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American Innovations
In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka’s Galchen’s American Innovations, a young woman’s furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family.
The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, re-imagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens’s “Anecdote of the Jar” responds to John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Galchen’s “The Lost Order” covertly recapitulates James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” while “The Region of Unlikeness” is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Aleph.” The title story, “American Innovations,” revisits Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose.”
By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today.
The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, re-imagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens’s “Anecdote of the Jar” responds to John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Galchen’s “The Lost Order” covertly recapitulates James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” while “The Region of Unlikeness” is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Aleph.” The title story, “American Innovations,” revisits Nikolai Gogol’s “The Nose.”
By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today.
175 pages, Hardcover
First published May 8, 2014
69 people are currently reading
3782 people want to read
About the author
Rivka Galchen
21 books463 followersRivka Galchen (born 1976) is a Canadian-American writer and physician. Her first novel, Atmospheric Disturbances, was published in 2008. She currently is an adjunct professor in the writing division of Columbia University's School of Art. In 2010, she was chosen as one of the 20 best writers under 40 by The New Yorker.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 186 reviews
January 13, 2015
The likelihood that I will enjoy a writer who writes with a tangible "for some obscure reason" etched into every utterance is slim. What are we to do with all those connections in our lives that, you know, bind us all together as a people? Nothing. Avoid them. Write in short sentences like these. Characterize them as "all those things I so studiously knew nothing about," which one of Galchen's narrators actually states for the record.
I tend not to read books with sentences like "I tend not to answer calls identified as Unavailable." Or ones where anytime the author would wish to say just about anything she must add qualifiers doubting she is really saying it: "...since it is the older people, generally, who have money, and who thus support the younger people, who have youth. Or something." This kind of paralyzing self-doubt expressing even the most mundane thoughts is reflected in Galchen's flat prose so common to American fiction that if you have four thoughts to say you're going to need four sentences to say them.
Fiction-wise it is obvious the swerve she makes away from autobiography. "All of this was not long after the publication of my first novel, and I had some money, even a bit of dignity, as the novel had been somewhat successful; at least, I'd been given a decent advance and some money from foreign rights, too - it was a dream! - but I didn't have lots of dignity and I didn't have lots of money, either, just some." Hey, that sounds just like Rivka Galchen, the author of Atmospheric Disturbances! But to clarify: "The novel was a love story, between a bird and a whale." Oh well gee maybe I guessed my fictional game wrong.
It is suggested there is something metaphysical about Galchen's faction in literature, those who wonder if people aren't in fact simulacra in this technological age (manifested in literary circles as "one can never really know who another person is" and so one must console, console, console our words into a binding). In the great world of politics this is called "waffling", for those who are forever sitting on both sides of an issue for not knowing what to say about the very things you're supposed to care about. If there was a poll taken for the upcoming election that asks, "Which party will you be voting for, the human race or the forces of the cosmos?" Galchen wouldn't know what to answer. She's an "Undecided".
Every poet recognizes the limits of experience. But the great ones don't go numb by them. They write perfectly crafted poems in gorgeous language rather than jot down references to Heidegger and a slew of "Or somethings". Galchen recognizes these limitations (sort of, maybe, or who knows), and to these she adopts a rhetoric of know-nothingness spoken deadpan to address these infinite realms inspired by no sense of direction whatsoever. We may as well be a hurtling comet. And that scratching on our surface a probe from planet Earth looking for information about us. One of the young narrators even frets about being denied sugared cereal for breakfasts (in Wild Berry Blue). There are a few times Galchen's narrators say they are not into symbols. But in one story (The Lost Order) her narrator and her husband are in search of a lost wedding ring. A book of symptoms rather than observations.
Throughout reading this collection I kept asking myself, "How is it that someone with the world at her feet, a book contract, great respect among literary people, by this, her second book around eight years later, has so little to say about a culture that has embraced her?" It is obvious she is looking directly at her life, but has made the mistake of needing to address it through fiction. Galchen needs to drop the fascination with Kafka (someone whose every sentence was rooted in multiple cultures, an ability Galchen doesn't have) and go ahead and write that memoir everyone who has noticed her wishes to read, shredding that last vestige of postmodernism she is clinging onto like an obligation does to an audience. Get rid of them. This is the 21st century not the 20th. Those kinds of games are over.
I tend not to read books with sentences like "I tend not to answer calls identified as Unavailable." Or ones where anytime the author would wish to say just about anything she must add qualifiers doubting she is really saying it: "...since it is the older people, generally, who have money, and who thus support the younger people, who have youth. Or something." This kind of paralyzing self-doubt expressing even the most mundane thoughts is reflected in Galchen's flat prose so common to American fiction that if you have four thoughts to say you're going to need four sentences to say them.
Fiction-wise it is obvious the swerve she makes away from autobiography. "All of this was not long after the publication of my first novel, and I had some money, even a bit of dignity, as the novel had been somewhat successful; at least, I'd been given a decent advance and some money from foreign rights, too - it was a dream! - but I didn't have lots of dignity and I didn't have lots of money, either, just some." Hey, that sounds just like Rivka Galchen, the author of Atmospheric Disturbances! But to clarify: "The novel was a love story, between a bird and a whale." Oh well gee maybe I guessed my fictional game wrong.
It is suggested there is something metaphysical about Galchen's faction in literature, those who wonder if people aren't in fact simulacra in this technological age (manifested in literary circles as "one can never really know who another person is" and so one must console, console, console our words into a binding). In the great world of politics this is called "waffling", for those who are forever sitting on both sides of an issue for not knowing what to say about the very things you're supposed to care about. If there was a poll taken for the upcoming election that asks, "Which party will you be voting for, the human race or the forces of the cosmos?" Galchen wouldn't know what to answer. She's an "Undecided".
