Matt Geiger's Blog
August 16, 2018
Astonishing Tales!* (Your Astonishment May Vary)
Hi everyone,
The new book (Astonishing Tales!*) is available for pre-order now on Amazon Prime. It will be released Dec. 1.
https://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-Ta...
The new book (Astonishing Tales!*) is available for pre-order now on Amazon Prime. It will be released Dec. 1.
https://www.amazon.com/Astonishing-Ta...
April 21, 2017
Graveyards
Hard at work on the next book. The current chapter is about graveyards. Kind of a sequel to the one in "Raised by Wolves." Here's a preview:
I’ve been to other parts of the country. I’ve even lived in some of them, including, somewhat regrettably, Florida, where the swampy ground makes traditional burials a mucky, challenging affair. As has already been noted by, well, just about everyone, Florida is populated mostly my degenerates. This seems borne out by the fact that, when you try to give people there a decent burial after they die in a meth lab explosion or by auto-erotic asphyxiation gone awry, the earth tends to spit them back out, essentially saying: “We don’t want them.”
I’ve been to other parts of the country. I’ve even lived in some of them, including, somewhat regrettably, Florida, where the swampy ground makes traditional burials a mucky, challenging affair. As has already been noted by, well, just about everyone, Florida is populated mostly my degenerates. This seems borne out by the fact that, when you try to give people there a decent burial after they die in a meth lab explosion or by auto-erotic asphyxiation gone awry, the earth tends to spit them back out, essentially saying: “We don’t want them.”
April 9, 2017
Pillow Men
Here's a little preview of a story about Peter the Great (and his pillow man) in the new book I'm working on:
The nonchalance with which people lived their lives in the distant past amazes me.
“I’m going for a ride,” millions of people have said to their loved ones. If I were the emperor of language, which I’m not (I’m currently only a squire) I could find a more accurate, more exciting way to say it. Granted, historical conversations would be a little longer, but it would all be worth it. The past was dripping with danger and adventure, and it was such a shame for people to waste boring language on it.
“I’m going to climb on top of this 1,000-pound, marginally domesticated ungulate - the one over there with the flaring nostrils and eyeballs bulging with fear - the one that could kill me by kicking me, or stepping on me, or biting me, or by me simply falling off of it, and then I’m going to try to balance on its back for several hundred miles,” the olden times man would say.
“Ah, I see. And to where do you go on this fine day?”
“I’m traveling to another country, the one with a healer in it,” he would reply. “I’m hoping he can cure me of my typhoid. And of whatever broken limbs I sustain during the ride there, obviously.”
The nonchalance with which people lived their lives in the distant past amazes me.
“I’m going for a ride,” millions of people have said to their loved ones. If I were the emperor of language, which I’m not (I’m currently only a squire) I could find a more accurate, more exciting way to say it. Granted, historical conversations would be a little longer, but it would all be worth it. The past was dripping with danger and adventure, and it was such a shame for people to waste boring language on it.
“I’m going to climb on top of this 1,000-pound, marginally domesticated ungulate - the one over there with the flaring nostrils and eyeballs bulging with fear - the one that could kill me by kicking me, or stepping on me, or biting me, or by me simply falling off of it, and then I’m going to try to balance on its back for several hundred miles,” the olden times man would say.
“Ah, I see. And to where do you go on this fine day?”
“I’m traveling to another country, the one with a healer in it,” he would reply. “I’m hoping he can cure me of my typhoid. And of whatever broken limbs I sustain during the ride there, obviously.”
March 20, 2017
Pioneer Press Review
On Sunday, the Pioneer Press (Twin Cities) published a nice review of "Raised by Wolves." To say I'm honored would be an understatement. It's included below:
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT …
You have to love a guy who considers “On the Origin of Species” a parenting guide and recalls when he worked at a zoo and had to hold a wet cloth on the genitals of an elderly horse. A guy who writes, “When your wife is very pregnant, comparing her to a cow won’t make her feel any better. At least, that’s what the doctor told me.” (He grew up on a farm.)
