Repetition Patterns

by Ben Tanzer

Dysfunctional suburbs. Dark thoughts. Crumbling relationships. Or in other words, just another day in the twisted world of author Ben Tanzer. The Chicago Center for Literature and Photography is proud to announce its first original book, the "story cycle" Repetition Patterns.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

40 pages, ebook

First published October 27, 2008

About the author

Emmy-award winner Ben Tanzer's acclaimed work includes the short story collection UPSTATE, the science fiction novel Orphans and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool. His recent novel The Missing was released in March 2024 by 7.13 Books and was a Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year finalist in the category of Traditional Fiction and his new book After Hours: Scorsese, Grief and the Grammar of Cinema, which Kirkus Reviews calls "A heartfelt if overstuffed tribute to the author’s father and the ameliorative power of art," was released by Ig Publishing in May 2025. Ben is also the host of the long running podcast This Podcast Will Change Your Life and lives in Chicago with his family.

Reviews

[Jason Pettus · Rating 5 out of 5]

FTC DISCLOSURE: I am the publisher of this book.

Why I signed Repetition Patterns.
An Apologia by Jason Pettus -- Goodreads member, CCLaP owner, and editor of this book

So before anything else, let me confess this: that even from the beginning, I have been predisposed against signing any story collections to CCLaP's new publishing program. And partly that's simply because of the oversaturation of story collections already among struggling basement presses; and partly that's just personal preference, as well as my long-time vision of CCLaP Publishing being a home for mature full-length works by mid-career writers, but just of an odd length for traditional paper-based commercial books. In fact, if anything, I would love to have people look at a CCLaP book as an artistic "punctuation" to an established writer's career, someone who already has a couple of more commercial books on the market; this is a chance for that writer to really flex their creative muscles a bit, and produce something that will add critically to their career if not necessarily that much financially. As an organization that is semi-nonprofit in scope and mission, this I feel is the most important thing CCLaP's publishing program can provide to both artists and the audience, instead of directly competing against other presses on a purely commercial basis.

And so, while I had already been a fan of Chicago author Ben Tanzer before all this, because of reviewing his first novel in 2007 before getting to know him, I can't say I was exactly thrilled when he first submitted the untitled story collection that he did; and throughout the first several stories I read, I had actually been ready to take a pass on the whole thing. But then I got to the remarkable "Life As He Had Known It," currently the seventh story of the published finalized book, and suddenly saw exactly what Tanzer was going for here, of how exactly these stories actually all fit together as a giant remarkable jigsaw puzzle, and how they touch on much bigger issues than their childhood pop-culture fascinations might let on at first. See, it's a story about new parenthood, not exactly remarkable unto itself; but it's a story about new parenthood gone horribly wrong, a constantly screaming baby and no known medical reason why it won't stop, driving the parents into a more and more panicked, sleep-deprived, stressed-out, dysfunctional mindset about it all. "Why not just pack up and leave my family tomorrow?" our frazzled narrator thinks to himself one particularly hopeless night. "People do that all the time, right? Why not let the baby sleep on its stomach, the only way we can seemingly get it to shut up for even a few minutes, despite the increased risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome it presents? Who would ever know?"

These are dark, terrifying fears, ones I imagine a whole lot of new parents fleetingly experience at their lowest moments; yet very few contemporary fiction writers ever address these kinds of fears in their stories, I imagine precisely because they're so dark and terrifying. This is something that's always consistently impressed me about Ben's writing -- his willingness to dig under the polite layers of young middle-class life, to find the ugly and dark bits and hold them up for all of us to look at -- and that for sure is part of why I signed this book. But this particular story also made me realize that in fact all the stories in this collection are craftily examining these kinds of issues as well; of where that fine line lays between being a good but frustrated parent and being a bad negligent one, of what tiny little private moments of decision in our lives separate us from being a decent person and an indecent one. And this too is a reason I ended up signing the manuscript, because I always think this is an important issue to mull, and especially these days when more and more people seem to no longer understand what exactly is decent behavior and what isn't.

