Wait Till You See Me Dance

by Deb Olin Unferth

For more than ten years, Deb Olin Unferth has been publishing startlingly askew, wickedly comic, cutting-edge fiction in magazines such as Granta, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, NOON, and The Paris Review. Her stories are revered by some of the best American writers of our day, but until now there has been no stand-alone collection of her short fiction.

Wait Till You See Me Dance consists of several extraordinary longer stories as well as a selection of intoxicating very short stories. In the chilling “The First Full Thought of Her Life,” a shooter gets in position while a young girl climbs a sand dune. In “Voltaire Night,” students compete to tell a story about the worst thing that ever happened to them. In “Stay Where You Are,” two oblivious travelers in Central America are kidnapped by a gunman they assume to be an insurgent—but the gunman has his own problems.

An Unferth story lures you in with a voice that seems amiable and lighthearted, but it swerves in sudden and surprising ways that reveal, in terrifying clarity, the rage, despair, and profound mournfulness that have taken up residence at the heart of the American dream. These stories often take place in an exaggerated or heightened reality, a quality that is reminiscent of the work of Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, and George Saunders, but in Unferth’s unforgettable collection she carves out territory that is entirely her own.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Contemporary, Short Story Collection, Adult Fiction, Adult, Anthologies

200 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2017

About the author

Deb Olin Unferth is the author of six books, including the novel Barn 8 and the story collection Wait Till You See Me Dance. Her work has appeared in Harper’s, The Paris Review, Granta, Vice, NOON, the New York Times, and McSweeney’s. She has received a Guggenheim fellowship, a Creative Capital grant, three Pushcart Prizes, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. An associate professor at the University of Texas in Austin, she also runs the Pen City Writers, a creative writing program at a penitentiary in southern Texas.

Reviews

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Update 8-24-17

WTYSMD landed on this 10 Best list at Vulture. com (it's the only one of the ten I've read, but I thought it worth noting here) http://www.vulture.com/article/best-b...

The title reeled me in, but the stories earned my respect.

This collection is divided into four sections. Parts 2 and 4 are comprised of one- to four-page flash and micro fiction, some of which I liked, although a few were a little too abbreviated, experimental and/or incomprehensible. Parts 1 and 3 contain short stories of conventional length and exceptional quality. Four of these are so good, I’m giving the whole book five stars just on the strength of those alone.

My favorites:

Pet
Wait Till You See Me Dance
Stay Where You Are
Voltaire Nights

I was reading a library copy, but I may have to buy myself one sooner or later so I can admire these again whenever I want to.

If you need further persuasion that Unferth knows what she's doing, there is a blurb on the back of the book praising her stories as "smart, fast, full of heart, and distinctive in voice" and Unferth herself as "an important and exciting talent" by none other than George Saunders. George Saunders!

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Soooo many good stories. My favorites:
Wait Till You See Me Dance
Stay Where You Are
My Daughter Debbie
Voltaire Night
Mr. Simmons Takes a Prisoner
Welcome
The Magicians

I like the longer stories better but there were only a few that I thought might be cut altogether (out of three dozen or so). If anyone can illuminate me on "A Crossroads," for example, I'd be interested.

In short, AMAZING. SO GOOD. GOD I LOVE THIS WOMAN.

[Halley Sutton · Rating 5 out of 5]

This woman's writing voice sounds more like me than I do.

[ReadAlongWithSue ★⋆. ࿐࿔catching up · Rating 5 out of 5]

This short story book was recommended to me from another avid reader on Instagram, I am so happy she pointed me in the direction of this author.

The shorter stories are as good as the longer of them within this publication. I've not heard of this author before but I have discovered I love how she relates her stories.

My favourite was My Daughter Debbie, a very good story well weaved.

These stories explore what its like to be a woman existing outside societal expectations, getting older, unlikable or just simply being a single Mother or a spinster.


I found some of these stories to be fascinating.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to describe Deb's unique style of story writing. It's kind of brittle and sad at times and weird and silly at other times. There's a wordly quality as well but it seems delivered with a shy shrug. This book combines some of her cool flash fictions with some more traditional-length tales. I was especially blown away by My Daughter Debbie (is she writing about herself in her mom's voice here? LOL), Voltaire Night (holy shit, this one's good!), and Mr. Simmons Takes a Prisoner.

[Sonya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The long stories in this collection are its strength, and the micro stories each reveal some small emotion or observation. All in all, Unferth shows imagination and craft. The title story is worth the price of the book alone.

[Kate Savage · Rating 4 out of 5]

I could read Deb Olin Unferth all day.