170319bks_geigerCounterMatt Geiger, Massachusetts transplant to Wisconsin, offers in “The Geiger Counter: Raised by Wolves and Other Stories,” musings and adventures that will make you laugh and maybe nod in agreement when he occasionally gets serious. Geiger won four Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards for these stories, which are really essays but, he says, “essay” is a boring word.
The best way to read this book is to just let go and follow Geiger wherever his fancy takes him. Some of his stories are about his boyhood, including the time he tried to buy a monkey from a dealer in Florida, mailed to his home in Ipswitch, Mass.
Admitting he has “the zealous pride of a convert,” he muses that the best thing about Wisconsin is the Cow Chip Toss. “To be more specific,” he writes, “the best thing about Wisconsin is the fact that no one seems to think the Cow Chip Toss is weird.” After explaining the toss (no need to go into detail for Minnesota readers), he worries that newcomers are going to change this kind of rural tradition, making Wisconsin “more urbane and more like everyplace else.”
A star of the book is Geiger’s daughter Hadley, now a toddler. He’s hilarious when he recalls how he worried that his baby’s head was shrinking until he learned the original measurement wasn’t accurate. He writes of the wonder of watching her open to the world and worries about how to teach her language. When he realized he might not be here for her someday, he set up a shelf marked “Books for Hadley to Read” that includes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Lao Tzu “to fill her head with beautiful, complicated, contradictory ideas.”
A really good dad.
AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT …
You have to love a guy who considers “On the Origin of Species” a parenting guide and recalls when he worked at a zoo and had to hold a wet cloth on the genitals of an elderly horse. A guy who writes, “When your wife is very pregnant, comparing her to a cow won’t make her feel any better. At least, that’s what the doctor told me.” (He grew up on a farm.)
170319bks_geigerCounterMatt Geiger, Massachusetts transplant to Wisconsin, offers in “The Geiger Counter: Raised by Wolves and Other Stories,” musings and adventures that will make you laugh and maybe nod in agreement when he occasionally gets serious. Geiger won four Wisconsin Newspaper Association awards for these stories, which are really essays but, he says, “essay” is a boring word.
The best way to read this book is to just let go and follow Geiger wherever his fancy takes him. Some of his stories are about his boyhood, including the time he tried to buy a monkey from a dealer in Florida, mailed to his home in Ipswitch, Mass.
Admitting he has “the zealous pride of a convert,” he muses that the best thing about Wisconsin is the Cow Chip Toss. “To be more specific,” he writes, “the best thing about Wisconsin is the fact that no one seems to think the Cow Chip Toss is weird.” After explaining the toss (no need to go into detail for Minnesota readers), he worries that newcomers are going to change this kind of rural tradition, making Wisconsin “more urbane and more like everyplace else.”
A star of the book is Geiger’s daughter Hadley, now a toddler. He’s hilarious when he recalls how he worried that his baby’s head was shrinking until he learned the original measurement wasn’t accurate. He writes of the wonder of watching her open to the world and worries about how to teach her language. When he realized he might not be here for her someday, he set up a shelf marked “Books for Hadley to Read” that includes Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cormac McCarthy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Karl Ove Knausgaard and Lao Tzu “to fill her head with beautiful, complicated, contradictory ideas.”
A really good dad.
March 9, 2017
Norse Mythology
We still worship the old gods here. And where there are Norse gods, there are always giants, trolls, and monsters.
That is why we live in the Troll Capital of the World. That is why in the little village of Mount Horeb, our brewery, and even our computer repair shop, proudly feature trolls in their names and on their signs. That is why statues of trolls stand guard, as ever-present reminders that life is often weird and ridiculous, outside our dentists, our banks and our Mexican restaurant. That is why the Sons of Norway ride through our summer parade on top of a dragon-studded float that looks like a Viking warship. That is why, when your child makes a new friend on the playground, that child’s name is often Freya or Bjorn.
And that is why, when people ask us about our ancestry, we might say the names of our grandmothers or grandfathers, but what we are all really thinking is, “I’m descended from wise Odin and mighty Thor.”
