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The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg
Since 1986 with the publication of her first story collection, Deborah Eisenberg has devoted herself to writing “exquisitely distilled stories” which “present an unusually distinctive portrait of contemporary American life” to quote the MacArthur Foundation. This one volume brings together Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997) and her most recent collection-Twilight of the Superheroes (2006).
“One of America’s finest writers.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Concentrated bursts of perfection.”—The Times (London) “Shimmering stories that possess the power and charm to move us.” —The New York Times “Exhilarating.”—Harper’s Magazine “Outstanding.”—Christian Science Monitor “Eisenberg simply writes like no one else.”—Elle “Eisenberg’s stories possess all the steely beauty of a knife wrapped in velvet.”—The Boston Globe “Dazzling.”—Time Out New York “Magic.”—Newsweek “Comic, elegant and pitch perfect.”—Vanity Fair “One of the great fiction writers living in America today.”—The Dallas Morning News “There aren’t many contemporary novels as shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny as Eisenberg’s best stories.”—The New York Times Book Review
“One of America’s finest writers.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Concentrated bursts of perfection.”—The Times (London) “Shimmering stories that possess the power and charm to move us.” —The New York Times “Exhilarating.”—Harper’s Magazine “Outstanding.”—Christian Science Monitor “Eisenberg simply writes like no one else.”—Elle “Eisenberg’s stories possess all the steely beauty of a knife wrapped in velvet.”—The Boston Globe “Dazzling.”—Time Out New York “Magic.”—Newsweek “Comic, elegant and pitch perfect.”—Vanity Fair “One of the great fiction writers living in America today.”—The Dallas Morning News “There aren’t many contemporary novels as shudderingly intimate and mordantly funny as Eisenberg’s best stories.”—The New York Times Book Review
992 pages, Paperback
First published September 16, 2008
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About the author
Deborah Eisenberg
38 books293 followersBorn in Chicago, Eisenberg moved to New York City in the 1960's where she has lived ever since. She also teaches at the University of Virginia. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Yale Review, Vanity Fair, and Tin House. She has won the Rea Award for the Short Story, a Whiting Writer's Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and three O. Henry Awards.
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January 5, 2016
And all around Patty’s little bed circled the terror that perhaps those former shimmering lures had not been signs of some central imperative but were instead the snares of a mocking siren; that perhaps she was soon to be dashed, like Mrs. Jorgenson, against the rocks (so to speak) of the hall floor. from ‘A Cautionary Tale’
I would be reading some of these stories feeling like I wouldn’t mind if I could just go on like that with them. But some other thing I had to do would ruin that best kind of as-you’re-reading-it-outside-yourself feeling. Back to work, my dog had to poop again. It wouldn’t be the same again when we were back together. Short stories can be in a pain in the ass for maintaining that flow I crave, but Eisenberg seemed to lose it in the same story, not just having to start a new one. If there was a way to sidestep having to end it, no resolutions or moral of the story. It sounds reasonable that they would buoy themselves with fighting words to move on…. But I don’t know, I would feel like I was reading a piece of writing then, less the alien bug on the floor. The moment when someone is putting on a show for your benefit and they couldn’t ever know what you needed anyone to be. I don’t like to say what four books in one big book are, especially when they are all short stories, but yeah, I got more than anything someone wanting someone to be something they weren’t. I kinda want to avoid slapping an overall meaning just to spite those endings but it was like being judged by other people was an evil meaning of life come to ruin my reading life.
Confession: I read two of the four collections in 2012 (‘All Around Atlantis’ and ‘Twilight of the Superheroes then, and ‘Transactions in a Foreign Language’ and ‘Under the 82nd Airborne’ now). I couldn’t decide if I liked her or not. I remember wanting ‘Mermaids’ to go on. What happened to the little girl in their class who was kidnapped? I’ll have to read that one again. Sometimes she’s like this wry kinda smile, that slug watching all your secrets doesn’t have a conscience you’re going through hell but they have a sense of humor about it. It pissed me off when I was a kid to hear “You’ll laugh about this some day”. I would think they were just laughing at me then and wanted me to know they were having a good time. But if Eisenberg had wanted to she could have split off beyond that shit space. I don’t think she wanted to. More stories than I would have liked were the asshole judging the main her/any unfortunate girls in their path/me too if I were there because I’m an awkward girl too. I don’t like this at any time. I cringe whenever (a lot) another woman tells me about their forays into online dating. You mean you’re going to squeeze into the limits of a buffet table placard by choice?! There are dudes bouncing girls on strings in ‘Flotsam’, ‘What Was It Like, Seeing Chris’, ‘Rafe’s Coat’, ‘A Lesson in Traveling Light’, ‘Transactions in a Foreign Currency’ (that’s all but two in the ‘Transactions’ collection!), ‘The Robbery’, ‘Presents’ and ‘Into the Station’. I started rereading ‘All Around Atlantis’ but it has been too long for me to feel out how they are related to the others otherwise. There is a beating black heart of judgement in all of the stories, just the pinning a woman down under the wing ripping grasp of someone with the virtue of a penis was not where I wanted to be. Mean little boys who don’t have to grow up. It is the worst in ‘A Lesson in Traveling Light’. A girl lives in her boyfriend’s vehicle in a mooch to the next mooch lifestyle. They stay with his friends. He has a lot of friends. I wonder why Lee had any friends to mooch from. I would think they would have to borrow from another friend to give them anything. Yeah, the kind of generosity that depends on someone else. I bet they forget to call ex-friends exes. His girlfriend loves his manual mean under his t-shirt sleeves. She sees his ex-girlfriend when his friends look at her. She sees his future girlfriend when they are not men. I could have gone on reading this when she sees his abandoned friend inside when they’ve moved on again. I could imagine what they would look like if they didn’t have to be a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Maybe she would remember to see them as other than obstacles.
Eisenberg is just so frustrating when it becomes about them not being good enough. The girl in ‘Flotsam’ is leaving her boyfriend who only smiled once. He’s preserved in how she wanted him to be in a photograph, watching over her in her new life. Still not good enough. There’s a self-styled glamour puss roommate in her run away rubbing herself on men. I loved it when this Cinder roommate actually tells her roommate that her hanger-on Mitch is only nice to HER, Cinder, because very good looking people are like famous people who can only socialize with other famous people. They just have to suspect other people’s motives. I was okay with Mitch, Cinder, Cinder’s cast-offs and pretty boyfriends. She probably had a series of roommates she prevailed on in between waiting for the latest pretty boyfriend to choose her over other women. Mitch always has drugs and moons over her. Of course she keeps him around. I don’t know about the you’re never good enough Robert in the photograph.
There’s another of those guys who think well of themselves in expensive clothes and never shuts up at parties of ‘Rafe’s Coat’. Rafe is in his thirties and the girl of this story in his same age. Of course he treats her like she’s much older. All of his girlfriends are ingenues. Why would anyone keep him around? I didn’t want to read about her getting further and further away from the flavor of the week. It was painful to read when her job isn’t good enough. Another boyfriend, this one is married with a kid, remembers the girl in ‘Transactions’ sometimes. She could be sisters with the girl of ‘Traveling’. Every moment with the choosey dude is the last. Pouty deer exes stop by and stare (I felt like every girl in her stories had tiny faces. They were constantly telling someone else they had a tiny face. I don’t think I’ve seen ‘sensational’ used so often either). Did they do that on purpose or are they always having that where is this relationship going conversation? I recognize being lonelier with the person than when you are alone. But I felt lonelier when Ivan was gone the same as when he was there. I missed my loneliness before hers started droning on top of it. I missed some life that was supposed to start. She didn’t have one. He called and she would drop her life to find him. Supposedly she lets go of him in this story. This was one of those times it felt like an ending for the sake of it. She could have done better than realizing he used his son to keep her away, his son to keep his wife away, her to keep the little face ingenue away. II want to know why Eisenberg was so focused on this particular type of judgement. So what if the guy wants them when he wants them?