Every poet recognizes the limits of experience. But the great ones don't go numb by them. They write perfectly crafted poems in gorgeous language rather than jot down references to Heidegger and a slew of "Or somethings". Galchen recognizes these limitations (sort of, maybe, or who knows), and to these she adopts a rhetoric of know-nothingness spoken deadpan to address these infinite realms inspired by no sense of direction whatsoever. We may as well be a hurtling comet. And that scratching on our surface a probe from planet Earth looking for information about us. One of the young narrators even frets about being denied sugared cereal for breakfasts (in Wild Berry Blue). There are a few times Galchen's narrators say they are not into symbols. But in one story (The Lost Order) her narrator and her husband are in search of a lost wedding ring. A book of symptoms rather than observations.
Throughout reading this collection I kept asking myself, "How is it that someone with the world at her feet, a book contract, great respect among literary people, by this, her second book around eight years later, has so little to say about a culture that has embraced her?" It is obvious she is looking directly at her life, but has made the mistake of needing to address it through fiction. Galchen needs to drop the fascination with Kafka (someone whose every sentence was rooted in multiple cultures, an ability Galchen doesn't have) and go ahead and write that memoir everyone who has noticed her wishes to read, shredding that last vestige of postmodernism she is clinging onto like an obligation does to an audience. Get rid of them. This is the 21st century not the 20th. Those kinds of games are over.
September 29, 2014
Before reading American Innovations I hadn't seen the cover blurb that states: The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, reimagined from the perspective of female characters. I don't know if understanding that beforehand would have altered my reading experience -- I am, at any rate, unfamiliar with Borge's The Aleph and Gogol's The Nose -- so I can only evaluate what I found on the page, and it was a somewhat uneven experience. For the most part, these are uncomfortable stories, veering often into the surreal (with one woman's furniture running away and another having a breast appear on her abdomen), but what was confusing to the mind often resonated in the heart.
Author Rivka Galchen definitely has a master's control of the English language as shown in this example, with a woman speaking on the phone with her husband from The Lost Order:
I was struck by that "I language along" as the perfect encapsulation of this type of conversation and there were many, many such striking moments throughout this collection. There were also a lot of esoteric bits that lost me like:
Fortunately, the NPR book review defined that for me as "A German philosophical term about the total nature of the work of art, first introduced by a mid-nineteenth century German aesthetician named Trahndorff", because I never would have looked it up; I was annoyed by the inclusion of a word like gesamtkunstwerk, and the repeated use of "the Kantian sublime", because they seemed designed to exclude non-academics from total understanding and that would be my biggest complaint: More than anything, American Innovations, with its literary allusions, feminist imperative, and post-post-modern constructions seems elitist; written for professional readers. But.
(Galchen left a "but" hanging at the end of a paragraph like that and I loved it -- one little word, so weighty.) But…like I said, there is much in this collection that is emotionally stirring: from that ironic frission a reader gets when you see characters lying or refusing to answer straight-forwardly, to the powerful way that Galchen captured a young girl's first major and unrequited crush on an inappropriately older man in Wild Berry Blue:
I know those feelings -- just like that -- but hadn't really remembered them until this short story, so that's definitely worthwhile. Perhaps if I could have identified more with Galchen's other themes -- she repeatedly mentions time travel, unemployed young women who have dead fathers and non-understanding mothers, writers who are also scientists, attraction to men with unwashed hair, acupuncture, manatees -- perhaps if more of her themes resonated with me emotionally I could have also connected with them intellectually.
And my final observation: I read American Innovations because it's on the 2014 Giller Prize longlist -- meant to recognise excellence in Canadian fiction -- but simply being born in Toronto doesn't make Rivka Galchen (raised in and residing in the States) a typically Canadian writer, and this book has nothing to do with Canadian themes. If anything, it seems perfectly representative of the Creative Writing Program at Colombia where Galchen is an adjunct professor, and has much in common with her colleagues Siri Hustvedt (and her The Blazing World) and Gary Shteyngart (and I wondered if her mention of Gary Gnu was a shoutout to him). I wish Canadian prizes were truly reserved for Canadian books. /end rant
Author Rivka Galchen definitely has a master's control of the English language as shown in this example, with a woman speaking on the phone with her husband from The Lost Order:
We hadn’t always conversed in a way that sounded like advanced ESL students trying to share emotions, but recently that was happening to us; I think we were just trying to keep a steady course through an inevitable and insignificant strait in our relationship.
“I’m sorry, Boo,” I say. “I’m the one who should apologize.” I am suddenly missing him very badly, as if I have been woken from one of those dreams where the dead are still with us. Being awake feels awful. I language along, and then at some point in my ramblings he says to me, “I have to go now,” and then he is gone.
I was struck by that "I language along" as the perfect encapsulation of this type of conversation and there were many, many such striking moments throughout this collection. There were also a lot of esoteric bits that lost me like:
I washed my face with peach scrub and took care, as I generally do, not to look into the mirror too gesamtkunstwerk-ily. Instead, only in close patches.
Fortunately, the NPR book review defined that for me as "A German philosophical term about the total nature of the work of art, first introduced by a mid-nineteenth century German aesthetician named Trahndorff", because I never would have looked it up; I was annoyed by the inclusion of a word like gesamtkunstwerk, and the repeated use of "the Kantian sublime", because they seemed designed to exclude non-academics from total understanding and that would be my biggest complaint: More than anything, American Innovations, with its literary allusions, feminist imperative, and post-post-modern constructions seems elitist; written for professional readers. But.
(Galchen left a "but" hanging at the end of a paragraph like that and I loved it -- one little word, so weighty.) But…like I said, there is much in this collection that is emotionally stirring: from that ironic frission a reader gets when you see characters lying or refusing to answer straight-forwardly, to the powerful way that Galchen captured a young girl's first major and unrequited crush on an inappropriately older man in Wild Berry Blue:
I begin to feel as if maybe I am going to cry because of these accumulated moments of being nothing. That's what it feels like standing so close to this type of beauty -- like being nothing…
He looks down at me, startled, then laughs abruptly. "Hi little sexy," he says. Then he laughs again, too loud, and the other cashier, who has one arm shrunken and paralyzed, turns and looks and then looks away again.
These few seconds seem like everything that has ever happened to me.
My milk somehow purchased, I go back to the table wondering if I am green, or emitting a high-pitched whistling sound, or dead…
I feel -- a whole birch tree pressing against my inner walls, its leaves reaching to the top of my throat -- the awful sense of wanting some other life.