Editor's note: I live in the Troll Capital of the World. In large part because of this, W.W. Norton was kind enough to send me a review copy of Neil Gaiman's new book, "Norse Mythology."
The preceding was a sneak peek at a review of "Norse Mythology" that will soon appear the local newspaper and on geigerbooks.com.
That is why we live in the Troll Capital of the World. That is why in the little village of Mount Horeb, our brewery, and even our computer repair shop, proudly feature trolls in their names and on their signs. That is why statues of trolls stand guard, as ever-present reminders that life is often weird and ridiculous, outside our dentists, our banks and our Mexican restaurant. That is why the Sons of Norway ride through our summer parade on top of a dragon-studded float that looks like a Viking warship. That is why, when your child makes a new friend on the playground, that child’s name is often Freya or Bjorn.
And that is why, when people ask us about our ancestry, we might say the names of our grandmothers or grandfathers, but what we are all really thinking is, “I’m descended from wise Odin and mighty Thor.”
Editor's note: I live in the Troll Capital of the World. In large part because of this, W.W. Norton was kind enough to send me a review copy of Neil Gaiman's new book, "Norse Mythology."
The preceding was a sneak peek at a review of "Norse Mythology" that will soon appear the local newspaper and on geigerbooks.com.
February 23, 2017
The good, the bad and the ugly (reviews)
The only universal advice I ever received from other authors was to ignore reviews.
Not the good ones, of course. Those critics are intelligent, insightful, and physically attractive. Their reviews should be read, re-read, photocopied and distributed to everyone I pass on the street. The bad ones. The ugly ones. Those, I was told to ignore.
Ones like my debut book recently received from a book critic in a humid, far off land full of escaped pet snakes with a taste for little children, ravenous sinkholes, and people who lack the physical (or mental) strength to properly vote in elections.
Reading a negative evaluation is a painful experience. After all, you bare your soul in a book, so it’s a little like getting a performance review from a scorned lover. Sure, the criticism hurts, but the passive aggressive comments, tucked into the article to look like compliments, sting even more.
This particular critic compared my book to a series of well-written (yay!) blogs (oh no!). As everyone knows, any author would rather write a bad book than a good blog. The same way a farmer would rather own a bad cow than a really good mosquito. The same way I’d rather have a bad case of hay fever than a good case of bubonic plague.
Getting told your book is like a well-written blog is like being told you have a nice little penis. It has the same kind of impact on your ego, at least.
He closed out his review by saying my stories could be amusing in small doses. High praise indeed.
I thought about ridiculing the critic. About making him pay with a really well-written blog about him. But that would be beneath me. I’m certainly not going to call this feeble-minded troglodyte names.
And he should be commended for taking the time to review my book, even if he didn’t like it. I’ve heard the treatments for syphilis can be time consuming and costly, so it’s impressive he found the time at all. Plus, since I used to live in his particular state, I know that no one there can read, which surely made reviewing my book fairly difficult for him. I’m not even sure how he evaluated it. Possibly by feel, or taste, or by seeing if his sister/cousin could throw it the entire length of their doublewide trailer.
There was also a big, fat typo in the middle of the review. Something glaring and unsightly. I’ve never been so happy to see one in my life.
“See, buddy?” I thought. “It’s not so easy, is it?”
But all that would be beneath me. All I have to do is come to terms with the fact that my writing is not beloved by all 7 billion people on earth. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but I think I can handle it.
And I just heard the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, which has critics and readers who are beautiful and kind and genuinely literate, plans to publish something about my book next week. Hopefully, if I get lucky, they’ll say something nice. Maybe they’ll even decide it’s a bad book, which would be great.
Not the good ones, of course. Those critics are intelligent, insightful, and physically attractive. Their reviews should be read, re-read, photocopied and distributed to everyone I pass on the street. The bad ones. The ugly ones. Those, I was told to ignore.
Ones like my debut book recently received from a book critic in a humid, far off land full of escaped pet snakes with a taste for little children, ravenous sinkholes, and people who lack the physical (or mental) strength to properly vote in elections.