I see these girls as a little girl playing dolls. A magazine life, clothes and a career in flashback. A shape on the arm. All for no other reason than they had the image they wanted before they were a person. ‘A Cautionary Tale’ is sooooo this. I liked this story a lot, despite irritation that another man (!) talked another woman’s ear off about his lofty from the same shit mountain ideals. Meanwhile he’s living in her overpriced NYC apartment and she’s sullying herself to work a demeaning job. I wished Stuart were a real person I could hit when he did that. Because they like to hear themselves talk. Inside the mouth piece is a rat running around on a wheel powered by nonstop talking. You ever hear people who love to give advice about shit they know nothing about? Stuart in ‘Flotsam’ must use his as a substitute for a soul. I loved the description of him getting more exhausted as he was sleeping. He was pathetic, the pedantic trivia (monarchs of all things there are you could bore a person with) customer from Patty’s waitress job. Patty had the crime of choosing NYC for her doll-house. That was pretty stupid, really, wasn’t there any other city she could manage than that one? Her college roommate schemed to unload Stuart onto her and lured her there to take her apartment from her. I liked the idea of Marcia being too weasley to just outright dump this Stuart guy. Marcia who the other girls in college knew slept with their boyfriends if she showed up with a case of beer. But why couldn’t he just get a job himself instead of living on another’s dime and droning on all day about how they weren’t good enough?
I didn’t look forward to the South American stories much, either. I would start a new story and go “oh fuck” when I realized it was another one. I think these are her other readers favorite but I thought they turned into the same thing eventually. Judgemental eyes don’t let you walk a step. People from home followed you here. Small talk hell. Go to their dinner party, reading over breakfast ruined (you could do that anywhere), ruins of the facade. I can’t decide if she’s pro facade. There’s a landlord elderly couple in ‘Broken Glass’. They are her neighbors in ‘The Robbery’. There was a before when they looked to the pregnant rich women who has friends who sleep with each other (I bet her stuck-up husband Nick will sleep with the gorgeous Amanda. Julia accuses her husband of believing Amanda allowed the messy affairs because she’s pretty). They are in the suburbs but Julia is obsessed with jealousy of her not-white housekeeper. Her relatives are to blame for everything. Her old dinner party neighbors aren’t dinner party untouched after the massacre of their doll collection in a robbery. The old people in ‘Broken’ are old, the wife has been ill. I liked that it was a mother/daughter rejection in ‘Under the 82nd Airborne’. Eisenberg can nail exactly what people are like. I can see young Holly clinging to her daddy and then to a fiancee as well as her daddy. Her actress mama didn’t get custody. If she had had custody I doubt she would have seen Holly anymore. I hated that it was like a contest that she was older now, Holly young and pretty. There’s a mother/daughter like this in ‘Presents’. I wished I could have hit Cheryl too. So what her mom is an aging bar slut. With all the coke that goes up Cheryl’s nose (courtesy of her drug dealer boyfriend, Danny) she thinks she’s not going to resemble Stevie Nicks (not the young and cute Stevie Nicks)? I was all for the leggo my ego actor buddy from Danny’s past. He talks too much too so another one of those. He’ll be lucky if his projects are better than what Eric Roberts gets these days. Eisenberg had them right but I didn’t care too much where they were going. There’s moment when the Carter asshole (he was as genuinely interested as any drunk who loves you soooooo much really loves you) asks to hear about Cheryl’s mom, though. I felt like I was reading about the one moment a shell remembers what it is like to be alive. Cheryl can’t offer up her complicated mother for him. This teen cokehead is the adult in the family so that says a lot. It felt so right the guilt, the mom in her mind (when her real mom dies this one will live as long as Cheryl does, more powerful than Obi Wan Kenobi) challenging what she said. Who was this asshole to just ask about her mom like that? Not that he could explain the ex girlfriend who stopped by to get herself. I liked that Cheryl notes his triumph when his penthouse buzzer goes off. He thinks he’s got her back for good. Maybe before he thought he was a star he hadn’t had chances enough to treat his girl badly. At least none of the girls had to be anything for the guys this time. But Cheryl just didn’t have time enough to disappoint anyone as Judith had let her down. Holly’s mom was too busy loving a little girl clinging to her teddy bear. I really liked the Eisenberg that had that little girl more lovable when it was the bear she was clinging to. Like the father who would use his daughter to get back at the pretty actress who didn’t want him as the center of the universe made her part of him. I really liked her when she wasn’t trying to think about it all too much for an ending to comment on this shit. I could have lived without the angry white people resenting foreigners. They had moments when their shells came to life too, unfortunately also when they were let down. Is that all there is here? When you’re in pain you remember THAT but there aren’t any other resources inside yourself? Why couldn’t the girl in ‘Flotsam’ smile in a photograph for herself? I just want to hit the assholes that go around like they are some ceiling that ordains anyone else.
That shit happens in ‘The Custodian’ and ‘Days’. ‘Days’ is painful to read. It’s too accurate of trying to fill the days with anything. I wish the girl hadn’t been doing this to have something to say when blank people (for all I know there’s more to them than asking strangers to account for their point in the universe every time they meet on the street. Sure didn’t seem like it, though). She joins the YMCA. Swimming for a while. They say that’s the best form of exercise! Showers fill the time. Running, colored tennis shoes, but that asshole on the track says you should be able to do more than that if you’ve been running for months now. I hate thinking about this one. If you forget what it is like to be alive this could be what hell is like. ‘The Custodian’ has the victory of the pretty girl who has more money, a better house, better grades. I freaking hated Isobel. I just want Lynnie to stop looking in that chick’s window every night. I remember going to other girl’s houses and they wouldn’t let you touch their things just like this. It reminded me of too much when Lynnie just knows she’s going to the classes for the kids without grace when they get to high school. But damn, girl, get off your knees and stop worshipping these people. Lynnie is in love with the whorey professor Russ and his former candle wife. All their kids. But Isobel is a transparent momentary fling. I loved everything about Lynnie’s mom, though. Sitting in front of the tv, she hates Isobel and her parents. That girl is not your friend. It is desperately sad that she had no warmth for her daughter. I can’t remember now (it’s been like a couple of days. Damn, Mariel) if it was this story that had the mothers loving their lumpy daughters. It was in one of them, anyway. I always looked for the moms who loved their daughters even if they weren’t tall and blonde because my mother had no love for one who wasn’t. Eisenberg can get that so right like you’re just there breathing with them and then get it wrong when it is taken as true that Lynnie was just there to safe keep Isobel’s secrets. Isobel goes off to get married, college. She’s probably bitchy to other mothers who don’t have perfectly kempt daughters and shiny appliances. But damn it isn’t true that is what Lynnie had to do. If Lynnie worshiped Isobel, Russ and Claire like they were secrets and she was their priestess, well, that’s her bullshit. Lynnie’s mother didn’t even have to wake up from her bitterness coma to know what Isobel was all about. Where does the rest rest?
”You know what?” he said. “You’re like the Blob. You remember that movie The Blob? You’re sentient protoplasm, but you’re as undifferentiated as sentient protoplasm can get. You’re devoid of even taxonomic attributes. from ‘’Flotsam’
I don’t know if she did want to wake them up any. I don't want to feel like you can win or lose by who is watching you. I can't stand that. Her introduction for the NYRB Cassandra at the Wedding irritated the crap out of me, also. I hold it against her that she loved that squirmy book so much, I can’t help it.
I don't really want to give this stars but I'm doing it anyway. It's more like sometimes it was great and other times it wasn't book. (More than not wanting to give stars I hate that I don't remember more of stories I read in 2012. One day I'll forget even more and all there will be left of me are star ratings, lost in what stars mean to other people I don't know.)
I would be reading some of these stories feeling like I wouldn’t mind if I could just go on like that with them. But some other thing I had to do would ruin that best kind of as-you’re-reading-it-outside-yourself feeling. Back to work, my dog had to poop again. It wouldn’t be the same again when we were back together. Short stories can be in a pain in the ass for maintaining that flow I crave, but Eisenberg seemed to lose it in the same story, not just having to start a new one. If there was a way to sidestep having to end it, no resolutions or moral of the story. It sounds reasonable that they would buoy themselves with fighting words to move on…. But I don’t know, I would feel like I was reading a piece of writing then, less the alien bug on the floor. The moment when someone is putting on a show for your benefit and they couldn’t ever know what you needed anyone to be. I don’t like to say what four books in one big book are, especially when they are all short stories, but yeah, I got more than anything someone wanting someone to be something they weren’t. I kinda want to avoid slapping an overall meaning just to spite those endings but it was like being judged by other people was an evil meaning of life come to ruin my reading life.