I know those feelings -- just like that -- but hadn't really remembered them until this short story, so that's definitely worthwhile. Perhaps if I could have identified more with Galchen's other themes -- she repeatedly mentions time travel, unemployed young women who have dead fathers and non-understanding mothers, writers who are also scientists, attraction to men with unwashed hair, acupuncture, manatees -- perhaps if more of her themes resonated with me emotionally I could have also connected with them intellectually.
And my final observation: I read American Innovations because it's on the 2014 Giller Prize longlist -- meant to recognise excellence in Canadian fiction -- but simply being born in Toronto doesn't make Rivka Galchen (raised in and residing in the States) a typically Canadian writer, and this book has nothing to do with Canadian themes. If anything, it seems perfectly representative of the Creative Writing Program at Colombia where Galchen is an adjunct professor, and has much in common with her colleagues Siri Hustvedt (and her The Blazing World) and Gary Shteyngart (and I wondered if her mention of Gary Gnu was a shoutout to him). I wish Canadian prizes were truly reserved for Canadian books. /end rant
July 27, 2014
Galchen's stories are not satisfying in the way short stories are usually satisfying. These stories are not tidy, they twist in the middle, heading in a different direction and then flutter out at the end. But I found that I respected this way of story telling in that it felt more like real life. This is a funny conclusion considering the numerous non-realistic elements in the stories. Yet the stories remained true. I remained entertained and intrigued throughout the collection.
The one story that will stay with me is "Wild Berry Blue." In this story, Galchen pushes beyond the intellectual realm and delves into the emotional realm. She describes the 9 year old's crush with wonderful detail and the protagonist's flip-flopping in her mind elicited emotion and connection in this reader. The other stories were interesting and Galchen's use of first person is commendable, but because she stays in the realm of the intellect, I'm not sure if the other stories will continue to resonate beyond today. But maybe they will. Maybe my ironing board will walk out of my life and I will think of Galchen and this wonderful collection of stories.
The one story that will stay with me is "Wild Berry Blue." In this story, Galchen pushes beyond the intellectual realm and delves into the emotional realm. She describes the 9 year old's crush with wonderful detail and the protagonist's flip-flopping in her mind elicited emotion and connection in this reader. The other stories were interesting and Galchen's use of first person is commendable, but because she stays in the realm of the intellect, I'm not sure if the other stories will continue to resonate beyond today. But maybe they will. Maybe my ironing board will walk out of my life and I will think of Galchen and this wonderful collection of stories.
August 29, 2017
Raccolta di racconti, scrittura creativa americana, classica. Rivka Galchen ne applica le regole a situazioni grottesche, talvolta surreali. Usa per lo più uno stile naturalistico che aumenta lo spaesamento che si prova seguendo le situazioni assurde descritte. Non c’è mai sensazionalismo, non si distacca dal tono ordinario: così, l’inquietante diventa pervasivo, è una componente del minimalismo. Qui a volte si spinge oltre il reale, fino al fantastico.
Alcuni racconti le riescono così bene da restare impressi. Su tutti, La zona della dissimilitudine. Non sempre il gioco funziona alla perfezione, qualcuno sembra più un tentativo, un esercizio di stile. La scrittura in generale è da manuale, anche se ogni tanto questo rompe l’incanto perché suona studiata a tavolino, specie nel mantenere la simmetria tra ciò che accade nel racconto e la scelta speculare di parole e immagini, che fanno sempre da contrappunto perfettamente intonato. A volte, però, il risultato è davvero buono.
Influenze varie: David Foster Wallace e Roberto Bolaño, esplicitamente citato in uno dei racconti. Secondo la quarta di copertina americana, alcuni racconti sono ispirati a dei classici. La zona della dissimilitudine verrebbe dall'Aleph di Borges; devo ammettere di non essermene accorta, pur amando entrambi i racconti. Innovazioni americane, da cui il titolo della raccolta, riprende Il naso di Gogol, e questo invece è chiaro. C'è poi L'ordine perduto da mettere in relazione con il racconto del 1939 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, sul quale non mi pronuncio perché non l'ho mai letto (né ho visto i film tratti da).
Alcuni racconti le riescono così bene da restare impressi. Su tutti, La zona della dissimilitudine. Non sempre il gioco funziona alla perfezione, qualcuno sembra più un tentativo, un esercizio di stile. La scrittura in generale è da manuale, anche se ogni tanto questo rompe l’incanto perché suona studiata a tavolino, specie nel mantenere la simmetria tra ciò che accade nel racconto e la scelta speculare di parole e immagini, che fanno sempre da contrappunto perfettamente intonato. A volte, però, il risultato è davvero buono.
Influenze varie: David Foster Wallace e Roberto Bolaño, esplicitamente citato in uno dei racconti. Secondo la quarta di copertina americana, alcuni racconti sono ispirati a dei classici. La zona della dissimilitudine verrebbe dall'Aleph di Borges; devo ammettere di non essermene accorta, pur amando entrambi i racconti. Innovazioni americane, da cui il titolo della raccolta, riprende Il naso di Gogol, e questo invece è chiaro. C'è poi L'ordine perduto da mettere in relazione con il racconto del 1939 The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, sul quale non mi pronuncio perché non l'ho mai letto (né ho visto i film tratti da).
October 15, 2017
DNF. I really struggled to get through the first 4 stories in this book. And then I gave up. I closed the book, with a good, clear conscience, and put it away.
This is the first book in a long, long, LONG time that I did not finish. It was disappointing, and I really struggled with the thought of putting it down without completing it first. Especially given that it's a collection of short stories, and that it could always change up in the next one, but I just couldn't wait to find out any longer. The stories were dull and long-winded and monotonous and went NOWHERE. The writing was pretentious and tedious and unnecessarily splashy.
It was nothing like I expected it to be, and I was disappointed in my purchase. Money wasted.
