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New American Stories
Ben Marcuss anthology of 32 stories aims to show the range of contemporary American short fiction and to celebrate the invasive, alchemical impact of a good short story on the human brain.
784 pages, Paperback
First published July 9, 2015
139 people are currently reading
924 people want to read
About the author
Ben Marcus
67 books481 followersSeemingly the most conspicuous aspect of Ben Marcus' work, to date, is its expansion on one of the most primary concerns of the original Surrealist authors -- perhaps most typified by Benjamin Péret, husband of the acclaimed painter Remedios Varo -- this being a very deep interest in the psychological service and implication of symbols and the manners by which those symbols can be maneuvered and rejuxtaposed in order to provoke new ideas or new points of view -- in other words, the creation of, in a sense, conscious dreams.
While Marcus' writing plays similarly with the meanings of words by either stripping them of their intended meaning or juxtaposing them with other words in critical ways, it also abandons the 'experimental' nature of so much of the Surrealists' writing for stories that describe human psychology and the human condition through a means that has in later years become notably more subjective and sensory in nature than that used in the broad range of fiction, both 'conventional' and 'nonconventional'.
The surreal nature of Marcus' work derives in part from the fact that it comprises sentences that are exact in their structure and syntax, but whose words, though familiar, appear to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which language and syntax themselves work to create structures of meaning. Common themes that emerge are family, the Midwest, science, mathematics, and religion, although their treatment in Marcus's writing lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts.
Marcus was born in Chicago. He attended New York University (NYU) and Brown University, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University where he was recently promoted to head of the writing MFA program. He is the son of Jane Marcus, a noted feminist critic and Virginia Woolf scholar. He is married to novelist Heidi Julavits.
While Marcus' writing plays similarly with the meanings of words by either stripping them of their intended meaning or juxtaposing them with other words in critical ways, it also abandons the 'experimental' nature of so much of the Surrealists' writing for stories that describe human psychology and the human condition through a means that has in later years become notably more subjective and sensory in nature than that used in the broad range of fiction, both 'conventional' and 'nonconventional'.
The surreal nature of Marcus' work derives in part from the fact that it comprises sentences that are exact in their structure and syntax, but whose words, though familiar, appear to have abandoned their ordinary meanings; they can be read as experiments in the ways in which language and syntax themselves work to create structures of meaning. Common themes that emerge are family, the Midwest, science, mathematics, and religion, although their treatment in Marcus's writing lends to new interpretations and conceptualizations of those concepts.
Marcus was born in Chicago. He attended New York University (NYU) and Brown University, and currently teaches writing at Columbia University where he was recently promoted to head of the writing MFA program. He is the son of Jane Marcus, a noted feminist critic and Virginia Woolf scholar. He is married to novelist Heidi Julavits.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
June 28, 2022
I read the entirety of this 700-page monster after being assigned... oh, a hundred pages for a class? An intensely odd decision on my part, but one that's led to some important conclusions, and a page full of reviews of these stories. (Yes, I did write down my opinion on every one.)
The conclusion I have come to in general from this collection is that I really only enjoy short fiction in the sci-fi-fantasy-genre. My four favorite stories of this collection - Charles Yu's Standard Loneliness Package , Maureen McHugh's Special Economics, Lucy Corin's Madmen, and Kelly Link's Valley of the Girls - reflect this, and are absolutely each worth a read if you get the chance. My fifth favorite of the collection, Yiyun Li's A Man Like Him , is an exception, but a fantastic one very worth reading for its compelling unreliable narrator.
My observation from the authors whose bios I looked up is that a great deal of these stories, especially the ones that deal with racial politics in manners I found questionable, are written by white authors. This is something I find a bit odd.
Said Sayrafiezadeh, Paranoia - ★★★☆☆
Playing with imagery of the U.S. as greedy as the backdrop to this story about an undocumented teenager. Interesting, well-written, and depressing.
Rebecca Li, Slatland - ★★☆☆☆
Follows a narrator in love with a man from Romania who does not love her back. What is this.
Jesse Ball, The Early Deaths of... - ★★★★☆
Follows four men as they fight their guilt over a crime they have committed, as represented by a Judge. Interesting story, enjoyed this a lot.
Deborah Eisenberg, Some Other Better Otto - ★★★★☆
Follows Otto as he decides whether to go to thanksgiving with his siblings Corinne, Martin, and Sharon, bringing his partner William. Primarily a character study. I adored this story and loved the writing.
Antony Doerr, The Deep - ★★★★☆
A story of young love and Ruby and Tom and the Great Depression. Beautifully written and I absolutely loved the ending.
Yiyun Li, A Man Like Him - ★★★★☆
A story about false and true accusation. To Teacher Fei, the anger of women is not a consequence of the actions of men, but an irrational act. Whether or not Teacher Fei has done what he is accused of is immaterial to his view of the world; regardless, he sees any accusation made against him as existing “for the sake of those who feel the need to accuse.” Even as his head grows increasingly claustrophobic, Li's relatively clear-eyed look at Fei's backstory allows the audience to escape the oppressive feeling that they are being beaten into liking Fei. A very well-done story.
George Saunders, Home - ★★★☆☆
A story about coming home from the war. Very distinctive voice.
NoViolet Bulawayo, Shhhh - ★★★☆☆
A story about a father coming home from South Africa sick. Excellent writing, genuinely amazing. I felt this one didn't function extremely well as a short story, which I think in hindsight is because... it isn't. It's an excerpt from the author's novel. This did successfully interest me in the novel, so that's a win.
Maureen McHugh, Special Economics - ★★★★★
“What are you doing?” “I am divorced,” begins this story. And thus follows an instant favorite, about a company and pseudo-enslavement. This one is just really interesting and enjoyable to read, with twists and turns and a touch of existential dread.
Sam Lipsyte, This Appointment Occurs in the Past - ★★☆☆☆
A story about the years-long relationship between our narrator and his complicated friend, Davis. Fascinating writing, really interesting ending. Again just not sure I quite got it, and though I knew it was a function of the unreliable narrator and meant as critical, something about the attitude towards women quite turned me off.
Lydia Davis, Men - ★★★★☆
Very interesting one-page short story. The one-pagers are very hit or miss for me, but this worked somehow; I particularly enjoyed the first sentence.
Donald Antrim, Another Manhattan - ★★★★☆
An anxiety-inducing, panic-filled swap back and forth between phone calls of a husband and wife, Jim and Kate, each cheating on each other with separate halves of a couple, Elliot and Susan. Excellent characterization even when dislikable. The story’s energy collapses as the end nears; the manic exterior is gone, and we move out from the inner life. Really excellently done.
Zadie Smith, Meet the President! - ★★★★☆
So intrigued and compelled by this story, about narrator Bill Peek and his relationships with a capitalistic world tied to development. Instantly wanted to reread this and try to understand all the parts I’d missed.
Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden - ★★★☆☆
A fascinating story in different movements about… boredom, or ennui, but that would be a reduction. I particularly loved “Silences” and “Widow”; the author has a great way of conveying the ways in which people talk to each other. Yet parts of this felt irrelevant or drawn out. [Also, the section about mentally handicapped people in “Adman” was really quite offensive.]
Joy Williams, The Country - ★★★☆☆
A story about a father son and an odd group called Come and See. I really don't know what to make of this, but the writing was decidedly compelling.
Christine Schutt, A Happy Rural Seat... - ★★★★☆
I couldn't quite explain to you why I found this story, about a couple named Nick and Pie and an event that changes them forever, so interesting, but I certainly did. Schutt has a fascinating writing style that I loved digging my teeth into.
Don Dello, Hammer and Sickle - ★★☆☆☆
A story about a man in prison and debts in Dubai. It was at this point that I began to realize many of these contemporary fiction short stories were getting a bit repetitive.
Matthias Svalina, Play - ★★★★☆
Reframing life as a game played by children. People are dehumanized and referred to as it in each game. Rather than having a plot, it serves as an itemized list. This one is very cool.
Lucy Corin, Madmen - ★★★★★
Really amazing story about a world wherein people adopt a mad person. I find both the premise and the writing of this fascinating.
Mary Gaitskill, The Arms and Legs of the Lake - ★★☆☆☆
Follows an array of narrators talking about their experiences with the Iraq war. A lot of interesting stuff in here. I found the racial politics of this questionable; the use of the N word was really deeply not needed and functioned almost entirely for shock value.
Wells Tower, Raw Water - ★☆☆☆☆
Hate that I'm one starring this because this man really can write. Wonderful descriptions, really generally well-written, fantastic concept, and I adore environmental horror. However, the comical degree to which the author of this story others women turned me off. From the beginning I was laughing a bit; “she was a pretty woman but close to sixty” was such a classic that it really made me chuckle. But the sexual assault by a grown man of a sixteen-year-old girl, complete with heavy sexualization of her, incestual subtext, and an array of imagery around her fertility as opposed to the 43-year-old oldster our protagonist calls his wife, was far too much. This was really upsetting, but not in the eerie way I'd hoped from earlier bits of the story; in a way that left me with an awful taste in my mouth that I don't see dispelling anytime soon.
Oh, and I wonder if Wells Tower was aware when he wrote about Cora, who is 43, having just finished menopause, a detail he adds as a literary indicator of her infertility, that menopause is typically a several-year period that starts between the ages of 45 and 55. Not worth a star rating; just wondered if he knew about that part.
Rachel B. Glaser, Pee on Water - ★★☆☆☆
No explanation, no definition, you just have to accept it. My short fiction professor compared this story to an epic in that it uses empirical evidence, or an establishment that these things happened, and is not big on narrative tension; it tells you what it will be giving. Themes of cleanliness are prominent. Interesting story to analyze, but really not fun to read in my humble opinion.
Tao Lin, Love Is a Thing On Sale... - ★★☆☆☆
I found this story... frankly rather myopic in its cynicism. There's a degree to which many of the stories in this novel connect cynicism about society to a cynicism about human nature and love, and I think it's a connection I disagree with.
Rebecca Curtis, The Toast - ★★★★☆
Follows a woman writing a literal toast for her sister’s wedding. This was SO compelling on a sheer writing and character level.
Robert Coover, Going for a Beer - ★★☆☆☆
Interesting few-page-long story. I also love misogyny.
Charles Yu, Standard Loneliness Package - ★★★★★
Instantly one of my favorite short stories of all time, following an unnamed narrator who lives the grief of others for a living as he falls for a woman named Kirthi. A literalization of emotional labor and capitalist critique, but also a gorgeous single story. When dipping too close to his emotional state, the narrator steps back, returning to a place of narrating events and emotions he experiences with "I am x" and "I am y". Even though these experiences are high on emotion, the lack of elaboration distances us from them, seeing them as just brief exercises in the day, just as the narrator is distanced from them. The ending made me cry; it both sees each character grow and still preserves the tragedy inherent in the story.
Deb Olin Unferth, Wait Till You See Me Dance - ★★★☆☆
A fascinating story about a teacher, an office assistant, a student ready to pass or fail, and a dance. What's most noticeable about the story is the experiments in style. There’s a high level of disjunction, with drastic time jumps and omission. Sentences are long, but not flowery, instead blunt/concise/declarative, a compression technique. The blocks themselves do aspire most of the time to a unitary purpose on the paragraph level. Thus, even when paragraphs feel disjuncted, you understand they are connected. Really well-done, not sure I actually loved it but I respect it a lot on a craft level.
Kyle Coma-Thompson, The Lucky Body - ★★★★☆
A four-page story about death. Fascinating descriptions and brilliantly written.
Rivka Galchen, The Lost Order - ★★★★☆
A fantastically written story about unemployment. Though I didn’t have much to make of this I do know I adored it.
Donald Ray Pollock, Fish Sticks - ★★☆☆☆
Why did this get written.