Confession: I read two of the four collections in 2012 (‘All Around Atlantis’ and ‘Twilight of the Superheroes then, and ‘Transactions in a Foreign Language’ and ‘Under the 82nd Airborne’ now). I couldn’t decide if I liked her or not. I remember wanting ‘Mermaids’ to go on. What happened to the little girl in their class who was kidnapped? I’ll have to read that one again. Sometimes she’s like this wry kinda smile, that slug watching all your secrets doesn’t have a conscience you’re going through hell but they have a sense of humor about it. It pissed me off when I was a kid to hear “You’ll laugh about this some day”. I would think they were just laughing at me then and wanted me to know they were having a good time. But if Eisenberg had wanted to she could have split off beyond that shit space. I don’t think she wanted to. More stories than I would have liked were the asshole judging the main her/any unfortunate girls in their path/me too if I were there because I’m an awkward girl too. I don’t like this at any time. I cringe whenever (a lot) another woman tells me about their forays into online dating. You mean you’re going to squeeze into the limits of a buffet table placard by choice?! There are dudes bouncing girls on strings in ‘Flotsam’, ‘What Was It Like, Seeing Chris’, ‘Rafe’s Coat’, ‘A Lesson in Traveling Light’, ‘Transactions in a Foreign Currency’ (that’s all but two in the ‘Transactions’ collection!), ‘The Robbery’, ‘Presents’ and ‘Into the Station’. I started rereading ‘All Around Atlantis’ but it has been too long for me to feel out how they are related to the others otherwise. There is a beating black heart of judgement in all of the stories, just the pinning a woman down under the wing ripping grasp of someone with the virtue of a penis was not where I wanted to be. Mean little boys who don’t have to grow up. It is the worst in ‘A Lesson in Traveling Light’. A girl lives in her boyfriend’s vehicle in a mooch to the next mooch lifestyle. They stay with his friends. He has a lot of friends. I wonder why Lee had any friends to mooch from. I would think they would have to borrow from another friend to give them anything. Yeah, the kind of generosity that depends on someone else. I bet they forget to call ex-friends exes. His girlfriend loves his manual mean under his t-shirt sleeves. She sees his ex-girlfriend when his friends look at her. She sees his future girlfriend when they are not men. I could have gone on reading this when she sees his abandoned friend inside when they’ve moved on again. I could imagine what they would look like if they didn’t have to be a boyfriend and a girlfriend. Maybe she would remember to see them as other than obstacles.
Eisenberg is just so frustrating when it becomes about them not being good enough. The girl in ‘Flotsam’ is leaving her boyfriend who only smiled once. He’s preserved in how she wanted him to be in a photograph, watching over her in her new life. Still not good enough. There’s a self-styled glamour puss roommate in her run away rubbing herself on men. I loved it when this Cinder roommate actually tells her roommate that her hanger-on Mitch is only nice to HER, Cinder, because very good looking people are like famous people who can only socialize with other famous people. They just have to suspect other people’s motives. I was okay with Mitch, Cinder, Cinder’s cast-offs and pretty boyfriends. She probably had a series of roommates she prevailed on in between waiting for the latest pretty boyfriend to choose her over other women. Mitch always has drugs and moons over her. Of course she keeps him around. I don’t know about the you’re never good enough Robert in the photograph.
There’s another of those guys who think well of themselves in expensive clothes and never shuts up at parties of ‘Rafe’s Coat’. Rafe is in his thirties and the girl of this story in his same age. Of course he treats her like she’s much older. All of his girlfriends are ingenues. Why would anyone keep him around? I didn’t want to read about her getting further and further away from the flavor of the week. It was painful to read when her job isn’t good enough. Another boyfriend, this one is married with a kid, remembers the girl in ‘Transactions’ sometimes. She could be sisters with the girl of ‘Traveling’. Every moment with the choosey dude is the last. Pouty deer exes stop by and stare (I felt like every girl in her stories had tiny faces. They were constantly telling someone else they had a tiny face. I don’t think I’ve seen ‘sensational’ used so often either). Did they do that on purpose or are they always having that where is this relationship going conversation? I recognize being lonelier with the person than when you are alone. But I felt lonelier when Ivan was gone the same as when he was there. I missed my loneliness before hers started droning on top of it. I missed some life that was supposed to start. She didn’t have one. He called and she would drop her life to find him. Supposedly she lets go of him in this story. This was one of those times it felt like an ending for the sake of it. She could have done better than realizing he used his son to keep her away, his son to keep his wife away, her to keep the little face ingenue away. II want to know why Eisenberg was so focused on this particular type of judgement. So what if the guy wants them when he wants them?
I see these girls as a little girl playing dolls. A magazine life, clothes and a career in flashback. A shape on the arm. All for no other reason than they had the image they wanted before they were a person. ‘A Cautionary Tale’ is sooooo this. I liked this story a lot, despite irritation that another man (!) talked another woman’s ear off about his lofty from the same shit mountain ideals. Meanwhile he’s living in her overpriced NYC apartment and she’s sullying herself to work a demeaning job. I wished Stuart were a real person I could hit when he did that. Because they like to hear themselves talk. Inside the mouth piece is a rat running around on a wheel powered by nonstop talking. You ever hear people who love to give advice about shit they know nothing about? Stuart in ‘Flotsam’ must use his as a substitute for a soul. I loved the description of him getting more exhausted as he was sleeping. He was pathetic, the pedantic trivia (monarchs of all things there are you could bore a person with) customer from Patty’s waitress job. Patty had the crime of choosing NYC for her doll-house. That was pretty stupid, really, wasn’t there any other city she could manage than that one? Her college roommate schemed to unload Stuart onto her and lured her there to take her apartment from her. I liked the idea of Marcia being too weasley to just outright dump this Stuart guy. Marcia who the other girls in college knew slept with their boyfriends if she showed up with a case of beer. But why couldn’t he just get a job himself instead of living on another’s dime and droning on all day about how they weren’t good enough?
I didn’t look forward to the South American stories much, either. I would start a new story and go “oh fuck” when I realized it was another one. I think these are her other readers favorite but I thought they turned into the same thing eventually. Judgemental eyes don’t let you walk a step. People from home followed you here. Small talk hell. Go to their dinner party, reading over breakfast ruined (you could do that anywhere), ruins of the facade. I can’t decide if she’s pro facade. There’s a landlord elderly couple in ‘Broken Glass’. They are her neighbors in ‘The Robbery’. There was a before when they looked to the pregnant rich women who has friends who sleep with each other (I bet her stuck-up husband Nick will sleep with the gorgeous Amanda. Julia accuses her husband of believing Amanda allowed the messy affairs because she’s pretty). They are in the suburbs but Julia is obsessed with jealousy of her not-white housekeeper. Her relatives are to blame for everything. Her old dinner party neighbors aren’t dinner party untouched after the massacre of their doll collection in a robbery. The old people in ‘Broken’ are old, the wife has been ill. I liked that it was a mother/daughter rejection in ‘Under the 82nd Airborne’. Eisenberg can nail exactly what people are like. I can see young Holly clinging to her daddy and then to a fiancee as well as her daddy. Her actress mama didn’t get custody. If she had had custody I doubt she would have seen Holly anymore. I hated that it was like a contest that she was older now, Holly young and pretty. There’s a mother/daughter like this in ‘Presents’. I wished I could have hit Cheryl too. So what her mom is an aging bar slut. With all the coke that goes up Cheryl’s nose (courtesy of her drug dealer boyfriend, Danny) she thinks she’s not going to resemble Stevie Nicks (not the young and cute Stevie Nicks)? I was all for the leggo my ego actor buddy from Danny’s past. He talks too much too so another one of those. He’ll be lucky if his projects are better than what Eric Roberts gets these days. Eisenberg had them right but I didn’t care too much where they were going. There’s moment when the Carter asshole (he was as genuinely interested as any drunk who loves you soooooo much really loves you) asks to hear about Cheryl’s mom, though. I felt like I was reading about the one moment a shell remembers what it is like to be alive. Cheryl can’t offer up her complicated mother for him. This teen cokehead is the adult in the family so that says a lot. It felt so right the guilt, the mom in her mind (when her real mom dies this one will live as long as Cheryl does, more powerful than Obi Wan Kenobi) challenging what she said. Who was this asshole to just ask about her mom like that? Not that he could explain the ex girlfriend who stopped by to get herself. I liked that Cheryl notes his triumph when his penthouse buzzer goes off. He thinks he’s got her back for good. Maybe before he thought he was a star he hadn’t had chances enough to treat his girl badly. At least none of the girls had to be anything for the guys this time. But Cheryl just didn’t have time enough to disappoint anyone as Judith had let her down. Holly’s mom was too busy loving a little girl clinging to her teddy bear. I really liked the Eisenberg that had that little girl more lovable when it was the bear she was clinging to. Like the father who would use his daughter to get back at the pretty actress who didn’t want him as the center of the universe made her part of him. I really liked her when she wasn’t trying to think about it all too much for an ending to comment on this shit. I could have lived without the angry white people resenting foreigners. They had moments when their shells came to life too, unfortunately also when they were let down. Is that all there is here? When you’re in pain you remember THAT but there aren’t any other resources inside yourself? Why couldn’t the girl in ‘Flotsam’ smile in a photograph for herself? I just want to hit the assholes that go around like they are some ceiling that ordains anyone else.
