraid to use it. Perhaps one day we'll see his poems but for now, the short stories are more than enough, dammit. 2 s wendy153 5

Though there were a couple of decent stories within the covers of this book, the overall book is a nightmare for to read. It is full of run-on sentences and huge paragraphs. The story line just drones on and on to the point where I actually put the book down numerous times because I could not keep my attention focused on the page. It was a nightmare to read not to mention remain objective. I am not one to give up on a book regardless of the layout of the page or the content of the story. So I persevered through it. As I stated earlier, there were a few good stories in there worth reading. If you have the time and patience, you will not be disappointed. 2 s Amie802 31

Thank you Netgalley, the publisher, and author for an advanced copy of this book.

When I initially saw this book (I did request based on the cover/title, and knew David Means was well-known, though I'd never read anything of his) I was interested. I was thinking I'd get some tongue-in-cheek, dark humor. Instead...I got really tired and bored.

After the first three stories failed to grab my attention, I'll admit I skimmed the rest. Long-winded run-on sentences are a pet peeve of mine. Ultimately, I felt no connection to the stories or characters.2019-reads arc contemporary ...more2 s Charlene412 14

The title and cover intrigued me greatly, but I was disappointed when I began reading. The writing was a bit convoluted and the unnecessary wordiness made it difficult to dive in and lose myself in the moment. The killer nurse one intrigued me, but then it was over before it really began. I think if it was streamlined and more concise, it would be more readable, but I'm guessing that's the author's writing style. It's just not my reading style. 2 s Kirsty2,724 175

I tried to read the first five stories in David Means' Instructions for a Funeral, but had no interest in any of them. I really did not enjoy the writing style, which consists of very long sentences that run on and on, largely with little point to them, and had no desire to follow the characters either. Not for me.abandoned august-2018 kindle2 s Ace BoggessAuthor 36 books105

This is a perfectly so-so book. The writing is sharp, but not that interesting. The stories have great ideas at their heart, but they rarely go beyond that. I loved the title piece and found a couple other stories compelling. Most, however, escaped my thoughts as soon as I finished them. Tastes are subjective, of course, and these stories weren't to mine. 2 s JaclynAuthor 55 books687

I love David MeansÂ’s short stories and these were no exception. His stories are always surprising and insightful and particularly American (not a criticism). I really enjoyed his first novel Hystopia a year or two ago but itÂ’s so good to have him back in his usual form. 2 s Jessica C618 57

I went in with high expectations for this book after seeing much of the praise for it on the internet. Unfortunately, it did not deliver at all.

Each story is one of those "slices of life" but it was so painfully hard to get through. I was bored by the lack of action, the lack of dialogue, the lack of character development. Nothing. I kept waiting for some greater meaning, some reason for why these stories were being told, but I didn't get that.

Instead, it felt I was reading disjointed thoughts from a journal, an unfinished work. I was so lost by half of it, and it took an immense effort to finish this book.*

*The only reason I did was because I received it as an ARC & wanted to fairly rate/review it. short-stories-or-anthology1 Fernando FernándezAuthor 2 books53

Lo dejo tras el sexto cuento, y luego de esforzarme en avanzar en el que da título al volumen. En parte es por la traducción, "se le acabó el chollo", "terminó en el talego", "su vida es una pizarra limpia", es un castellano fabricado a partir de la lectura de otras traducciones, suena impostado, se interpone entre las voces narrativas y el lector. De todas formas sospecho que en inglés tampoco funcionen del todo, en parte por entusiasmo del gran pestiño (Franzen) en su blurb, en parte por la estructura narrativa, muy alicatada y de MFA (taller literario), poco jugosa, como que se cansan los ojos al leer igual que la mandíbula masticando miga vieja, sin sabor.1 Vincent Scarpa611 172

Another knockout collection from David Means. After reading this one and his newest, I can’t wait to read the others that I’ve (foolishly!) missed. I must say that he might be the best ender of short stories *ever*. My favorites in this collection were “Fistfight, Sacramento, August 1950,” “The Ice Committee,” and the exquisite “Farewell, My Brother.” But each story here is really worth reading!1 mags the bags69

some were decent. too many parentheses overall1 Gabby77 1 follower

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