Reading a negative evaluation is a painful experience. After all, you bare your soul in a book, so it’s a little like getting a performance review from a scorned lover. Sure, the criticism hurts, but the passive aggressive comments, tucked into the article to look like compliments, sting even more.
This particular critic compared my book to a series of well-written (yay!) blogs (oh no!). As everyone knows, any author would rather write a bad book than a good blog. The same way a farmer would rather own a bad cow than a really good mosquito. The same way I’d rather have a bad case of hay fever than a good case of bubonic plague.
Getting told your book is like a well-written blog is like being told you have a nice little penis. It has the same kind of impact on your ego, at least.
He closed out his review by saying my stories could be amusing in small doses. High praise indeed.
I thought about ridiculing the critic. About making him pay with a really well-written blog about him. But that would be beneath me. I’m certainly not going to call this feeble-minded troglodyte names.
And he should be commended for taking the time to review my book, even if he didn’t like it. I’ve heard the treatments for syphilis can be time consuming and costly, so it’s impressive he found the time at all. Plus, since I used to live in his particular state, I know that no one there can read, which surely made reviewing my book fairly difficult for him. I’m not even sure how he evaluated it. Possibly by feel, or taste, or by seeing if his sister/cousin could throw it the entire length of their doublewide trailer.
There was also a big, fat typo in the middle of the review. Something glaring and unsightly. I’ve never been so happy to see one in my life.
“See, buddy?” I thought. “It’s not so easy, is it?”
But all that would be beneath me. All I have to do is come to terms with the fact that my writing is not beloved by all 7 billion people on earth. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but I think I can handle it.
And I just heard the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, which has critics and readers who are beautiful and kind and genuinely literate, plans to publish something about my book next week. Hopefully, if I get lucky, they’ll say something nice. Maybe they’ll even decide it’s a bad book, which would be great.
February 18, 2017
Into the dark and tender places of our being.
I'm not ashamed to admit that Kimberly Blaeser's assessment of my book is far more elegant than anything I've ever written. But hey, that's why she is a poet laureate and I'm not.
I really hope my book, in some small measure, achieves some of the things she describes. I'm honored:
"Whether recounting escapades of cider-making or child-rearing, encounters with college professors or dying horses, in The Geiger Counter Matt Geiger whittles down the pomp and pretention of life’s circumstances and trains his philosopher’s vision on the most basic of human questions. With an often self-deprecating humor and more accuracy than any scientific instrument, he launches his stories into the dark and tender places of our being. There, the down-to-earth personae disarms us and lulls us with the mundane. But somehow amid cow pies and cancer screenings, he unerring takes the measure of loss, redraws the shapes of kindness, unearths wisdom, and charts a path through fear. Perhaps more importantly, he incites each reader to look more closely at their own life--in all its mundane glory."
-Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2015-16, author of Apprenticed to Justice
Blaeser is a Professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she teaches Creative Writing and Native American Literatures. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Apprenticed to Justice, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, and Trailing You. Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. She is the editor of Stories Migrating Home: A Collection of Anishinaabe Prose and Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. Blaeser, is currently at work on a collection of “Picto-Poems” which combines her photographs and poetry.
I really hope my book, in some small measure, achieves some of the things she describes. I'm honored:
"Whether recounting escapades of cider-making or child-rearing, encounters with college professors or dying horses, in The Geiger Counter Matt Geiger whittles down the pomp and pretention of life’s circumstances and trains his philosopher’s vision on the most basic of human questions. With an often self-deprecating humor and more accuracy than any scientific instrument, he launches his stories into the dark and tender places of our being. There, the down-to-earth personae disarms us and lulls us with the mundane. But somehow amid cow pies and cancer screenings, he unerring takes the measure of loss, redraws the shapes of kindness, unearths wisdom, and charts a path through fear. Perhaps more importantly, he incites each reader to look more closely at their own life--in all its mundane glory."