That shit happens in ‘The Custodian’ and ‘Days’. ‘Days’ is painful to read. It’s too accurate of trying to fill the days with anything. I wish the girl hadn’t been doing this to have something to say when blank people (for all I know there’s more to them than asking strangers to account for their point in the universe every time they meet on the street. Sure didn’t seem like it, though). She joins the YMCA. Swimming for a while. They say that’s the best form of exercise! Showers fill the time. Running, colored tennis shoes, but that asshole on the track says you should be able to do more than that if you’ve been running for months now. I hate thinking about this one. If you forget what it is like to be alive this could be what hell is like. ‘The Custodian’ has the victory of the pretty girl who has more money, a better house, better grades. I freaking hated Isobel. I just want Lynnie to stop looking in that chick’s window every night. I remember going to other girl’s houses and they wouldn’t let you touch their things just like this. It reminded me of too much when Lynnie just knows she’s going to the classes for the kids without grace when they get to high school. But damn, girl, get off your knees and stop worshipping these people. Lynnie is in love with the whorey professor Russ and his former candle wife. All their kids. But Isobel is a transparent momentary fling. I loved everything about Lynnie’s mom, though. Sitting in front of the tv, she hates Isobel and her parents. That girl is not your friend. It is desperately sad that she had no warmth for her daughter. I can’t remember now (it’s been like a couple of days. Damn, Mariel) if it was this story that had the mothers loving their lumpy daughters. It was in one of them, anyway. I always looked for the moms who loved their daughters even if they weren’t tall and blonde because my mother had no love for one who wasn’t. Eisenberg can get that so right like you’re just there breathing with them and then get it wrong when it is taken as true that Lynnie was just there to safe keep Isobel’s secrets. Isobel goes off to get married, college. She’s probably bitchy to other mothers who don’t have perfectly kempt daughters and shiny appliances. But damn it isn’t true that is what Lynnie had to do. If Lynnie worshiped Isobel, Russ and Claire like they were secrets and she was their priestess, well, that’s her bullshit. Lynnie’s mother didn’t even have to wake up from her bitterness coma to know what Isobel was all about. Where does the rest rest?
”You know what?” he said. “You’re like the Blob. You remember that movie The Blob? You’re sentient protoplasm, but you’re as undifferentiated as sentient protoplasm can get. You’re devoid of even taxonomic attributes. from ‘’Flotsam’
I don’t know if she did want to wake them up any. I don't want to feel like you can win or lose by who is watching you. I can't stand that. Her introduction for the NYRB Cassandra at the Wedding irritated the crap out of me, also. I hold it against her that she loved that squirmy book so much, I can’t help it.
I don't really want to give this stars but I'm doing it anyway. It's more like sometimes it was great and other times it wasn't book. (More than not wanting to give stars I hate that I don't remember more of stories I read in 2012. One day I'll forget even more and all there will be left of me are star ratings, lost in what stars mean to other people I don't know.)
February 3, 2024
This book brings together the first four of Deborah Eisenberg’s five short-story collections. The collections are presented in the order in which they were published: 981 pages and 27 stories. This book won the 2011 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. I enjoyed every one of the stories. When I finished the last story, I was ready to move on, but only because I had spent a lot of time with Deborah Eisenberg. I rated eleven of the stories 5 stars, ten of them 4 stars and six of them 3 stars. I found I liked the least her stories that were situated in third-world countries; they just did not come alive for me as much as the other stories did. All the stories include a lot of dialogue and quite a few begin with dialogue, which I found quickly engaged me. The stories are long, averaging about 40 pages, but never felt long.
One of my favorite stories of the entire collection was the very last story: The Flaw in the Design. A married couple has one boy, Oliver, in college. Oliver’s grades are good. He has a series of girlfriends, although his parents are not impressed by his choices. The father, John, is a consultant, potentially in natural resource production, and his wife, whose name we don’t know, has been a stay-at-home Mom. The family traveled to other countries, pursuing financially rewarding opportunities for John. One of John’s associates is now being accused of fraudulent activities; Oliver verbally attacks his father, insinuating that John is likely guilty of similar activities. Oliver’s remarks to his father are extremely acerbic and hateful; they almost leap off the page. Oliver’s parents are very concerned about his behavior, and John has strong regrets about ever taking Oliver to other countries, thinking this experience has contributed to his current problems.
I gave this large collection five stars. This was tough because in a large collection like this I am not going to rate all or even most of the stories that high. In this case, though, the stories were of such consistent quality while never being repetitive that I felt the overall collection deserved this rating.
Now I am not a reader who pays much attention to dust jackets or covers. I have certainly never purchased a book because I liked the cover. But I thought the dust jackets for the four individual short-story collections that make up this overall collection were striking, and since Deborah Eisenberg does not seem to be that widely known or read, copies of the individual collections were inexpensive.
One of my favorite stories of the entire collection was the very last story: The Flaw in the Design. A married couple has one boy, Oliver, in college. Oliver’s grades are good. He has a series of girlfriends, although his parents are not impressed by his choices. The father, John, is a consultant, potentially in natural resource production, and his wife, whose name we don’t know, has been a stay-at-home Mom. The family traveled to other countries, pursuing financially rewarding opportunities for John. One of John’s associates is now being accused of fraudulent activities; Oliver verbally attacks his father, insinuating that John is likely guilty of similar activities. Oliver’s remarks to his father are extremely acerbic and hateful; they almost leap off the page. Oliver’s parents are very concerned about his behavior, and John has strong regrets about ever taking Oliver to other countries, thinking this experience has contributed to his current problems.
I gave this large collection five stars. This was tough because in a large collection like this I am not going to rate all or even most of the stories that high. In this case, though, the stories were of such consistent quality while never being repetitive that I felt the overall collection deserved this rating.
Now I am not a reader who pays much attention to dust jackets or covers. I have certainly never purchased a book because I liked the cover. But I thought the dust jackets for the four individual short-story collections that make up this overall collection were striking, and since Deborah Eisenberg does not seem to be that widely known or read, copies of the individual collections were inexpensive.
April 17, 2010
As the title makes clear, this is a compendium of all four of Eisenberg's previously published volumes of stories. As such, it gives us, under one cover, the evolution of a particular and exquisite talent, though one that is not, I am sure, to everyone's taste. When she first published, Eisenberg was bucking the publishing tide. Minimalism and "K-Mart realism" were in the ascendant, Raymond Carver was short story royalty, and his imitators--or the imitators of what Gordon Lish did to his stories--were legion. Eisenberg was everything that Carver was not--maximalist, even digressive, urban and urbane, East Coast, female, sardonic, and Jewish. But Eisenberg was never about being trendy, and she would turn out to be impossible to imitate.
The themes and obsessions that rule Eisenberg's fiction were there from the beginning, and the stories just kept getting better honed, more sophisticated, more acute and exact, more ample. The stories in the first collection are written entirely in the first person; as if in answer to unheard critics, the second is almost entirely in third person. Overall the stories range in form from the traditional (or "linear") to the "modular" (the terms belong to Madison Smartt Bell.) Some of the best, like "Twilight of the Superheroes," (one of the greatest fictions coming out of 9/11), belong to the latter group. Be warned that these are long short stories, some, like "Holy Week" achieving almost novella length, and that their effect is large; they are not snacks to be consumed one after the other, but entire meals. Better to space the reading of them in order to let the full effect sink in.
Eisenberg is surely one of the best contemporary American story writers, and to read her is to be reminded of what a boys' club (with the exception of a few Southerners like Welty, O'Connor, and Porter) this form has been. Even today, there are few women who dedicate themselves to the rigors of the short story. (Men who come to mind include Tobias Wolff, Lee Abbott, and George Saunders.) To read her is to be struck again by the superior pleasure to be found in the well-made sentence, the perfect line of dialogue. Struck through with mordant wit, subtle and complex, these stories remind us of the ways in which we ourselves have evolved through the last numbing twenty-five years.
