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The Ant Generator
"The unforgettable characters in Elizabeth Harris's stories are up to their necks in love and trouble, to borrow a phrase from Alice Walker. Reading this book is a great relief from the strain of some of the self-indulgence of the postmodern. The seams of Ms. Harris's fictional craft are not visible in her stories. They are neatly and modestly hidden from view so that one sees only the elegant polish and ease of a well-tailored suit. It is a very plain suit, sensible and serviceable, and, most important, it will never go out of style. I am struck by the kindness and humility of the narrative voice in The Ant Generator, as Harris creates the lives of ordinary people under the stress, trying to understand what Virginia Woolf called 'the meaning of life.' Harris's voice is low-key, sure of itself and very wise indeed."—Jane Marcus
"Intimate and urgent reading, Harris's stories are united by her generosity of characterization and language and her creation of agonizing realism."—Belles Lettres
"The stresses of daily life leave many of Harris's characters, in these 11 tightly focused, stringently realistic stories, emotionally numb, off-balance or grasping at straws…The best stories in this continually surprising debut collection …tap deep veins of feeling."—Publishers Weekly
"Sly, original, and never dull."—Kirkus Reviews
Punctuated with weirdly comic moments, the stories in The Ant Generator reflect Harris's view of the world as a slightly strange place with shifting, dubious boundaries. Men and women encounter the commonplace improbabilities of modern life: a woman who works in an archaeological museum dreams of order but experiences random violence, a bored schoolteacher gets into the Book of World Records by standing on one foot.
In the various interactions of mind and matter in Harris's affecting stories, people try to force their experience into simple shapes, against natural and social opposition, with comic or tragic results. Sometimes their determination to command their own meaning is redemptive and creative; at other times they confront the luminous mystery and unforgiving character of the natural world or the anger of the dispossessed. Harris sensitively creates individuals who respond to the ordinary in extraordinary ways, characters who think in dreams and visions and who, like the author, employ rare gifts.
"Intimate and urgent reading, Harris's stories are united by her generosity of characterization and language and her creation of agonizing realism."—Belles Lettres
"The stresses of daily life leave many of Harris's characters, in these 11 tightly focused, stringently realistic stories, emotionally numb, off-balance or grasping at straws…The best stories in this continually surprising debut collection …tap deep veins of feeling."—Publishers Weekly
"Sly, original, and never dull."—Kirkus Reviews
Punctuated with weirdly comic moments, the stories in The Ant Generator reflect Harris's view of the world as a slightly strange place with shifting, dubious boundaries. Men and women encounter the commonplace improbabilities of modern life: a woman who works in an archaeological museum dreams of order but experiences random violence, a bored schoolteacher gets into the Book of World Records by standing on one foot.
In the various interactions of mind and matter in Harris's affecting stories, people try to force their experience into simple shapes, against natural and social opposition, with comic or tragic results. Sometimes their determination to command their own meaning is redemptive and creative; at other times they confront the luminous mystery and unforgiving character of the natural world or the anger of the dispossessed. Harris sensitively creates individuals who respond to the ordinary in extraordinary ways, characters who think in dreams and visions and who, like the author, employ rare gifts.
170 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1991
6 people want to read
About the author
Elizabeth Harris
2 books10 followersLibrarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Winner of the 2014 Gival Press Fiction Award, Elizabeth Harris is a native Texan who grew up in Ft. Worth. She won the John Simmons Prize, awarded by University of Iowa Press, for her first book, "The Ant Generator", a collection of stories praised for their “sense of wonder, comedy and acid-etched existentialism.” Those and uncollected stories appeared in Antioch Review, Epoch, Chicago Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, and other magazines, and have been anthologized in New Stories from the South, Best of Wind, The Iowa Award, and Literary Austin.
“Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman" is her second book, coming October, 2015. She was a runner up in a previous Gival Press contest with “The Look Thief,” a novel still in manuscript; and in a Faulkner Pirate’s Alley competition for an earlier novel. As yet untitled, her current project is a contemporary novel with a historical setting.
Harris taught fiction writing and modern literature for a number of years at The University of Texas at Austin. Elizabeth Harris and her husband are avid birders and divide their time between the Texas coast and Austin.
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Winner of the 2014 Gival Press Fiction Award, Elizabeth Harris is a native Texan who grew up in Ft. Worth. She won the John Simmons Prize, awarded by University of Iowa Press, for her first book, "The Ant Generator", a collection of stories praised for their “sense of wonder, comedy and acid-etched existentialism.” Those and uncollected stories appeared in Antioch Review, Epoch, Chicago Review, North American Review, Shenandoah, and other magazines, and have been anthologized in New Stories from the South, Best of Wind, The Iowa Award, and Literary Austin.
“Mayhem: Three Lives of a Woman" is her second book, coming October, 2015. She was a runner up in a previous Gival Press contest with “The Look Thief,” a novel still in manuscript; and in a Faulkner Pirate’s Alley competition for an earlier novel. As yet untitled, her current project is a contemporary novel with a historical setting.
Harris taught fiction writing and modern literature for a number of years at The University of Texas at Austin. Elizabeth Harris and her husband are avid birders and divide their time between the Texas coast and Austin.
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October 24, 2020
A weird and wonderful collection of stories about outcasts, misfits, eccentrics; about the depressed and repressed and disillusioned from mainstream America.
In the title story, "The Ant Generator," a woman dreams she can create electricity by harnessing the energy of ants; in "Hybrid Wolfdogs," an aging real-estate investor commits himself to caring for a pair of mongrel wolves; in "The Green Balcony," a woman remains on her apartment terrace for days, hoping that a vision will tell her how to live her life; in "The World Record Holder," a divorced Texas high school teacher, daughter of a famous jockey, finds existential meaning by setting The Guinness Book of Records milestone for standing on one foot; in "Patty Soames's Ghost Story About Farley," a lawyer glimpses her ex-lover, a dapper cocaine dealer who committed suicide, returning as a ghost to request a foot-massage; in "All Dance," a retired widower romantically courts a reserved divorcee, calm in her acceptance of the fact that she's dying of cancer.
The stories are some 30 years but still hold up in 2020's damaged culture.
In the title story, "The Ant Generator," a woman dreams she can create electricity by harnessing the energy of ants; in "Hybrid Wolfdogs," an aging real-estate investor commits himself to caring for a pair of mongrel wolves; in "The Green Balcony," a woman remains on her apartment terrace for days, hoping that a vision will tell her how to live her life; in "The World Record Holder," a divorced Texas high school teacher, daughter of a famous jockey, finds existential meaning by setting The Guinness Book of Records milestone for standing on one foot; in "Patty Soames's Ghost Story About Farley," a lawyer glimpses her ex-lover, a dapper cocaine dealer who committed suicide, returning as a ghost to request a foot-massage; in "All Dance," a retired widower romantically courts a reserved divorcee, calm in her acceptance of the fact that she's dying of cancer.
The stories are some 30 years but still hold up in 2020's damaged culture.
Displaying 1 of 1 review