2024 BOOK REVIEW #23: COOL FOR AMERICA STORIES BY ANDREW MARTIN

I’ve had a stretch of bookless weeks with elections, classes, lots of magazines to read, a few family dramas, and working on stories related to forced motel evacuations.

I went back to Andrew Martin for my latest read, giving me updated Raymond Carver vibes for the inbetweener overly educated, direction free, region hopping and underemployed set still in extremely messy relationships mode.

This is earlier work than the “Early Work” I previously read and critiqued, with a collection of short stories which appeared in journals like The Paris Review and marked the start of Martin’s career as a bonafide writer.

On his website, Martin calls it a “follow-up to a classic-in-the making.”

Some of the characters reappear and struggle with what the NYTimes called a “lingering post-adolescence” without the constraints of having to go to school anymore but without a safety net and winds starting to whip around on their high and alcohol fueled beam of unpredictable coolness.

At their age, with their detachment and self deprecation, the characters can still somewhat handle their meltdowns, but for how long?

His next book promised on his Instagram is called Down Time, while he had a short story called Lovefool published in Harper’s earlier this year, indicating that “Bad times call for long short stories.”