**I won this book as a GoodReads Giveaway.
The themes and obsessions that rule Eisenberg's fiction were there from the beginning, and the stories just kept getting better honed, more sophisticated, more acute and exact, more ample. The stories in the first collection are written entirely in the first person; as if in answer to unheard critics, the second is almost entirely in third person. Overall the stories range in form from the traditional (or "linear") to the "modular" (the terms belong to Madison Smartt Bell.) Some of the best, like "Twilight of the Superheroes," (one of the greatest fictions coming out of 9/11), belong to the latter group. Be warned that these are long short stories, some, like "Holy Week" achieving almost novella length, and that their effect is large; they are not snacks to be consumed one after the other, but entire meals. Better to space the reading of them in order to let the full effect sink in.
Eisenberg is surely one of the best contemporary American story writers, and to read her is to be reminded of what a boys' club (with the exception of a few Southerners like Welty, O'Connor, and Porter) this form has been. Even today, there are few women who dedicate themselves to the rigors of the short story. (Men who come to mind include Tobias Wolff, Lee Abbott, and George Saunders.) To read her is to be struck again by the superior pleasure to be found in the well-made sentence, the perfect line of dialogue. Struck through with mordant wit, subtle and complex, these stories remind us of the ways in which we ourselves have evolved through the last numbing twenty-five years.
**I won this book as a GoodReads Giveaway.
March 9, 2010
One hardly knows how to describe a Deborah Eisenberg story, let alone this volume which brings together all five of her collections under a single cover. Adjectives like "exhilarating" or "dazzling" feel too light, too insubstantial to give the sense of the power and precision of her work. Others like "genius" have been so over used as to become common as crab grass and as such would feel like an insult to a writer who can fairly and without hyperbole be described as perhaps the best currently active American short story writer.
Eisenberg's stories aren't the minimalist sort that has gained so much traction in recent decades - her prose are weighty, the word bulky comes to mind. Many feel as if they might well be novels, yet the don't have the stripped down feel of other such stories - one doesn't get the sense of characters imprisoned by an author's commitment to the form, as if the shortness of the length were walls which they can't claw through to get to their real potential. No, Eisenberg's characters breathe in the moment.
Her stories, usually on the longish side at thirty plus pages, would rather meander a bit, often down tangents letting the reader gain an attachment to the character in a way that other practitioners of this form tend to eschew. As such they deliver a feeling of a being on a journey, the emotional baggage and humor giving them a heft which rests not on a single word or moment, no it is the flow of her character's relationships that carry the reader along, pulling us in their interior lives. As such, each story can at times feel exhausting, an emotional investment, making this collection a thing to be sipped, not gobbled, almost 1,000 page of prose to be digested slowly over weeks and months not hours, less one be left totally spent.
Eisenberg is funny, often sardonic, and always poignant. The title story of her fifth collection, "Twilight of the Superheroes" brings forth beautifully both the sense of mourning and melodrama that permeated New York in the wake of 9/11. Another, the "Girl Who Left her Sock on the Floor" holds much of the same sense of loss. As with many in her collected works, these stories permeate with questions of the end of childhood and what it means to be an adult.
"The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg" deserves a place in your home. Not on a shelf gathering dust, but on your nightstand, so that you may indulge yourself, one story at a time, to treasure every visit into the world of her singular talent.
Eisenberg's stories aren't the minimalist sort that has gained so much traction in recent decades - her prose are weighty, the word bulky comes to mind. Many feel as if they might well be novels, yet the don't have the stripped down feel of other such stories - one doesn't get the sense of characters imprisoned by an author's commitment to the form, as if the shortness of the length were walls which they can't claw through to get to their real potential. No, Eisenberg's characters breathe in the moment.
Her stories, usually on the longish side at thirty plus pages, would rather meander a bit, often down tangents letting the reader gain an attachment to the character in a way that other practitioners of this form tend to eschew. As such they deliver a feeling of a being on a journey, the emotional baggage and humor giving them a heft which rests not on a single word or moment, no it is the flow of her character's relationships that carry the reader along, pulling us in their interior lives. As such, each story can at times feel exhausting, an emotional investment, making this collection a thing to be sipped, not gobbled, almost 1,000 page of prose to be digested slowly over weeks and months not hours, less one be left totally spent.
Eisenberg is funny, often sardonic, and always poignant. The title story of her fifth collection, "Twilight of the Superheroes" brings forth beautifully both the sense of mourning and melodrama that permeated New York in the wake of 9/11. Another, the "Girl Who Left her Sock on the Floor" holds much of the same sense of loss. As with many in her collected works, these stories permeate with questions of the end of childhood and what it means to be an adult.
"The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg" deserves a place in your home. Not on a shelf gathering dust, but on your nightstand, so that you may indulge yourself, one story at a time, to treasure every visit into the world of her singular talent.
August 24, 2010
One of the best story collections I've ever read. It really is hard to find any collection where more than 50% of the stories are solid, but this just blew my mind. Do not come to these stories if you are looking for an epiphany or revelations. Eisenberg disagrees with such endings as, to her, they are unrealistic. Every story is a gem--a wonder. My favorite story is "Some Other, Better Otto" which had me close to tears several times, and really great character examinations.
I'm so glad I found Eisenberg.
I'm so glad I found Eisenberg.
April 11, 2016
I love this book. I'm reading it little by little, over the last few months. The prose is so crisp and clean. The stories are unique; no one else writes like this. Very Manhattan, but not showy. I'll write more later.
Want to read
April 10, 2020"Long Stories," a shelf of anthologies I'm erratically working through.
----------------------------
"Transactions in a Foreign Currency"
Refined, savvy prose channeled through the narrow straits of intimate relationships and around the sandbars of self-development. Borderline lyrical. Several central characters are drawn from the sophisticated and well-to-do academic/artistic milieu, almost parodying Henry James in the pursuit of prototypes unsullied by banal concerns and therefore free to be pure abstractions. "Days" is the exception here and the best in the first batch. Looking forward to how the rest develops, hoping the purview becomes less solipsistic, more experimental in form and daring in content. But the language is gorgeous.
---------------------------
"Under the 82nd Airborne"
Halfway through the collection, my lukewarm estimation remains the same, if not more sure. There's no denying Eisenberg's languid and learned prose, but there's just something arid, lifeless, or too textbooky, like she's unwilling to risk anything. The tonal range is confined to that of the cozily tenured. For all the urbanity and world-wisdom, there's no sense of urgency, as if she could convey that what she was doing really mattered to her and should to us. And despite the sociopolitical gilding here and there, it still seems like an ungainly grasping for "relevance." The title story was a dismal flatliner, but the timeline jugglery in "The Custodian" and the mildly adventurous "Holy Week" stand out. Here's hoping the latter half of this tome will see Eisenberg break her all too poised and mannerly stride and stumble into something exciting.
---------------------------
----------------------------
"Transactions in a Foreign Currency"
Refined, savvy prose channeled through the narrow straits of intimate relationships and around the sandbars of self-development. Borderline lyrical. Several central characters are drawn from the sophisticated and well-to-do academic/artistic milieu, almost parodying Henry James in the pursuit of prototypes unsullied by banal concerns and therefore free to be pure abstractions. "Days" is the exception here and the best in the first batch. Looking forward to how the rest develops, hoping the purview becomes less solipsistic, more experimental in form and daring in content. But the language is gorgeous.
---------------------------
"Under the 82nd Airborne"
Halfway through the collection, my lukewarm estimation remains the same, if not more sure. There's no denying Eisenberg's languid and learned prose, but there's just something arid, lifeless, or too textbooky, like she's unwilling to risk anything. The tonal range is confined to that of the cozily tenured. For all the urbanity and world-wisdom, there's no sense of urgency, as if she could convey that what she was doing really mattered to her and should to us. And despite the sociopolitical gilding here and there, it still seems like an ungainly grasping for "relevance." The title story was a dismal flatliner, but the timeline jugglery in "The Custodian" and the mildly adventurous "Holy Week" stand out. Here's hoping the latter half of this tome will see Eisenberg break her all too poised and mannerly stride and stumble into something exciting.
