A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane

Rating:
Summary: Look who's reading!
Review: Barry Yourgrau manages to articulate your most bugged-out daydreams.--Adam Horovitz (Ad Rock of the Beastie Boys)

I can never remember my dreams, so Barry Yourgrau's stories are a pretty good substitute.--David Byrne

Odd, wild, and brilliant...--Patrick McGrath (Author of "Asylum" and "Spider")

A real comic gift...An identifiable world vision composed of considerable sadness, hilarity, anxiety, terror and sexual longing.--New York Times Book Review

Rating:
Summary: Thank you Barry
Review: I read this book several years ago when it first came out, and I loved it. I still like to go back to it every now and then, pluck one of the stories and savor it like a fresh grape.

Rating:
Summary: It's okay....
Review: I'm all for weird books and stories, but Barry Yourgrau's A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane was a bit too much for me. I liked (and could keep focused) about 25% of the short stories in this collection of flash fiction. Some of it was just too crazy for me, and some were crazy but with some substance to them. I think it would be interested to take some of Yourgrau's more substantial short fiction and turn them into movies -- depending on who does it and how it's done, of course. Take everything literally, and you'll just have a Rene Magritte movie that doesn't really make sense.

Hey! Excellent way to explain Yourgrau and probably a great compliment to him as a writer -- his writings can be greatly compared to Magritte's art. Enough sad. If it's your "thing," then you'll love it. If you need a bit more to hold a story together, then you may be driven crazy.

Rating:
Summary: It's okay....
Review: I'm all for weird books and stories, but Barry Yourgrau's A Man Jumps Out of an Airplane was a bit too much for me. I liked (and could keep focused) about 25% of the short stories in this collection of flash fiction. Some of it was just too crazy for me, and some were crazy but with some substance to them. I think it would be interested to take some of Yourgrau's more substantial short fiction and turn them into movies -- depending on who does it and how it's done, of course. Take everything literally, and you'll just have a Rene Magritte movie that doesn't really make sense.

Hey! Excellent way to explain Yourgrau and probably a great compliment to him as a writer -- his writings can be greatly compared to Magritte's art. Enough sad. If it's your "thing," then you'll love it. If you need a bit more to hold a story together, then you may be driven crazy.

Rating:
Summary: I LOVE THIS BOOK
Review: This is one of my favorite books of all time, one of the funniest books I have ever read. Barry Yourgrau is a genius. I read this book a long time ago and have always had a hard time finding copies. I give good books to my friends all the time, and I'm thrilled that this is being reissued and now I'll be to find copies for myself and other people. Definitely read this book. Everyone I have given it to loves it. And I just read his new book, The Haunted Traveler. It's great, read them both, but read this one first.

Rating:
Summary: BEASTIE BOYS!
Review: You cant see it in that little picture but thats a quote from Ad Rock from the Beastie Boys that looks like it's coming out of the jet on the cover. Id say pretty much everything Ad Rock likes I like, and so I read this, and this is no exception. Theres some funny, trippy stuff in here. I say definitely read this book.