Upright Beasts

by Lincoln Michel

Children go to school long after all the teachers have disappeared, a man manages an apartment complex of attempted suicides, and a couple navigates their relationship in the midst of a zombie attack. In these short stories, we are the upright beasts, doing battle with our darker, weirder impulses as the world collapses around us.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Magical Realism, Collections, Anthologies

216 pages, Paperback

First published October 5, 2015

About the author

Lincoln Michel is the author of the story collection Upright Beasts (Coffee House Press) and the novel The Body Scout (Orbit), which was named one of the 10 Best Science Fiction Books of 2021 by The New York Times and one of the 75 Best Sci-Fi Books of All Time by Esquire.

His short fiction appears in The Paris Review, Granta, Lightspeed, McSweeney’s, NOON, Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, The Guardian, and elsewhere.

He writes the newsletter Counter Craft and his next novel, My Metallic Realms, will be published by Atria in 2025.

Reviews

[Roxane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strange, sharply written stories. I was less fond of the last section but the first three sections were wonderful. Lots of unexpected endings. The first story, Our Education is probably my favorite. Very good read overall. Check it out.

[Adam Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the Dopest. Anyone who says different is a wack MC.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really wonderful and inventive.

[Panagiotis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ο Lincoln Michel ανήκει στη μια συνομοταξία των νέων διηγηματογράφων που έχουν πειραματικές διαθέσεις, είναι άτακτοι, άλλοτε σκληροί και αρέσκονται σε εναλλακτικές εκδοχές της πραγματικότητάς μας.

Όπως στην πρώτη ιστορία με τα έγκλειστα παιδιά ενός σχολείου. Καθηγητές δεν υπάρχουν πια. Μόνο μερικά απομεινάρια της ύπαρξής τους. Ή μήπως κι αυτά είναι τεχνητά, μήπως ποτέ δεν υπήρξαν; Μια οργισμένη νεολαία απέναντι στο καθεστημένο που αντιπροσωπεύει η παιδεία, τσαλαπατάει τις αναμνήσεις ενός κατεστραμμένου κόσμου. Σε σχέση με την Link, που μου θύμισε αρκετά, ο Μίσελ είναι λιγότερο σκανταλιάρης, προσεγγίζει το αλλόκοτο με μια ύποπτη σύνεση,  η αφήγησή του έχει μια μελαγχολία, άλλοτε έναν κάπως πεισιθάνατο τόνο που γίνεται ξεκάθαρος στο The River Trick, όπου το άστυ έχει πέσει σε μια αυτοκαταστροφική μανία - κόσμος αυτοκτονεί κατά το δοκούν, τίποτα δεν φαίνεται να μπορεί να αναχαιτίσει τον ολοκληρωτικό χαμό και το τέλος είναι τρυφερό μπροστά στο αναπόφευκτο της καημένης πόλης.

Ένας κοινός θεματικός άξονας σε πολλές ιστορίες είναι οι ανθρώπινες σχέσεις. Όπως μια από αυτές που ξεχώρισα, On the brief travels of my brother, όπου ο αφηγητής μιλώντας για τον αδερφό του με μια παράξενη αποστασιοποίηση, ουσιαστικά μιλάει για τις αποστάσεις που βάζουμε ανάμεσα στα αγαπημένα πρόσωπα. Mου άρεσε αυτή η απλή και την ίδια στιγμή σχολαστική φωνή να εξιστορεί άνευρες σχέσεις και παραμελημένα αισθήματα  -  μια προσκόλληση σε άνευ σημασία λεπτομέρειες, που νομίζω καμουφλάρει την αδυναμία να νιώσει αληθινές συγκινήσεις. Αρκετά συχνά ένιωθα αυτό διαβάζοντας: νόμιζα πως κάτι καταλάβαινα, τελειώνοντας ιστορίες με μια αίσθηση μεταξύ μουδιάσματος και ικανοποίησης.