Kelly Link, Valley of the Girls - ★★★★★
An out of sequence story following a world wherein the wealthy try to recreate pyramids, and double in faces. My favorite type of scifi-fantasy story is when the author goes “hey, here’s this really messed up premise. Wouldn’t this be messed up? Anyway, here’s something about identity.” I love this. I think this is the ideal story actually.
Claire Vaye Watkins, The Diggings
Follows siblings going out to California, one of them with a vision for the future. This is very compulsively readable. I'm not quite sure what to make of its racial politics. Overall I don't quite know what to make of it in general, though I did not dislike it.
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The conclusion I have come to in general from this collection is that I really only enjoy short fiction in the sci-fi-fantasy-genre. My four favorite stories of this collection - Charles Yu's Standard Loneliness Package , Maureen McHugh's Special Economics, Lucy Corin's Madmen, and Kelly Link's Valley of the Girls - reflect this, and are absolutely each worth a read if you get the chance. My fifth favorite of the collection, Yiyun Li's A Man Like Him , is an exception, but a fantastic one very worth reading for its compelling unreliable narrator.
My observation from the authors whose bios I looked up is that a great deal of these stories, especially the ones that deal with racial politics in manners I found questionable, are written by white authors. This is something I find a bit odd.
Said Sayrafiezadeh, Paranoia - ★★★☆☆
Playing with imagery of the U.S. as greedy as the backdrop to this story about an undocumented teenager. Interesting, well-written, and depressing.
Rebecca Li, Slatland - ★★☆☆☆
Follows a narrator in love with a man from Romania who does not love her back. What is this.
Jesse Ball, The Early Deaths of... - ★★★★☆
Follows four men as they fight their guilt over a crime they have committed, as represented by a Judge. Interesting story, enjoyed this a lot.
Deborah Eisenberg, Some Other Better Otto - ★★★★☆
Follows Otto as he decides whether to go to thanksgiving with his siblings Corinne, Martin, and Sharon, bringing his partner William. Primarily a character study. I adored this story and loved the writing.
Antony Doerr, The Deep - ★★★★☆
A story of young love and Ruby and Tom and the Great Depression. Beautifully written and I absolutely loved the ending.
Yiyun Li, A Man Like Him - ★★★★☆
A story about false and true accusation. To Teacher Fei, the anger of women is not a consequence of the actions of men, but an irrational act. Whether or not Teacher Fei has done what he is accused of is immaterial to his view of the world; regardless, he sees any accusation made against him as existing “for the sake of those who feel the need to accuse.” Even as his head grows increasingly claustrophobic, Li's relatively clear-eyed look at Fei's backstory allows the audience to escape the oppressive feeling that they are being beaten into liking Fei. A very well-done story.
George Saunders, Home - ★★★☆☆
A story about coming home from the war. Very distinctive voice.
NoViolet Bulawayo, Shhhh - ★★★☆☆
A story about a father coming home from South Africa sick. Excellent writing, genuinely amazing. I felt this one didn't function extremely well as a short story, which I think in hindsight is because... it isn't. It's an excerpt from the author's novel. This did successfully interest me in the novel, so that's a win.
Maureen McHugh, Special Economics - ★★★★★
“What are you doing?” “I am divorced,” begins this story. And thus follows an instant favorite, about a company and pseudo-enslavement. This one is just really interesting and enjoyable to read, with twists and turns and a touch of existential dread.
Sam Lipsyte, This Appointment Occurs in the Past - ★★☆☆☆
A story about the years-long relationship between our narrator and his complicated friend, Davis. Fascinating writing, really interesting ending. Again just not sure I quite got it, and though I knew it was a function of the unreliable narrator and meant as critical, something about the attitude towards women quite turned me off.
Lydia Davis, Men - ★★★★☆
Very interesting one-page short story. The one-pagers are very hit or miss for me, but this worked somehow; I particularly enjoyed the first sentence.
Donald Antrim, Another Manhattan - ★★★★☆
An anxiety-inducing, panic-filled swap back and forth between phone calls of a husband and wife, Jim and Kate, each cheating on each other with separate halves of a couple, Elliot and Susan. Excellent characterization even when dislikable. The story’s energy collapses as the end nears; the manic exterior is gone, and we move out from the inner life. Really excellently done.
Zadie Smith, Meet the President! - ★★★★☆
So intrigued and compelled by this story, about narrator Bill Peek and his relationships with a capitalistic world tied to development. Instantly wanted to reread this and try to understand all the parts I’d missed.
Denis Johnson, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden - ★★★☆☆
A fascinating story in different movements about… boredom, or ennui, but that would be a reduction. I particularly loved “Silences” and “Widow”; the author has a great way of conveying the ways in which people talk to each other. Yet parts of this felt irrelevant or drawn out. [Also, the section about mentally handicapped people in “Adman” was really quite offensive.]
Joy Williams, The Country - ★★★☆☆
A story about a father son and an odd group called Come and See. I really don't know what to make of this, but the writing was decidedly compelling.
Christine Schutt, A Happy Rural Seat... - ★★★★☆
I couldn't quite explain to you why I found this story, about a couple named Nick and Pie and an event that changes them forever, so interesting, but I certainly did. Schutt has a fascinating writing style that I loved digging my teeth into.
Don Dello, Hammer and Sickle - ★★☆☆☆
A story about a man in prison and debts in Dubai. It was at this point that I began to realize many of these contemporary fiction short stories were getting a bit repetitive.
Matthias Svalina, Play - ★★★★☆
Reframing life as a game played by children. People are dehumanized and referred to as it in each game. Rather than having a plot, it serves as an itemized list. This one is very cool.
Lucy Corin, Madmen - ★★★★★
Really amazing story about a world wherein people adopt a mad person. I find both the premise and the writing of this fascinating.
Mary Gaitskill, The Arms and Legs of the Lake - ★★☆☆☆
Follows an array of narrators talking about their experiences with the Iraq war. A lot of interesting stuff in here. I found the racial politics of this questionable; the use of the N word was really deeply not needed and functioned almost entirely for shock value.
Wells Tower, Raw Water - ★☆☆☆☆
Hate that I'm one starring this because this man really can write. Wonderful descriptions, really generally well-written, fantastic concept, and I adore environmental horror. However, the comical degree to which the author of this story others women turned me off. From the beginning I was laughing a bit; “she was a pretty woman but close to sixty” was such a classic that it really made me chuckle. But the sexual assault by a grown man of a sixteen-year-old girl, complete with heavy sexualization of her, incestual subtext, and an array of imagery around her fertility as opposed to the 43-year-old oldster our protagonist calls his wife, was far too much. This was really upsetting, but not in the eerie way I'd hoped from earlier bits of the story; in a way that left me with an awful taste in my mouth that I don't see dispelling anytime soon.
Oh, and I wonder if Wells Tower was aware when he wrote about Cora, who is 43, having just finished menopause, a detail he adds as a literary indicator of her infertility, that menopause is typically a several-year period that starts between the ages of 45 and 55. Not worth a star rating; just wondered if he knew about that part.
Rachel B. Glaser, Pee on Water - ★★☆☆☆
No explanation, no definition, you just have to accept it. My short fiction professor compared this story to an epic in that it uses empirical evidence, or an establishment that these things happened, and is not big on narrative tension; it tells you what it will be giving. Themes of cleanliness are prominent. Interesting story to analyze, but really not fun to read in my humble opinion.
Tao Lin, Love Is a Thing On Sale... - ★★☆☆☆
I found this story... frankly rather myopic in its cynicism. There's a degree to which many of the stories in this novel connect cynicism about society to a cynicism about human nature and love, and I think it's a connection I disagree with.
Rebecca Curtis, The Toast - ★★★★☆
Follows a woman writing a literal toast for her sister’s wedding. This was SO compelling on a sheer writing and character level.
Robert Coover, Going for a Beer - ★★☆☆☆
Interesting few-page-long story. I also love misogyny.
Charles Yu, Standard Loneliness Package - ★★★★★
Instantly one of my favorite short stories of all time, following an unnamed narrator who lives the grief of others for a living as he falls for a woman named Kirthi. A literalization of emotional labor and capitalist critique, but also a gorgeous single story. When dipping too close to his emotional state, the narrator steps back, returning to a place of narrating events and emotions he experiences with "I am x" and "I am y". Even though these experiences are high on emotion, the lack of elaboration distances us from them, seeing them as just brief exercises in the day, just as the narrator is distanced from them. The ending made me cry; it both sees each character grow and still preserves the tragedy inherent in the story.
Deb Olin Unferth, Wait Till You See Me Dance - ★★★☆☆
A fascinating story about a teacher, an office assistant, a student ready to pass or fail, and a dance. What's most noticeable about the story is the experiments in style. There’s a high level of disjunction, with drastic time jumps and omission. Sentences are long, but not flowery, instead blunt/concise/declarative, a compression technique. The blocks themselves do aspire most of the time to a unitary purpose on the paragraph level. Thus, even when paragraphs feel disjuncted, you understand they are connected. Really well-done, not sure I actually loved it but I respect it a lot on a craft level.
Kyle Coma-Thompson, The Lucky Body - ★★★★☆
A four-page story about death. Fascinating descriptions and brilliantly written.
Rivka Galchen, The Lost Order - ★★★★☆
A fantastically written story about unemployment. Though I didn’t have much to make of this I do know I adored it.
Donald Ray Pollock, Fish Sticks - ★★☆☆☆
Why did this get written.
Kelly Link, Valley of the Girls - ★★★★★
An out of sequence story following a world wherein the wealthy try to recreate pyramids, and double in faces. My favorite type of scifi-fantasy story is when the author goes “hey, here’s this really messed up premise. Wouldn’t this be messed up? Anyway, here’s something about identity.” I love this. I think this is the ideal story actually.
Claire Vaye Watkins, The Diggings
Follows siblings going out to California, one of them with a vision for the future. This is very compulsively readable. I'm not quite sure what to make of its racial politics. Overall I don't quite know what to make of it in general, though I did not dislike it.
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October 12, 2015
The last long story in here was like the hypo John Travolta plunges into Uma Thurman’s chest after she ODs in Pulp Fiction, because this Brobdingnagian anthology was about to up and die on me until that point, its pallor was waxy and lips quite blue. However Claire Watkins’ delicious 53 page novella of the 1849 gold rush (The Diggings) brought it back to startled life. It’s written in a male version of the formal tone adopted by Mattie Ross in her narration of the Coen Brothers’ great remake of True Grit.
Each morning and night I fried a hunk of pork in the same skillet we used to pan the river. . After, I mixed flour in the grease to make a gray, pork-flecked porridge. I was a lacking cook, I admit, but that pork would have bested the fairest housewife. Pickled, cured or fried, the swine of California was the stingkingest salt junk ever brought around the Horn.
I still think of myself as a fan of short stories but these 740 pages have made me reconsider – like when one of your heroes puts out a really strange album, and you have to scratch your chin and let it go by, but then the next one is even stranger and more unpleasant – I could be talking about Tom Waits again here – alright, I am – and you have to think, well, maybe I’m not a fan any more. Maybe we’ve split up. Maybe Tom Waits already moved out the house and didn’t tell me. I mean, I haven’t seen him for months.
There are eight gold plated crackerjacks here, out of 32. It doesn’t help that three I’d already read in the books they came from (Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock, Tenth of December by George Saunders and We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, which is a novel, so that was cheating).
There was a massive amount of vagueness and withholding of specifics in a lot of these stories, so it was really hard to know where they were coming from. I think you’re supposed to you know be an active reader and do the math yourself but shoot, really. Just tell me. But many times, a short story is like a joke or a poem, you get it or you don’t. I loved the crazy children’s games instructions in Play by Mathias Svalina but the critic in the Independent called it a “rare misfire”. I assume that meant that he liked all the ones I disliked – in fact he singled out for special praise Pee on Water by Rachel Glaser, which was puerile, laboured and tiresome, so I hope I don’t run into Jonathan Gibbs any time soon or fisticuffs may ensue. Maybe just shoving and glaring.