This is the first book in a long, long, LONG time that I did not finish. It was disappointing, and I really struggled with the thought of putting it down without completing it first. Especially given that it's a collection of short stories, and that it could always change up in the next one, but I just couldn't wait to find out any longer. The stories were dull and long-winded and monotonous and went NOWHERE. The writing was pretentious and tedious and unnecessarily splashy.
It was nothing like I expected it to be, and I was disappointed in my purchase. Money wasted.
August 9, 2014
You know what? I'm tired of this whole style. I don't know what to call it, even. Talented female writers whose characters I can't stand, who seem to be made of nothing but self-obsessive neurosis. I'll just go back and re-read Margaret Atwood's short stories or something. I can't believe so many reviews of the title story failed to see how Atwood-derivative it was.
I'm sure I'll read a few more stories before I return this to the library, but they don't hold together as a collection. It's that lost, anemic female narrator thing that I can't tolerate.
I'm sure I'll read a few more stories before I return this to the library, but they don't hold together as a collection. It's that lost, anemic female narrator thing that I can't tolerate.
July 29, 2015
Many of my reviews here are off the cuff riffs that inform reviews that I write for other publications, namely The Floating Library, my books column for San Diego CityBeat. Sometimes the review I post here is a cut and paste job from a published review. This one is neither. I've written my review and turned it in and I'm writing today to tell you that I'm disappointed in it, and in myself.
I generally don't read other reviews of books I'm reading until I've finished writing the review. I think that's standard practice. If I have a problem with a book I'm curious to see if others found it problematic, too; but I don't want my thinking about a book clouded by what other critics have written. When I finished American Innovations, there was a lot to read because it's the paperback edition of a follow up to a big debut novel that received a great deal of acclaim so all the major book reviewing outlets weighed in when it came out last spring and I discovered that my review wasn't all that different from the reviews I was reading, which was disappointing.
In the jacket copy and promo materials, the publisher teases the reader with the notion that the stories are contemporary retellings of canonical works of literature with all of the male protagonists replaced by modern women. The copy goes on to point out how this story references Gogol and that story riffs on Borges, etc. But the jacket copy only lists three stories. Did the publisher reveal the analogs to the other stories? Not as fas as I could tell. Did anyone bother to figure out what the rest of the stories might me referencing? It doesn't look like it. Instead, each and every review mentions the same handful of stories. And so did I.
I like these kinds of literary parlor tricks and I know other readers like them, too. But after reading this interview in Gawker I couldn't help but feel like I'd been conned. While Galchen is open about the influences, she says things that make me think that this conceit was cooked up after the fact as a marketing tool. Perhaps that's cynical. Galchen states that the idea for a collection of female protagonists began to cohere after 6-7 stories, but is much more vague about their antecedents. At one point in the interview she says that she's not much of a planner, which to my way of thinking flies in the face of the assertion of the book as a "project" that sets out to make use of other works.
What's so exasperating to me about all of this is that Galchen is a phenomenal writer with a very particular sense of humor that propels her stories to some very interesting places. Her characters are oddly vulnerable and strangely fearless. They seem to me like rare and special beings who process civil interaction and family dynamics in a way that's almost alien. If I had to choose a single word it would be "precious" even though doing so incurs the risk of negative connotations. I've never read stories like these before, stories that seem crafted to showcase a certain way of living in the world that is not quite but almost at odds with things that perhaps we put too much value on--possessions, spouses, family, even literature--if not in fiction then most certainly in real life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I apologize for following the herd, for letting myself be led by the nose to sniff the hothouse flowers blooming in their pots when there is so much else out there to take in, celebrate and share.
I generally don't read other reviews of books I'm reading until I've finished writing the review. I think that's standard practice. If I have a problem with a book I'm curious to see if others found it problematic, too; but I don't want my thinking about a book clouded by what other critics have written. When I finished American Innovations, there was a lot to read because it's the paperback edition of a follow up to a big debut novel that received a great deal of acclaim so all the major book reviewing outlets weighed in when it came out last spring and I discovered that my review wasn't all that different from the reviews I was reading, which was disappointing.
In the jacket copy and promo materials, the publisher teases the reader with the notion that the stories are contemporary retellings of canonical works of literature with all of the male protagonists replaced by modern women. The copy goes on to point out how this story references Gogol and that story riffs on Borges, etc. But the jacket copy only lists three stories. Did the publisher reveal the analogs to the other stories? Not as fas as I could tell. Did anyone bother to figure out what the rest of the stories might me referencing? It doesn't look like it. Instead, each and every review mentions the same handful of stories. And so did I.
I like these kinds of literary parlor tricks and I know other readers like them, too. But after reading this interview in Gawker I couldn't help but feel like I'd been conned. While Galchen is open about the influences, she says things that make me think that this conceit was cooked up after the fact as a marketing tool. Perhaps that's cynical. Galchen states that the idea for a collection of female protagonists began to cohere after 6-7 stories, but is much more vague about their antecedents. At one point in the interview she says that she's not much of a planner, which to my way of thinking flies in the face of the assertion of the book as a "project" that sets out to make use of other works.
What's so exasperating to me about all of this is that Galchen is a phenomenal writer with a very particular sense of humor that propels her stories to some very interesting places. Her characters are oddly vulnerable and strangely fearless. They seem to me like rare and special beings who process civil interaction and family dynamics in a way that's almost alien. If I had to choose a single word it would be "precious" even though doing so incurs the risk of negative connotations. I've never read stories like these before, stories that seem crafted to showcase a certain way of living in the world that is not quite but almost at odds with things that perhaps we put too much value on--possessions, spouses, family, even literature--if not in fiction then most certainly in real life.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I apologize for following the herd, for letting myself be led by the nose to sniff the hothouse flowers blooming in their pots when there is so much else out there to take in, celebrate and share.
July 7, 2015
Galchen made all kinds of big splash with her first novel in 2008, Atmospheric Disturbances
So readers have been waiting impatiently for a new book. this is of short stories, and they are international, sciencey in the style of andrea barrett Servants of the Map: Stories , some surrealness , so love, but mostly none. Lots of dead fathers and ghosts. Quality writing and stories, like Deborah levy Black Vodka: Ten Stories, not ho-hum shorts, or at least, not so memorable stories in something like baboon Baboon
So recommended for galchen and quality stories fans.