Γιατί το βιβλίο έχει πολλές ιστορίες  που δεν οδηγούν κάπου τις περισσότερες φορές. Όχι μόνο οι μικρές αλλά και οι εκτενέστερες, πράγμα μάλλον αναμενόμενο σε αυτό το ύφος της λογοτεχνίας. Και αυτή φαίνεται να είναι η συνολική αίσθηση που αφήνει το βιβλίο: του ανικανοποίητου και του αναπάντητου. Για τις τρεις τελευταίες ιστορίες, όμως, η συλλογή αυτή ξεπλήρωσε μεγάλο μέρος των προσδοκιών μου. Ο Μισέλ επιστρατεύει την ιδιαίτερη φωνή του για να διηγηθεί αλλόκοτες ιστορίες με αρχή, μέση και τέλος, επιτέλους. Στην πρώτη, μια παρέα έχει ένα αυτοκινητιστικό ατύχημα με ένα αμφιβόλου ταυτότητας πτηνού. Θα καταλήξει στα χέρια μιας παράξενη οικογένειας στη μέση του πουθενά που έχοντας σώσει μια εξωγήινη βδελυρή οντότητα, τρέφεται από αυτήν, έχοντας υποστεί μια νοσηρή μετάλλαξη. Στην δεύτερη ιστορία δύο ζευγάρια βιώνουν ένα ξέσπασμα πανδημίας. Στην ύπαιθρο, ανυποχώρητοι στην απόφασή τους να κάνουν τις διακοπές τους, αναγκάζονται να σκοτώνουν ζόμπι, άλλοτε να τα διώχνουν, καθώς εκείνα σκοντάφτουν σε φράχτες και φυτά. Και στις δύο ιστορίες οι μικρές αποτυχίες των σχέσεων, οι μικρές απιστίες και οι ατελέσφοροι έρωτες φαίνονται να ταλανίζουν τους ανθρώπους ακόμα και την στιγμή που η πραγματικότητά τους έχει ανατραπεί. Το βιβλίο κλείνει με έναν επίλογο ευφάνταστο, προσφέροντας ως μπόνους άλλη μια ιστορία.

Οι περισσότερες ιστορίες λειτουργούν σαν υποσχέσεις για μια μεγαλύτερη ιστορία που θα μπορούσε να είναι πολύ καλή. Αλλά οι επιλογές του Μίσελ μπορεί να κάνουν πολλούς αναγνώστες να ψάχνουν μάταια ένα συμβατικό επιμύθιο στο τέλος. Ωστόσο για αυτό το εξαιρετικό κλείσιμο των τελευταίων ιστοριών θα κατατάξω τον Michel στους "ενδιαφέροντες και ελπιδοφόρους" συγγραφείς. Το προτείνω όμως; Ναι, μια με συνθήκη: αν κανείς μπορεί να διαβάσει αυτές τις ιστορίες σαν σύντομες καταβυθίσεις σε λογοτεχνικά σύμπαντα, τότε είναι ένα ωραίο βιβλίο. Χρειάζεται όμως μια τριβή με την σύγχρονη μορφή του διηγήματος για να προσαρμόσει κανείς τους αναγνωστικούς του κάλυκες σε τέτοιες γεύσεις. Σας ακούγετε ενδιαφέρον; Ξεκινήστε τον πειραματισμό! 

[Book Riot Community]

Lincoln Michel has long been an important voice in the literary world as a writer for BOMB, Tin House, The Believer, and more, as well as Electric Literature's online editor, so it's exciting to finally have a collection of his work. These stories are dark and weird - which is right in my wheelhouse. Michel explores social impulses and the surprising behaviors of us "upright beasts" when normality is twisted or ripped from existence. A stellar debut. (Bonus: It's published by Coffee House Press, who can't seem to help but rock so hard.)

Tune in to our weekly podcast dedicated to all things new books, All The Books: http://bookriot.com/category/all-the-...

[MissFede · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF 45%

Unfortunately I found these stories quite unremarkable. I have read almost half of them and none really stuck with me. They are supposed to be dark and eerie but instead I found them insipid. I am afraid this is a disappointment for me and I will not be finishing this collection.

[Peter Landau · Rating 5 out of 5]

The stories in UPRIGHT BEASTS by Lincoln Michel are just far enough removed from reality so as to be more real. They’re strange, like life is strange, and just as funny, heartfelt and unexpected. It’s only in the final section of the book that he pulls further back from credibility with the inclusion of monsters who are not manmade. At first I thought the gimmick was tipping the scales to too cutesy or clever, at least for me, but this section, featuring the two longest of his short stories, share a common bold of relationships gone bad in dramatically bad times. They may not have been my favorites of the collection, but by the end of the final story, about love in the time of a zombie apocalypse, I was surprised by the emotional wallop I felt reading the last paragraph. These stories may employ schtick, but that doesn’t make them any less powerful, in fact, it makes them stronger, weirder and deeper.

