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Dra—
A new edition of a classic of contemporary American literature, first published in 1997 by Sun & Moon Press but unavailable in recent years.
“Dra-, the nondescript heroine of this grim, hilarious fiction, might have fallen through the same hole as Lewis Carroll's Alice, only now, 130 years later, there's no time for frivolity, just the pressing need to get a job. In a sealed, modern Wonderland of "small stifled work centers, basements and sub-basements, night niches, and training hutches connected by hallways just inches across," Dra- seeks employment . . . This labyrinthine journey is brilliantly mimicked in the architecture of the prose. Levine creates cozy little warrens, small safe spaces made of short clear sentences, then sends the reader spiraling down long broken passages, fragmented by colons and semi-colons which give a halting, lurching gait to our progress. A quest, a comedy of manners, and a parable, Dra- is, above all else, a philosophical novel concerned with the most basic questions of living.”–Matthew Stadler, reviewing the original edition in The Stranger, 1997.
“Dra-, the nondescript heroine of this grim, hilarious fiction, might have fallen through the same hole as Lewis Carroll's Alice, only now, 130 years later, there's no time for frivolity, just the pressing need to get a job. In a sealed, modern Wonderland of "small stifled work centers, basements and sub-basements, night niches, and training hutches connected by hallways just inches across," Dra- seeks employment . . . This labyrinthine journey is brilliantly mimicked in the architecture of the prose. Levine creates cozy little warrens, small safe spaces made of short clear sentences, then sends the reader spiraling down long broken passages, fragmented by colons and semi-colons which give a halting, lurching gait to our progress. A quest, a comedy of manners, and a parable, Dra- is, above all else, a philosophical novel concerned with the most basic questions of living.”–Matthew Stadler, reviewing the original edition in The Stranger, 1997.
152 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1997
11 people are currently reading
348 people want to read
About the author
Stacey Levine
19 books69 followersStacey Levine is the author of Pulitzer Prize Finalist Mice 1961. Her other books--The Girl with Brown Fur, Frances Johnson, Dra---, and My Horse and Other Stories, have a devoted following of readers.
Levine's work has garnered a Pulitzer Prize fiction finalist nomination, a PEN fiction award, and Stranger Genius Award in Literature. Her fiction has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, The Iowa Review, Yeti, The Fairy Tale Review, Your Impossible Voice, Golden Handcuffs Review, and other venues.
A collection of all her short fiction, plays, and co-authored comics to date will be published in 2026.
www.staceylevine.com
Levine's work has garnered a Pulitzer Prize fiction finalist nomination, a PEN fiction award, and Stranger Genius Award in Literature. Her fiction has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Fence, The Iowa Review, Yeti, The Fairy Tale Review, Your Impossible Voice, Golden Handcuffs Review, and other venues.
A collection of all her short fiction, plays, and co-authored comics to date will be published in 2026.
www.staceylevine.com
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Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews
October 23, 2020
Draga? Dragoslava? Dragomira? Draupadi? Draupneer? Drametha? Dravini? Drakshayini? Draco? Dracula?
Whether from bureaucratic censorship or acknowledgment of an unfinished persona, the protagonist’s name is cut short throughout the entirety of this brief book. The plot is as simple as the prose: Dra— is trying to find a job, though her willingness to even get one fluctuates between determined and desperate to docile and disobedient. Wandering through a labyrinthine employment center with gymnasium bathrooms and infinite roofs, the parallels to Kafka are obvious, but I also was put in mind of The Little Prince, because during her claustrophobic and docked odyssey, Dra— encounters various broken adults stuck in their own absurd purgatories, and they too have a kind of planetary isolation. One of the final adults Dra— comes across is a child studying to be a nurse, a parental paradox that, like the dead-inside obsession of finding a meaningless job for the sake of finding a meaningless job, is the result of a capitalist society.