But even better, as I made my way through this entire collection for the first time, I realized that Ben was doing this in a rather stylistically unique way; and that was by creating a very realistic-feeling yet fictional town for all these stories to take place, literally jumping back and forth in time over a good twenty-year period, with it never exactly clear whether our narrator is the same person in every story, but definitely with some shared friends between one story and the next, and definitely with shared locations whose fates we can watch progress non-linearly over the decades. It's no coincidence, after all, that existing fans of these stories have referred to them before as Sherwood Andersonesque, and in fact you can see this manuscript in many ways as Ben's attempt at creating his very own Winesburg, Ohio, a very real-feeling place that one hopes he will continue to revisit occasionally throughout his career.

But make no mistake -- this is Sherwood Anderson with a fair dose of Sam Shepard injected into it, plus a dash of Chuck Klosterman for good measure, all of it filmed with a flattened lens by Robert Altman; yes, they are related stories about small-town life that are sometimes nostalgic, but with a pitch-black sense of despair many times thrown in, tales of rural smothering and the tragic consequences that can sometimes ensue, most of it tinted through the grimy filter of '80s pop-culture gone to seed. And this is yet another reason why I signed this manuscript, because I consider Ben excellent at what I just described: of being dark but never hopeless, emotional but rarely melodramatic, an intense setter of mood and lover of language but never delving into purple prose or awkward gimmicks. And by doing it in this case through such fascinating stylistic techniques as repeated motifs and references, as well as repeated dialogue placed in different contexts within different stories, he achieves his goals in a mature, inventive way that I believe marks a new high point creatively for him.

It's for all these reasons that I signed Repetition Patterns, despite it on the surface not appearing to be the type of project I was originally looking for; it's why I'm so sure you're going to like it too, even if like me you're not a usual fan of story collections. I call Repetition Patterns a "story cycle" for a reason; it is a more complicated book of short pieces than the usual "greatest-hits" one, a more special book as a result, and one I hope you enjoy reading as much as I enjoyed working on it.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first experience with one of Tanzer's books, and I couldn't be more thrilled. I love how Tanzer manages to squeeze so much description in without really seeming like he's doing it. The prose is still tight and clean, but more is there than it seems and there are some real poetic phrasings here and there. I love the way the stories proceed as well. Tanzer manages to be both hard hitting and mournfully yearning at the same time, the stories being extremely tender gut-shots. This is a marvelous short collection and I'm definitely going to check out more of Tanzer's work.

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

(eBook/freedownload)

This book was brought to my attention by Jason Pettus, owner of the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography , for which I would like to thank him. And also a big thank you to it's author, Ben Tanzer, who has been a great sport - patiently waiting for me to read and review this collection of short stories.

Are you finding it strange that, being a self professed non-fan of short stories, I am reading short story collections back to back this week? I think it is time to re-evaluate my position on them, as Ben Tanzer stands up and demands to be noticed in Repetition Patterns.

I admit to being slightly underwhelmed as I read the first story, which happens to be the title story - just some guy unhappy with his therapist, whose unprofessional accusations cause him to start up with a new therapist. While reading Babysitter and What We Thought We Knew, as I was introduced to a town of neighboring kids and their promiscuous tendencies, and pedophile parents, I started to wonder what I had signed myself up for.

The third story, however, entitled Gift, demonstrates how wonderful sound can be, and how silence can remind us of what we are not hearing. It also forces you to realize how precious every moment is, and how we may tend to take them all for granted.

Among others, we meet a strange boy who becomes obsessed with a girl in his school, and rages against what he can't have; a teenager who spends months in a Pac Man daze only to be let down by the final level; and confused new parents who want nothing more than to get their infant son to just stop screaming.

Early on, I started to recognize patterns - the movies the characters watched, the names of places the characters saw or visited, the raw sexual undertones that ravaged their town and their lives. I also became aware of a natural evolution of maturity and security, and of accepting things for what they are, without resigning yourself to them. It's these patterns, these repetitive moments, that make Ben's book work.