So readers have been waiting impatiently for a new book. this is of short stories, and they are international, sciencey in the style of andrea barrett Servants of the Map: Stories , some surrealness , so love, but mostly none. Lots of dead fathers and ghosts. Quality writing and stories, like Deborah levy Black Vodka: Ten Stories, not ho-hum shorts, or at least, not so memorable stories in something like baboon Baboon
So recommended for galchen and quality stories fans.
August 8, 2017
Dieci racconti di surreale quotidiano.
Vite dimesse e dai margini incerti, all'insegna di un sommesso spaesamento in cui a tratti affiora l'impossibile. Mobili che decidono di scappare di casa, frigoriferi che si svuotano e si riempiono da soli, incontri che attraversano il tempo.
La scrittura è molto buona, agile e immediata e con un ritmo interessante; d'altra parte la Galchen insegna scrittura creativa. A volte però si ha l'impressione che l'autrice usi la creatività come un'arma impropria, generando esperimenti che lasciano perplessi.
Qui per esempio la protagonista parla delle sue poco floride condizioni economiche : " Un po' di soldi li avevo, ma non un sacco. Sbarre di non-soldi mi crescevano intorno nei sogni imprigionandomi come fusti di granoturco magico". O ancora, descrivendo le emozioni di un innamoramento: "Sono pervasa, ed è la pressione di un albero di betulla contro le mie pareti interne, con le foglie che mi arrivano fino alla gola, dalla sensazione orribile di volere un'altra vita". No, con le metafore botaniche non ci siamo.
Quello che però salva il libro è un racconto, bellissimo. Si chiama Blu frutti di bosco ed è un Disordine e dolore precoce in salsa americana, ma che salsa ! Qui non c'è realismo magico o trovate innovative, c'è una descrizione attenta ed empatica di un primo amore infantile, con una straordinaria capacità di cogliere le sfumature e di descrivere le prime crepe del castello felice dell'infanzia e il nascere della consapevolezza di sé e della inquietudine.
Chi è capace di tanta sottigliezza merita credito. Con la Galchen innovatrice mi fermerei qui, aspetto la Galchen osservatrice al prossimo appuntamento .
Vite dimesse e dai margini incerti, all'insegna di un sommesso spaesamento in cui a tratti affiora l'impossibile. Mobili che decidono di scappare di casa, frigoriferi che si svuotano e si riempiono da soli, incontri che attraversano il tempo.
La scrittura è molto buona, agile e immediata e con un ritmo interessante; d'altra parte la Galchen insegna scrittura creativa. A volte però si ha l'impressione che l'autrice usi la creatività come un'arma impropria, generando esperimenti che lasciano perplessi.
Qui per esempio la protagonista parla delle sue poco floride condizioni economiche : " Un po' di soldi li avevo, ma non un sacco. Sbarre di non-soldi mi crescevano intorno nei sogni imprigionandomi come fusti di granoturco magico". O ancora, descrivendo le emozioni di un innamoramento: "Sono pervasa, ed è la pressione di un albero di betulla contro le mie pareti interne, con le foglie che mi arrivano fino alla gola, dalla sensazione orribile di volere un'altra vita". No, con le metafore botaniche non ci siamo.
Quello che però salva il libro è un racconto, bellissimo. Si chiama Blu frutti di bosco ed è un Disordine e dolore precoce in salsa americana, ma che salsa ! Qui non c'è realismo magico o trovate innovative, c'è una descrizione attenta ed empatica di un primo amore infantile, con una straordinaria capacità di cogliere le sfumature e di descrivere le prime crepe del castello felice dell'infanzia e il nascere della consapevolezza di sé e della inquietudine.
Chi è capace di tanta sottigliezza merita credito. Con la Galchen innovatrice mi fermerei qui, aspetto la Galchen osservatrice al prossimo appuntamento .
May 11, 2021
These stories were exhausting, often beginning somewhere and ending nowhere. There is a mind-blowing unevenness to this collection which limited me to reading only one story per sitting. These are extremely well written stories with some very funny sentences, but they were a bit too "clever" for my tastes.
My favorite stories:
“The Lost Order,” which presents the afternoon reveries of an unemployed woman, plays with the human desire to escape humdrum reality for imaginary adventure. The narrator engages in a series of trivial deceptions—when someone calls her with a wrong number, trying to place an order for Chinese food, she takes the order, allowing the caller to think his food is on the way when it isn’t. For some reason this story really stuck.
"But one day I woke up and heard myself saying, I am a fork being used to eat cereal. I am not a spoon. I am a fork. And I can’t help people eat cereal any longer."
“The Region of Unlikeness,” our narrator becomes infatuated with a handsome, enigmatic man who doesn’t return her affections. She nevertheless spends a great deal of time with him and his strange friend, whom she doesn’t like.
“I got absolutely no work done while I was friends with those guys. And hardly any reading, either,” she reports. 'What I mean to say is that those were the happiest days of my entire life.'”
“Wild Berry Blue,” is an almost painfully clear and precise description of the way a child falls in love, and the most straightforward story of the lot.
"Why do I always want the McDonaldland butter cookies and never the chocolate chip? It seems creepy to me now for the first time, all the habits and ways of the heart I have that I didn’t choose for myself."
The Lost Order ★★★★★
The Region of Unlikeness ★★★★☆
Sticker Shock ★★★☆☆
American Innovations ★☆☆☆☆
Wild Berry Blue ★★★★☆
The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire DNF
Real Estate ★★☆☆☆
Dean of the Arts DNF
The Late Novels of Gene Hackman DNF
Once an Empire ★★★☆☆
My favorite stories:
“The Lost Order,” which presents the afternoon reveries of an unemployed woman, plays with the human desire to escape humdrum reality for imaginary adventure. The narrator engages in a series of trivial deceptions—when someone calls her with a wrong number, trying to place an order for Chinese food, she takes the order, allowing the caller to think his food is on the way when it isn’t. For some reason this story really stuck.