Typical of the WTF kind of shenanigans you get in these stories: Madmen by Lucy Corin gives us an America where when girls go through puberty they have to visit a giant asylum and pick out an inmate (a “madman”, which can be of either sex) who will then go to live with the girl and her family. How zany is that – some kind of metaphor do you think? Beats me. Of course it’s not explained, you take it or leave it. The story burbles along in the voice of the eye-rolling self-involved teenager. It’s kind of slightly wackily amusing. But, er, huh?
There were three unreadable stories, from authors who have previous form with me, meaning I already dislike them, so no surprise – Zadie Smith, Sam Lipsyte and of course Mary Gaitskill of the Yeah Whatever school of American literature. I think I’m the only person who doesn’t think she’s a minor godlet.
Science fiction inveigles itself into a few of these stories – Special Economics by Maureen McHugh was terrific and audacious, set in near future China, Standard Loneliness Package (great title) by Charles Yu, which was frankly really really silly, and Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link. All would fit well in any Gardner Dozois annual SF anthology.
I noticed that many of the narrators throughout the book were kind of zonked-out, stoically recording parts of their fairly dreadful lives and kind of shrugging hopelessly, what can you do. Pretty much nobody has a good time in these 740 pages.
Ben Marcus in his introduction describes the effect of good short stories as something akin to LSD or a new form of crack. He’s so over the top that to Ben Marcus the top is just a dot ten miles below his feet :
When I want to be ambushed, captured, thrust into a strange and vivid world, and tossed aloft until I cannot stand it, until everything is at stake and life feels almost unbearably vivid, I do something simple. I read short stories.
Get a grip, here, Ben. It seems you have neglected your medication again. I too wanted to take a trip upon your magic swirling ship, Ben. I wasn’t sleepy and there was no place I was going. But the thing never really got off the ground. A lot of manoeuvring around the runways and some scary faces peering in at the windows.
Two and a half stars.
Each morning and night I fried a hunk of pork in the same skillet we used to pan the river. . After, I mixed flour in the grease to make a gray, pork-flecked porridge. I was a lacking cook, I admit, but that pork would have bested the fairest housewife. Pickled, cured or fried, the swine of California was the stingkingest salt junk ever brought around the Horn.
I still think of myself as a fan of short stories but these 740 pages have made me reconsider – like when one of your heroes puts out a really strange album, and you have to scratch your chin and let it go by, but then the next one is even stranger and more unpleasant – I could be talking about Tom Waits again here – alright, I am – and you have to think, well, maybe I’m not a fan any more. Maybe we’ve split up. Maybe Tom Waits already moved out the house and didn’t tell me. I mean, I haven’t seen him for months.
There are eight gold plated crackerjacks here, out of 32. It doesn’t help that three I’d already read in the books they came from (Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock, Tenth of December by George Saunders and We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo, which is a novel, so that was cheating).
There was a massive amount of vagueness and withholding of specifics in a lot of these stories, so it was really hard to know where they were coming from. I think you’re supposed to you know be an active reader and do the math yourself but shoot, really. Just tell me. But many times, a short story is like a joke or a poem, you get it or you don’t. I loved the crazy children’s games instructions in Play by Mathias Svalina but the critic in the Independent called it a “rare misfire”. I assume that meant that he liked all the ones I disliked – in fact he singled out for special praise Pee on Water by Rachel Glaser, which was puerile, laboured and tiresome, so I hope I don’t run into Jonathan Gibbs any time soon or fisticuffs may ensue. Maybe just shoving and glaring.
Typical of the WTF kind of shenanigans you get in these stories: Madmen by Lucy Corin gives us an America where when girls go through puberty they have to visit a giant asylum and pick out an inmate (a “madman”, which can be of either sex) who will then go to live with the girl and her family. How zany is that – some kind of metaphor do you think? Beats me. Of course it’s not explained, you take it or leave it. The story burbles along in the voice of the eye-rolling self-involved teenager. It’s kind of slightly wackily amusing. But, er, huh?
There were three unreadable stories, from authors who have previous form with me, meaning I already dislike them, so no surprise – Zadie Smith, Sam Lipsyte and of course Mary Gaitskill of the Yeah Whatever school of American literature. I think I’m the only person who doesn’t think she’s a minor godlet.
Science fiction inveigles itself into a few of these stories – Special Economics by Maureen McHugh was terrific and audacious, set in near future China, Standard Loneliness Package (great title) by Charles Yu, which was frankly really really silly, and Valley of the Girls by Kelly Link. All would fit well in any Gardner Dozois annual SF anthology.
I noticed that many of the narrators throughout the book were kind of zonked-out, stoically recording parts of their fairly dreadful lives and kind of shrugging hopelessly, what can you do. Pretty much nobody has a good time in these 740 pages.
Ben Marcus in his introduction describes the effect of good short stories as something akin to LSD or a new form of crack. He’s so over the top that to Ben Marcus the top is just a dot ten miles below his feet :
When I want to be ambushed, captured, thrust into a strange and vivid world, and tossed aloft until I cannot stand it, until everything is at stake and life feels almost unbearably vivid, I do something simple. I read short stories.
Get a grip, here, Ben. It seems you have neglected your medication again. I too wanted to take a trip upon your magic swirling ship, Ben. I wasn’t sleepy and there was no place I was going. But the thing never really got off the ground. A lot of manoeuvring around the runways and some scary faces peering in at the windows.
Two and a half stars.
January 20, 2018
Why is this collection called "American" stories as 30/32 of them are about/on/in New York City and/or NYC authors (despite their foreign-sounding names)? The answer, I guess, is question number two: why does this collection have only one editor? Leave it to Ben Marcus to assemble a bunch of shallow stories (which by the way, evoke or directly copy his novelistic personas of self-involved, sentimental egotists) and label them "New" and "American" instead of "self-indulgent middle class New York stories". Boring and shallow, these stories seek to capture readers' attention with the tired post-modern gimmicks (lack of psychological insight, no plot, no sociological context so as to avoid upsetting readers inadvertently by sounding pro/anti something, no dilemmas/hard choices of any sort, just cardboard characters) and there's nothing to sustain interest or offer insights into their characters' non-struggles.
August 22, 2015
“This anthology aims to present the range of what American short-story writers have been capable of in the previous ten years,” says the editor of New American Stories, Ben Marcus, in a charming, if somewhat bloated and hyperbolic, introduction. “When I could not shake a story... there was a sign that the story had taken seed. As I read, the stories I sided with were the ones that began to own me.”
The result is a mammoth selection: 32 stories across almost 800 pages. While it is tempting to fixate on the glaring absentees, it must be acknowledged that there is a wealth of fine writing on display.
Marcus tries to cover all bases, with a smattering of old-guard names (Delillo, Coover, Lydia Davis, Denis Johnson) and a decent selection of the critics' current darlings (Yiyun Li, Sam Lipsyte, Anthony Doerr, George Saunders). But the bulk of the writers included here - names like Charles Yu, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Rebecca Lee and Tao Lin, to single out just a few - are presented as the next wave, superstars-in-waiting.
With so much variety on offer, unevenness is inevitable. Thankfully, though, there are enough hits to cover the occasional misfires.
Mathias Svalina's 'Play' explores the rules of the various games that children play. More of a collage of flash pieces than a cohesive story in the strictest sense, it is so beautifully written that its affectations are easily forgiven.
'Valley of the Girls' by the always terrific Kelly Link is a weird one, about wild, privileged kids who hide away and replace themselves with doppelgängers for well-behaved public consumption. In giving the near future an ancient Egyptian slant, Link proves, as usual, that genre really can be not only artistically relevant, but sublime.
Robert Coover's 'Going for a Beer' also surprises. In unfurling, in scattershot fashion, a man's life from youth to death, it's the simple but effective idea of a memory laid thoroughly bare, and presents itself in a crazed stream-of-consciousness jumble that builds to something quite hypnotic.
These stories are impressive as much for their ambition as for what they achieve. But the anthology's two clear highlights, which come from George Saunders and 2005 Frank O'Connor Award winner, Yiyun Li, keep to a more traditional structure.
Li's 'A Man Like Him', tells the story of Teacher Fei, an elderly bachelor who lives with his ailing and senile mother, and who has suffered disgrace following (seemingly unfounded) accusations of paedophilia. Now, having discovered the internet, he spends his free time in a cafe, engaging in chat-room conversations. And when he reads about a girl who is suing her father because of an infidelity that led to divorce, Teacher Fei becomes obsessed with righting a wrong.
'Home' by George Saunders depicts the homecoming of a soldier back from one of the recent wars. Decorated as a hero but damaged by some terrible combat sin, he struggles to fit back in among his trailer trash brood as it becomes apparent just how much he's lost. “Thank you for your service,” runs like a punchline through the story, the dialogue is as finely tuned as good music and is hilarious until it grows cold and thoroughly sad.
New American Stories, Marcus insists, is his literary equivalent of a mix-tape. Rather than settling for his thirty-two favourites, he has aimed for diversity, in an effort to reveal how wide the limits of the short-form have been stretched: “he idea,” he writes, “as to put together a book that shows just what the short story can do... Each story here is a different weapon, built to custom specifications.” In this, and in portraying – for better and for worse – a fair picture of the 21st century American short story, he largely succeeds.
The result is a mammoth selection: 32 stories across almost 800 pages. While it is tempting to fixate on the glaring absentees, it must be acknowledged that there is a wealth of fine writing on display.
Marcus tries to cover all bases, with a smattering of old-guard names (Delillo, Coover, Lydia Davis, Denis Johnson) and a decent selection of the critics' current darlings (Yiyun Li, Sam Lipsyte, Anthony Doerr, George Saunders). But the bulk of the writers included here - names like Charles Yu, Said Sayrafiezadeh, Rebecca Lee and Tao Lin, to single out just a few - are presented as the next wave, superstars-in-waiting.
With so much variety on offer, unevenness is inevitable. Thankfully, though, there are enough hits to cover the occasional misfires.
Mathias Svalina's 'Play' explores the rules of the various games that children play. More of a collage of flash pieces than a cohesive story in the strictest sense, it is so beautifully written that its affectations are easily forgiven.
'Valley of the Girls' by the always terrific Kelly Link is a weird one, about wild, privileged kids who hide away and replace themselves with doppelgängers for well-behaved public consumption. In giving the near future an ancient Egyptian slant, Link proves, as usual, that genre really can be not only artistically relevant, but sublime.
Robert Coover's 'Going for a Beer' also surprises. In unfurling, in scattershot fashion, a man's life from youth to death, it's the simple but effective idea of a memory laid thoroughly bare, and presents itself in a crazed stream-of-consciousness jumble that builds to something quite hypnotic.
These stories are impressive as much for their ambition as for what they achieve. But the anthology's two clear highlights, which come from George Saunders and 2005 Frank O'Connor Award winner, Yiyun Li, keep to a more traditional structure.
Li's 'A Man Like Him', tells the story of Teacher Fei, an elderly bachelor who lives with his ailing and senile mother, and who has suffered disgrace following (seemingly unfounded) accusations of paedophilia. Now, having discovered the internet, he spends his free time in a cafe, engaging in chat-room conversations. And when he reads about a girl who is suing her father because of an infidelity that led to divorce, Teacher Fei becomes obsessed with righting a wrong.
'Home' by George Saunders depicts the homecoming of a soldier back from one of the recent wars. Decorated as a hero but damaged by some terrible combat sin, he struggles to fit back in among his trailer trash brood as it becomes apparent just how much he's lost. “Thank you for your service,” runs like a punchline through the story, the dialogue is as finely tuned as good music and is hilarious until it grows cold and thoroughly sad.