[Glori Simmons · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories were so original in voice, observation, and form. Unferth disassembles, magnifies, re-arranges, and lights up the small moments in life like a kaleidoscope. I never knew what would come next. Reading WAIT TILL YOU SEE ME DANCE was a physical experience, a wake up call to the world around us. It seemed entirely appropriate that I was reading it when the bus driver slammed on the brakes and I was tossed into the aisle. Weeks later, I still have the bruises and am still thinking about WAIT....

[Uriel Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love the fiction of Deb Olin Unferth. In smart, spare prose she says so much. Her neurotic, loser characters are all of us as they tread their unsteady lives full of loneliness, ennui, and desperation. Unferth elevates mundane, domestic drama to new heights, making powerful existential statements in each of the 39 stories collected here. This is a writer at the top of her game — don't miss out!

[Magdelanye · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a delightful surprise!
Some of the stories are longish and some short short.
All are just right!

[michelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deb is so brilliant. This book is so brilliant.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

"You would have thought that going through that would keep them together, and it did for a while, but humans go through all sorts of episodes, and it doesn't always settle their hearts" (58).
"...and she can't remember what there is to do in the world other than study screens of various sizes with various intentions" (88).
"...and she casts desperate looks at people on the streets and in shops, and she thinks, How do people fill their days? Are they unhappy, having to face their own brains so often and with such constancy?" (89).
"...they found themselves confronting a deep, colorless meaninglessness each day" (96).
"Sand is unhygienic, full of prehistoric infection" (126).
*The story "The First Full Thought of Her Life" is truly heart wrenching, though worth it despite the pain of doing so.

[Chaitra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved Voltaire Night, Bride, Wait Till You See Me Dance. In fact I liked the two sections with the longer stories. There was more room there. But one of my favorite stories was only a short paragraph. It was called Fear of Trees, and it was about a man who was imprisoned for decades without seeing a single tree during the time, who is released and is freaked out by all the trees he sees around his house. It's my personal preference that makes me like the longer ones better. But, Unferth can write, and she can make a point in the shortest of stories. Love this collection.

[Eric Hollen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written short stories full of desire and yearning. The endings for a lot of these fell flat to me. Not so much as because of where they arrive (which felt right) but because the language and sentences never seem to escape the former grasp of the sardonic, which undercuts I think a lot of the emotional resonance I was looking for (but which is also one of her strengths).

But I should say this may be more of what I want as a reader, that emotional punch, and that other readers may or will probably feel differently!

[Kendra · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story collection is a dreamy, bizarre romp through one of the dreamiest and most bizarre minds of our literary generation. Unferth leans unflinchingly into the strangeness of human existence, merrily tearing down fourth walls and shattering conventions as she goes. Personal favorite stories: "Wait Till You See Me Dance," "Mr. Simmons Takes a Prisoner," and "The First Full Thought of Her Life."

[Kirsten · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read one of these stories in an earlier journal and was intrigued by the swerve.  I have respect for this writing and think that earlier story and a few others are quite good.  The rest I can do without.  I always expect a range of reaction from myself for short story collections, so I don't mind weak pieces.  I rate based on my favorites and how I react to the tone and throughline.  In this case I found it depressing in a way that didn't resonate with me.
DNF/skipped around

[Jay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think I would have loved this less if not for listening to the audiobook, because I would have missed out on Unferth's voice almost children's storybook style of reading. It made a lot of the stories much more uneasy, which I really enjoyed. This is a hard one to rec to people, but if you want to try something different, this is a great read.

[Ethan]

I don't often vibe with flash fiction so half this collection bounced off me. The longer stories are sharp and compelling and well-written but lean a lot on the postmodern "This is me, the writer. Are you aware that you're reading a story right now?" trope that also isn't my favorite.

[Jennifer Didik · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Won in a Goodreads Giveaway!) 3.5ish

[Jo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5* witty, well written and quirky. this author is talented! BUT some stories felt pointless and noticeably less effective than the really good ones (Voltaire Night, The First Full Thought of Her Life). idk this took a turn for me!

[Lauren · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not so much "stories" as depressingly negative rambling; in places almost a stream-of-consciousness style of writing. Not for me. Yuck.

DNF @ 25%

[Jasen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great collection. Lost a little steam at the end but some gut-punching moments of wonder & grace in here.