"But one day I woke up and heard myself saying, I am a fork being used to eat cereal. I am not a spoon. I am a fork. And I can’t help people eat cereal any longer."
“The Region of Unlikeness,” our narrator becomes infatuated with a handsome, enigmatic man who doesn’t return her affections. She nevertheless spends a great deal of time with him and his strange friend, whom she doesn’t like.
“I got absolutely no work done while I was friends with those guys. And hardly any reading, either,” she reports. 'What I mean to say is that those were the happiest days of my entire life.'”
“Wild Berry Blue,” is an almost painfully clear and precise description of the way a child falls in love, and the most straightforward story of the lot.
"Why do I always want the McDonaldland butter cookies and never the chocolate chip? It seems creepy to me now for the first time, all the habits and ways of the heart I have that I didn’t choose for myself."
The Lost Order ★★★★★
The Region of Unlikeness ★★★★☆
Sticker Shock ★★★☆☆
American Innovations ★☆☆☆☆
Wild Berry Blue ★★★★☆
The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire DNF
Real Estate ★★☆☆☆
Dean of the Arts DNF
The Late Novels of Gene Hackman DNF
Once an Empire ★★★☆☆
August 31, 2014
This story collection is wonderfully witty and melancholy, or more melancholy than witty, filled with innuendoes that at times I couldn’t understand, being originally not from America, but sensed on some other level. On a universal level. On a level of connection with words and images that stayed with me like bright flashes of every day strangeness. Simple strangeness of existence. Things we do to fill our lives, to think we know where we’re going, when in fact we have no clue.
There are two levels to these stories. The humor glaze upon the soft tender inner something that is sad and wondrous and lonely and lost sometimes. Most of the stories are told from the point of view of a young woman, sometimes a writer, going about her life, meeting people, thinking, ruminating. Perhaps the funniest and my favorite story was Sticker Shock, on affair of a family told through numbers, house cost numbers, insurance numbers, year numbers. It’s fantastic how underneath it all there was so much feeling, and so much irony, it made me laugh out loud. In another story, a young woman witnesses her furniture escape her apartment, like it made up its mind and decided to leave her. In another she gets tangled into a relationship with two men, one of whom is the son of the other from the future. And through all of them, like a nerve, is strung some kind of a longing, for being, for togetherness, for love, and yet there is never an answer. Just like in real life.
All in all, a delicious collection. Beautifully written. Of periwinkle blues and Kantian sublime and wit.
There are two levels to these stories. The humor glaze upon the soft tender inner something that is sad and wondrous and lonely and lost sometimes. Most of the stories are told from the point of view of a young woman, sometimes a writer, going about her life, meeting people, thinking, ruminating. Perhaps the funniest and my favorite story was Sticker Shock, on affair of a family told through numbers, house cost numbers, insurance numbers, year numbers. It’s fantastic how underneath it all there was so much feeling, and so much irony, it made me laugh out loud. In another story, a young woman witnesses her furniture escape her apartment, like it made up its mind and decided to leave her. In another she gets tangled into a relationship with two men, one of whom is the son of the other from the future. And through all of them, like a nerve, is strung some kind of a longing, for being, for togetherness, for love, and yet there is never an answer. Just like in real life.
All in all, a delicious collection. Beautifully written. Of periwinkle blues and Kantian sublime and wit.
July 29, 2014
The thing that kept me away from short story collections (and suspicious of writers famous for them) all these years is that frustrating sense of hope this goddamn form warrants. If a novel is bad, you can tell by at most 50 pages in and can leave it there in good, clear conscience. In a collection, however, even if the first couple of stories are absolutely off, you keep thinking, "Maybe the next one will get better? I mean, they got bundled together into a book for a reason, right?" Yes, and the reason is appallingly bad taste. Jesus, I can't believe what shit my compulsion drove me through, page after page from this utterly deranged woman. I should not have given in to this typical marketing hype, given that I had loathed Atmospheric Disturbances as well.
February 18, 2015
These stories are weird. In a good way--but weird nonetheless. Apparently a lot of them are influenced by very popular, classic short stories, such as Gogol's "The Nose" (for more information on this, see the NY Times Review here: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/boo... )
Galchen makes each story her own, however, and every single one of them has a female protagonist. I found Galchen's narrative voice easy to connect to--almost soothing and familiar. Unfortunately I did not feel the same way about most of her protagonists. In theory, I like the idea of taking traditional story structures, especially those written by men, and inverting the stories so they occur from a female perspective. Her protagonists, though, seemed to rely way too much on the actions of men or the feelings of men in their lives to shape how they acted or felt about themselves. In that way, I found the whole feminist aspect of these stories to be treated half-heartedly. I think Galchen could've taken the stories to a whole new level by cutting out the protagonists' dependence on men.
There are a lot of themes that bind these stories together. Images of ghosts and other supernatural/sci-fi elements are quite common in these stories. There is also a focus on death, memory, and unrequited love (maybe "unrequited" is not the right word--more like love that has been abandoned by one party or the other). I really enjoyed the reoccurring images of time and how it functions differently for different people at various points in life. Another pleasing aspect of these stories is that each protagonist deals with a unique perception of reality. Galchen hints at the many different ways reality can be perceived based on a person's general mental/phsyical health, age, economic status, and environment.
All that being said, I look forward to reading more from Galchen in the future, and can only see good things coming from her if she continues to write with such finesse.
The Lost Order ★★★★☆
The Region of Unlikeness ★★★☆☆
Sticker Shock ★★☆☆☆
American Innovations ★★★★☆
Wild Berry Blue ★★★★☆
The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire ★★★☆☆
Real Estate ★★★☆☆
Dean of the Arts ★★☆☆☆
The Late Novels of Gene Hackman ★★★☆☆
Once an Empire ★★★☆☆
Galchen makes each story her own, however, and every single one of them has a female protagonist. I found Galchen's narrative voice easy to connect to--almost soothing and familiar. Unfortunately I did not feel the same way about most of her protagonists. In theory, I like the idea of taking traditional story structures, especially those written by men, and inverting the stories so they occur from a female perspective. Her protagonists, though, seemed to rely way too much on the actions of men or the feelings of men in their lives to shape how they acted or felt about themselves. In that way, I found the whole feminist aspect of these stories to be treated half-heartedly. I think Galchen could've taken the stories to a whole new level by cutting out the protagonists' dependence on men.
