The Least You Need to Know: Stories

By Lee Martin

Book Overview

Lee Martin's own distinctive voice has the qualities of his favorite setting: the commonplace and middle-class turned over with a searchlight of want and need to know. Morticians and insurance men, salesmen and farmers; women hoping to make life more beautiful and less pressing with delicate, bewildering hobbies and necessary flirtations; boys who veer from shame to pride, from decency to irredeemable wrongs, in an afternoon; people who do not quite recover, during the time of our acquaintance, but do not give up gracefully. Lee Martin was born in Illinois. He earned his MFA from the University of Arkansas, and his Ph.D. From the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His stories have been widely published in journals including The Georgia Review, Story, Double-Take, New England Review, Prairie Schooner , and Glimmer Train Stories . He received a Nebraska Arts Council Fellowship in Fiction (1995) as well as Individual Arts Fellowships in Fiction from the Ohio Arts Council (1987) and the Tennessee Arts Commission (1989).

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0964115131
• ISBN13: 9780964115132
• Release Date: January 1996
• Publisher: Sarabande Books
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.66 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.6" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Comparable to Salinger

One of the best short story collections I have read. Comparable in many ways to Salinger.

Dominant fathers with feet of clay and quirky artistic moms.

First off, this is a beautifully designed book, a wonderful art object in its own right. Most of the stories are set in the midwest, and feature troubled adolescent boys trying to figure out the world in the context of dysfunctional and poignant family settings. A great book for classroom use as well, due to the incredible imagination and storytelling skill-Lee Martin takes historical reality and asks "what if?"