New American Stories, Marcus insists, is his literary equivalent of a mix-tape. Rather than settling for his thirty-two favourites, he has aimed for diversity, in an effort to reveal how wide the limits of the short-form have been stretched: “he idea,” he writes, “as to put together a book that shows just what the short story can do... Each story here is a different weapon, built to custom specifications.” In this, and in portraying – for better and for worse – a fair picture of the 21st century American short story, he largely succeeds.
November 23, 2015
A few good stories here but mainly just... Weird. I'm okay with weird, good with it, in fact, but some were just un-fucking-readable. Gratuitous weird. Pages of viscera, which I had to skip. And if the metaphor is stupid, let it go, you know? Do we really need to wonder why teen girls who, once they get their periods, get to go choose a madman from an asylum to keep as a pet? If anyone can help me with that, and if it thoughtfully tries to solve some universal mystery, please: all ears. Let me have it. Probably something about adulthood or the illusion of sanity or some such bullshit. There, I swore twice in a review. One star for each bad word. I'm very fair.
June 16, 2020
Eight months later, this collection is complete. These thirty-two stories are solid overall.
"Paranoia" by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh-3 out of 5 stars: A story about a man named Dean living in a world of escalating heat and excruciating cold as a war looms on the horizon. Most of the piece is centered around his friendship with Roberto, an undocumented immigrant with an Arnold Schwarzenegger obsession. Some outdated terminology was used, but Dean called it out. Not much happens in this piece, but "Paranoia" is an apt title, as a sense of unease anchors the piece.
"Slatland" by Rebecca Lee-3.5 out of 5 stars: Margit visits a child psychology professor at eleven. She's depressed due to the knowledge that her father is having an affair and her parents are getting a divorce. The professor teaches her a technique called Slatland, astral projection/disassociation that allows her to gain perspective. From there, she's able to accept what's to come, growing up and falling in love with a man who both loves and hates America, who also happens to be married to a woman back in Romania.
"The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr" by Jesse Ball-2 out of 5 stars: Four men throw snowballs at a woman on the street, thinking she is a girl that got them kicked out of a bar. This act makes the woman miscarry. Her husband retaliates by having each man participate in a shootout with him. Carr is the primary narrator, the least ugly in moral compass of the men. Although repetitive with the shootouts, the story does a good job of pointing out what someone is willing to do to repent. But the dream sequence moment felt anticlimactic and didn't add anything.
"Some Other, Better Otto" by Deborah Eisenberg-3 out of 5 stars: This story follows a man named Otto, married to a wonderful man but perpetually grumpy due to his family and their treatment of him, a niece, and his sister, who is dealing with schizophrenia. A lot happens, and although gripping and sad, it feels too wordy and verbose in its prose.
"The Deep" by Anthony Doerr-4 out of 5 stars: I'm taking a star off because the romance between Tom and Ruby was cliche and cheesy despite its cute moments. Taking place from the 1910s to the 1930s, the story follows a young man named Tom as he grows up. He's born with a hole in his heart and eventually outlives the doctors' expectations of him. As the salt mines his family operates shut down due to the Great Depression, leading good friends to move out and pass away, Tom remains haunted by Ruby, a girl he met in school, who introduced him to an underwater world. When she disappears, he doesn't give up hope. Doerr's prose is decadent and elegant, simple yet evocative, and the dialogue and writing in italics was fitting. It felt authentic to the time period, leading to a sad and heartbreaking piece that only offered bleak hope.
"A Man Like Him" by Yiyun Li-3.5 out of 5 stars: Despite this story's bleak non-ending and its focus on a retired elementary school art teacher combating what he believes is a woman's unjust fury, "A Man Like Him" is a quiet examination of a man who lives with his mother, someone gentle and kind even as she loses her memories. He comes to meet another man at the center of his daughter's angry blog. She calls this other man an adulterer. This story comments on the generational divide, set in technologically-shifting China at some point in the past, where chat rooms and imagination have taken over, Teacher Fei living a life that's uneventful but fueled by sudden rage. It's mostly expository, but Li's writing grips and intrigues.
"Home" by George Saunders-2.5 out of 5 stars: This was an odd story, part portrait of domestic home life that's a little tilted and part character study on a war veteran returning home and dealing with sudden fits of anger, his mother and her new boyfriend getting evicted from their home, his sister's fears of him holding her baby, his niece, and other people not really regarding his service with any acknowledgement other the basics.
"Shhhh" by NoViolet Bulawayo-5 out of 5 stars: With a strong narrative voice, Bulawayo tells the emotionally resonant story of a girl named Darling, whose father has returned from South Africa with AIDS. As he slowly dies in a shack on the family property, she is assigned with watching over him, something that takes her away from her friends. One day, the friends come in, and the experience ends up revealing a new side to a friend called Bastard and reigniting the light in Darling's dad's eyes. This is a chapter from a novel called We Need New Names, which my brother read in a creative writing class earlier this semester. Context, however, is not needed. This piece stands perfectly well on its own.
"Special Economics" by Maureen McHugh-2 out of 5 stars: Slightly amusing and compelling, but ultimately dry and mechanical. Jieling, an aspiring hip-hop singer, gets a job at a company called New Life. There, a group of young women work on making cells to be used for American bio-batteries. However, the company exploits the women by having their wages be reduced through the debt they owe. Jieling befriends a worker at the factory, and after outsmarting a government spy, they work together to stop the corruption. Unfortunately, this part is skipped over, and due to the stilted writing, this piece lacked engagement for me.
"This Appointment Occurs in the Past" by Sam Lipsyte-1.5 out of 5 stars: I didn't like this story, although I appreciate my Creative Writing professor sharing a craft talk with me that shared the intricacies of Lipsyte's writing style. I just didn't find the writing realistic of everyday conversation and found the story itself rather bizarre. Here, a man visits an old college friend while reminiscing on their "homosocial" stand-off re-enactment youth; in the present, the protagonist ends up in a wheelchair with an unexpected wife and still talking to the ex-mother-in-law he had sex with at the start of the piece. Wild.
"Men" by Lydia Davis-3 out of 5 stars: Well, that was quick. Davis presents a poignant paragraph of a village of women who live in peace until a man wanders in. They hide until he vanishes.
"Another Manhattan" by Donald Antrim-4 out of 5 stars: This started out rather hilariously, but as time went on and Jim, a man having an affair on his wife but wanting to buy her a huge bouquet in the hopes of wooing her back, started unraveling, the circumstances grew sadder, much more heartbreaking. Antrim's verbose prose and funny side quips about each person involved in the foursome disaster that was Jim-Kate-Susan-Elliot, including the revolving and omniscient switches, held it all together.
"Meet the President!" by Zadie Smith-1 out of 5 stars: Although I did like parts of Smith's prose, this feature from The New Yorker confused me. In a futuristic small seaside town in London, few people are left following devastating floods. There, a fourteen-year-old boy named Bill Peek plays on a VR-styled headset, graphically killing things while a little girl is pushed onto him. I'm not entirely sure what Smith was trying to say with this piece, and because of that, I didn't connect to it. But the illustration accompanying it on The New Yorker website is great.
"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" by Denis Johnson-4 out of 5 stars: Despite the verbose and overenthusiastic narration of Bill "Whit" Whitman, commercial writer extraordinaire, this was still a charming and offbeat story. Told in ten parts, Whit's wild life story unfolds, from burning paintings to a friend's suicide and an attempt at cruising slipped beneath the wall of a bathroom stall. Whit battles shoulder pain and the masquerade he's become, saying goodbye to an ex-wife and discussing a play idea with a friend of his, his award-winning commercial about a bear and rabbit chase solved through money never out of mind.
"The Country" by Joy Williams-3 out of 5 stars: This was an odd short story, but I found the writing engaging despite the narrator's irritating tone and wandering tangents. A single father attends regular meetings at an Episcopal church in a desolate wasteland, all dreams of grandeur lost in what appears to be a pseudo-dystopian destruction. His son is visited by the spirits of the narrator's mother and father, animal sanctuary operators who died in a car accident. Although I'm unsure what this story's primary message was, Williams kept me intrigued.
"A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden" by Christine Schutt-4 out of 5 stars: A young married couple meets a friend of their employer. The wife goes missing, and the husband can't quite make the connection to the friend as the person who may be responsible. Filled with vignettes, vivid and quirky details, and sharp observations that beef up the simplistic storyline, Schutt's piece was definitely memorable.
"Hammer and Sickle" by Don DeLillo-5 out of 5 stars: This story was utterly captivating. The writing style pulled me in first, followed by the gripping dialogue and plot that meandered but somehow resonated. A man at a minimum security prison spends his days watching his daughters give news reports that grow more and more elaborate while thinking about his place in society and within a prison that reflects a structure of dystopian order. Filled with jumpsuits, soccer games, and passive living, DeLillo's short story kept me glued to the book, and although I'm not sure what it ended up being about thematically, I don't really care because it was so gripping and well-crafted.
"Play" by Mathias Svalina-4 out of 5 stars: This creepy and offbeat story is told in a series of vignettes, titled with the names of childhood games and familiar phrases and then obliterating the innocence from them. Although the context behind these kids becoming cannibals and carving their names into walls is unknown, innocence becomes replaced with carnal desire to keep living and finish the games.
"Madmen" by Lucy Corin-2 out of 5 stars: When a girl gets her period, she has the right to choose a companion from a psychiatric hospital that will teach her about the strength of the world. This madman selection is a rite of passage, but with strain over who to choose and past depressive episodes, the selection is harder than it seems. I didn't connect with this as much as I wanted to; the concept was a little out there. But the prattling narrator added some charm.
"The Arms and Legs of the Lake" by Mary Gaitskill-2.5 out of 5 stars: Despite having good writing, this story was all over the place. Following a train ride with several individuals, notably a black soldier who claims to be touched by God, Gaitskill discusses the fallout of the Iraq War on these passengers. However, in the process, she utilizes the n-word either in a black or white conductor's mind and appropriates AAVE.
"Raw Water" by Wells Tower-2 out of 5 stars: While intriguing and mostly well-written, I didn't particularly like the main character of Tower's story and the sexual overtones of it. In "Raw Water," a man and his wife move to an area where few people live due to rumors that the magical red water that's said to be healing actually kills you slowly. Initially, it seems that the water is actually a godsend, but the more it unleashes terrifying inner desires and makes you feel stronger, the more it takes advantage of your system until you have too much energy, can't eat enough food, and want to be a savage. By the end of the story, our protagonist finds himself on the same path of the man who brought them here in the first place, although he doesn't know it yet.
"Pee on Water" by Rachel B. Glaser-3 out of 5 stars: An interesting and scattered meditation on the development of human life, centered around the invention of the flush toilet.
"Love Is a Thing on Sale for More Money than There Exists" by Tao Lin-1 out of 5 stars: I didn't click with this story at all. Amidst a New York bubbling with alleged terrorism, a straight college couple falls apart as they both let each other down without owning up to it.
"The Toast" by Rebecca Curtis-2 out of 5 stars: While I loved the bizarre beginning to this story, a creative writing professor turned health coach having to write a toast for her older sister's wedding, the meandering flashback of the toast itself, highlighting both of the women's terrible relationships with their mother, how the older sister keeps trying to convince her mother of her love, and the protagonist's complaints on older siblings, lost me. Also, the r-word was used. Big no-no.
"Going for a Beer" by Robert Coover-3 out of 5 stars: A hazy and Groundhog Day-esque story where a man finds himself at a bar to get drunk and sleep with another woman over and over again, "Going for a Beer" is an interesting paragraph-long story told over four quick pages.