“Wait Till You See Me Dance” by Deb Olin Unferth

“I was being compared to Mary, his wife, who, if she were not around, nothing would be much different – George would have married a different lady, that’s all – and I have to say I do see the connection. Nothing would be different if I weren’t around. I haven’t caused anything, good or bad. Even if I have done something in advertently, as, say, in the movies when a man moves a cup and a thousand years later all the humanity explodes, it’s likely that if I hadn’t been born, my mother would have had a different baby around the same time and that baby would have been somewhat like me or mostly like me and would have made similar choices, probably the very same ones, and she would be here right now instead of me, feeling the things that I feel in my stead. And any ill or beneficial effects that I may have caused would be caused by her, not me. She’d take care of moving or not moving any cup that I would have or not.” P.33-34

“For Jane, sure, there might be enough. She was still young enough to create more for herself, to make it someplace, find someone. And adequate life, a job and retail, maybe, we’re being a company rep or an exec or something. Maybe she’d find that life exotic after the one she led. Or nicely quaint. So far she hadn’t done it because of what it could become in the long run – what they’d always feared, what they’ve always been running from, the job, the doll, the dumb, and then death. She’d always said she could never go in for a regular job, house, kids, vacation a few weeks a year. Avoidance of this has been their mainstay, their mythology. But now this option seemed inviting compared to what Max would become by himself, alone, aging. Might as well be dead .” P.52

“You would have thought that going through that would keep them together, and it did for a while, but humans go through all sorts of episodes, and it doesn’t always settle their hearts.
At the end of it all, after she left – well, after he left (because she made him) and, not knowing what she was doing, she left too – and after they both found themselves in countries far away from each other, and places that didn’t have the energy or beauty the two of them had once found in such places together (although there is nothing unique in that, the world dims overtime – though maybe it wouldn’t have had the evil tint that it eventually seemed to max to have, or the lifeless, meaningless tint that it seemed to Jane to have, if they hadn’t parted ways)-after all that, each of them installed on separate continents, she wrote a letter to no one of significance: one of the sisters they met in Nicaragua with whom they travel for a few days. Jane wrote to explain, felt she had to explain to the stranger why she left him (or made him leave, the walking man( and what it had felt like.” P.58-59

“More years past and you’re wondering the desert alone, picking up rocks, your guide is lost was never there, your gratitude for feeling desire is waning. What is so great about wanting when what you want is so elusive and in any case why did you want it to begin with? You forgot what it was like to not know what you want, and you find yourself drifting back to that space again, although you have come so far out, I have passed so many posts that you don’t know where you are now, I have no courage to go back and take another direction entirely – why should you if this is what it comes to? Besides, you are so old and tired.
It was nice to have once wanted, you think (though you were fooled), maybe you could just sit down in a grassy field (if you can find one out here, unlikely, maybe some gravel) and reflect on what a fine job you once did, and look up at the sky. Were the illusions? You had thought so. You could have sworn they were more rugged than that. But it turned out not to be so. A few heavy rains washed them away. A few earthquakes came along and swallowed them.” P.75

“The father was hot, like the dog, who kept dropping into the ground. The father worried about the dog. He felt every emotion the dog did – powerfully – felt at least as much pain as the dog did at any moment, felt the dogs hunger, felt the dogs thirst. Felt the dogs loneliness and isolation and being the only one of its kind of mid this crowd, felt the suffering of walking a path in the heat wearing a heavy fur coat, of walking with no destination, no food or water, tied to a rope, dragged like a slave.
The mother could tell us what the father was thinking. He didn’t have to say a word. Just the way he moved his feet along the ground set it all, the mother thought for the 10th time that day.” P.87

“The plan is to cut back in half-hour increments until she is down to two hours per day. She’s old enough to have a memory of life off-line, but it fades each year and now it seems as far away. She doesn’t recall what she did with that time and whether it was fulfilling.
The first week is so easy, she doesn’t feel it. She could be online twenty-three and 1/2 hours a day! Weeks go by, months, and she doesn’t notice how severely she is restricting her use. Four months pass – a restriction of eight hours – and still she is fine as long as she doesn’t wake in the night and in a fit of insomnia browse. Besides, one was sometimes look up from the screen, if only to pay for a soda, or walk down the hall. Six months in, she hits the twelve-hour mark and that’s when the pain sits in. She leaves her phone at home and now she can’t walk down the street and check her mail. She goes to the movies but can’t look up at the screen while looking at the screen. More hours open up, hours that must be filled with activities, and she can’t remember what there is to do in the world other than study screens of various sizes with various intentions. Now she treasures each minute she has, and her time off-line feels ghostly, like time spent waiting for her real time, her life time, her online time.” P.88

