ONCE UPON A TIME, before Antheneum in New York took a chance on an unknown author and published Staggerford (1977), Jon Hassler wrote a number of short stories that introduce many of the characters in his later novels. Only a handful of these stories had appeared in print (mostly in small literary magazines) until we published KEEPSAKES, our best-selling book last year. RUFUS at the DOOR is equally first rate.
This collection of short stories written in the 1960s and 1970s includes: "Rufus at the Door", "Anniversary", "Winning Sarah Spooner", "The Life and Death of Delano Klein", "Dodger's Return", "Agatha McGee and the St. Isidore Seven", and "Nancy Clancy's Nephew". Illustrated with wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec. Available in both hardcover and softcover editions.
DUST JACKET
ONCE UPON A TIME, before Atheneum in New York took a chance on an unknown author and published Staggerford (1977), Jon Hassler wrote twenty-some short stories. He remembers exactly the day he began writing. It was September 1, 1970. He was thirty-seven years old and a teacher at Brainerd Community College in central Minnesota. "I finished teaching my nine o'clock freshman English class and went to the library. I took out a notebook and pen, and began [my first] story."
Only a handful of these early stories ever made it into print (mostly in small literary magazines), and Jon stored them away "in an old wooden filing cabinet I bought for $25 at a now-defunct department store in Brainerd."
That cabinet later accompanied Jon to Collegeville, Minnesota, where he was writer-in-residence at St. John's University for seventeen years, and to his current home in Minneapolis.
In 1999 the Afton Historical Society Press published seven of these stories in Keepsakes and Other Stories to overwhelming public response. This companion volume, RUFUS AT THE DOOR & Other Stories, brings to print seven more, beginning with the heart-wrenching tale of a good-natured, slow-witted man of about thirty-five named Rufus. Many of the characters in Jon's stories, including Rufus, are based on people he has known. You'll find out which ones in the Publisher's Note preceding the stories.
SIX YEARS AGO, Jon Hassler was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. In a holiday letter to Jon's friends in 1999, his best-known character, Agatha McGee, wrote that the novelist's dreadful companion, Dr. Parkinson, "has begun to behave in cruel and irritating ways." This moving letter from Agatha appears at the end of this book as a postscript to Jon's stories.
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REVIEWS
Jon Hassler's rich, uncluttered style provides the perfect window through which to view his characters' lives
Annette Sandford /The Dallas Morning News
Jon Hassler wrote 27 short stories in the 1970s, published a few in small literary quarterlies and then turned to writing novels. His first published novel, Staggerford (the story of a week in the life of Miles Pruitt, a high school English teacher), was widely praised. Eight more well-received novels followed, while his earlier stories languished with their rejection slips in a neglected file box.
Now, praise be, the Afton Historical Society Press has brought them to light. The first group of stories, Keepsakes and Other Stories, came out last year, and now we have Rufus at the Door. It seems incredible that these splendidly rendered tales could ever have been passed over. Mr. Hassler's clear, uncluttered, easygoing style provides his people (they are so much more than characters) with exactly the right atmosphere for the enactment of the dramas of their lives.
In the title story, narrated by a man thinking back on a high school field trip to an insane asylum, the horror of the visit is intensified when out of the assembled idiots, morons, imbeciles and madmen, the boy recognizes a man from his hometown.
"Winning Sarah Spooner" is Mr. Hassler's take on the old theme of a widow finding a new mate, but it goes down so smoothly and humorously that you can hardly believe it ever happened before.
In "Agatha McGee and the St. Isidore Seven," the title character, drawn from the earlier publication, Staggerford, is the kind of wily, common-sense schoolteacher who rules with a velvet baseball bat and gets things done when nobody else can.
Every story invites a second reading, for the sheer pleasure of savoring the feelings invoked, but "Dodger's Return," for me, at least, is the top selection. It is a tough, poignant story of a newcomer's brief friendship with Dodger, the school outcast. The fun the two boys enjoy ends when the new boy realizes the association is making him an outcast, too. He drops Dodger but is forever haunted by a loss of self-respect.
Two unusual features add further interest to this excellent book. One, a publisher's note at the beginning, includes the kind of information readers often wish they knew about how stories originate and how characters are created and so on. The other, a jewel of a letter by salty old Agatha McGee, appears after the last story and ironically describes the author's ongoing battle with Parkinson's disease.
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