There are a lot of themes that bind these stories together. Images of ghosts and other supernatural/sci-fi elements are quite common in these stories. There is also a focus on death, memory, and unrequited love (maybe "unrequited" is not the right word--more like love that has been abandoned by one party or the other). I really enjoyed the reoccurring images of time and how it functions differently for different people at various points in life. Another pleasing aspect of these stories is that each protagonist deals with a unique perception of reality. Galchen hints at the many different ways reality can be perceived based on a person's general mental/phsyical health, age, economic status, and environment.
All that being said, I look forward to reading more from Galchen in the future, and can only see good things coming from her if she continues to write with such finesse.
The Lost Order ★★★★☆
The Region of Unlikeness ★★★☆☆
Sticker Shock ★★☆☆☆
American Innovations ★★★★☆
Wild Berry Blue ★★★★☆
The Entire Northern Side Was Covered with Fire ★★★☆☆
Real Estate ★★★☆☆
Dean of the Arts ★★☆☆☆
The Late Novels of Gene Hackman ★★★☆☆
Once an Empire ★★★☆☆
April 10, 2019
This was a read. I hate to admit that it mostly left me cold, not from being bad, but more from just sort of existing, of the sort where one wonders where exactly it's supposed to be. Perhaps this is best summed up in Wild Berry Blue, a story in which a child, small enough to need to stand on tiptoes at the mcdonalds counter to push a dollar bill along it, is yet old enough to have a book report on "The Yellow Wallpaper," despite by all other data being a literal child of maybe 10, tops. It's odd, too, because otherwise that story of the blind foolishness of a child's first concept of love is one of the better pieces here, with its odd tensions of walking the line between cookies and milk and realizing what the world is truly like. Other stories fill with data and trivialities about rents and inheritances. When the hostess of a party declares that the younger generations are "conservative and very judgmental," one has no choice but to believe we're supposed to agree, as the younger protagonist has not done much to prove the claim false.
So where do we go from here, then, a book that is in some ways billed as taking a feminist stance on a number of classic stories? Too often these feel like exercises and not statements. Even in the most fantastical setups, worlds are not built... I am more drawn to images of Portland, Maine during "Once an Empire," due to its focus on its own rendition of the city's Time and Temperature building, than I am sucked in at the "mystery" of the narrator's disappearing furniture... it feels like these things are happening to the narrators and primary characters, and they've simply resigned themselves to it. Perhaps a statement of its own, but harder to suss out, especially when a character zones out and comments on gnus reporting the news when the word "gnosis" comes up in a diagnostic setting, or when the one food mentioned in a scene is a note that "Among the snacks were bright yellow peppers," a specificity which seems imbued with meaning, despite crudites being pretty standard party snack fare. It's either super dense symbolism, or super distracted, fragmentary details. Either way, it was hard to feel too much about it.
So where do we go from here, then, a book that is in some ways billed as taking a feminist stance on a number of classic stories? Too often these feel like exercises and not statements. Even in the most fantastical setups, worlds are not built... I am more drawn to images of Portland, Maine during "Once an Empire," due to its focus on its own rendition of the city's Time and Temperature building, than I am sucked in at the "mystery" of the narrator's disappearing furniture... it feels like these things are happening to the narrators and primary characters, and they've simply resigned themselves to it. Perhaps a statement of its own, but harder to suss out, especially when a character zones out and comments on gnus reporting the news when the word "gnosis" comes up in a diagnostic setting, or when the one food mentioned in a scene is a note that "Among the snacks were bright yellow peppers," a specificity which seems imbued with meaning, despite crudites being pretty standard party snack fare. It's either super dense symbolism, or super distracted, fragmentary details. Either way, it was hard to feel too much about it.
May 24, 2016
More reviews available at my blog, Beauty and the Bookworm.
This is an odd book. Collections of short stories tend to be odd in some sort of way, but this one is particularly odd, partly because of the nature of the stories and party because of the unevenness of the collection. Some of the stories have a hint of the possible paranormal about them; in one, a woman watches her furniture walk away on its own. Some of them seem to lack any real point or driving motive, such as the one that's basically just an accounting of how a mother and daughter bought and sold things. Some are first person, some are third. Some have narrators that may or may not be unreliable, leaving me with the vague, nagging sense that all the narrators might be unreliable and Galchen was just having a giggle at my expense. It's not that great of a feeling. There's an overall feeling in these stories that something is just off, for a reason that you can't quite put your finger on, and some of the title/story combinations made me feel like I was missing something massive, though even after a good deal of reflection I can't figure out what that missing aspect was. The sense of disconnection that the main characters of the stories feel with everyone around them is a recurring theme, but it also makes them somewhat alien to me, the reader. In the end, I wasn't taken in to a single one of these stories, but was left on the outside looking in, and that's not the best place for a reader to be.
2 stars out of 5.
This is an odd book. Collections of short stories tend to be odd in some sort of way, but this one is particularly odd, partly because of the nature of the stories and party because of the unevenness of the collection. Some of the stories have a hint of the possible paranormal about them; in one, a woman watches her furniture walk away on its own. Some of them seem to lack any real point or driving motive, such as the one that's basically just an accounting of how a mother and daughter bought and sold things. Some are first person, some are third. Some have narrators that may or may not be unreliable, leaving me with the vague, nagging sense that all the narrators might be unreliable and Galchen was just having a giggle at my expense. It's not that great of a feeling. There's an overall feeling in these stories that something is just off, for a reason that you can't quite put your finger on, and some of the title/story combinations made me feel like I was missing something massive, though even after a good deal of reflection I can't figure out what that missing aspect was. The sense of disconnection that the main characters of the stories feel with everyone around them is a recurring theme, but it also makes them somewhat alien to me, the reader. In the end, I wasn't taken in to a single one of these stories, but was left on the outside looking in, and that's not the best place for a reader to be.