Speaking of purgatories, I’ve been encountering more than a few books with this time-strangulated, repetitive tic lately, similar yet distinctive bardos including The Song of Percival Peacock, Spanking the Maid, Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters, and some of the stories in David Vardeman’s An Angel of Sodom. Vardeman’s spirit is also heavily in the vein of the Kafkaesque but his prose is a notch or two more accomplished than Levine’s. Dra— has an avalanche of adverbs and I recall someone saying once that if you want to make your character sound insane, riddle their speech with adverbs, although in this case the narrative is third person. And but so I gave Levine beneficial doubt about this…artistic choice of such uglily repeating adverbs, yet a couple of sentences were truly overburdened by them and most of the time they negatively drew attention to the prose and by the end of it I was sickly seeing them. Here are the adverbs from a single page (keep in mind the pages are small and with sizeable font): “powerfully” “closely” “enjoyably” “quietly” “nearly” “mechanically” “crookedly” “generally” “only” “anxiously” “loudly” and another “loudly”
Rather than a short novel, this is a long story, monophonic as it is, and even early on I was thinking, maybe she’d end up becoming a maid, allowing me to mentally stitch this story to Coover’s Spanking the Maid, another short novel that’s in truth a long story, and then the coincidence of coming across this sentence: “…Dra— mentioned flirtingly that once, long ago, she had labored as a maid.”
Overall, the absurd surrealism in this little book is subtle, tame even, and the prose is safe and, unsatisfyingly, the ending of Dra— is just an abrupt sto—
Whether from bureaucratic censorship or acknowledgment of an unfinished persona, the protagonist’s name is cut short throughout the entirety of this brief book. The plot is as simple as the prose: Dra— is trying to find a job, though her willingness to even get one fluctuates between determined and desperate to docile and disobedient. Wandering through a labyrinthine employment center with gymnasium bathrooms and infinite roofs, the parallels to Kafka are obvious, but I also was put in mind of The Little Prince, because during her claustrophobic and docked odyssey, Dra— encounters various broken adults stuck in their own absurd purgatories, and they too have a kind of planetary isolation. One of the final adults Dra— comes across is a child studying to be a nurse, a parental paradox that, like the dead-inside obsession of finding a meaningless job for the sake of finding a meaningless job, is the result of a capitalist society.
Speaking of purgatories, I’ve been encountering more than a few books with this time-strangulated, repetitive tic lately, similar yet distinctive bardos including The Song of Percival Peacock, Spanking the Maid, Big Bishop Roko and the Altar Gangsters, and some of the stories in David Vardeman’s An Angel of Sodom. Vardeman’s spirit is also heavily in the vein of the Kafkaesque but his prose is a notch or two more accomplished than Levine’s. Dra— has an avalanche of adverbs and I recall someone saying once that if you want to make your character sound insane, riddle their speech with adverbs, although in this case the narrative is third person. And but so I gave Levine beneficial doubt about this…artistic choice of such uglily repeating adverbs, yet a couple of sentences were truly overburdened by them and most of the time they negatively drew attention to the prose and by the end of it I was sickly seeing them. Here are the adverbs from a single page (keep in mind the pages are small and with sizeable font): “powerfully” “closely” “enjoyably” “quietly” “nearly” “mechanically” “crookedly” “generally” “only” “anxiously” “loudly” and another “loudly”
Rather than a short novel, this is a long story, monophonic as it is, and even early on I was thinking, maybe she’d end up becoming a maid, allowing me to mentally stitch this story to Coover’s Spanking the Maid, another short novel that’s in truth a long story, and then the coincidence of coming across this sentence: “…Dra— mentioned flirtingly that once, long ago, she had labored as a maid.”
Overall, the absurd surrealism in this little book is subtle, tame even, and the prose is safe and, unsatisfyingly, the ending of Dra— is just an abrupt sto—
May 29, 2017
Eternally job-searching in a dystopian indoor world of drab office corridors void of value, meaning, or hope. This has kind of mind-numbing quality, but in an intentional and effective way, as events gradually pile up without any chance of success or progress. How can sense or progress exist when the the purposes that can exist are external, pointless, and probably agonizing? Our protagonist Dra- (Nathanimal described her perfectly as "so unformed that that she doesn't even have a full name) is consumed by equal parts anxiety, torpor, and indecision, but in fact she's a perfect reflection of the world she exists in. Which, absurd while you're reading it, seems uncannily accurate when you step away and try to describe it. This is the state of a world where we must senselessly long for and pursue jobs at all times, at all costs, our lives swallowed in pursuit of these all-too-often meaningless goals. Also, while the big Modernist reference points here are too obvious to need noting (and, I mean, they influenced everyone to follow anyway), I propose a more obscure one, possibly: Maurice Blanchot's Aminadab.