“How do people fill their days? Are they unhappy, having to face their own brain so often and was such constancy?
Is it worth it, the still life? She feels – as she switches off the light, going to sleep early since there is nothing else to do – that she can glimpse in the distance of time when she might enjoy an experience for what it is, when she might read a book and want to read it, when she might take a walk and find it fun, when she might hear a joke and laugh without awareness of her loss. It is with that hope that she does this, for its possibility.” P.89

“Your character just wants a normal life - but that is the only thing under heaven that your character cannot have.
Your character dies. The story goes on without her. The water is rising, the sky is breaking, the air is filling with poison. The bottom of the window is six feet up.” P.91

“Mr. Simmons was not a family man.
This, although he had a family. A wife, two daughters. A large department to put them in. A dog. He felt attached to them (fuzzy-headed, waving from a distance) as he did to certain household kinks: the sticky lock, weak showerhead. Comfortable inconveniences, he might say. He preferred the empty office on Sundays to the fussy kitchen at home. He didn’t have to pine up the steps at Christmas, perform science experiments with lightbulbs and tinfoil, romp off to the corner store for snacks. No bike rack on the Toyota, no ski chips, no corn in the City of Chicago community Garden. He worked late, told the kids to cut the racket at dinner, Red political magazines before bed. He side heavily, slammed to the refrigerator door when the kids asked for cash for keys. But Mr. Simmons wasn’t cool. He never beat his family or tossed them down the stairs.
The Simmons’ younger daughter entered college in the apartment required. He kept to his routine.” P.114

“Oh, the layers under the surface (he thought), the air pockets, the parallel world, the possible futures that could explode out of this moment, the past that didn’t come to past: they continue to spin themselves out until they run into concrete and unspool where they are, spilling into the gaps, gathering around him as he lifted his rifle.

Oh, the inaccessible in our lives all around us (thought some birds going by above), the lives we can’t imagine, the water world, the dominion of the insects, the plants, the antediluvian consciousnesses, made up of light and dark, moist and dry.

There is how time doesn’t work the way we think it does (thought the baby), or space either, the scientists have it all wrong day and someday we will know this, or someone will, but in the meantime, the wrong way in the real way run alongside each other, along with all the other rejected theories going back through history, the lives of the baby and the father running along them, strings of frayed yarn.” P.128

“There’d Ben plenty of others, dead, or live but damaged. Earth is full of them, more assembling and disassembling every day. Among them, yes, this perfect little girl, but she’d been pretty unlikely, considering.” P.130

“Now in the sound the sound in her head went, Six years later she was walking up the dune with her daughter....
These things happen but one goes up the dune anyway, bareheaded, no bulletproof fest, face open to the sky, and if everyone else has peeled off – father, baby, brother, and so many more – if you yourself won’t make it, you sit in the sand and you send the girl on without you, as you must, and if that doesn’t work, you hope something will and that one day she will know that to see her in front of you was all she ever wanted.” P.135

“Then the shoes that bring you here: you have to admit that you have a strong relationship to them, and they are normal. They must go. The coffee – that’s an instrument. Then the rest of the clothing. Then the family, because you use them a deck, and the friends too. The past in general, but most specifically a few years after graduate school when you didn’t know what you were doing and were grasping at any straw, hoping someone or something would latch and take hold – those years: you can no longer use them. Abandoned them. Then the helpful mate, he has to go, and all the mates who helped in the past – or didn’t help, because sometimes their unhelpfulness was helpful too. Desire, that, too, must go (or is that already gone? for how long has it been missing?) Also, all other deep believes in dark roads in the mind. And core pieces of me – work ethic and so long.” P.176

[Graham Catt · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few gems in this collection.

[Jared · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not great!

[Kaysha · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could see her becoming one of my favorite authors. Beautiful writing, lovely sense of humor. Short stories are hard, but I see a lot of potential and I can tell she has a definite voice and a lot to say. I would love to read other things written by her.

[Rod Hansen · Rating 4 out of 5]

To read a collection such as this from a lesser known author is to mine for gold.

Amid the silt - and there will be silt - one hopes for gold in whatever size it appears.

There are very short stories here, so the gold may come in small flakes. Joining them are slightly longer pieces, where one hopes for a good size nugget to add some much-valued weight.

And a truly successful dive will yield something truly substantial. A fist-sized chunk of bouillon, a prize, a genuine treasure.

Readers will find all types in this wonderfully eclectic collection.

Let’s start with the genuine mother lode. For me, that was a longer piece titled “Voltaire Night.” Here, a professor of an adult education class hosts her students in a social event inspired by the title author’s CANDIDE, in which teacher and students share stories of the worst thing ever to happen to them.