-Kimberly Blaeser, Wisconsin Poet Laureate 2015-16, author of Apprenticed to Justice
Blaeser is a Professor at University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she teaches Creative Writing and Native American Literatures. She is the author of three collections of poetry: Apprenticed to Justice, Absentee Indians and Other Poems, and Trailing You. Blaeser is Anishinaabe, an enrolled member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, and grew up on the White Earth Reservation in northwestern Minnesota. She is the editor of Stories Migrating Home: A Collection of Anishinaabe Prose and Traces in Blood, Bone, and Stone: Contemporary Ojibwe Poetry. Blaeser, is currently at work on a collection of “Picto-Poems” which combines her photographs and poetry.
February 14, 2017
Happy Valentine's Day
Happy Valentine's Day, everybody. My gift to you is some cut and pasted romantic poetry from syphilitic philosopher Nietzsche, whose name I just spelled correctly without the assistance of spellcheck. It appears the information below comes from Shane Ralston, who is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Penn State University Hazleton:
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) [2] is probably not the first person who comes to mind when you think about romantic love. For most of his life, Nietzsche was a solitary and lonely figure.
In Beyond Good and Evil [3], Nietzsche railed against the evils of women, only to recant all that he’d written a paragraph later. He attempted to win the heart of Lou Salomé, only to have her rebuff his affections. Supposedly he contracted syphilis in a whorehouse.
Nietzsche’s most striking aphorisms about love appear in Thus Spoke Zarathustra [4]—a work that most casual readers find intellectually dense and, in parts, thoroughly incomprehensible. Nevertheless, he wrote so much about love in this work that it could be renamed Thus Spoke Romeo.
Here are a few ardor-filled remarks about philo (love in Greek) that appear in the pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
“I fear you close by, I love you far away.”
“Where one can no longer love, one should – pass by!”
“Whatever I create and how much I love it – soon I have to oppose it.”
“Devise the love that bears not only all punishment but also the guilt!”
“It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain…
Something unquenched, unquenchable, is in me that wants to speak out. A craving for love is in me, that itself speaks the language of love…
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my song too is the song of a lover.”
“Woman's love involves injustice and blindness against everything that she does not love... Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best cows... “
Nietzsche liked playfully juxtapose opposites, emphasizing the dyadic nature of love (close-by/far-away, to-love/to-pass-by, create-and-love-it/oppose-it). While the song of the lover was Nietzsche’s, he longed for those who didn’t share his feelings (such as Salomé)—the age-old tragedy of unrequited love [5]. Given how he viewed women (as cats, birds and cows), it’s unsurprising that he was alone and unloved for most his life until his death.
Although Nietzsche might not have been a winner in the game of love, he was still a reflective contestant. To be in love can drive a person to madness. For Nietzsche, though, the cause of his lunacy was probably a case of untreated syphilis.
--
.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) [2] is probably not the first person who comes to mind when you think about romantic love. For most of his life, Nietzsche was a solitary and lonely figure.
In Beyond Good and Evil [3], Nietzsche railed against the evils of women, only to recant all that he’d written a paragraph later. He attempted to win the heart of Lou Salomé, only to have her rebuff his affections. Supposedly he contracted syphilis in a whorehouse.
Nietzsche’s most striking aphorisms about love appear in Thus Spoke Zarathustra [4]—a work that most casual readers find intellectually dense and, in parts, thoroughly incomprehensible. Nevertheless, he wrote so much about love in this work that it could be renamed Thus Spoke Romeo.
Here are a few ardor-filled remarks about philo (love in Greek) that appear in the pages of Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
“I fear you close by, I love you far away.”
“Where one can no longer love, one should – pass by!”
“Whatever I create and how much I love it – soon I have to oppose it.”
“Devise the love that bears not only all punishment but also the guilt!”
“It is night: now do all leaping fountains speak louder. And my soul too is a leaping fountain…
Something unquenched, unquenchable, is in me that wants to speak out. A craving for love is in me, that itself speaks the language of love…
It is night: only now do all songs of lovers awaken. And my song too is the song of a lover.”