I look forward to reading more from him. Check out this book, and also take a peek at his blog - This Blog Will Change Your Life.

[Mark Brand · Rating 5 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I came of age in the 80's and the imagery of Repetition Patterns is right there in full-color for me, maybe it's because I'm also a young father with a son who teaches me more about real living in any given ten minutes than I learned in the entirety of my life up to his arrival, maybe it's just because Ben Tanzer is a hell of a nice guy, but for me, this book was one of the best things I've read so far this year.

To start with, I will admit that I read relatively few books like this. I am a writer myself and my work is largely speculative and somewhat futuristic so I read a LOT of speculative fiction and this leaves me with little enough time to read other mainstream or genre fiction. I take recommendations though, from people I trust, and I do try to read the work of my contemporaries in the Chicago literary scene because they're great people and they're generally producing interesting, relevant work.

That said, I found myself making a list as I was reading Repetition Patterns of all of the people I wanted to put it into the hands of to read. Happily, and I'll get to this in a minute, the distribution method of this book is very conducive to word-of-mouth. Anyway, for every father I know of young children, and every couple I know who grew up when I did and have seen the world change the way Tanzer and I have, I thought "this person really needs to read this book." Technically, it's like buscuits and gravy; understated, rich, and satisfying. The metaphorical subtext is present enough to color the whole thing beautifully the way some great indie films manage to do. You read it and you can't exactly put your finger on it, but you need little encouragement to devour it. Writing about my generation, the generation neither firmly Gen X nor Millenials but rather something more like "Garbage Pail Kids" where our first movie at the movie theater wasn't Star Wars but rather E.T. or The Return of the Jedi, is nothing new, but I've rarely seen it done this well, and usually when it was it was in the form of a screenplay.

When contemplating the skill needed to write something meaningful about this generation, you have to wonder if all of the cliches don't just instantly bog down the story before it can get off the ground. Culturally, our generation is such a mishmash of corporate marketing and kitsch mixed with genuine emotion and weird moments of spontaneous "things that happened", that making sense of it in any cohesive way is something that would require confidence on the order of Chuck Norris at a kindergarten introductory karate class.

Repetition Patterns has a palpable flavor of metaphor in it, but never does this seem heavy-handed or trite, and Tanzer's recognizeable characters shine through it vividly. I say "recognizeable" because there's more than a hint of northern New York in the book as well, which being from there I particularly appreciated. Another thing I loved about the book that others have mentioned is the small-town flavor of it. Tanzer does a terrific job of making the book very readable even if one has little or no experience with small towns, but if you do, you'll find yourself thinking about the one in your own personal past almost immediately. Inclusion of nostalgic memories + small town flavor = instant, bittersweet literary homesickness. There are living people in this book, which is probably the highest thing that I can think to say of a piece of contemporary fiction. Regardless, Repetition Patterns would have been a great piece of fiction on its own even had it not been for the terrific way it was produced and released.

I should clarify that I read the ebook version of this story, which I bought at CCLaP's main page and paid $5.00 for. This in itself bears mention because I normally hate reading ebooks and though I have read a few and I tolerate them because of their free-ness, this is the first one I've ever paid for. I couldn't have picked a better first electronic purchase. Tanzer and CCLaP Editor Jason Pettus seem to have found a combination that not only got past my dislike of the medium, but made me feel very willing to plunk down some cash in the future for more of the same if produced similarly. Most of the time I feel like publishers tack on a "digital" version of their books as an afterthought, but Repetition Patterns was the first one I've seen that was honed to ebook perfection with the medium directly in mind.The book is slim at 40-ish digital full-sized PDF pages, but my sense of size was quickly lost when reading it on the Stanza iPhone player and rendered completely irrelevant once I realized that at this length it was MEANT to be comfortably read as an ebook. It was like getting a nod from some considerate and understanding architect who, knowing that your butt was going to be in them, made the benches in his modernistic museum convex instead of hard and flat. Comfortable and inviting is a big shift for me when it comes to digitally-presented literature, so I gave the book a lot of credit for that, too.