We’ll reveal nothing else but to say, this modest and fairly undramatic story still feels huge at its conclusion. Some of the students’ reminiscences are silly, others more profound, and by evening’s end all leave with a shared understanding of each other. The reader, too, feels privileged to be among them.

Some of the other pieces are far less significant, some trifling, some baffling. But amidst these one might find a genuine treasure.

In one shorter work, “A Crossroads,” commuters who drive through a crowded downtown neighborhood clogged with honking cars, laundromats, and general noise, assume the family living in the middle of all this must surely be unhappy. But they are not unhappy. It is a single mother who loves having a house to call home, a back yard with a kiddie pool for her children, and the thought of how proud her mother would be of her to see her have all this.

That’s the good stuff, in collections such as these. The bits you can take in, see your own reflection in the rippling waters as you sift, delight in the tiny little treasure you find there.

That’s what you’ve been looking for.

That’s the real gold.

[Rebecca Schiff]

AN INTRODUCTION BY REBECCA SCHIFF
It makes sense that I’m introducing Deb Olin Unferth for Recommended Reading because I spend a lot of time recommending Deb Olin Unferth. I recommend her to students. I recommend her to friends. I recommend her to other writers. I recommend her because she’s one of the few fiction writers working today whose work is both poetic and funny, because she’s a sentence-level dazzler who knows how to tell a story.

“Wait Till You See Me Dance,” the title story in Unferth’s second collection, has elements of her earlier fiction — thought riffs about existence, sentences that remake the language — but takes those elements and gives them new force and meaning through subtle, Unferthian storytelling. In this story, an adjunct professor keeps repeating to her English 99 class that their final “will be graded by outside sources,” a phrase that absolves her of responsibility. Yet, she confides in the reader: “These outside sources were supposed to be mysterious, were maybe not even people, were maybe just God, but I happened to know were simply whichever teacher or two the office assistant lined up to do it.”

The idea that God is an outside source would be funny on its own, but the question of who gets to grade the final exams, of whether we are responsible for each other’s fates, of whether human beings can affect each other at all, becomes central to the story. The professor, for her own reasons, decides to change one student’s fate. What happens next keeps surprising, turning and turning again on Unferth’s distinctive logic. She even weaves in references to It’s a Wonderful Life (without ever mentioning it by name), a movie that I now realize deserves a closer reading, an Unferth reading. I feel lucky to be alive at the same time as Deb, to be in the same field, because her writing reminds me of what’s possible in fiction. Suspense can grow out of sentences. Being playful on the page can be a matter of life and death.

[David Holoman · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.9 stars. There are about 40 'stories' in the collection of which about a half dozen are greater than two pages. The rest are not, and can be as short as a paragraph.

For the stories that are over two pages, they are mostly really good; the adjective Lucia Berlin-esque springs to mind. The author has a gift for identifying and describing dysfunction, which is, after all, a universal experience. The weaving of time and point-of-view in The First Full Thought of Her Life is memorable. I expect you will see Voltaire Night anthologized in the future.

However the indulgence required to plow through the little vignettes trying to find something redeeming is more than I can muster most of the time. Also distinction between fiction and memoir is in some cases as gauzy or non-existent (I expect) as possible (although this was an issue for Berlin as well.)

I really sought this book out, and in the end it was a good deal less than I was hoping for.

[Vince · Rating 3 out of 5]

I generally like flash fiction, so I was expecting to (or at least hoping I'd) disagree with the bulk of the reviews here. Instead I find myself agreeing - Unferth's longer stories are the stronger ones. That isn't to say that I can fault her, really; she's a very strong writer. It's just that some stories didn't hit the mark with me. Sometimes I didn't really get it, sometimes I thought it was a bit shallow (so I probably didn't get it), sometimes the characters I spent barely a paragraph with annoyed me to distraction. One time that was combined with being too concerned for the dog to have enjoyed it even if I'd liked the characters.

Based on the descriptions alone I'd expected to like "Voltaire Night" the least, but it ended up being one of my favourites. "Wait Till You See Me Dance" and "The First Full Thought of Her Life" were also highlights. I won't be tempted to re-read most of the flash stories here, but I'd definitely return to these three.

[Markus Podesta · Rating 5 out of 5]

There are an infinite amount of reasons to love this collection. I could write thousands of words about its power. It is everything I aspire to be and to write. Unferth has an uncanny ability to make you laugh and cry and wallow in ennui in the most celebratory of manners. This collection is exquisite. I have already reread it multiple times, and it is still as potent on each read. She is a master.