Piscio sull'acqua

by Rachel B. Glaser

13 racconti estremi, surreali, sfrontati, ricchi di immagini poetiche dolorosamente vivide: un ombrello che ha una faccia e cammina, e può sollevarti in alto, fino a Marte; un fuoco che sfida la marea; una capsula spaziale in cui si viaggia in compagnia di uno scimpanzé; un Cristo appeso per secoli sempre alla stessa croce; un videogioco in cui si può essere John Lennon e fare sesso sfrenato con Yoko Ono.
La realtà virtuale allucinata nel chiuso degli appartamenti, gli amori post-moderni trasposti in diapositive, le piazze desolate percorse dagli skater: scene di vita americana contemporanea si intrecciano con i ricordi di un’era primordiale, in un viaggio onirico che estende oltre ogni livello le possibilità della narrazione per poi richiuderla in un finale sospeso e scioccante.
Da una giovane autrice americana di cui sentiremo parlare molto, un’opera dallo straordinario potere visionario e dalla scrittura limpida e trascinante, capace di mettere a nudo la tragica compostezza della vita moderna.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published September 24, 2010

Reviews

[Jerrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love stories and the strange power they hold. And so this book, which tracks the way stories and storytelling, bleed into, meld with, and disfigure "reality", was a strange and welcome delight.

The author, as noted by several blurbers, breaks a lot of rules. That is to say, she does a lot of things we don't expect and often argue against in our fiction. She often tells instead of shows, or tells and shows. She rights flat--often eschewing all sense of psychology or pathos. She turns stories out of essays and uses found-material like silly putty. But it all works. In each story, she taps into something deep and resonant, finding ways to not merely render the mundane strange but to enact for the reader a fun-house mirror effect. What if nothing were taken for granted? How does the world looked turned upside down?

The final story, which gives the collection its title, is a collage of incidents and fragments. It haphazardly pokes around the evolution of the world & human "civilization", revealing the continuity of our wonderment and confusion at our beautiful, dirty, precarious, boring, ecstatic, muddled condition. It is a perfect metaphor for the book as a whole, which is masterful and wholly its own thing.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

As well as the excellent review in ‘The Short Review’ the charming cover looked Beatle-ish (from the Magical Mystery tour era; although it is in fact the author’s own work/design and based on Caravaggio’s ‘The Incredulity of Saint Thomas’) and there was a story called ‘The Jon Lennin Xperience’, so a Beatles fan like me was bound to be interested. And that story is fascinating – a computer game based on Lennon in which you can share an ice cream with Paul or perform cunnilingus on Yoko (lovely). I liked others too, the very fine ‘The Kid’ a drug dealer-and-his-girlfriend story, succinctly done, and one where Tom, the narrator’s boyfriend somehow represents the country: He 9-11ed. It hit his upper body and he tumbled. He was in a plane and felt queasy. He stood tall next to his twin and they both caught fire. I’m used to reading about dysfunctional families so the totally functional family in ‘The Totems are Grand’ where they carve trees, work as a team, in tribute to their dying grandmother came as a shock. There are stories about monkeys in space, about the evolution of the world (the title story). I liked them all, all had interesting, wobbly things to say:Parks make trees a fetish thing.. but often they read not like stories but meditations/riffs on war, money, nature, or art (eg Children tend to add a curlicue of smoke upon the addition of a chimney.. in China, there are no curlicues..). Representations of Christ lead to Cobain’s voice and how digital appropriation can be a form of 4th dimensional rape, as in the mash-up of Ludacris’s ‘What’s Your Fantasy’ and Kylie Minogue’s 'Can’t Get You out of My Head’. I kind of got prickly sometimes, sometimes didn’t know what to make of them. They’re good though, they’ll lead you away from your seat and up several strange alleys and you’ll probably look for more by Ms Glaser. I will.

[Ted Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just got my free copy and I'm so excited I just want to brush my teeth until I don't have any gums left! Thanks Publishing Genius!


Update: No gums left, but luckily I still smile for pictures. POW showed me how.

[Grant Carln't · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man. This book kept teaching me how to love it more. Each sentence is tuned to mystery, and the mystery can turn from playful-wacky to haunting. This book has its own little area carved out somewhere on the side of my body. One other thing to say is I feel like when I read something that feels wildly creative, it's often brutal. Like I need to reconcile the good pain it caused me after. But this book made me realistically gleeful. What I'm saying is, I'm real happy this book happened to me.

[David LeGault · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Robinson sold me on this at AWP, saying he would give me my money back if I didn't love it. In itself I appreciated this gesture, that he stands behind the books he publishes to this extent. Better yet, he was right; the book moved in ways we don't see very often in fiction. So happy to have gotten into this book, and I can already tell I'll be returning to this one often.

[Mike Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could write with half the verve of the Glaz. Holy goddamn is she good. I remember in middle school when there was only one store in town that sold a certain kind of Chinese candy. Now that store is gone and all we have is Rachel B. Glaser. The new Grace Paley is right here.