July 21, 2021
"The speaker reached for words and tried to take them apart for the purpose of giving the audience insight, but his speech grew absurd; and as he said the unfamiliar word “glickson,” he spilled his mug of drinking water across his front, chilling himself. For the remainder of the lecture he had simply stood before the audience, teeth chattering, blinking back tears."
Dreamlike, Dra- reminds me of Kafka, The Trial specifically, where the main character Josef K basically bounces from character to character through the story, never really in control of his life, easily distracted. Dra-'s main character, Dra-, is looking for a job, and she bounces through the story, talking to a swath of characters. I say 'talking to', it's more that the other characters talk at her. Their propensity to monologue makes me think of stage language, and makes me wonder if Stacey Levine has written for the theatre.
I do enjoy this dreamlike/nightmarish nature, and the self-absorbedness of the characters. It's frequently very funny.
“But I’m a deep thinker. Are you?”
“I think in my sleep. My thoughts move in order.”
Dreamlike, Dra- reminds me of Kafka, The Trial specifically, where the main character Josef K basically bounces from character to character through the story, never really in control of his life, easily distracted. Dra-'s main character, Dra-, is looking for a job, and she bounces through the story, talking to a swath of characters. I say 'talking to', it's more that the other characters talk at her. Their propensity to monologue makes me think of stage language, and makes me wonder if Stacey Levine has written for the theatre.
I do enjoy this dreamlike/nightmarish nature, and the self-absorbedness of the characters. It's frequently very funny.
“But I’m a deep thinker. Are you?”
“I think in my sleep. My thoughts move in order.”
January 23, 2019
One of the more fascinating elements of this absurd novel is the setting. As Dra— wanders the corridors of this intriguing space looking for her worksite I kept trying to conceive an image of it in my mind. Details from the film Brazil seemed fitting. Dra— herself is a vague person, a bit wobbly and unformed. She so desperately wants a job, for that is what is expected of her. But she also experiences sudden urges, sometimes to use the toilet, other times to see the Nurse. Above all, she strives to find her Administrator. Making her way to her worksite Dra— encounters a revolving cast of characters only too willing to lecture her or dispense advice, much of which is nonsense, cut in with brilliant non sequiturs. I could see this being staged as a play—there are a lot of monologues, only occasionally broken by Dra—'s clipped interjections. It's a strange and funny book and I quite enjoyed it.
January 4, 2012
oh what can one say about stacey levine? Lucy Ellmann has emulated it, Lorrie Moore would be jealous of it, Bernard Share has guffawed over it, Rikki Ducornet has already done it with water and desire, but stacey levine has written a story of longing, love, work, and administrators (and feces) that puts one in Alice's Wonderland without any possibilty whatsoever of cakes. Here's a short excerpt from near the climax when Dra--- is thinking back to her time in school:
"No one in school had spoken to her, though, so she was hidden, in effect, without having to hide. During her time there she made frequent, frustrating, solitary visits to the school's bathrooms via echoing, sopping-wet hallways, stopping along the wall to moan and dig her fingernails deeply into the soft wall-grout, an old habit whose origin she simply did not know.
And against the fixity of her rock-hard stomach, she recalled a classmate, now dead, who once from in-between empty library shelves had poked forth her gullish eyes and shouted to the silent, gaping library class: "I'm married!" then shoved a small metal chest to the floor, scattering wigs and electrical switches everywhere.
She remembered the school's vice-principal, who, after killing a mouse on the lunchroom carpet, had taken her into his office where they sat and stared shyly at one another for many minutes in silence. What was left of his parched-looking hair, badly thinned by disease and medicine, was mostly hidden by a small cotton cap; nevertheless, he was rather vibrant, and not too weak. "I like you," she had said to him in a kind of fomenting exhaustion, puzzled with herself, her eyes fairly burrowing into his jacket front, and they both turned away.