---------------------------
April 12, 2010
Skip the first set of stories, which are early efforts and tend to blend all together. But once you get to the second set, you realize almost instantly that Deborah Eisenberg is a special talent. The dialogue is fantastic. The word choice is spot on and the rhythm of the sentences is like good music. I can't say that I like the subject matter very much - Eisenberg is almost exclusively concerned with the lives of rather feckless women tenuously tied to rather creepy men - but I do love the writing. There is humor and pathos throughout, often in the space of one sentence. You can pick up any story in the final three quarters of this collection and find something that would make any writer or careful reader smile.
April 4, 2010
I wanted to like this book, but the writing style felt too tedious. I can’t put my finger on it, some of the storied had good concepts, I just couldn’t get into it. Plus the sheer size of the book was overwhelming!
September 5, 2021
An exceptional collection of short stories beautifully written but, unfortunately, not the type of stories I enjoy reading. This is a book of almost 1000 pages that I stretched out over several weeks, reading one or two stories at a time. Eisenberg writes very insightful stories, often with a touch of humor, that deal with the interaction between her characters through, mostly, dialog and, mostly, about relationships. These are the type of story that appeals to many people but I just can't seem to be interested in and soon become bored with.
December 17, 2020
The majority of this collection of short stories evoked the feeling in me of being a kid and having to sit at the dinner table with a group of adults, such as my extended family, and having to listen to their inane chit-chat while politely sitting still and pretending to care even though I would much rather do anything else at all. It was so banal, included way too many over-privileged soliloquies and most of it was just boring. I don't know why I finished it tbh. Maybe because I didn't hate it, I was just bored.
November 13, 2021
(2.4/5.0) Boooo. She's married to Wallace Shawn, and these stories are like whinier, less interesting versions of My Dinner with Andre. They have that tiring self-congratulatory sense of humor of 80s New York literati. Tiresome at best.
Want to read
March 26, 2010Holy shit.
August 17, 2018
the master
March 31, 2025
The biggest trick Eisenberg pulls: making one whole day pass in her short stories, no more and no less. Having chance encounters and stray thoughts not appear as escalations in the tension at all, but only occur to you in retrospect, at the end of the day, going to bed with the narrator. She comes the closest anyone ever has to balancing perfectly fictions need to entertain with its need to render the world-as-lived. I don't know how she seems to show you the world-as-spoken without, like, aping the frenetic pace of Joyce or Woolf but she does.
And if this all seems academic let me promise you that she is so so funny, every sentence an acerbic light show, and each of her girls, gay men, and addicts so lost. One of the best we have to offer whichever species succeeds us.
And if this all seems academic let me promise you that she is so so funny, every sentence an acerbic light show, and each of her girls, gay men, and addicts so lost. One of the best we have to offer whichever species succeeds us.
October 9, 2022
Eisenberg’s mammoth collection is sensational. Many of her (long) short stories are packed with enough character and detail to fuel a novel.
Highly recommended to any short story reader.
Highly recommended to any short story reader.
May 19, 2010
I'd been meaning to read Twilight of the Superheroes ever since The Millions called it one of the best books of the millennium. So, when I saw this four-in-one (including TOTS) tome listed as a Goodreads giveaway, I threw caution to the wind and signed up. Be careful what you wish for!
Actually, I'm very happy that Goodreads picked me and that this was my exposure to Eisenberg, since I personally thought that TOTS was one of the weaker sets of stories in this collection. I'd give Transactions in a Foreign Currency three-and-a-half or four stars; Under the 82nd Airborne the same; and All Around Atlantis and TOTS each two or two-and-a-half stars.
Most of these stories are set in New York City and take that NY-is-the-center-of-the-universe view, which I can't help but notice: it makes me roll my eyes a little. But there is certainly a lot of emotional range and circumstance covered here, with intelligence, sensitivity, and humor. With few exceptions, I was totally sucked into these longish stories. Eisenberg is a master at starting a story on an intriguing note, and all of her characters' voices are believable, though young women are her forte. Some reviewer recently remarked that her characters aren't happy but hyper-self-aware, which strikes me as right and probably explains part of their appeal. Eisenberg's similes are wonderfully clever, and there is very little heavy-handedness to be seen here. Over the course of the four collections, Eisenberg got much better at her endings, which I felt were often terribly chosen. As an example in the third collection, a young women discovers that her biological father is alive after her mother's death, and the story ends right before she meets him. Bah. I find this technique unforgivably annoying and lazy in short stories; it would never fly in a novel. It says a lot about Eisenberg's other abilities as a writer that I stuck with her.
In short, I heartily recommend TIAFC and UTEA, both of which contain some luminous writing; know that the endings might require some patience, though. The stories are all so otherwise strong that none leap out as far-and-away better than the others. As for the other two collections, there are good moments, but I'd pass, with the single exception of the story "Window" in TOTS, which is hypnotic, chilling, and memorable.
Actually, I'm very happy that Goodreads picked me and that this was my exposure to Eisenberg, since I personally thought that TOTS was one of the weaker sets of stories in this collection. I'd give Transactions in a Foreign Currency three-and-a-half or four stars; Under the 82nd Airborne the same; and All Around Atlantis and TOTS each two or two-and-a-half stars.
Most of these stories are set in New York City and take that NY-is-the-center-of-the-universe view, which I can't help but notice: it makes me roll my eyes a little. But there is certainly a lot of emotional range and circumstance covered here, with intelligence, sensitivity, and humor. With few exceptions, I was totally sucked into these longish stories. Eisenberg is a master at starting a story on an intriguing note, and all of her characters' voices are believable, though young women are her forte. Some reviewer recently remarked that her characters aren't happy but hyper-self-aware, which strikes me as right and probably explains part of their appeal. Eisenberg's similes are wonderfully clever, and there is very little heavy-handedness to be seen here. Over the course of the four collections, Eisenberg got much better at her endings, which I felt were often terribly chosen. As an example in the third collection, a young women discovers that her biological father is alive after her mother's death, and the story ends right before she meets him. Bah. I find this technique unforgivably annoying and lazy in short stories; it would never fly in a novel. It says a lot about Eisenberg's other abilities as a writer that I stuck with her.
In short, I heartily recommend TIAFC and UTEA, both of which contain some luminous writing; know that the endings might require some patience, though. The stories are all so otherwise strong that none leap out as far-and-away better than the others. As for the other two collections, there are good moments, but I'd pass, with the single exception of the story "Window" in TOTS, which is hypnotic, chilling, and memorable.
November 27, 2012
_____
Lyle is stretched out on a yoga mat that Nathaniel once bought in preparation for a romance (as yet manqué) with a prettily tattooed yoga reached…
(p780)
Manqué: short of or frustrated in the fulfillment of one's aspirations or talents.
_____
Once in a while, though---it happened sometimes when she encounter one of them unexpectedly---Lynnie would see them as they had been. For an instant their sleeping tower would flash, but then their dimmed present selves might greet Lynnie, with casual and distant politeness, and a breathtaking pain would cauterize the exquisitely reworked wound.
(p405)
_____
For her, it rises up with the force of experience and subsides dizzyingly, leaching out all colors, severing gravitational pull, setting everything flying. Recognizable terrain falls away beneath her at these times with a roar, an unstable bluff.
(p382)
_____
Was terribly aware how quickly it would be over, sitting with her there in the fragrant night. Thought of her ten years hence: a dinner party, high over some sparkling city, Sarah in a wonderful little dress, more beautiful, even, than now. Gazing out the window, next to someone---a colleague, and admirer…
(p465)
_____
Musicians and members of the audience milled about in the uncertain radiance of stars and klieg lights.
(p604)
Klieg light: a carbon arc lamp used especially in making motion pictures.
John H. Kliegl †1959 & Anton T. Kliegl †1927 German-born American lighting experts.
_____
Beale dove abruptly beneath the table, resurfacing with a tape recorder as primitive-looking as a trilobite.
(p592)
Trilobite: any of numerous extinct Paleozoic marine arthropods (group Trilobita) having the segments of the body divided by furrows on the dorsal surface into three lobes.
_____
Now that I have been sensitized, I realize that for months I have been surrounded by a continuous susurrus about running.
(p138)
Susurrus: A whispering or rustling sound. Adjective: susurrant
WORD
Lyle is stretched out on a yoga mat that Nathaniel once bought in preparation for a romance (as yet manqué) with a prettily tattooed yoga reached…
(p780)
Manqué: short of or frustrated in the fulfillment of one's aspirations or talents.