[Gwen · Rating 4 out of 5]

loved it at times and other times i hated it... what that says about my writing!? idk but i guess ill say vindictively mr wyss was right

[gene · Rating 5 out of 5]

this shit is so good i was back at the parents' place for two months in the summer and, knowing this, i ordered two copies: one to arrive at my home in boston and one to arrive at the parents' place. this book is like a backhand spring and a hey, hey, over here! she's doing new things, this one. and some reviewers said that her style was deceptively simple, sentence-wise, but that's only true if you're the type of person to look at photos of the large hadron collider and go, what's this erector set magic?

[Downward · Rating 4 out of 5]

formally inventive and oddly structured stories that don’t quite pack an emotional punch as make you kind of marvel at the dotted line between a and b. I sort of felt like (some not all, certainly not the final story) felt like an improvisational exercise, where someone starts telling a fantastic story without knowing where it’s going, though I’m certain I’m wrong about that bc to make it appear that way and be successful indicates that it’s actually been drafted within an inch of its life by someone who really knows what they’re doing. so it’s fun I liked it would read again.

[Tyler Crumrine · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories reached through my chest and grabbed a hold of my heart. Now Glaser keeps moving her fingers around but I can't tell if she's forcing blood through my arteries or disconnecting them. I feel a kind of warmth and cold at the same time. These are very, very good stories. Please go read them.

[Jamie Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked the first and last stories best -- but opinions vary (my friend Jon loved the "Beatles story" the most).

Beware if you've heard Rachel read the last aloud at a reading; I enjoyed that enough but it is WAY better read on the page.

[Joseph Riippi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of the best stories I've read this year are in this book. The title story is a brilliant idea, with exact execution. As is "Jon Lennin Experience"/.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is substantially different than all of the other books I've read. Analogs are hard to come by. Every time I think her writing is like Kelly Link's, I think it's not.

[Kerstin Ahlgren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rachel Glaser drops in smarter things about real things - death, depression, family - than authors who are a lot less funny and entertaining to read. I want to write like her.

[Matt Briggs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how when reading this book the next sentence was often concrete and surprising and then felt somehow inevitable.

[David Catney · Rating 4 out of 5]

“One day, Louisa was out in the fields with the Sheriff and he was showing her how to shoot a gun, but she was afraid to hold it. He said that Jo wouldn't be afraid to hold a gun and he was right. Louisa laughed her melodious laugh, took the gun and held it. She smiled at the Sheriff because she had finally fallen in love. It was so much more amazing than she'd thought. She had never thought loving a man could outdo being friends with a bunch of eclectic eccentric women, but here she was, in the middle of it, happily proven wrong. The flies in the field chased each other. The sun watched them from behind mountains. Louisa sneezed and her fingers clenched the trigger and the Sheriff was shot in the heart! Down he went like a horse. She fell to his side, mortified, and he held her laughing. He told her he forgave her and he loved her, and she cried and cried and he laughed and he died.”

[emilia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Non quello che mi aspettavo dal titolo: pensavo fosse qualcosa dalle parti de "La gang del pensiero" di Tibor Fisher (chissà perchè) e invece è proprio un'altra cosa, alla Barthleme. Sorprendente, stimolante ma volevo leggere qualcosa di meno eccitante. Le tre stelle sono una media, dato che è una raccolta di racconti, ed è più di gusto che di qualità (quella è sulle quattro abbondanti). Nota di merito a Carbonio Editore, la cui scelta è sempre interessante.

[Erika Zini]

Finalmente arriva anche in Italia "Piscio sull'acqua" di Rachel B.Glaser, "una raccolta audace, poetica, spiazzante". Qui una breve anteprima in attesa dell'uscita il 27/04/2019 → http://www.erikazini.com/2019/06/20/g...

[Sarah Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book I've read since The Babysitter at Rest. Every short story was more shocking and juicy than the one before.

[meowdeleine]

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1b...

[Mira Schubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

LIFECHANGING

[AutomaticSlim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feels meticulously pieced together yet simple. Reminded me of certain other writers from this time period in its style. Really good, especially enjoyed the monkey/space story.

Solid 4

[Sarkis Antonyan · Rating 5 out of 5]

if i start talking about this i’ll start crying

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

From publisher

Rachel B. Glaser has a unique way of looking at the world. She sees beyond the surface, into the blood and marrow of things, and she exposes that through the people and things that populate her collection of short stories in Pee on Water.

In the story THE JON LENNIN XPERIENCE - Our main guy's sister purchases him a Beatles reality video game. He is anti-everything technological and ignores the game for many days. Eventually he decides to give it a whirl and ends up becoming obsessed with being John Lennon.

In THE TOTEMS ARE GRAND - a family comes together to celebrate their terminally ill grandmother's life by creating totem poles out of the trees in their yard.