“Woman's love involves injustice and blindness against everything that she does not love... Woman is not yet capable of friendship: women are still cats and birds. Or at best cows... “
Nietzsche liked playfully juxtapose opposites, emphasizing the dyadic nature of love (close-by/far-away, to-love/to-pass-by, create-and-love-it/oppose-it). While the song of the lover was Nietzsche’s, he longed for those who didn’t share his feelings (such as Salomé)—the age-old tragedy of unrequited love [5]. Given how he viewed women (as cats, birds and cows), it’s unsurprising that he was alone and unloved for most his life until his death.
Although Nietzsche might not have been a winner in the game of love, he was still a reflective contestant. To be in love can drive a person to madness. For Nietzsche, though, the cause of his lunacy was probably a case of untreated syphilis.
--
.
February 3, 2017
Scandihoovian
Well, it's that time of year again. The time when people in the Wisconsin town where I live put on tall red hats, play in the snow, drink beer and enter a spelling bee. (Sometimes in that order.)
As part of the festivities, I'll be signing books at the Grumpy Troll Brew Pub in Mount Horeb, WI on Sunday from 1-3 p.m.
And in honor of the Annual Scandihoovian Festival, here's a little taste of one of the stories I'm currently working on:
I expected many questions when my first book was released. I ran the most probable ones through my mind and carefully readied answers that would sound spontaneous, witty and magnanimous.
I thought two questions seemed most likely: “Why is your writing so amazing?” and its cousin, “Why are you so great?”
The question I actually get most is slightly different, and I have not yet come up with a clever response.
“Where can I buy your book?”
“Well, at bookstores,” I usually say. “Or online. You know, wherever you usually buy books.”
“So,” one friend replied thoughtfully in the frozen foods aisle at the local supermarket, “can I buy it at the gas station? The gas station is right by my house.”
“I don’t think they sell books,” I responded. “I mean, I know they sell roadmaps, which are kind of like very messy books, but I don’t think they sell the kind of book I wrote.”
“Hhhmm,” he hummed, pondering laboriously.
“Do they sell it here?”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here,” he continued. “At the grocery store. I mean, not right here with the popsicles. That would be ridiculous. But maybe over with paper towels and things?”
That aisle does have a lot of paper in it. He had a point. And what’s the difference, really, between my book and the napkins, except that the thing I made has pithy observations about fatherhood printed on it, while they just say “Bounty” over and over again. Neither one is destined to win a Nobel Prize in literature, I suspect.
“No, I’m sorry but I don’t think they sell it here,” I said.
People usually look at me like I’m really going out of my way to inconvenience them. Like they asked where to find my book, and I told them they must first locate the Golden Fleece and the Ark of the Covenant, and only then can they obtain a book of stories about a plump man-child and a cute baby.
Or like I told them it’s primarily sold in brothels. On Mars.
“Where do you normally buy books?” I sometimes ask. “They probably have it, or they could at least get it for you.”
“If you don’t want to go to a physical book store, you can always get it from Amazon.com,” I offer. “That’s like a bookstore that also sells dish towels, batteries and diapers, and you don’t have to stand up, walk or drive a car to get there.”
It’s at this point I start to feel like I’m asking too much of them. Like this is a charitable endeavor. Like this is just another iteration of the program through which I bought a massive raspberry cheesecake that I couldn’t fit into my freezer in order to help the local high school kids take a trip abroad.
As part of the festivities, I'll be signing books at the Grumpy Troll Brew Pub in Mount Horeb, WI on Sunday from 1-3 p.m.
And in honor of the Annual Scandihoovian Festival, here's a little taste of one of the stories I'm currently working on:
I expected many questions when my first book was released. I ran the most probable ones through my mind and carefully readied answers that would sound spontaneous, witty and magnanimous.
I thought two questions seemed most likely: “Why is your writing so amazing?” and its cousin, “Why are you so great?”
The question I actually get most is slightly different, and I have not yet come up with a clever response.
“Where can I buy your book?”
“Well, at bookstores,” I usually say. “Or online. You know, wherever you usually buy books.”
“So,” one friend replied thoughtfully in the frozen foods aisle at the local supermarket, “can I buy it at the gas station? The gas station is right by my house.”