"Standard Loneliness Package" by Charles Yu-5 out of 5 stars: Absolutely heartbreaking. A man works for a company that can live out other people's pain or grief for them, and then he falls in love with a woman who can't return his feelings.
"Wait Till You See Me Dance" by Deb Olin Unferth-2 out of 5 stars: A very busy story about an ESL teacher who can see when people die falling in love with a student and going to a Native American powwow with an office assistant to dance in appropriated costumes.
"The Lucky Body" by Kyle Coma-Thompson-3 out of 5 stars: A 35-year-old man is killed and mutilated by an unknown group.
"The Lost Order" by Rivka Galchen-1 out of 5 stars: This story about a detached woman, an unavailable number calling her about takeout food that she's not in charge of, and a struggling relationship with her husband, lost me.
"Fish Sticks" by Donald Ray Pollock-2.5 out of 5 stars: A man runs into a long-time lover, a woman who loves fish sticks, at the local laundromat while remembering a runaway trip with his cousin thirty years prior.
"Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link-2.5 out of 5 stars: Like the last story, this one was written well but ultimately very busy. In a world where girls get special pyramids and teenagers have Faces acting out their lives for them, a young man recounts sexual conquests as his sister dies from attempted suicide courtesy of a snake bite.
"The Diggings" by Claire Vaye Watkins-3 out of 5 stars: A boy tells the story of his visions being used to help his older brother's gold search in a seventeen-part narrative that does hold racism and behaviors befitting of the time period but ultimately reveals a heartbreaking descent into madness.
"Paranoia" by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh-3 out of 5 stars: A story about a man named Dean living in a world of escalating heat and excruciating cold as a war looms on the horizon. Most of the piece is centered around his friendship with Roberto, an undocumented immigrant with an Arnold Schwarzenegger obsession. Some outdated terminology was used, but Dean called it out. Not much happens in this piece, but "Paranoia" is an apt title, as a sense of unease anchors the piece.
"Slatland" by Rebecca Lee-3.5 out of 5 stars: Margit visits a child psychology professor at eleven. She's depressed due to the knowledge that her father is having an affair and her parents are getting a divorce. The professor teaches her a technique called Slatland, astral projection/disassociation that allows her to gain perspective. From there, she's able to accept what's to come, growing up and falling in love with a man who both loves and hates America, who also happens to be married to a woman back in Romania.
"The Early Deaths of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr" by Jesse Ball-2 out of 5 stars: Four men throw snowballs at a woman on the street, thinking she is a girl that got them kicked out of a bar. This act makes the woman miscarry. Her husband retaliates by having each man participate in a shootout with him. Carr is the primary narrator, the least ugly in moral compass of the men. Although repetitive with the shootouts, the story does a good job of pointing out what someone is willing to do to repent. But the dream sequence moment felt anticlimactic and didn't add anything.
"Some Other, Better Otto" by Deborah Eisenberg-3 out of 5 stars: This story follows a man named Otto, married to a wonderful man but perpetually grumpy due to his family and their treatment of him, a niece, and his sister, who is dealing with schizophrenia. A lot happens, and although gripping and sad, it feels too wordy and verbose in its prose.
"The Deep" by Anthony Doerr-4 out of 5 stars: I'm taking a star off because the romance between Tom and Ruby was cliche and cheesy despite its cute moments. Taking place from the 1910s to the 1930s, the story follows a young man named Tom as he grows up. He's born with a hole in his heart and eventually outlives the doctors' expectations of him. As the salt mines his family operates shut down due to the Great Depression, leading good friends to move out and pass away, Tom remains haunted by Ruby, a girl he met in school, who introduced him to an underwater world. When she disappears, he doesn't give up hope. Doerr's prose is decadent and elegant, simple yet evocative, and the dialogue and writing in italics was fitting. It felt authentic to the time period, leading to a sad and heartbreaking piece that only offered bleak hope.
"A Man Like Him" by Yiyun Li-3.5 out of 5 stars: Despite this story's bleak non-ending and its focus on a retired elementary school art teacher combating what he believes is a woman's unjust fury, "A Man Like Him" is a quiet examination of a man who lives with his mother, someone gentle and kind even as she loses her memories. He comes to meet another man at the center of his daughter's angry blog. She calls this other man an adulterer. This story comments on the generational divide, set in technologically-shifting China at some point in the past, where chat rooms and imagination have taken over, Teacher Fei living a life that's uneventful but fueled by sudden rage. It's mostly expository, but Li's writing grips and intrigues.
"Home" by George Saunders-2.5 out of 5 stars: This was an odd story, part portrait of domestic home life that's a little tilted and part character study on a war veteran returning home and dealing with sudden fits of anger, his mother and her new boyfriend getting evicted from their home, his sister's fears of him holding her baby, his niece, and other people not really regarding his service with any acknowledgement other the basics.
"Shhhh" by NoViolet Bulawayo-5 out of 5 stars: With a strong narrative voice, Bulawayo tells the emotionally resonant story of a girl named Darling, whose father has returned from South Africa with AIDS. As he slowly dies in a shack on the family property, she is assigned with watching over him, something that takes her away from her friends. One day, the friends come in, and the experience ends up revealing a new side to a friend called Bastard and reigniting the light in Darling's dad's eyes. This is a chapter from a novel called We Need New Names, which my brother read in a creative writing class earlier this semester. Context, however, is not needed. This piece stands perfectly well on its own.
"Special Economics" by Maureen McHugh-2 out of 5 stars: Slightly amusing and compelling, but ultimately dry and mechanical. Jieling, an aspiring hip-hop singer, gets a job at a company called New Life. There, a group of young women work on making cells to be used for American bio-batteries. However, the company exploits the women by having their wages be reduced through the debt they owe. Jieling befriends a worker at the factory, and after outsmarting a government spy, they work together to stop the corruption. Unfortunately, this part is skipped over, and due to the stilted writing, this piece lacked engagement for me.
"This Appointment Occurs in the Past" by Sam Lipsyte-1.5 out of 5 stars: I didn't like this story, although I appreciate my Creative Writing professor sharing a craft talk with me that shared the intricacies of Lipsyte's writing style. I just didn't find the writing realistic of everyday conversation and found the story itself rather bizarre. Here, a man visits an old college friend while reminiscing on their "homosocial" stand-off re-enactment youth; in the present, the protagonist ends up in a wheelchair with an unexpected wife and still talking to the ex-mother-in-law he had sex with at the start of the piece. Wild.
"Men" by Lydia Davis-3 out of 5 stars: Well, that was quick. Davis presents a poignant paragraph of a village of women who live in peace until a man wanders in. They hide until he vanishes.
"Another Manhattan" by Donald Antrim-4 out of 5 stars: This started out rather hilariously, but as time went on and Jim, a man having an affair on his wife but wanting to buy her a huge bouquet in the hopes of wooing her back, started unraveling, the circumstances grew sadder, much more heartbreaking. Antrim's verbose prose and funny side quips about each person involved in the foursome disaster that was Jim-Kate-Susan-Elliot, including the revolving and omniscient switches, held it all together.
"Meet the President!" by Zadie Smith-1 out of 5 stars: Although I did like parts of Smith's prose, this feature from The New Yorker confused me. In a futuristic small seaside town in London, few people are left following devastating floods. There, a fourteen-year-old boy named Bill Peek plays on a VR-styled headset, graphically killing things while a little girl is pushed onto him. I'm not entirely sure what Smith was trying to say with this piece, and because of that, I didn't connect to it. But the illustration accompanying it on The New Yorker website is great.
"The Largesse of the Sea Maiden" by Denis Johnson-4 out of 5 stars: Despite the verbose and overenthusiastic narration of Bill "Whit" Whitman, commercial writer extraordinaire, this was still a charming and offbeat story. Told in ten parts, Whit's wild life story unfolds, from burning paintings to a friend's suicide and an attempt at cruising slipped beneath the wall of a bathroom stall. Whit battles shoulder pain and the masquerade he's become, saying goodbye to an ex-wife and discussing a play idea with a friend of his, his award-winning commercial about a bear and rabbit chase solved through money never out of mind.
"The Country" by Joy Williams-3 out of 5 stars: This was an odd short story, but I found the writing engaging despite the narrator's irritating tone and wandering tangents. A single father attends regular meetings at an Episcopal church in a desolate wasteland, all dreams of grandeur lost in what appears to be a pseudo-dystopian destruction. His son is visited by the spirits of the narrator's mother and father, animal sanctuary operators who died in a car accident. Although I'm unsure what this story's primary message was, Williams kept me intrigued.
"A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden" by Christine Schutt-4 out of 5 stars: A young married couple meets a friend of their employer. The wife goes missing, and the husband can't quite make the connection to the friend as the person who may be responsible. Filled with vignettes, vivid and quirky details, and sharp observations that beef up the simplistic storyline, Schutt's piece was definitely memorable.
"Hammer and Sickle" by Don DeLillo-5 out of 5 stars: This story was utterly captivating. The writing style pulled me in first, followed by the gripping dialogue and plot that meandered but somehow resonated. A man at a minimum security prison spends his days watching his daughters give news reports that grow more and more elaborate while thinking about his place in society and within a prison that reflects a structure of dystopian order. Filled with jumpsuits, soccer games, and passive living, DeLillo's short story kept me glued to the book, and although I'm not sure what it ended up being about thematically, I don't really care because it was so gripping and well-crafted.
"Play" by Mathias Svalina-4 out of 5 stars: This creepy and offbeat story is told in a series of vignettes, titled with the names of childhood games and familiar phrases and then obliterating the innocence from them. Although the context behind these kids becoming cannibals and carving their names into walls is unknown, innocence becomes replaced with carnal desire to keep living and finish the games.
"Madmen" by Lucy Corin-2 out of 5 stars: When a girl gets her period, she has the right to choose a companion from a psychiatric hospital that will teach her about the strength of the world. This madman selection is a rite of passage, but with strain over who to choose and past depressive episodes, the selection is harder than it seems. I didn't connect with this as much as I wanted to; the concept was a little out there. But the prattling narrator added some charm.
"The Arms and Legs of the Lake" by Mary Gaitskill-2.5 out of 5 stars: Despite having good writing, this story was all over the place. Following a train ride with several individuals, notably a black soldier who claims to be touched by God, Gaitskill discusses the fallout of the Iraq War on these passengers. However, in the process, she utilizes the n-word either in a black or white conductor's mind and appropriates AAVE.
"Raw Water" by Wells Tower-2 out of 5 stars: While intriguing and mostly well-written, I didn't particularly like the main character of Tower's story and the sexual overtones of it. In "Raw Water," a man and his wife move to an area where few people live due to rumors that the magical red water that's said to be healing actually kills you slowly. Initially, it seems that the water is actually a godsend, but the more it unleashes terrifying inner desires and makes you feel stronger, the more it takes advantage of your system until you have too much energy, can't eat enough food, and want to be a savage. By the end of the story, our protagonist finds himself on the same path of the man who brought them here in the first place, although he doesn't know it yet.
"Pee on Water" by Rachel B. Glaser-3 out of 5 stars: An interesting and scattered meditation on the development of human life, centered around the invention of the flush toilet.
"Love Is a Thing on Sale for More Money than There Exists" by Tao Lin-1 out of 5 stars: I didn't click with this story at all. Amidst a New York bubbling with alleged terrorism, a straight college couple falls apart as they both let each other down without owning up to it.
"The Toast" by Rebecca Curtis-2 out of 5 stars: While I loved the bizarre beginning to this story, a creative writing professor turned health coach having to write a toast for her older sister's wedding, the meandering flashback of the toast itself, highlighting both of the women's terrible relationships with their mother, how the older sister keeps trying to convince her mother of her love, and the protagonist's complaints on older siblings, lost me. Also, the r-word was used. Big no-no.
