Welcome to Gavagan's Bar (rhymes with "pagan") where it's always 1953, the bartender is Irish, and the drinks are never watered down! Where you can rub elbows with mad inventors, dark wizards, and ancient gods masquerading as ordinary schlubs.The Gavagan's Bar stories were written by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt between 1950 and 1956, and were among those stories that pioneered the modern Fantasy-or-Science-Fiction "Tall Tales." The idea was to write a sci-fi or fantasy story as an anecdote told in a bar. The style won't suit everyone -- the authors paint the characters and setting with broad strokes, as opposed to the detailed descriptions popular today. But the sheer creativity and bravado is fantastic, and the stories hearken to the earliest days of the American Science Fiction scene.The 1950s era is in full evidence in theses stories. In Gavagan's Bar, ladies drink at the tables, not the bar. Gentlemen will be refused service if they start getting too drunk, and the racism and sexism of the era is mild but evident -- in the characters. Refreshingly, the characters' flaws are starkly evident, and the authors pull no punches. None of it was wince-inducing for this reader, but others may find it not to their taste.The stories cover topics such as ancient gods walking among men and dark sorcerers who make dire pacts, little people and mythological beasts, modern wacky inventions and medieval alchemy. None of the stories is allowed to go too long; they're each just long enough for the gag to work. It reads fast. if you've ever read Dashiell Hammett or Robert E. Howard in the original, you know what I mean; it's a pulpy style of writing, where words flow off the page as fast as you can turn them.The stories were ended prematurely by Fletcher Pratt's untimely death. L. Sprague de Camp writes a little in the afterword about a story idea that was left undeveloped. I'm left to mourn what might have been. We don't really have anything like this being written today. For analogues in the same vein, you have to go earlier: the "Jorkens" tales of Lord Dunsany, and the "Tales of the White Hart" by Arthur C. Clarke are usually cited as the closest in style, but I've read only a few of the former and none of the latter. In any case, if you're a fan of the tall tale, or the 1950s, and especially if you're a Sci-Fi or Fantasy fan who loves the TV series "Mad Men," you owe it to yourself to check them out.
A charming book that stands up to repeated reading. It's a collection of short stories published in the 1950s, each a tale of supernatural weirdness experienced by the patrons of Gavagan's Bar (rhymes with 'pagan'; located in an unnamed U.S. city that seems like New York to me). On the surface, each story appears to be a typical tall-tale as one would expect to hear in a pub, but the strange happenings within the bar itself cause the patrons to lend more credence to each other's odd claims of fantastical experiences. The first time I read it, I treated it like a collection of short stories and read each in isolation here and there between other books and activities. I quickly noticed patterns and in the end wished I'd paid more attention to the recurring characters, so in the second read-through I approached it as a novel. I'm impressed at the continuity of these stories, written and published separately by two authors over many years. As they state in the preface to this Expanded Edition of Gavagin's Bar: "Mr. Cohan's value to Gavagan's will become more apparent in the course of our reports. The material for them has been gathered over a considerable space of time, and we believe that, taken together, they constitute a document of no small social importance. Too little investigation has been given, and too little importance has previously been attached to certain sequences of incident for which Mr. Cohan, both as bartender and an unlettered philosopher, acts as a catalytic agent." Next time I read it, I'll focus more on Mr. Cohan as a main character. (See also my review of Spider Robinson's Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.)
What do You think about Tales From Gavagan's Bar (1980)?
I have weakness, liking stories that occured at the same place/setting in the whole/most of the story (e.g. Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, or Wuxia novel Happy Hero). So, when I learned that there is bar tales theme in fantasy/SF, I was excited. This is my second fantasy/SF bar tall tales short-stories anthology. My first was The Draco Tavern. I can't help myself comparing these two books, and with Draco Tavern (DT) as the reference, I must remind myself several times if I thought Draco is the more sophisticated one, that de Camp and Pratt wrote Tales From Gavagan's Bar (TFGB) stories decades before DT.I have to admit that I pretty annoyed with some stories of TFGB that have open-ended, or unfinished plot. Only some stories I can consider as completed. This is my concern with this book.On the other hand, every short story not only has fresh idea compared to previous story, but also has light funny hilarious storytelling. I couldn't predict what kind of story will unfold at the beginning, but I was confident the story would be fun. Well, if you are looking for a short story with completed plot, this book could be 1 or 2 star for you.
—Jokoloyo