“I don’t think they sell books,” I responded. “I mean, I know they sell roadmaps, which are kind of like very messy books, but I don’t think they sell the kind of book I wrote.”
“Hhhmm,” he hummed, pondering laboriously.
“Do they sell it here?”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here,” he continued. “At the grocery store. I mean, not right here with the popsicles. That would be ridiculous. But maybe over with paper towels and things?”
That aisle does have a lot of paper in it. He had a point. And what’s the difference, really, between my book and the napkins, except that the thing I made has pithy observations about fatherhood printed on it, while they just say “Bounty” over and over again. Neither one is destined to win a Nobel Prize in literature, I suspect.
“No, I’m sorry but I don’t think they sell it here,” I said.
People usually look at me like I’m really going out of my way to inconvenience them. Like they asked where to find my book, and I told them they must first locate the Golden Fleece and the Ark of the Covenant, and only then can they obtain a book of stories about a plump man-child and a cute baby.
Or like I told them it’s primarily sold in brothels. On Mars.
“Where do you normally buy books?” I sometimes ask. “They probably have it, or they could at least get it for you.”
“If you don’t want to go to a physical book store, you can always get it from Amazon.com,” I offer. “That’s like a bookstore that also sells dish towels, batteries and diapers, and you don’t have to stand up, walk or drive a car to get there.”
It’s at this point I start to feel like I’m asking too much of them. Like this is a charitable endeavor. Like this is just another iteration of the program through which I bought a massive raspberry cheesecake that I couldn’t fit into my freezer in order to help the local high school kids take a trip abroad.
January 26, 2017
Unicorns in Space
Today Isthmus, a wonderful Madison-area magazine covering arts, politics and culture, ran a nice story about my debut: http://isthmus.com/arts/books/matt-ge...
And tonight I'll be reading at the Cambridge Community Library: http://www.hngnews.com/cambridge_deer...
In addition to select pieces from "Raised by Wolves," I'll also be reading an all new story that's never been published in newspaper or book form. Here's a sample:
A couple years ago, I decided to lose some weight. I stopped eating things that everyone knows make you fat, and subsequently lost 60 pounds. The result was that everyone thought I was dying. For some people, shedding weight can really turn things around, in a good way. But for others - and apparently I fall squarely into this category - being thin brings with it a distinct aesthetic unpleasantness. Like an emaciated, sallow-faced Santa Claus, my newfound leanness robbed me of my more jolly attributes. Over the course of a few months, literally dozens of people approached me, walking slowly and silently like they were trying to sneak up on a deer, and asked, “Are you okay? I mean, how is your health?”
To make matters worse, they tended not to believe me when I told them how I lost the approximate poundage of a small sofa.
“I just stopped eating sugary things and drinking beer,” I said. “Little, common sense things like that. I also stopped eating cheese, which is nice because dairy wreaks havoc on my stomach.”
I might as well have said I lost the weight by running ultra marathons with my pet unicorn. In space.
And tonight I'll be reading at the Cambridge Community Library: http://www.hngnews.com/cambridge_deer...
In addition to select pieces from "Raised by Wolves," I'll also be reading an all new story that's never been published in newspaper or book form. Here's a sample:
A couple years ago, I decided to lose some weight. I stopped eating things that everyone knows make you fat, and subsequently lost 60 pounds. The result was that everyone thought I was dying. For some people, shedding weight can really turn things around, in a good way. But for others - and apparently I fall squarely into this category - being thin brings with it a distinct aesthetic unpleasantness. Like an emaciated, sallow-faced Santa Claus, my newfound leanness robbed me of my more jolly attributes. Over the course of a few months, literally dozens of people approached me, walking slowly and silently like they were trying to sneak up on a deer, and asked, “Are you okay? I mean, how is your health?”
To make matters worse, they tended not to believe me when I told them how I lost the approximate poundage of a small sofa.
“I just stopped eating sugary things and drinking beer,” I said. “Little, common sense things like that. I also stopped eating cheese, which is nice because dairy wreaks havoc on my stomach.”
I might as well have said I lost the weight by running ultra marathons with my pet unicorn. In space.