"It is desire that you now feel. By all accounts, the name we give this emotion is desire," he answered softly to the wall, perhaps just as exhausted as she; "You give me evidence enough----look at your hands----but my training tells me that this feeling may actually be the p[product of rage. Do you understand how rage can mimic other emotions?"
"No one in school had spoken to her, though, so she was hidden, in effect, without having to hide. During her time there she made frequent, frustrating, solitary visits to the school's bathrooms via echoing, sopping-wet hallways, stopping along the wall to moan and dig her fingernails deeply into the soft wall-grout, an old habit whose origin she simply did not know.
And against the fixity of her rock-hard stomach, she recalled a classmate, now dead, who once from in-between empty library shelves had poked forth her gullish eyes and shouted to the silent, gaping library class: "I'm married!" then shoved a small metal chest to the floor, scattering wigs and electrical switches everywhere.
She remembered the school's vice-principal, who, after killing a mouse on the lunchroom carpet, had taken her into his office where they sat and stared shyly at one another for many minutes in silence. What was left of his parched-looking hair, badly thinned by disease and medicine, was mostly hidden by a small cotton cap; nevertheless, he was rather vibrant, and not too weak. "I like you," she had said to him in a kind of fomenting exhaustion, puzzled with herself, her eyes fairly burrowing into his jacket front, and they both turned away.
"It is desire that you now feel. By all accounts, the name we give this emotion is desire," he answered softly to the wall, perhaps just as exhausted as she; "You give me evidence enough----look at your hands----but my training tells me that this feeling may actually be the p[product of rage. Do you understand how rage can mimic other emotions?"
August 5, 2019
I found this book very randomly. I love the cover. This book is about a woman, named Dra-, who is looking for a job. From the beginning she is told to go look for her administrator so that she can start her first day of work. Dra- falls into an Alice in Wonderland type world on her way to look for her administrator. It’s an absurd, surreal story about how ridiculous searching for a job is. Also, not wanting to find one because who genuinely WANTS a job? We all need it for money so it’s merely a survival thing, a thing expected of you. While reading this it definitely reminded me of Kafka, especially The Trial, and Agony by Mark Beyer. This book is black and white like an expressionist movie, nightmarish and absurd.
August 27, 2007
you won't like it... but i did!
January 12, 2011
The secretary shifted. "Sometimes we need someone older, don't we?" And Dra- heard the woman's eyes click open and shut and felt the cool draft of her breath as they sat together uncomfortably on the office chair, rocking slightly.
"I've wondered how people fit together, and speak, and stay together," Dra- murmured.
"Oh? I know just what you mean!" said the secretary.
"You do? How does it work, then -- how do people stay with one another so easily and talk for such a long time, as if it were nothing?"
"Oh. Well, if that's what you're saying, then I'm afraid I don't know what you mean at all."
"I mean, people staying together, days and nights of it -- how do they do that, without scaring away?"
"Oh, Missy, that's the stuff of the world. Everybody talks to everyone else -- they talk, and they get married; then they go to work, and by then life is nearly over, isn't it? People work, they drink water. They advance on the job." The woman shrugged.
"But what do they talk about? What things do they say?"
"Oh, anything, dammit, anything at all, what does it matter? Something funny, or something spooky -- people just talk, don't they?"
"Talk about what?"
"Well, we're talking right now, aren't we?"
"Well, yes. You mean people ask one another for guidance?"
"Well, sure, they can do that."
"I've heard people speaking in foreign phrases I don't understand! I've seen things that don't make sense, that don't fit in with the rest -- how can I --"
"Just forget anything like that, Missy, and concentrate on your plan for life. Why, you already have a job, so, at least in my book, you're ahead of the game."
"Well -- I'll have to find my Administrator and get settled; then --"
"Oh, quiet," the secretary said.
"But, I'm lost, don't you remember?"
"Shut up, girl."
"I've wondered how people fit together, and speak, and stay together," Dra- murmured.
"Oh? I know just what you mean!" said the secretary.