[Scott]

Full of monsters, and monstrous people, alien half-breeds, and zombies, Upright Beasts should feel alien in itself. But it's funny, warm, melancholy, and complex. I loved it. I've now read "If It Were Anyone Else" some eight or nine times trying to figure out how it works - I cannot. It is a genius piece of writing. And I've taught "Our Education" to great success at least twice. The collection is equal parts Kafka, Barthelme, and Lovecraft, I think so anyway. But it's certainly not enough of a description as it does not account for the zombies. Read this book.

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Came highly recommended with (apt) comparisons to Donald Barthelme, who is my favorite author. I'd throw in some Kōbō Abe and Steven Millhauser reminders too. Did not disappoint.

[Tobias · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some nicely unsettling stories here, from the satirical to the horrific to the flat-out strange. A couple of the stories impressively capture a mood of paranoia–whether it's a suburban community's rivalries turning manic or a group of friends wrangling with their own pasts and a zombie outbreak.

[Ryan Bradford · Rating 5 out of 5]

A bunch of super-inventive short stories. The thing I love about these is that no matter how fantastical the premise gets, Michel grounds it with modern-era miserablism and pettiness. Maybe like Seinfeld for the horror/sci-fi/speculative crowd. [Chef kiss]

[Esmée · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started this in 2016 and read about a good third, but wasn't really grabbed by the stories. Picked it back up again this month to finally finish it and unfortunately it gave me the same feeling. All stories are solid, well-written and have interesting ideas, but they just didn't work for me.

[Mitch Loflin · Rating 4 out of 5]

A zesty little mix of stories here, most of which I liked. One of my favorites is basically just the episode of Spongebob with Robot Krabs.

[mantareads · Rating 3 out of 5]

The last few stories were delightfully, chillingly weird

[Maya Chiraz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The whole book is good but the last 3 stories I couldn’t force myself to finish them.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

I cranked through this little volume of short stories quite quickly and really enjoyed them all! Each one cultivates an air of strangeness that both alienates us and pulls us in all at the same time. That was a fascinating dynamic- I'm feeling enough of the eerie vibe to want to draw back, but instead, I got sucked in. The final story, "Getting There Nonetheless" was probably my favorite.

I would love to see a novel from this author! This collection was really great reading, but as always with short stories, I found them too...short. They left me wanting more. I'd really like to see what Michel can do with a full novel! I'm sure it would be an enthralling read.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's some wild and great stuff in this one. I'd definitely read the next book that Michel puts out. I came really close to rating the whole book five stars, and there are certainly many five star stories in here. Many. Frankly, I wonder if I ended up just slightly on the four star side for the whole book just because some struck me so much more than others that I wanted just a bit more out of stories I would have otherwise loved. Star systems suck anyway. Regardless, all good stories and some great writing. Imaginative, surreal, and cool. What's not to like?

[Sheng · Rating 3 out of 5]

Upright Beasts is a strange, peculiar, sometimes enjoyable but downright odd collection of short stories by Lincoln Michel. Divided into four main sections Upright Beasts, North American Mammals , Familiar Creatures and Megafauna, Michel makes it difficult to discern where reality ends and little twists of fantasy begin in each of these stories. Sometimes they work and leave you feeling uncomfortable and thinking, other times they feel forgettable and underdeveloped.