THE KID is a story about a bored guy who takes his dog and his girlfriend on a road trip to deliver drugs for his dead brothers friend. On one particular drop off, someone holds the kid and his girlfriend at gunpoint - and forces the kid to choose between his girlfriend, who he loves having sex with, and his dog, a loyal sidekick who he has raised since it was a puppy.

THE MONKEY HANDLER deals with the complicated and tragic ending of a puppy-dog crush in the confined quarters of space travel.

The title story, PEE ON WATER, takes a creative look at the process of evolution.

These stories were my favorite - by miles. They had the perfect pace. They were pretty straight-forward. They snagged my attention from the first sentence and held it throughout the entire story.

Some of the others, like ICONOGRAPHIC CONVENTIONS OF PRE- AND EARLY RENAISSANCE, INFECTIONS, MY BOYFRIEND BUT TRAGIC, and MCGRADY's SWEETHEART, appeared to take on too much all at once. They confused and frustrated me, and in the case of ICONOGRAPHIC and MCGRADY'S - turned me off so much that I stopped reading them and moved on to the next one.

Rachel takes the english language and makes it her own. No matter what story you're reading, you can see her fingerprints all over them. I would be very interested to see what she could do with a full length novel.

Many thanks to Publishing Genius for sending me the review copy! Check out Pee on Water for the Kindle and Nook. And check out this interview with the author from WeWhoAreAboutToDie - http://wewhoareabouttodie.com/2010/09...

[Michael Beeman · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Pee on Water, Rachel Glaser’s debut short story collection, you will find updated fairy tales, post-modern love stories, surreal dips into a mix of real and imagined history, and narratives sketched from the point of view of the book you are holding—and all of this in one ten page story, “The Magic Umbrella,” an endlessly inventive piece of writing in which Glaser uses a series of internal “About the Authors,” to allow each section build on the previous and take these fantastic turns.

Over the course of just 143 pages the author covers a wide range of subjects: A lonely youth becomes deeply engrossed in, and then beholden to, an interactive video game about John Lennon’s life in “The Jon Lennin Xperience.” “The Kid” starts as a burn-out love story, but quickly becomes a surreal nightmare. My personal favorite, one of the most touching and, oddly enough considering the subject, conventional stories in terms of form is “The Monkey Handler,” a tale chronicling the misadventures of a group of astronauts and their amateur crew whose star-crossed love affairs lead to their abandonment in space.

The result is a collection that is inventive and original, touching as well as hilarious, and surprising in all the best ways.

[John Pappas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is insane, and insanely good. Each story is infused with such a powerful compassion and intelligence. I was struck by how cleverly these stories articulate how it feels to be alive right now, in a world where people spend more time in front of computer screens than in conversation, searching for the next diversion on youtube rather than investing in more meaningful inquiry. The feeling of dislocation in the characters coupled with a vague entitlement supplanting a sense of historical place and the reliance on technology facilitating a blurring of fantasy and reality combines to create what feels like a very real and vital depiction of the now. Stories like "The Jon Lennin Xperience," "The Monkey Handler" and "The Totems are Grand" are especially well-crafted and prescient. This is a must-read.

[Rachael · Rating 2 out of 5]

a very short book of short stories. rough around the edges in a way where i couldn't be quite sure if it was intentional and good or sometimes just a bit lazy. there were a few stories i really enjoyed but some of them were not necessarily difficult to follow but felt a bit pretentious in their stripped down way; lacking much cohesiveness or poetry that made me care at all what happened. the human psyche is pretty dark and dim much of the time but if i'm feeling apathy as opposed to schadenfreude i'm disappointed. there were, however, some very interesting perspectives for a few of the short stories she wrote so i won't discount that. i'd give 2.5 stars if i could, and with better editing and replacing some of the poorer quality stories with some of the more poignant ones it could have been so much better. i'd be interested to see what glaser does with more experience.

[W. Benson Cartwright · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Really great, funny, moving, emotionaly engaging stories. Affecting. Jeez. Here's an example of some great lines: "This love was my favorite. My other boyfriends had been before. This love was now and it leaked all over." Later, when the boyfriend has died, we get, "I do the eating thing, the sleeping thing, but what am I but a crying machine, humming along. Breathing, sighing, waiting. I am an admirer of things, a secret brain of events. Before, I was a responder, a pretty shape, contagious laughing. Now, I am just an animal that can move. An example of a person."
These stories are strange, hilarious and sometimes brutal in their honesty. Fantastic.

[Smiley III · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's awesome! She's a very innovative writer. Personable too. I based a story on her (character named "Rachel") in my collection Rejections by the Cautious Skeptic -- it's called "Increased Discomfort." It's hard not to! She's so appealing. 😉

[Jim Ivy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good, albeit slightly uneven, collection of short stories by Rachel Glaser. There are some real gems here, to be sure. Some of the stories could have been pushed further, explored a little deeper, to reveal something even more special, I think. I can't wait to see how Ms. Glaser progresses in her next book. There is going to be brilliance. It's only a matter of time...