"You do? How does it work, then -- how do people stay with one another so easily and talk for such a long time, as if it were nothing?"
"Oh. Well, if that's what you're saying, then I'm afraid I don't know what you mean at all."
"I mean, people staying together, days and nights of it -- how do they do that, without scaring away?"
"Oh, Missy, that's the stuff of the world. Everybody talks to everyone else -- they talk, and they get married; then they go to work, and by then life is nearly over, isn't it? People work, they drink water. They advance on the job." The woman shrugged.
"But what do they talk about? What things do they say?"
"Oh, anything, dammit, anything at all, what does it matter? Something funny, or something spooky -- people just talk, don't they?"
"Talk about what?"
"Well, we're talking right now, aren't we?"
"Well, yes. You mean people ask one another for guidance?"
"Well, sure, they can do that."
"I've heard people speaking in foreign phrases I don't understand! I've seen things that don't make sense, that don't fit in with the rest -- how can I --"
"Just forget anything like that, Missy, and concentrate on your plan for life. Why, you already have a job, so, at least in my book, you're ahead of the game."
"Well -- I'll have to find my Administrator and get settled; then --"
"Oh, quiet," the secretary said.
"But, I'm lost, don't you remember?"
"Shut up, girl."
May 2, 2021
This is a difficult book to rate, since its tone is one part depressing and one part absurd comedy. And all of the characters seem to have unnatural (natural?) obsessions with their feces (yes, you read that right) which every time they're mentioned, give you a jolt. a very weird book about Dra-'s obsession with acquiring employment, apparently the zenith of achievement . . . the book is a wry observation of capitalist culture and the anxiety and resignation of all the human cogs in the wheel with diatribes on the importance of telephones, and peculiarly, water, leading me to wonder if all the characters aren't merely stoned and thirsty...which is a perfectly acceptable interpretation in this interpretable world where every line is saturated with double meaning . . . oftentimes to annoying extremes . . . but the intermittent flashes of comedic absurdity are what save it from getting bogged down. Can't think of anyone I'd necessarily recommend it to, except for those who enjoy the oppressiveness of Kafka but want a little less horror and a bit more gross humor in their metaphors.
January 6, 2026
I liked it. Good first book of the year coming back to work from the holidays. Kinda strange scatological obsession in this. I think we’ve all felt as rudderless and confused in life as Dra- at least once or twice, but at least the advice I was getting was ‘Just go in and find the manager and give them a strong handshake’ and not ‘Smiling is for dogs.’ or to get into bed and piss myself. Anyway, Levine is right that work blows and the world is poisoned and killing us all and that a lot of people feel lonely. Not really sure it had a lot to say beyond that.
October 13, 2020
First published in 1997, Stacey Levine’s novella Dra– is a satirical look at entering the work place. The titular protagonist is such an unformed nobody that she doesn’t even get a complete name. Now that Dra– is of a certain age (what age?), she’s been called forth to enter the workforce (by whom?). Almost no character has a name and everything is a bit janky. Scenes play out like a performance in the Theatre of the Absurd. Even the jobs Dra– may choose from, both of which require “the spooning of unhealthy human hair from the floor into refuse containers filled with strong fluid” are nonsensical.
The entire novella takes place in a single weird, seemingly-endless building, but the experience is more like Alice in Wonderland than a job placement company. As Dra– travels around the employment building looking for the Administrator to whom she’s been assigned, she encounters “a passageway with a staircase that did not ascend or descend, but instead lay sideways on the floor,” clear walls obscured by steam, and airplanes flying inside several floors above.
Check out the full review at Grab the Lapels.
The entire novella takes place in a single weird, seemingly-endless building, but the experience is more like Alice in Wonderland than a job placement company. As Dra– travels around the employment building looking for the Administrator to whom she’s been assigned, she encounters “a passageway with a staircase that did not ascend or descend, but instead lay sideways on the floor,” clear walls obscured by steam, and airplanes flying inside several floors above.
Check out the full review at Grab the Lapels.