"Going for a Beer" by Robert Coover-3 out of 5 stars: A hazy and Groundhog Day-esque story where a man finds himself at a bar to get drunk and sleep with another woman over and over again, "Going for a Beer" is an interesting paragraph-long story told over four quick pages.
"Standard Loneliness Package" by Charles Yu-5 out of 5 stars: Absolutely heartbreaking. A man works for a company that can live out other people's pain or grief for them, and then he falls in love with a woman who can't return his feelings.
"Wait Till You See Me Dance" by Deb Olin Unferth-2 out of 5 stars: A very busy story about an ESL teacher who can see when people die falling in love with a student and going to a Native American powwow with an office assistant to dance in appropriated costumes.
"The Lucky Body" by Kyle Coma-Thompson-3 out of 5 stars: A 35-year-old man is killed and mutilated by an unknown group.
"The Lost Order" by Rivka Galchen-1 out of 5 stars: This story about a detached woman, an unavailable number calling her about takeout food that she's not in charge of, and a struggling relationship with her husband, lost me.
"Fish Sticks" by Donald Ray Pollock-2.5 out of 5 stars: A man runs into a long-time lover, a woman who loves fish sticks, at the local laundromat while remembering a runaway trip with his cousin thirty years prior.
"Valley of the Girls" by Kelly Link-2.5 out of 5 stars: Like the last story, this one was written well but ultimately very busy. In a world where girls get special pyramids and teenagers have Faces acting out their lives for them, a young man recounts sexual conquests as his sister dies from attempted suicide courtesy of a snake bite.
"The Diggings" by Claire Vaye Watkins-3 out of 5 stars: A boy tells the story of his visions being used to help his older brother's gold search in a seventeen-part narrative that does hold racism and behaviors befitting of the time period but ultimately reveals a heartbreaking descent into madness.
August 17, 2015
Overall an excellent anthology of contemporary American stories from the last ten years or so. What impressed me most, other than the near-uniform excellence of the individual stories, was the coherence of the anthology, the way the stories speak to one another while also being very different formally and stylistically. One thing Ben Marcus is interested in as editor is a certain stylistic richness and density, and every story has a unique voice. I love the realistic character studies like Yiyun Li's A Man Like Him sitting side by side with fabulist and science fiction stories like Maureen McHugh's Special Economics and Kelly Link's The Valley of the Girls. There's the classical beauty of Anthony Doerr's The Deep and the hard-bitten Southern grotesque of Donald Ray Pollock's Fish Sticks. There's the cerebral, neurotic interiority of Deborah Eisenberg's Some Other, Better Otto and the spare language of a child's perspective in NoViolet Bulawayo's Shhhh. The collection favors long stories, with quite a few in the 30-40 page range, but there are also short, formally playful stories like Lydia Davis's Men, Robert Coover's Going for a Beer, Kyle Coma-Thompson's The Lucky Body, Mathias Svalina's Play, and Rachel Glaser's Pee on Water.
I had only read five of the stories in the anthology previously, so most of the work was unknown to me, and 14 of the 32 stories were by writers I had never read before, so I've enjoyed getting to know their work and am inspired to read more. My favorite story in the anthology by a writer whose work I already know well is Denis Johnson's long, wonderfully meandering story The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. My favorite by a writer I had never read before is either Claire Vaye Watkins's The Diggings, Charles Yu's Standard Loneliness Package, or Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's Paranoia. I started to do a list of favorites but the list got too long. I'm excited to teach this anthology in an undergrad fiction workshop because every one of these stories has something to teach. The problem is deciding which stories to put on the syllabus.
I had only read five of the stories in the anthology previously, so most of the work was unknown to me, and 14 of the 32 stories were by writers I had never read before, so I've enjoyed getting to know their work and am inspired to read more. My favorite story in the anthology by a writer whose work I already know well is Denis Johnson's long, wonderfully meandering story The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. My favorite by a writer I had never read before is either Claire Vaye Watkins's The Diggings, Charles Yu's Standard Loneliness Package, or Saïd Sayrafiezadeh's Paranoia. I started to do a list of favorites but the list got too long. I'm excited to teach this anthology in an undergrad fiction workshop because every one of these stories has something to teach. The problem is deciding which stories to put on the syllabus.
March 13, 2016
My favorite stories must be the ones by Rachel B. Glaser, Tao Lin, Joy Williams, Mary Gaitskill but the most creative and well written, for me, is the one bty Charles Yu.
December 14, 2015
Didn't want this book to end. Want to re-read it immediately. Marcus has an agenda for a particular approach to the short story that I happen to completely agree with. Only a couple of stories left me cold--the rest had a significant impact on the stories I'm currently writing and how I plan to approach others on the drawing board. Many writers I'd never heard of but plan to explore their work. In my Top 3 books of the year and destined to be a desert-island book for me.
October 7, 2023
I don't know what to write. It says short stories on the front and I expected short stories, but I wasn't aware how many short stories I'd end up reading. Now I'm kinda burned out.
Here is a short review of every short story in the book:
Paranoia by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Solid start. A short story about american dreamers. Bet that hit different in 2014.
Slatland by Rebecca Lee
Peak short story fiction.
Very well written and interesting story about a woman who struggles to find the right way to deal with her interpersonal problems. There is also a therapist who talks in a funny voice, which is always a plus for any kind of story. The idea of the slatlands and rising above conflicts is pretty dope, but I don't think that it is applicable to every problem in real life. You better go visit a therapist, maybe you are lucky and find one who talks to you in a funny voice.
The Early Deaths Of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr
Also a peak short story (This review spoils the story so read it before continuing).
Was a gut punch for me, reading how all those guys are getting killed in senseless duels. By the end I was really hoping that the protagonist would just turn the judge's head into pink mist with a well placed shot, but of course it all comes differently. In the last pages you find out that the judge just kills the boys for his bitch cunt wife. It's like reading a Hemingway short story. My neck still hurts from that whiplash because my feminist mind was experiencing, because my first reaction was "Oh damn the wife is badass". Some kids throw a snowball into your face? Just have your Judge Dredd husband kill all of them in a duel even though he kinda doesn't want to. That is some huge boss ass bitch energy. Maybe the emancipation movement was just a logical conclusion of the ban on duels. Now that all those crazy women whose husbands have just been castrated can't eliminate some poor blokes by proxy. Of course they won't just sit still at home and churn butter. These women all have a mean pitbull inside of them just waiting to get out. Go girls, you get them four year olds.
Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg
Not good. Forgot nearly everything. Something about some middle aged gay lawyer with family problems. Thats like every gay lawyer, get creative.
The Deep by Anthony Doerr
Good story. There is nothing as pure as a blooming love between a girl and a mentally stunted boy.
A Man Like Him by Yiyun Li
Meh story. I don't remember enough about it to write something good here and I don't dislike it too much to write something bad about it anyway.
Home by George Saunders
Good Story. A dysfunctional veteran returning to a home that doesn't care for veterans and having a kinda fucked up life. Can't have an american short story collection without some of these.
SHHHH by NoViolet Bulawayo
Yeah I don't remember this one at all.
Special Economics by Maureen McHugh
Great story! Especially if you fight yourself through 200 pages of kinda depressing short stories and then realize that this one actually has a happy ending with no strings attached. What a relief!
This Appointment Occurs In The Past by Sam Lipsyte
Great story! Loveable hairy sex machine meets his dying rich theatre kid friend. What a great performance!
Men by Lydia Davis
Short story.
Another Manhattan by Donald Antrim
Ok story. Eh. Kinda weird couple, but whatever floats your boat. Not sure what to make of this story. Something about mental health or dysfunctional relationships? I don't know and I don't really care.
Meet The President! by Zadie Smith
Good story. Cool sci-fi version of playing TimeSplitters on your ps2 while your little cousin is there on a visit and mom says you have to play with her, but with more subtext.
The Largesse Of The Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
Meh story. Some weird caleidoscope portrait about some dude.
The Country by Joy Williams
Meh story but better than the previous one. Something about religious cults.
A Happy Rural Seat Of Various View: Lucinda's Garden by Christine Schutt
Good story. Do you know those commericals on your phone for video games you never buy? The one about the woman who gets a garden from her criminal grandma? This story kinda has the same vibe.
Hammer And Sickle by Don DeLillo
Cool prison story.
Play by Mathias Svalina
Bonghit short story. Probably the best in the whole book.
Madmen by Lucy Corin
Great short story! So many themes packed in there, I could write a lot about it but I won't. Just read it!
The Arms And Legs Of The Lake by Mary Gaitskill
Another veteran story! And even better than Home! They mention Ghostface Killah! That's a mark of quality writing!
Raw Water by Wells Tower
Meh story. I remember what it was about but I don't really have anything to say about it.
Pee On Water by Rachel B. Glaser
Good story. It's a history of the earth in episodes kinda story. Can't help to compare it to Play as they both are the odd ones out within this anthology. But Play is so much weirder and cooler that Pee On Water gets kinda overshadowed.
Love Is A Thing On Sale For More Money Than There Exists by Tao Lin
This was a weird one because Tao Lin was the only one of the authors I read before. So I went into this short story with some expectations and only thought "Oh so this is like a mini Taipei, right?". I am a horrible reviewer, please don't take me seriously.
The Toast by Rebecca Curtis
I had so high hopes for this short story! It starts so out so good! The flashbacks were great and these drip fed moment that characterise both sister where like heroin to me, but then it fizzles just out. It feels like the the story took some turn along the way and I would have preferred riding along in the other direction.
Going For A Beer by Robert Coover
Yeah so I just reread my review and noticed that I forgot to write something about this short story. I also don't feel like opening the book again to remember what this one was about, so that's that.
Standard Loneliness Package by Charles Yu
Great story! Character driven drama enabled through light sci-fi. That's the best kind of sci-fi imo.
Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth
Cool story. Not sure who it was about but I liked it.
The Lucky Boy by Kyle Coma-Thompson
Huh? That's just some pages of gore right? Maybe I'm missing something, kinda skimmed this one.
The Lost Order by Riveka Galchen
Good story. It's really hard to not cook spaghetti.
Fish Sticks by Donald Ray Pollock
Good story. hmm. I liked it but I don't think I get it, but I liked the part where the bodybuilder had to blow some fat dude for money.
Valley Of The Girls by Kelly Link
Good story. Maybe I just wasn't trying anymore as I got closer to the end of the book. It's a good story I kinda get some subtext and I kinda don't get anything at all.
The Diggings by Claire Vaye Watkins
The big closer. I was really demotivated because this story is like 80 pages long and I really wanted to finish the book. But it's a great one! I really liked it.
Here is a short review of every short story in the book:
Paranoia by Saïd Sayrafiezadeh
Solid start. A short story about american dreamers. Bet that hit different in 2014.
Slatland by Rebecca Lee
Peak short story fiction.
Very well written and interesting story about a woman who struggles to find the right way to deal with her interpersonal problems. There is also a therapist who talks in a funny voice, which is always a plus for any kind of story. The idea of the slatlands and rising above conflicts is pretty dope, but I don't think that it is applicable to every problem in real life. You better go visit a therapist, maybe you are lucky and find one who talks to you in a funny voice.
The Early Deaths Of Lubeck, Brennan, Harp, and Carr
Also a peak short story (This review spoils the story so read it before continuing).
Was a gut punch for me, reading how all those guys are getting killed in senseless duels. By the end I was really hoping that the protagonist would just turn the judge's head into pink mist with a well placed shot, but of course it all comes differently. In the last pages you find out that the judge just kills the boys for his bitch cunt wife. It's like reading a Hemingway short story. My neck still hurts from that whiplash because my feminist mind was experiencing, because my first reaction was "Oh damn the wife is badass". Some kids throw a snowball into your face? Just have your Judge Dredd husband kill all of them in a duel even though he kinda doesn't want to. That is some huge boss ass bitch energy. Maybe the emancipation movement was just a logical conclusion of the ban on duels. Now that all those crazy women whose husbands have just been castrated can't eliminate some poor blokes by proxy. Of course they won't just sit still at home and churn butter. These women all have a mean pitbull inside of them just waiting to get out. Go girls, you get them four year olds.
Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg
Not good. Forgot nearly everything. Something about some middle aged gay lawyer with family problems. Thats like every gay lawyer, get creative.
The Deep by Anthony Doerr
Good story. There is nothing as pure as a blooming love between a girl and a mentally stunted boy.
A Man Like Him by Yiyun Li
Meh story. I don't remember enough about it to write something good here and I don't dislike it too much to write something bad about it anyway.
Home by George Saunders
Good Story. A dysfunctional veteran returning to a home that doesn't care for veterans and having a kinda fucked up life. Can't have an american short story collection without some of these.
SHHHH by NoViolet Bulawayo
Yeah I don't remember this one at all.
Special Economics by Maureen McHugh
Great story! Especially if you fight yourself through 200 pages of kinda depressing short stories and then realize that this one actually has a happy ending with no strings attached. What a relief!
This Appointment Occurs In The Past by Sam Lipsyte
Great story! Loveable hairy sex machine meets his dying rich theatre kid friend. What a great performance!
Men by Lydia Davis
Short story.
Another Manhattan by Donald Antrim
Ok story. Eh. Kinda weird couple, but whatever floats your boat. Not sure what to make of this story. Something about mental health or dysfunctional relationships? I don't know and I don't really care.
Meet The President! by Zadie Smith
Good story. Cool sci-fi version of playing TimeSplitters on your ps2 while your little cousin is there on a visit and mom says you have to play with her, but with more subtext.
The Largesse Of The Sea Maiden by Denis Johnson
Meh story. Some weird caleidoscope portrait about some dude.
The Country by Joy Williams
Meh story but better than the previous one. Something about religious cults.
A Happy Rural Seat Of Various View: Lucinda's Garden by Christine Schutt
Good story. Do you know those commericals on your phone for video games you never buy? The one about the woman who gets a garden from her criminal grandma? This story kinda has the same vibe.
Hammer And Sickle by Don DeLillo
Cool prison story.
Play by Mathias Svalina
Bonghit short story. Probably the best in the whole book.
Madmen by Lucy Corin
Great short story! So many themes packed in there, I could write a lot about it but I won't. Just read it!
The Arms And Legs Of The Lake by Mary Gaitskill
Another veteran story! And even better than Home! They mention Ghostface Killah! That's a mark of quality writing!
Raw Water by Wells Tower
Meh story. I remember what it was about but I don't really have anything to say about it.
Pee On Water by Rachel B. Glaser
Good story. It's a history of the earth in episodes kinda story. Can't help to compare it to Play as they both are the odd ones out within this anthology. But Play is so much weirder and cooler that Pee On Water gets kinda overshadowed.
Love Is A Thing On Sale For More Money Than There Exists by Tao Lin
This was a weird one because Tao Lin was the only one of the authors I read before. So I went into this short story with some expectations and only thought "Oh so this is like a mini Taipei, right?". I am a horrible reviewer, please don't take me seriously.
The Toast by Rebecca Curtis
I had so high hopes for this short story! It starts so out so good! The flashbacks were great and these drip fed moment that characterise both sister where like heroin to me, but then it fizzles just out. It feels like the the story took some turn along the way and I would have preferred riding along in the other direction.
Going For A Beer by Robert Coover
Yeah so I just reread my review and noticed that I forgot to write something about this short story. I also don't feel like opening the book again to remember what this one was about, so that's that.
Standard Loneliness Package by Charles Yu
Great story! Character driven drama enabled through light sci-fi. That's the best kind of sci-fi imo.
Wait Till You See Me Dance by Deb Olin Unferth
Cool story. Not sure who it was about but I liked it.
The Lucky Boy by Kyle Coma-Thompson
Huh? That's just some pages of gore right? Maybe I'm missing something, kinda skimmed this one.
The Lost Order by Riveka Galchen
Good story. It's really hard to not cook spaghetti.
Fish Sticks by Donald Ray Pollock
Good story. hmm. I liked it but I don't think I get it, but I liked the part where the bodybuilder had to blow some fat dude for money.
Valley Of The Girls by Kelly Link
Good story. Maybe I just wasn't trying anymore as I got closer to the end of the book. It's a good story I kinda get some subtext and I kinda don't get anything at all.
The Diggings by Claire Vaye Watkins
The big closer. I was really demotivated because this story is like 80 pages long and I really wanted to finish the book. But it's a great one! I really liked it.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 10, 2020
I had never heard of this one, so I took it home from the library and found out why.
July 29, 2024
somehow reading a short story anthology is so much easier than reading a collection all by the same author. fun diverting stuff nothing lifechanging
Read
May 23, 2016Wow! I am so thankful for this collection of short stories. I'd had a shitty attitude about contemporary short stories in general pretty much since I started reading them. This book (thank god) introduced me into several veins of literature I can now follow. I say different veins because (and this is the important part) these stories are very different from each other.
Not everything in this book was for me, I'd say I loved about 50% percent of the stories (high marks in my book). I felt the stories at the beginning were alright, but not altogether compelling. The center of this book really picks up pace. It was like being bombarded with all this great stuff I didn't know was out there. By the last 100-200 pages I was into familiar territory. I'd read a few of these writers and found I was more taken by those whose praises I was just singing. Finally, the collection ends on a very strong note with a longer, more invested story by Claire Vaye Watkins.
I highly recommend this book (especially for those feeling pessimistic about the craft).
Not everything in this book was for me, I'd say I loved about 50% percent of the stories (high marks in my book). I felt the stories at the beginning were alright, but not altogether compelling. The center of this book really picks up pace. It was like being bombarded with all this great stuff I didn't know was out there. By the last 100-200 pages I was into familiar territory. I'd read a few of these writers and found I was more taken by those whose praises I was just singing. Finally, the collection ends on a very strong note with a longer, more invested story by Claire Vaye Watkins.
I highly recommend this book (especially for those feeling pessimistic about the craft).
September 3, 2015
9/3/15: Good to read stories by authors I've read before and also happy to be introduced to new (to me) writers. Solid collection, with only a few that I didn't connect to. I'm just not a Sam Lipsyte person. I've tried.
Favorite stories: The Early Deaths of Luke, Brennan, Harp, and Carr by Jesse Ball
Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg
There are a bunch of writers in this collection I've meant to read but somehow have missed. And there are also stories by writers I admire: Mary Gaitskill, Claire Vaye Watkins, Don Delillo, George Saunders, Donald Antrim, Wells Tower, and Rebecca Lee. So there's a lot to uncover and it might take me a while to get through all the stories. No rushing this time.
Update, 8/14/15: Working slowly through, still far from finished.
Favorite stories: The Early Deaths of Luke, Brennan, Harp, and Carr by Jesse Ball
Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg
There are a bunch of writers in this collection I've meant to read but somehow have missed. And there are also stories by writers I admire: Mary Gaitskill, Claire Vaye Watkins, Don Delillo, George Saunders, Donald Antrim, Wells Tower, and Rebecca Lee. So there's a lot to uncover and it might take me a while to get through all the stories. No rushing this time.
Update, 8/14/15: Working slowly through, still far from finished.
May 21, 2016
Many of the stories in this anthology are opaque, demanding, and depressing. A sense of nihilistic ennui permeates them. Some adhere to traditional styles while others break the mold. Few are happy. All must be read again to be truly understood, though it's a difficult task. Some are the typical male-centered literary fap fest, which I don't care for. The white straight male point of view should be represented but it's way overdone. But other American voices are included as well - even those not embedded in the network. I give it three because of the polarizing nature of many stories. The most interesting are the entries from outsiders and newbies - here's hoping they maintain a unique voice!
February 25, 2016
I don't read short stories regularly, but I heard an interview with Ben Marcus on the Diane Rehm Show. I read maybe a fourth of the stories in the book, and found they were either too weird or too bleak for my tastes. Yes, the stories made me feel (as emphasized in the intro), but they made me feel like they had me by their teeth, shaking me back and forth to stun me before the kill.
My favorite part of the book is the introduction. Marcus is talking about short stories in particular, but his descriptions of the power of language apply to other forms of literature, too.
Note language in some stories.
My favorite part of the book is the introduction. Marcus is talking about short stories in particular, but his descriptions of the power of language apply to other forms of literature, too.
Note language in some stories.
August 16, 2020
A little uneven but that's to be expected with all the different authors. Some standouts are Pollock's story, Deborah Eisenberg's (obviously - she's the King), Antrim's, Joy Williams's, Charles Yu's, and Link's
May 3, 2016
Excellent.
July 14, 2016
Individually, the stories are great, but as a collection they become repetitive in theme, motif, and style. My favorites of the collection were "Men," "Madmen," and "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden."
December 10, 2018
SIX WORD REVIEW: Delightful gems mixed in the potpourri.
May 24, 2022
2.5 stars
I really only got this for the short story contained in this anthology called "men," by Lydia Davis. So, I didn't read all of the stories.
Thanks go to reviewers:
Luke Reynolds
For his talented ratings of the stories
and
Ilana Diamont
For her pertinent review
Both saving me a waste of my time. Short story collections can be so hit or miss.
"Shhh," by NoViolet Buyawayo, 3 stars
The protagonist's father is dying from AIDS. Mother of Bones ( her grandma ), consults Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro, who says to avenge the spirit and heal father, they need to find two fat white virgin goats to be brought up the mountain for sacrifice and that father has to be bathed in the goats' blood. In addition, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro says he will need 500 U.S. dollars as payment, and if there are no U.S. dollars, euros will do.
"Special Economics," by Maureen McHugh, 4 stars
" 'a revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery,' JieLing said. It had been her father's favorite quote from chairman mao.
'... It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act by which one class overthrows another.' "
"Another Manhattan," by Donald Antrim, 2 stars
The title refers to another drink manhattan, and also another night in Manhattan.
A couple, Jim and Kate, have a disaster of a marriage. They have a couple of friends, a married couple, Elliot and Susan, and they're all having affairs with each other's spouses. Ugh.
"Pee on Water," by Rachel B. Glaser, 3 stars
First there was a beautiful planet, and then humans crawled out of the water.
😢
"A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden," by Christine Schut, 2 stars
Nothing I liked here.
"Hammer and Sickle," by Don DeLillo, 2 stars
A man serving time in a minimum-security prison, wonders where all the people in the cars passing under the bridge across the highway nearby, are going. 🤷♀️
"Standard Loneliness Package," by Charles Yu, 5 stars
💔
This was the perfect story to read for the blues I'm having now. I have to live with my abuser, for financial reasons, and every once in awhile he likes to make me cry.
That was a couple weeks ago now.
There are a couple exerpts from the story that I like:
".. a lot of the rich look mildly betrayed in the face of death, as if they are a little bit surprised that good style and a lot of money weren't quite enough to protect them from the unpleasantness of it all. [A rich person's funeral.]"
"About a week before he cracked up, we were in the coffee room and Deep told me a story about a guy at Managed Life Solutions, a mental Anguish shop across town, who made arrangements with a prominent banker who wanted to kill his wife. The banker was going to do it, made up his mind, but he didn't want the guilt. Plus, he thought it might help with his alibi if he didn't have any memory.
Bullshit, I said. That would never work.
No, really, Deep says. He tells me all about it, how they arranged it all while talking in public, at work in fact, but they talked in code, etc. . .