_____
PASSAGE
Once in a while, though---it happened sometimes when she encounter one of them unexpectedly---Lynnie would see them as they had been. For an instant their sleeping tower would flash, but then their dimmed present selves might greet Lynnie, with casual and distant politeness, and a breathtaking pain would cauterize the exquisitely reworked wound.
(p405)
_____
PASSAGE
For her, it rises up with the force of experience and subsides dizzyingly, leaching out all colors, severing gravitational pull, setting everything flying. Recognizable terrain falls away beneath her at these times with a roar, an unstable bluff.
(p382)
_____
PASSAGE
Was terribly aware how quickly it would be over, sitting with her there in the fragrant night. Thought of her ten years hence: a dinner party, high over some sparkling city, Sarah in a wonderful little dress, more beautiful, even, than now. Gazing out the window, next to someone---a colleague, and admirer…
(p465)
_____
WORD
Musicians and members of the audience milled about in the uncertain radiance of stars and klieg lights.
(p604)
Klieg light: a carbon arc lamp used especially in making motion pictures.
John H. Kliegl †1959 & Anton T. Kliegl †1927 German-born American lighting experts.
_____
WORD
Beale dove abruptly beneath the table, resurfacing with a tape recorder as primitive-looking as a trilobite.
(p592)
Trilobite: any of numerous extinct Paleozoic marine arthropods (group Trilobita) having the segments of the body divided by furrows on the dorsal surface into three lobes.
_____
WORD
Now that I have been sensitized, I realize that for months I have been surrounded by a continuous susurrus about running.
(p138)
Susurrus: A whispering or rustling sound. Adjective: susurrant
May 15, 2011
I was not sure whether I should give this book 3 or 4 stars, but I fell to 4. I had never heard or nor read Deborah Eisenberg until this collection came out which received rave reviews (as well as the PEN/Faulkner Award). I love short stories, love, love, love them. However, this is a collection of all of her works (four collections), and it clocks in at 980 pages. It is a workout. And I must say that I think I would have appreciated her works if I had bitten it off in smaller chunks instead of plowing through the whole thing at one time. When you read that many stories at once you hit rough patches. That many stories can't all be great, so you love the great ones, and then the book stalls out when you hit the not so good ones. You also see trends of hers that would seem a little more discrete if you read fewer stories together but which stand out and at time seems tedious when they repeat themselves after so many stories (i.e. exotic locations, fascination with Third World countries, starting a story in the present before it bounces back to the time when the story takes place, etc.). But let's not focus on the negative most of the stories are really, really good, and many stories are great. She is a marvelous writer, who creates great characters (who more often than not have some terrible longing for something or other...). And when a collection encompasses everything a writer has ever done and it leaves that good of an impression, than that writer is on to something. I'd recommend the book, but I'd recommend reading it in segments...
April 27, 2010
(Disclosure: This book was received free via the First-Reads program, with the understanding that I might read and review it.)
Not only "the collected stories", these are the complete stories of Deborah Eisenberg - four books in one very massive tome. This is a book to pick up and put down, read a story or two, go onto something lighter or maybe less introspective, and then come back to it when you have a hungering for a short visit to a deep place. I say deep, because no matter how much humor Eisenberg grants a character or a subject on the surface, you will be drawn down into stories that are so much more than their plots. There's a sort of progression through the four collections, starting with characters trying to define themselves by the people that surround them, then by the places they visit, until finally the stories that take familiar situations and challenge us to see them through the eyes of characters that we probably wouldn't run across every day in the real world.
There's a lot Virginia Woolf in Eisenberg's style, except that Eisenberg seems to like and sometimes even enjoy her characters. That makes reading even her darker and her most abstract stories for more enjoyable.
Not only "the collected stories", these are the complete stories of Deborah Eisenberg - four books in one very massive tome. This is a book to pick up and put down, read a story or two, go onto something lighter or maybe less introspective, and then come back to it when you have a hungering for a short visit to a deep place. I say deep, because no matter how much humor Eisenberg grants a character or a subject on the surface, you will be drawn down into stories that are so much more than their plots. There's a sort of progression through the four collections, starting with characters trying to define themselves by the people that surround them, then by the places they visit, until finally the stories that take familiar situations and challenge us to see them through the eyes of characters that we probably wouldn't run across every day in the real world.
There's a lot Virginia Woolf in Eisenberg's style, except that Eisenberg seems to like and sometimes even enjoy her characters. That makes reading even her darker and her most abstract stories for more enjoyable.
May 20, 2019
I love the way she bluntly and dispassionately points out what no one wants to look at. Ugly Americans behaving badly overseas, vain people making vain efforts to make sense where there is none, respectable white people looking very shabby as they try to figure out how to be good without being uncomfortable. Not many of Eisenberg's characters are particularly likable or particularly dislikable. Mostly you just feel varying degrees of embarrassment for them and then realize you're embarrassed for yourself, because of course you are. You're just like them.
In one very nice passage she describes our human lives as "...vanishing. Leaving nothing more than inscrutable little piles of commemorative trash." Swoon.
In one very nice passage she describes our human lives as "...vanishing. Leaving nothing more than inscrutable little piles of commemorative trash." Swoon.
August 15, 2013
There are certainly diminishing returns as the book progresses, if only for the unfair brilliance of the first two collections. By the last story I had resolved to a four star rating, and then I read the below paragraph three pages from the end and thought, oh, right, that is the entirety of everything, game over.
"Looking at a painting takes a certain composure, a certain resolve, but when you really do look at one it can be like a door swinging open, a sensation, however brief, of vaulting freedom. It's as if, for a moment, you were a different person, with different eyes and different capacities and a different history--a sensation, really, that's a lot like hope."
"Looking at a painting takes a certain composure, a certain resolve, but when you really do look at one it can be like a door swinging open, a sensation, however brief, of vaulting freedom. It's as if, for a moment, you were a different person, with different eyes and different capacities and a different history--a sensation, really, that's a lot like hope."
August 8, 2024
Deborah Eisenberg’s stories are some of the best I’ve read. The metaphors are gorgeous; the dialogue is pitch-perfect; the stories are politically and philosophically serious without ever becoming pretentious. So why, when I’m reading her, do I often find myself becoming frustrated and disappointed? Why this sense that, for all her mastery, her stories fail to achieve the emotional intensity at which they aim?
The problem is the stories’ tone. The surface brilliance of Eisenberg’s style, with its heavy use of assonance, its comic word choice, and its jokey rhetorical questions, creates a light, jaunty tone that’s incompatible, to my mind, with the tragic material she deals with.
Because of space constraints, I’ll try to illustrate this point with two examples although, of course, no isolated example can prove my point. After all, tone pervades a story, and a comic paragraph doesn’t create a comic story. Still, these examples are illustrative because they come from moments of high emotional tension; they demonstrate the way in which, even when the stories are at their most intense, the tone remains light and even comic.
In the following passage, the teenage protagonist’s mother has just died. When a nurse misidentifies a woman her mother hated as her mother’s friend, she reacts thus: “Yargh. It wasn’t enough that her mother had died— no, they had to toss her out, into that huge, melted mob, the dead, who couldn’t speak for themselves, who were too indistinguishable to be remembered, who could be used to prove anything, who could be represented any way at all!" (p.537).
In some ways, this passage is obviously brilliant; it makes a beautiful point, I think, about the way the living freely misrepresent the dead and, as with all of Eisenberg’s writing, it’s sonically beautiful. Still, the passage maintains a light, comic tone that doesn’t at all evoke the way a grieving teen might actually feel in this situation. Start with “Yargh” and “toss her out.” The former is a comic sound effect, an expression of frustration we might find in a comic book, and it seems to convey mere annoyance rather bewilderment, fury, or grief. The latter, “toss her out,” evokes slapstick action. Then there’s the assonance and alliteration. The repeated “u” sounds, especially in the phrase “used to prove,” create, at least to my ear, a light and bouncing rhythm that dispels any sense of intense emotion. The same goes for the alliterative phrase “melted mob.” Beyond the rhythmic bounce of the phrase, “melted mob” is another comic image. Taken separately, of course, “melted” and “mob” can be violent, disturbing words but, taken together, especially in conjunction with “yargh” and “toss her out,” the phrase evokes an image, at least for me, of cartoon action. Even the italicization of “the dead” feels comic, as if the speaker were putting the phrase in scare quotes. As with “yargh” and the concluding exclamation point, the italicization seems to convey exasperation rather than the rage, grief, or dread that we might expect in this moment.