October 24, 2016
Dra-- is a little deceptive, with an incomplete heroine who wishes nothing more than to get a job (maybe indicates the story began in the 90s), and with a plot that is a succession of failed or mixed up encounters, would seem to be essentially on the academic end of passion. But learn to here the rhythm and really read the words, and fury and desire come seething through. "'Do you think it is better to keep relationships cool and contained, or let all hell break loose?'" says Frieda, the assistant to the Admininistrator, the character who Dra-- has undertaken this journey of digressions in search of. The fear but also the desire is that these are the only choices.
April 28, 2012
Alice in Wonderland in Franz Kafka. I've read it three times.
July 12, 2014
One of those books I didn't particularly enjoy while I was reading it, but refused to get out of my head when I was done. Stacey Levine has Kafka's sense of humour: terrifying, absurd, nightmarish.
January 8, 2021
v amazed by the passage where Dra–
November 27, 2025
Ok tea!
July 28, 2008
One of my favorites, if not still my favorite book. Levine writes incredibly funny and unpredictable prose, whose giddy moments turn quickly from dark to light. Her descriptions are always amazing and the interactions among ambient characters both bizzarly mundane and gravely existential. The prose escalates in ways that one cannot imagine, then veers in yet another startling direction, only to fizzle into a pit like one's emotions at the end of long tedious work day. I'm not a good reviewer, but it's impossible to do justice to this book, in my opinion.
thee-forsaken
January 3, 2015From the jacket description I though this would be interesting, a witty laugh for those who don't buy into the muck & grind. No. This is for people who *really really* care. It occurs to me just now that satire done poorly is merely whiny passive-aggression.
Albert Cossery did the whole anti-work thing much better. Of course, his stories were not just satire, his characters not just scarecrows stuffed with ideology, and he had an entire "theory of idleness," not just a bone to pick.
Albert Cossery did the whole anti-work thing much better. Of course, his stories were not just satire, his characters not just scarecrows stuffed with ideology, and he had an entire "theory of idleness," not just a bone to pick.
September 9, 2012
A wonderful update and homage to Kafka's The Trial.
January 15, 2024
a weird fever dream wtf
November 10, 2025
A survival guide for redundancy in the age of LinkedIn and Indeed, written long before it began
January 1, 2025
At its best it reminds me of a silent film with big reactions and physicalities, and imaginative and absurd gags aplenty. It's an explicitly, intentionally mind-numbing novel about the search for meaning where wage labor is the context within which all fulfillment must be achieved, a context itself ultimately devoid of meaning. Instead the lives of the characters are hollowed out as the panic rises inside them of the meaninglessness of a life dedicated to Going to Work, even while trying to talk their way out of that inner panic, saying anything they can think of to connect with one another or even relate to each others' humanity. Their language degenerates to empty rhetoric, deadend cliches, and lobotomized smalltalk as they desperately try to express themselves while simultaneously becoming increasingly agonized more and more by their inability to.
July 13, 2025
It is widly known that humans work for the money. Money is very useful to acquire things one needs. Those things, really, can also be obtaneid through illicit methods, but those ultimately break the social binding with your society and this can cause trauma and vomits.
In Stacey Levine's novel, human beings are employees. But they work for the social binding. They are searching for a place in society that can only be achieved by working. This social binding is also the only retribution one can get out of a job. But Dra- seems to be searching for something more. She wants the money, which is the only word that is never written on this novel, but the money has gone.
In Stacey Levine's novel, human beings are employees. But they work for the social binding. They are searching for a place in society that can only be achieved by working. This social binding is also the only retribution one can get out of a job. But Dra- seems to be searching for something more. She wants the money, which is the only word that is never written on this novel, but the money has gone.
July 31, 2016
I don't think I have ever had such a hard slog through a mere 150 pages. I kept picking it up and putting it down. Four years later I have finally finished this weird, surreal little book. It has its moments but ultimately it felt too much like a meandering journey through someones bizarro dreams, and y'all know how I feel about other people's dreams.
April 11, 2010
This really didn't work for me. It's a bit hard to describe...I'd say it reminds me of a cross between Pinter and Kafka and a hyperactive child who's playing dumb.
Displaying 1 - 27 of 27 reviews