The next Monday I came to work, and they were pulling Deep out the door, two paramedics, each one with an arm hooked under Deep, dragging him out, two security guards trailing behind. As they dragged him past me, I tried to make eye contact, but as he turned toward me I got a good look and I saw it: there was no one left Inside there anymore. Deepak had gone somewhere else. He just kept saying, okay, so. Okay, so. like he was trying to convince himself. Okay. So."
This is a story about person who works for an agency that lives your pain for you: heartbreak, emotional pain, physical pain etc. It resonated soundly in my heart.
I really only got this for the short story contained in this anthology called "men," by Lydia Davis. So, I didn't read all of the stories.
Thanks go to reviewers:
Luke Reynolds
For his talented ratings of the stories
and
Ilana Diamont
For her pertinent review
Both saving me a waste of my time. Short story collections can be so hit or miss.
"Shhh," by NoViolet Buyawayo, 3 stars
The protagonist's father is dying from AIDS. Mother of Bones ( her grandma ), consults Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro, who says to avenge the spirit and heal father, they need to find two fat white virgin goats to be brought up the mountain for sacrifice and that father has to be bathed in the goats' blood. In addition, Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro says he will need 500 U.S. dollars as payment, and if there are no U.S. dollars, euros will do.
"Special Economics," by Maureen McHugh, 4 stars
" 'a revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery,' JieLing said. It had been her father's favorite quote from chairman mao.
'... It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained, and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act by which one class overthrows another.' "
"Another Manhattan," by Donald Antrim, 2 stars
The title refers to another drink manhattan, and also another night in Manhattan.
A couple, Jim and Kate, have a disaster of a marriage. They have a couple of friends, a married couple, Elliot and Susan, and they're all having affairs with each other's spouses. Ugh.
"Pee on Water," by Rachel B. Glaser, 3 stars
First there was a beautiful planet, and then humans crawled out of the water.
😢
"A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden," by Christine Schut, 2 stars
Nothing I liked here.
"Hammer and Sickle," by Don DeLillo, 2 stars
A man serving time in a minimum-security prison, wonders where all the people in the cars passing under the bridge across the highway nearby, are going. 🤷♀️
"Standard Loneliness Package," by Charles Yu, 5 stars
💔
This was the perfect story to read for the blues I'm having now. I have to live with my abuser, for financial reasons, and every once in awhile he likes to make me cry.
That was a couple weeks ago now.
There are a couple exerpts from the story that I like:
".. a lot of the rich look mildly betrayed in the face of death, as if they are a little bit surprised that good style and a lot of money weren't quite enough to protect them from the unpleasantness of it all. [A rich person's funeral.]"
"About a week before he cracked up, we were in the coffee room and Deep told me a story about a guy at Managed Life Solutions, a mental Anguish shop across town, who made arrangements with a prominent banker who wanted to kill his wife. The banker was going to do it, made up his mind, but he didn't want the guilt. Plus, he thought it might help with his alibi if he didn't have any memory.
Bullshit, I said. That would never work.
No, really, Deep says. He tells me all about it, how they arranged it all while talking in public, at work in fact, but they talked in code, etc. . .
The next Monday I came to work, and they were pulling Deep out the door, two paramedics, each one with an arm hooked under Deep, dragging him out, two security guards trailing behind. As they dragged him past me, I tried to make eye contact, but as he turned toward me I got a good look and I saw it: there was no one left Inside there anymore. Deepak had gone somewhere else. He just kept saying, okay, so. Okay, so. like he was trying to convince himself. Okay. So."
This is a story about person who works for an agency that lives your pain for you: heartbreak, emotional pain, physical pain etc. It resonated soundly in my heart.
November 27, 2018
I love short stories and it was a gift to find this anthology in the bookstore. I was captured by the cover, with the snippet comparing language to a drug. Just by flipping through its contents it is easy to recognize many big names in the collection.
When I got this book I was just beginning to get into short stories and it was a great way to get to know the writing style of several important contemporary authors. It introduced me to Coover, to Mathias Svalina, to Claire Watkins, and more. It was a fantastic way to go deeper into modern fiction.
The stories included are all masterfully written and demonstrate the unique style and voice that each contributor is able to achieve. There is richness in characters, themes, and structure that can be a lesson to aspiring writers.
One of my favorites was Rebecca Lee's "Slatland", which is composed of gorgeous prose and built with incredible empathy and understanding. Another standout for me was NoViolet Bulawoyo's "Shhhh". The first paragraph is still one of the best paragraphs I have ever read, and the striking style of her writing persists throughout the story. There are other gems in the collection, such as Saunders' "Home" and Johnson's "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden", but I really believe that each of the stories contained have an exceptional component that makes them special. These stories have magic in them.
When I got this book I was just beginning to get into short stories and it was a great way to get to know the writing style of several important contemporary authors. It introduced me to Coover, to Mathias Svalina, to Claire Watkins, and more. It was a fantastic way to go deeper into modern fiction.
The stories included are all masterfully written and demonstrate the unique style and voice that each contributor is able to achieve. There is richness in characters, themes, and structure that can be a lesson to aspiring writers.
One of my favorites was Rebecca Lee's "Slatland", which is composed of gorgeous prose and built with incredible empathy and understanding. Another standout for me was NoViolet Bulawoyo's "Shhhh". The first paragraph is still one of the best paragraphs I have ever read, and the striking style of her writing persists throughout the story. There are other gems in the collection, such as Saunders' "Home" and Johnson's "The Largesse of the Sea Maiden", but I really believe that each of the stories contained have an exceptional component that makes them special. These stories have magic in them.
May 18, 2017
The problem of anthologies --
The majority were fantastic. The genre of this book is literary, but between different types of literary -- sci-fi, experimental (non-narrative), historical.
The cool thing this book does is balance newer, less well-known authors with more infamous ones -- and I never really noticed a big difference in quality. George Saunders is head and shoulders above, but that's not anything new. I only liked about 50% of the more experimental pieces, and the Kelly Link story near the end didn't capture me in time. I didn't read it because I felt like I was running after story threads that were constantly vanishing or becoming more foggy with more explanation. The last story is the notable historical fiction pieces; I enjoyed it but shrunk back a little at how overtly masculine it felt.
On-par with "The Best American" series is its eclectic mixture of genres and quality.
The majority were fantastic. The genre of this book is literary, but between different types of literary -- sci-fi, experimental (non-narrative), historical.
The cool thing this book does is balance newer, less well-known authors with more infamous ones -- and I never really noticed a big difference in quality. George Saunders is head and shoulders above, but that's not anything new. I only liked about 50% of the more experimental pieces, and the Kelly Link story near the end didn't capture me in time. I didn't read it because I felt like I was running after story threads that were constantly vanishing or becoming more foggy with more explanation. The last story is the notable historical fiction pieces; I enjoyed it but shrunk back a little at how overtly masculine it felt.
On-par with "The Best American" series is its eclectic mixture of genres and quality.
February 20, 2020
A magnificent collaborative effort, brought together in such a way that is undoubtedly sincere in its endeavour (at least as best it can being made up of independent literature) to take shape of the modern world & current society’s baseline commentary.
No duds, all stories have at very least some poignant passages & Ben Marcus, an extremely innovative writer & one with a genuinely unique voice, should be commended on his editing in pulling together these stories in such a way that is thoughtful & that despite the diverse, extreme disparity in styles, tone, punctuation & in each stories totality, lifts these powerful little gems of stories from one ruby to the next. It’s almost as though a metaphoric pallet cleanser has been installed into the novel’s spine!
My favourite story.. nope can’t do it, but I can say that the dry witt & irony in many of the more “human drama” type short stories, to me - standout as the highlight overall..
Enjoy!!!
No duds, all stories have at very least some poignant passages & Ben Marcus, an extremely innovative writer & one with a genuinely unique voice, should be commended on his editing in pulling together these stories in such a way that is thoughtful & that despite the diverse, extreme disparity in styles, tone, punctuation & in each stories totality, lifts these powerful little gems of stories from one ruby to the next. It’s almost as though a metaphoric pallet cleanser has been installed into the novel’s spine!
My favourite story.. nope can’t do it, but I can say that the dry witt & irony in many of the more “human drama” type short stories, to me - standout as the highlight overall..
Enjoy!!!
Read
February 23, 2023A string of 3-4 stories where each made me cry by the end even the fact of chinese boy's un-factual and assumed father being truly uncle.
Very pleasant and diverting reading experience w/ all stories radiating out clean from a known medial line. some making a sort of unnecessary speculatory hash, when writing i feel obsessive cleavage between NECESSARY and UNNECESSARY, or more meaningfully between the fine hard transcendent center vs loose sort of running-in-place verbal folds, some of these stories are the center and some are the folds
Learned that though george saunders is easily parody-able and simple there is a perfect and never superfluous and strong brave heart to his work that in other paler saunders-like pieces is not present at all
Interesting to end it in the dust in the hard placed location of extant and previous time
Very pleasant and diverting reading experience w/ all stories radiating out clean from a known medial line. some making a sort of unnecessary speculatory hash, when writing i feel obsessive cleavage between NECESSARY and UNNECESSARY, or more meaningfully between the fine hard transcendent center vs loose sort of running-in-place verbal folds, some of these stories are the center and some are the folds
Learned that though george saunders is easily parody-able and simple there is a perfect and never superfluous and strong brave heart to his work that in other paler saunders-like pieces is not present at all
Interesting to end it in the dust in the hard placed location of extant and previous time
September 25, 2017
5 Stars
- Slatland
- The Early Deaths
- This Appointment Occurs in the Past
- Hammer and Sickle
- Play
- Love is a Thing on Sale for More Money Than There Exists
- Going for a Beer
- Standard Loneliness Package
4 Stars
- Paranoia
- Men
- The Largesse of the Sea Maiden
- Pee on Water
- The Lucky Body
- Fish Sticks
3 Stars
- Home
- The Lost Order
- Valley of Girls
- The Diggings
2 Stars
- The Deep
- A Man Like Him
- Shhhh
- Meet the President
- The Country
- Madmen
1 Star
- Some Other, Better Otto
- Special Economics
- A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden
- The Arms and Legs of the Lake
- Raw Water
- The Toast
- Wait Till You See Me Dance
October 31, 2019
This is definitely the most worthwhile thing I’ve ever read and taught me that I’m an absolute sucker for short stories! Not every story is a home run but I remember each and every one and believe that each is worth reading at least once. I’ve passed this book to a few of my friends to read my select favorite stories or just ones I feel fit their aesthetics (I’m a libra) and they’ve loved them; and I know they would love the book as a whole as well. This book really got me back into reading and for that I will be eternally grateful. God bless Ben Marcus and his taste.
January 10, 2025
This book is responsible for reigniting my love of reading that was killed off in later high school/college, and I can't thank it enough for that!! Beyond some lovely stories that have nearly all stayed in my head and heart over the years (namely The Deep, A Happy Rural Seat of Various View: Lucinda's Garden, and Piss on Rock) this book is beautifully bound on such nice paper and has such a wonderful weight. It has the size and heft of a 400 pager and yet contains nearly double that in pagecount!! A lovely and important read for me, now and always.
November 9, 2023
I do recommend SOME of these stories they are actually not too difficult to read and have a great meaning… however… I read this for an English class and one thing I can tell you is a lot of these stories were trying so hard for a big quiet symbolic reason that it was more decoding and then still remaining confused after.
Some I would recommend from here: Madmen, standard loneliness package, and meet the President.
Some I would recommend from here: Madmen, standard loneliness package, and meet the President.
November 30, 2025
If no one reads short stories, then any book of short stories must be the best of the best. So you not only get good writing, but each story has a novelty to it that makes it sparkle, wow, devastate, or makes you laugh, cringe, or cry. It's like inflation: your spending-dollar doesn't go as far anymore, why should you attention? But seriously, having read ~1/2 of this for a class, I see greatness here, much to learn from, things dangerous to come to.
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