Now, I am of course not claiming that tragedy and comedy are incompatible. The funniest moments in Amy Hempel’s work, for example, are also often the saddest. But the humor in Hempel’s stories works, I think, because a current of pain runs beneath the jokes. Eisenberg’s perpetually jaunty tone, by contrast, with its constant sparkle and humor, seems to me incapable of evoking this sort of dark undercurrent. Even when she deals with death and despair, her tone renders the stories’ atmosphere perpetually light.
Another example: a former heroin addict is remembering the day she quit cold turkey and ran away from her dealer boyfriend. Here is Eisenberg’s representation of the emotions involved: “Could her hands actually have been shaking the way she saw them shake? And what on earth was happening with her legs! How did she get out that afternoon? Practically crawling, through the air’s hammer blows and sirens, her vision all fretted and dazzled, falling away in glaring planes, past the razor-sharp, poison-colored blades of grass growing by the house…” (p.639).
Okay, again— this passage is gorgeous. The images and rhythmic effects are beautiful, and the repetition of those long “a” sounds, beginning with “away in glaring panes,” creates a concussive effect that evokes the protagonist’s throbbing pain. Still, there’s a surface brilliance to the imagery that, with the exception of those long “a’s,” draws my attention toward surface effects and thus distracts from, rather than deepening, my sense of the protagonist’s emotions. And then the rhetorical questions. Of course, they do illustrate the protagonist’s sense of dislocation as she tries to remember this moment, but they also create a casual tone, especially with informal phrases like “how on earth” that seem totally unsuited for the recollection of an excruciating event. The rhetorical questions create a head-scratching, idly wondering tone that seems better suited to a character wondering how their darn kids grew up so fast. Here, again, Eisenberg seems to shy away from the intense emotions that her stories of death and addiction require.
There is, in fact, a whole class of writers who are, to my mind, afflicted with a similar problem. Lorrie Moore, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Patricia Lockwood— each of these writers has a brilliant, comic style that’s surprisingly inflexible and ill-suited, to my mind, for tragic situations. Still, Eisenberg’s stories are of course exciting; it’s only because she writes so beautifully that I so wish she had a wider emotional range.
The problem is the stories’ tone. The surface brilliance of Eisenberg’s style, with its heavy use of assonance, its comic word choice, and its jokey rhetorical questions, creates a light, jaunty tone that’s incompatible, to my mind, with the tragic material she deals with.
Because of space constraints, I’ll try to illustrate this point with two examples although, of course, no isolated example can prove my point. After all, tone pervades a story, and a comic paragraph doesn’t create a comic story. Still, these examples are illustrative because they come from moments of high emotional tension; they demonstrate the way in which, even when the stories are at their most intense, the tone remains light and even comic.
In the following passage, the teenage protagonist’s mother has just died. When a nurse misidentifies a woman her mother hated as her mother’s friend, she reacts thus: “Yargh. It wasn’t enough that her mother had died— no, they had to toss her out, into that huge, melted mob, the dead, who couldn’t speak for themselves, who were too indistinguishable to be remembered, who could be used to prove anything, who could be represented any way at all!" (p.537).
In some ways, this passage is obviously brilliant; it makes a beautiful point, I think, about the way the living freely misrepresent the dead and, as with all of Eisenberg’s writing, it’s sonically beautiful. Still, the passage maintains a light, comic tone that doesn’t at all evoke the way a grieving teen might actually feel in this situation. Start with “Yargh” and “toss her out.” The former is a comic sound effect, an expression of frustration we might find in a comic book, and it seems to convey mere annoyance rather bewilderment, fury, or grief. The latter, “toss her out,” evokes slapstick action. Then there’s the assonance and alliteration. The repeated “u” sounds, especially in the phrase “used to prove,” create, at least to my ear, a light and bouncing rhythm that dispels any sense of intense emotion. The same goes for the alliterative phrase “melted mob.” Beyond the rhythmic bounce of the phrase, “melted mob” is another comic image. Taken separately, of course, “melted” and “mob” can be violent, disturbing words but, taken together, especially in conjunction with “yargh” and “toss her out,” the phrase evokes an image, at least for me, of cartoon action. Even the italicization of “the dead” feels comic, as if the speaker were putting the phrase in scare quotes. As with “yargh” and the concluding exclamation point, the italicization seems to convey exasperation rather than the rage, grief, or dread that we might expect in this moment.
Now, I am of course not claiming that tragedy and comedy are incompatible. The funniest moments in Amy Hempel’s work, for example, are also often the saddest. But the humor in Hempel’s stories works, I think, because a current of pain runs beneath the jokes. Eisenberg’s perpetually jaunty tone, by contrast, with its constant sparkle and humor, seems to me incapable of evoking this sort of dark undercurrent. Even when she deals with death and despair, her tone renders the stories’ atmosphere perpetually light.
Another example: a former heroin addict is remembering the day she quit cold turkey and ran away from her dealer boyfriend. Here is Eisenberg’s representation of the emotions involved: “Could her hands actually have been shaking the way she saw them shake? And what on earth was happening with her legs! How did she get out that afternoon? Practically crawling, through the air’s hammer blows and sirens, her vision all fretted and dazzled, falling away in glaring planes, past the razor-sharp, poison-colored blades of grass growing by the house…” (p.639).
Okay, again— this passage is gorgeous. The images and rhythmic effects are beautiful, and the repetition of those long “a” sounds, beginning with “away in glaring panes,” creates a concussive effect that evokes the protagonist’s throbbing pain. Still, there’s a surface brilliance to the imagery that, with the exception of those long “a’s,” draws my attention toward surface effects and thus distracts from, rather than deepening, my sense of the protagonist’s emotions. And then the rhetorical questions. Of course, they do illustrate the protagonist’s sense of dislocation as she tries to remember this moment, but they also create a casual tone, especially with informal phrases like “how on earth” that seem totally unsuited for the recollection of an excruciating event. The rhetorical questions create a head-scratching, idly wondering tone that seems better suited to a character wondering how their darn kids grew up so fast. Here, again, Eisenberg seems to shy away from the intense emotions that her stories of death and addiction require.
There is, in fact, a whole class of writers who are, to my mind, afflicted with a similar problem. Lorrie Moore, David Foster Wallace, George Saunders, Patricia Lockwood— each of these writers has a brilliant, comic style that’s surprisingly inflexible and ill-suited, to my mind, for tragic situations. Still, Eisenberg’s stories are of course exciting; it’s only because she writes so beautifully that I so wish she had a wider emotional range.
July 14, 2010
I have a longer review posted on my blog (http://booklech.blogspot.com/) if anyone is interested... but for now, some favorite quotes:
(from 'twilight of the superheroes' p795):
"'Fifty percent of respondents say that the event taking place is not occurring,' Madison says, 'The other fifty percent remain undecided. Clearly the truth lies somewhere in between.'"
(from 'like it or not' p875)
"'It's a wonder we can understand anything at all about ourselves...We can't even see our own kidneys.'"
(from 'twilight of the superheroes' p795):
"'Fifty percent of respondents say that the event taking place is not occurring,' Madison says, 'The other fifty percent remain undecided. Clearly the truth lies somewhere in between.'"
(from 'like it or not' p875)
"'It's a wonder we can understand anything at all about ourselves...We can't even see our own kidneys.'"
November 12, 2012
Really wonderful, really dense... it took me what, a month to read? Such a fine-tuned literary prism onto the world, you read it and wonder, Why didn't I think of that?
It's funny because I just loved Twilight of the Superheroes when it first came out, but attached to the other collections that came before, it pales a little. The early stuff is so immediate. Anyway, more later... stay tuned.
It's funny because I just loved Twilight of the Superheroes when it first came out, but attached to the other collections that came before, it pales a little. The early stuff is so immediate. Anyway, more later... stay tuned.
April 14, 2010
I was surprised when this book came by how big it was. It was a very enjoyable read however even though it was long. I really liked this collection these stories were very well written and funny and smart at times. I have never heard of Deborah Eisenberg before but now I have and I have to say I am a fan now!
Want to read
March 15, 2010This looks interesting to me
March 27, 2010
No, please.
February 18, 2012
Amazing stories. Unable to put them down until about under the 82nd airborne. Something gave way not in a good way. Will have to push through to other sections. Don't want to give up on this one.
March 14, 2012
Lorrie Moore + Don DeLillo, perhaps? Add Jean Rhys, without the personal demons. Lots of wit and compassion for the underdog.
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