2 stars out of 5.
July 24, 2018
I've been on a short story collection kick given the focus of my dissertation. While these stories are not as heavily centered in speculative fiction as my dissertation, many still contain an element of the uncanny, the inexplicable that only women can understand. I can't help but think about Gloria Anzaldúa's idea of la facultad, the special knowledge women can acquire in their liminal social positions.
The characters in these stories are unlikable, honest. They are all rather blunt in their speech. Some women are aware of their imperfections, others not, although they usually unwittingly sharing that information with the reader. Somehow, they're endearing. I especially enjoyed "Sticker Shock," which uses real estate to explore a difficult relationship between mother and daughter. Real estate seems to be something of a common theme across stories. As is mother-daughter relationships and feelings of isolation.
These were fun to read. While not light-hearted, they manage to tackle concerns of contemporary society with irreverent solemnity. Oxymoronic, I know.
The characters in these stories are unlikable, honest. They are all rather blunt in their speech. Some women are aware of their imperfections, others not, although they usually unwittingly sharing that information with the reader. Somehow, they're endearing. I especially enjoyed "Sticker Shock," which uses real estate to explore a difficult relationship between mother and daughter. Real estate seems to be something of a common theme across stories. As is mother-daughter relationships and feelings of isolation.
These were fun to read. While not light-hearted, they manage to tackle concerns of contemporary society with irreverent solemnity. Oxymoronic, I know.
December 28, 2014
In a way, the meandering endings of some of these stories were a relief - a gradual slackening of something taut and tense as opposed to an abrupt snap. It made me pay attention to the smaller stories contained within the larger one without taking away from the suspense of each story, it made me look for hints and clues and I didn't much mind that they were never really solved (except for in the case of "Dean of the Arts" where I really did want to find out more about Manuel Macheko). My favourite story was Wild Berry Blue, which I found had the best descriptions of feelings and feeling. A favourite line:
"Why do I always want the McDonaldland butter cookies and never the chocolate chip? It seems creepy to me now for the first time, all the habits and ways of the heart I have that I didn’t choose for myself."
"Why do I always want the McDonaldland butter cookies and never the chocolate chip? It seems creepy to me now for the first time, all the habits and ways of the heart I have that I didn’t choose for myself."
April 3, 2015
standard rivka galchen, which is to say: brilliant, funny, off-kilter, a little lost. a lot of the book flirts with themes explored in atmospheric disturbances, the author's novel debut: identity conflation, directionless, parents, otherness and anxiety, hilarious and completely literary wordplay. a lot of folks seem taken with "wild berry blue," which i might call the least galchenesque and most straightforward story of the lot. my personal favorite is probably "sticker shock," a laugh-out-loud funny and highly original look at the perennial issues of contention: money and family. definite shades of lydia davis' "break it down," at least to my mind. the whole thing is a great read and well worth your time.
June 12, 2014
Why am I giving this three stars? I'm upset that I'm giving it three stars. For the first half of the collection, I thought I'd definitely be giving it 4 or 5 stars, but somewhere in the second half I fell off the AMERICAN INNOVATIONS wagon. It isn't that I'm not into magical realism/furniture leaving of its own accord, etc. I'm entirely impressed by Rivka Galchen's mind and the real oddity of her stories. But the last few stories just fell flat for me. I hope that, whenever I read this collection again (which I will), I'll change my mind about them. They are evocative! They include minute details that I love and relate to, patterns of the skippy/predictably associative human mind. But.
February 26, 2016
I loved this collection of short stories. Galchen's writing feels wholly fresh and original and gives you an intimacy to the thoughts of the narrator, one that feels natural and familiar to your own. It seemed that most of the stories utilized an unreliable narrator, or at least one who internalized and argued out the lies they told themselves--the way we lie to ourselves everyday, methodically or flippantly, apologizing vaguely or absentmindedly. At times the stories are extremely funny and at times sad with longing, sometimes they feel hollowed out of emotion, in a way that conveys the weight and mass of the feelings that used to reside there and hinting at what violence carved them out.
August 21, 2014
Apparently these stories develop from those written by widely-known writers. Don't let that turn you off. There is a deep humanity to Galchen's work, which I didn't find in the originals that I recognised. The loneliness she finds all around her reminds me of what found in some of Lucinda Williams songs. Galchen uses few artifices, no epiphanies and the humour has to be searched for. Nevertheless she writes convincingly from the heart, regardless of the imitations she undertakes.
November 4, 2016
A quirky and intelligent collection of heartbreaking and funny short stories, often one and the same. This is literary fiction with recognizable dialogue and no fear of genre fiction staples like time travel and the supernatural. None of us are perfect and maybe everyone has something to say and this book takes a close look at all of that.
June 27, 2019
I'm not quite sure what to make of this collection of short stories. Whilst I was reading each one I enjoyed the slightly off-centre nature of the main character but was left somehow unsatisfied at the conclusion.
Each story's protagonist is somehow adrift in their life and I guess that's reflected in the vagueness of the story.
More like a 3.5
Each story's protagonist is somehow adrift in their life and I guess that's reflected in the vagueness of the story.
More like a 3.5
January 15, 2018
Freakin brilliant. Really sticks with me. I can look at the title of the story and remember everything. I mean, its gotten in there, (there meaning my brain), and rearranged it. Style and also other stuff. Thank you!
March 25, 2018
A rather odd collection of stories, many of which fail to arrive in the way I expected, ending rather surprisingly. Her style kept me reading, she writes beautifully and in an original voice. I would recommend taking them one at a time, interspersed with other reading.
October 16, 2014
Loved all of them. Just the right amount of weird.
May 22, 2014
Cerebral, with a bit of magical realism sprinkled in. Beautiful language without being pretentious. I usually don't like short stories, but I think I liked every single one in this collection.
June 20, 2014
Pretentious, overwrought and dull. There are dozens of better story collections out there. Skip this one.
September 29, 2014
Didn't really enjoy it took me forever to read as a result, overrated.
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January 11, 2015Almost too much—ask the movement at this moment and they'll murmur.
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