Read it, and don't be afraid to buy it instead of just getting it for free, it's 100% worth it. The only thing about Repetition Patterns I found myself still wanting was a place for it on my bookshelf alongside my other favorites, but hey, it's the 21st century right? Maybe my new bookshelf will be a virtual one or something.

[Ben]

It changed my life.

[Jason Jordan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tanzer does it again with Repetition Patterns, a forty-page eBook that could be his best work yet. The stories are delivered from a first person point of view--except for "Life As He Had Known It"--and I liked the narrator of each. Similar to what I said about Tanzer's debut Lucky Man (Manx Media, 2007), and also feel about Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine (Orange Alert Press, 2008), the characterization is what makes Repetition Patterns so enjoyable. It's hard to keep all the characters straight in "The Babysitter," but that's the anomaly.

[Mkwoa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent. Really looking forward to reading more from Tanzer (which I will start now)

[Xian Xian · Rating 3 out of 5]

http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot....

I somehow stumbled upon a website of wonderful indie authors who write experimental styles of literature. I don't quite remember how, but I somehow started off with Ben Tanzer. All of the authors provide the choice to buy the book in print or in e-book form. You can either download them for free or pay a certain price. This website or publishing label is called CCLap Publishing (http://www.cclapcenter.com/publishing/)

I'm not really sure how I found Ben Tanzer, it was probably during my search for online literary magazines or on Twitter. Repetition Patterns was the first book I saw, and the title caught my attention. This book is a short story collection, a very short, light read.

The title story deals with a guy who is going through depression and feels that his psychologist is a jerk, he ends up finding a new one. I'm not really sure what the meaning of the story is suppose to be about, but Ben Tanzer's writing style is very 'readable', his stories are nice to read for some reason. A lot of them focus on the lives of suburban people, depression, young adults and dysfunctional parents or families. A lot of them are dark, but the endings are usually either light hearted or tragic.

Repetition Patterns seems to be a study of suburban life, the a parody of daily life, gossiping women, unfaithful husbands, and people who are generally unsure of their lives. The characters are confused and don't seem to understand others or they get disappointed in their lives. They usually yearn for an escape from reality.

The stories are well written and easy to read. It was a bit of a page-turner for me, so these stories must be really good and I'm slowly crawling out of my book funk.

[Dana Miranda · Rating 3 out of 5]

as a 'story cycle' there is a quaint sense of foreboding and in dealing with life, wherein chaos becomes the repetition patterns and order as the wanted delusions. there are situations posed where one feels unsatisfied with life, and that of its triumph (we come to the realization that a false sense of security, is still security and when one is without either: emptiness).

one can easily get this meaning and many others tanzer is trying to communicate, the aspects of self-approval that is denied, vilified, or acknowledged within us, being one of them. however, i simply couldn't connect to the work. as tanzer points out one can easily become accustomed to indifference, and i to his work.

[Leesa · Rating 5 out of 5]

SUMMER OF TANZER! I am reading all of Ben Tanzer's books this summer b/c Ben Tanzer is one of my new favorite writers b/c of reasons. SOME of those reasons include: he's really good, every story is good, b/c in this book he writes stuff like this: "Her lips were warm, electric, like fresh fruit. We started to kiss..." and "What we thought wE knew wasn't v. important b/c the fact was that we didn't know shit, and you never do." AND BASEBALL ANALOGIES that I love like: "George had a look of defeat about him from the first day I met him, like a guy who had hit the game-winning triple only to get tagged out b/c he failed to touch second base."

Tanzer's writing is truly intimate and touching, always. It makes me *feel* things. I love it and love it, I do.

[Oriana]

Unequivocally yes. I can't wait to see what Jason's got!!

[Ray Charbonneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slice of life stories that got me engaged with the characters, enough so that I was sometimes disappointed by the seeming lack of a point to the story.

[Joseph Michael Owens · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review forthcoming!