The titular Upright Beasts was probably my favourite section out of the entire collection. These stories were all a little weird but they gave me that strange feeling that everything felt weirdly about right at the end of them. Our Education is both the first story and a highlight, depicting a post-apocalyptic world where students occupy a school with no adults and teachers start to change from a memory of the past to a forbidden legend in an 1984 kind of way. If It Were Anyone Else is a strangely heartwarming tale where the main character tries his best to avoid an overly friendly stranger who seems a little lonely. The main character tests the man to his limits and in the end, seems to have opened up a little as the man breaks down somewhat. The River Trick tells of a caretaker in an apartment complex filled with half-suicidal occupants, half because they do not want to go all the way in their suicide attempts and always tip off the caretaker when to enter and stop them before they go too far. The Room Inside My Father's Room is a story that appears to have a deeper meaning as each successive generation of sons feel severely constrained by the rooms they have been given when compared against the huge space that their fathers and generations before have. It kind of misses the mark for me though. The delightfully dark Almost Recess however caught me off-guard with its abrupt end where a classroom of schoolchildren decide to construct a fake gallows with their teacher, only for it to have very real results. The closer of Our New Neighbourhood is a peculiar tale of a husband's descent into paranoia and madness in increasing the value of property in the neighbourhood. This takes a toll on his wife who starts coping out in her own way by gathering information on the neighbours with the original temptation of having an affair. These two wrongs somehow cancel each other out for an ending that resolves everything.

North American Mammals was a little hit and miss for me. It started off well with Filling Pools where the main character goes about filling up deep ends of swimming pools with concrete to make them less dangerous of small kids. By this point, I was already conditioned into expecting some small child to end up stuck in the concrete as it hardens in the pool and meeting a sticky end but thankfully, that didn't happen. There were no cracks in the concrete but rather in the main character's psyche instead as he struggled with his relationship with his ex. A few forgettable stories filled this section but Halfway Home to Somewhere Else was relatively interesting as a grown up main character travels back to a spring where he used to frequent as a teenager with his wife and child and ends up in a disagreement with similar youths. Things Left Outside ended this section well as a woman grows increasingly obsessive over the origins and story of a dead body discovered near her house.

Familiar Creatures was also slightly disappointing. I liked the fairytale-ish My Life in the Bellies of Beasts where the main character grows up in various creatures' insides as he gets swallowed by different ones throughout his life, eventually freed by a girl he met when he was young. The Head Bodyguard Holds His Head in His Hands was another standout as a group of bodyguards try and deal with a role reversal in their adult lives, now guarding a dictator that they used to bully in school. Everybody Who's Anybody is perhaps the best, giving a Black Mirror vibe when a rich architect decides to clones himself and identity issues and distrust between characters makes it difficult to discern who is the original and who is the cunning copy. In between these stories however were many less-than-impressive ones that didn't really leave much of an impact on me.

Longer short stories are found in the final segment Megafauna. Dark Air was just an absolutely wild ride. Surrealism slowly turned into a downright nightmarish horror story as an awkward trio of a couple and the girl's roommate (and suspected third party) run into a strange family after having an unfortunate incident with an alien-like creature. It really did well inserting a sense of dread and terror in the climatic ending. Getting There Nonetheless was more of a slow burn. The zombie genre has been done multiple times but this story started out so chill that I failed to realise a true zombie epidemic was in the way. As the two couples staking out in a holiday house slowly succumb one-by-one to the infection, the true gravity of the situation starts to set in as the people they knew and once were fade away, replaced by organisms functioning at the lowest level of cognition.

Overall, this book had some highlights and some forgettable moments. The stories were definitely unique though and not quite like anything I have ever seen before. The strange subdued sense of unease and discomfort is created masterfully by Michel and this leads me to give it a 3.5/5.

[Nadxieli Mannello · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great collection with a range of stories from the quiet and opaque to the weird to the darkly funny. "Our Education," "The River Trick," "Filling Pools" and "If It Were Anyone Else"--I'm just going to start listing too many -- are really spectacular.

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This short story collection is what is best about The Rumpus Book Club. Good quirky writing that I never would have picked up on my own. A few of them missed the mark for me but most of them left me thinking and a few even caused me to re-read them. That's pretty hard to get me to do : )

[Jason Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

Michel mixes around genres here, so you get a little Borges, a little Lovecraft, a little Bradbury. It's a great and strange first collection.

[Charles Dee Mitchell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I picked this up because I admire Michel's editorial projects: the website Electric Literature and the journal Gigantic. But there wasn't much here for me in the stories.

[Gilly · Rating 5 out of 5]

MINDFUCK

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deft, confounding collection of short stories, weaving between realism, fantasy, and horror/weird. One of the consistent themes, I think, is a kind of grudging nostalgia for youth, in all its moronic brutality.

