Cloudbursts: Collected and New Stories was published by Knopf in 2018, gathering forty-five stories spanning McGuane’s entire career alongside several new pieces. The collection functions as a retrospective — tracing his development from the antic, overstuffed early stories through the increasingly controlled and emotionally complex Montana work of his maturity.
The early stories (1970s–1980s) are wilder: characters are drunker, the comedy is broader, the prose more extravagant. The middle-period stories achieve the balance that defines McGuane’s best work: precise physical description of the Western landscape, comic dialogue that conceals genuine pain, and endings that resist resolution. The late stories (2010s) are his sparest and most moving — aging men facing mortality, ranchers watching their way of life disappear, fathers and sons attempting connection across decades of mutual incomprehension.
The “cloudbursts” of the title are the sudden, violent rainstorms that sweep the Montana plains in summer — appearing from nowhere, transforming the landscape in minutes, and disappearing. McGuane’s stories operate the same way: brief, intense, leaving the terrain permanently altered.
Collecting Cloudbursts
First edition (Knopf, New York, 2018): Boards with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine in jacket: $15–$25
- Signed first: $30–$60
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation. The definitive McGuane short fiction collection.
Five Decades of Stories
Cloudbursts gathers stories spanning McGuane’s entire career, from early picaresque comedies written in the 1960s to mature Montana tales from the 2010s. Reading the collection chronologically reveals a writer’s evolution: the early stories share the manic energy of the novels (wild characters, linguistic bravado, Key West heat), while the later stories are quieter, more observant, and more willing to let silence do the work. The title story is among his finest — a brief, devastating piece about loss and landscape.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are McGuane’s non-fiction books about? McGuane has published several essay collections — An Outside Chance (1980, revised 1990), Some Horses (1999), and The Longest Silence: A Life in Fishing (1999). These cover fishing, horses, ranching, and the outdoor life with the same literary precision he brings to his fiction. The Longest Silence is considered one of the finest angling books ever written.