I don't want to call the characters bad people, but many of them are--let's say--sub-par people; of course, we're all sub-par people who each individually think we are above-par people, that's what being a person is about. So in Upright Beasts we have a bunch of normal, sub-par people caught in situations ranging from a-little-odd to completely-insane, and instead of dealing with it, these normal, sub-par people are trying to ignore things and just keep on keeping on. Because that's what normal, sub-par people do.

There are moments in this story collection that in lesser hands would have seemed like cliché mockery of modern Internet culture (e.g. "ha ha, look at that Millennial checking social media while the world burns") but there's a mix of melancholy and strangeness that prevents it from ever veering too far towards blunt parody. And the general momentum and pacing of the book keeps you reading from story to story without hitting that "short story collection wall" which happens even with the best writers. The stories are similar enough in tone that it's not a chore each time you have to start a new one, but are different (and odd) enough that it never bogs down.

Perhaps the best thing in the collection is the final flourish, A Note on the Type, a hilarious meta-story about two rival typesetters. It's both an excellent microcosm of the entire collection and also feels like a secret joke between you and the author. Seriously, though, I'd read a whole book about fictitious typesetting feuds throughout history.

[Andy January · Rating 4 out of 5]

I almost DNFed this book but I am glad I didn’t because somewhere around 2/3rds of the book, every story is so good.

This book is composed of so many short stories, ranging from a page to 15 pages and is divided into 4 sections.

The first 2 sections are called Upright Beasts and North American Mammals. The stories were good but rather uninteresting especially if you are a non-American reader. I think there are nuances in those stories that only local Americans could grasp.

The second 2 sections Familiar Creatures and Megafauna are stories injected with Magical Realism and science fiction. These stories totally saved the book from utter boredom.

Nevertheless Lincoln Michel is a good storyteller!

3.5 rounded to 4.

[Jiro Dreams of Suchy · Rating 3 out of 5]

The type of horror that doesn’t sicken with blood and guts nor menace or fear but just that what the fuck is going on feeling of never knowing what life really is and the closer you get to an answer or an understanding the farther away you are from any sort of conclusion. Why do we fall in love, why do we try to do anything at all?

I enjoyed these stories but if you want answers or even clear cut ideas this isn’t for you, this is purely surreal.

Favorite stories
The room inside my fathers room

What you need to know about the weathervane

Lawn dad

What we have surmised about the John Adam’s incarnation

Dark air (personal favorite 🤩)

[LeeLee Lulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

These are a series of sad, clever stories that I would mostly put under the umbrella of "festering suburbia." (I really like to read stories and try to find a theme. Sometimes there isn't one. That's a disappointment). Things are happening in a heightened, sad, hyper-stifled, version of our own reality.

Most of the book is along that vein until the final quarter, where the stories gently lift themselves off the rails and go buckwild. These are more hit-and-miss, but the hits really do land.

Overall, I really dug this quirk-fest.

[Karen Carlson · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you like your fiction dark and weird, this’ll do the trick. But the weirdness isn’t the point; it’s just the path to the point, which is generally human relations. Most of the stories are very short – 2 to 5 pages. Some are surreal, others horror; a few are just straight realism. Several show striking techniques of storytelling. And then there’s a wonderful Easter egg at the very end.


FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Eleanor Imbody · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the stories much more once I started reading them as flash fiction. Looking for the word "beasts" was like a fun Easter egg hunt, it probably appears in about half the stories. Some of my favorites were "Routine," "Everybody Whose Anybody," "My Life in the Bellies of Beasts" (love!!), Things Left Outside," "Our Education," and "The River Trick." Many of the stories were haunting, funny, and sharp. A few were forgettable. Will definitely be reading more of Michel!

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting, original stories. Blurbs are from Lipsyte, Yu, van den Berg, and Link for good reason. There are hints of each, as well as Saunders, and Percy, and maybe Orner in the flash pieces sprinkled throughout. Without question, and enjoyable read with some shocking moments.

Favorite Stories: The River Trick, Our New Neighborhood, and Getting There Nonetheless.

Honorable Mention: The Deer in Virginia, Some Notes on My Brother's Brief Travels, and Things Left Outside.