Asunder

by Robert Lopez

Praise for Robert

The unforgettable stories in this collection vary in length and style, but all of them devestate, all constantly cross the boundaries between poetry and prose. Here we have characters who are uncertain of themselves, of the people surrounding them. Here people are in trouble and need help. The compressed lyricism of these stories seems driven by the silence of what is not said, what lies beneath the lines and between them. As in his novels Part of the World and Kamby Bolongo Mean River, this elliptical tension of the language gives way to moments of grace and savage humor, leaving the reader startled, as though the world were a complete surprise.

Michael Kimball, author of Dear Everybody , says that "Robert Lopez and his writing are original and pure, fearless and hypnotic. He is one of the brave protagonists of American literature."

David McLendon, editor of the literary journal Unsaid , agrees, saying that "For a great long while something was broken inside our language. Robert Lopez took what was broken and did something more than simply repair it. He repaired what was broken and broke it again and made it human. Beautiful and ugly and lastingly mortal, our language through Lopez becomes a kind of song. The kind of song we all might sing to bring some laughter from our deathbeds."

Genres: Short Stories

171 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name.

Reviews

[Philip Shaw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lopez pulls at your viewpoint from the inside, not grabbing you by the head to crane your neck, but by imagining the arcs that tie your eyes to your vital organs, he plucks away at them like some kind of mad harpist. This book is in two parts: a collection of shorts that collide in style as much as they diverge in matter; and a novella told in repetitive flash fictions that brings the narrator's inner world and voice inside of you as he makes sense of his surroundings without struggle or conflict but with some sort of resignation of grace. - Philip Swanstrom Shaw

[J.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Lopez is a sentence crafter, belligerently curt but marvelously poetic, a writer who uses nicely balanced repetition with a unique and refined minimalism. His debut short story collection, Asunder, does nothing but solidify these characteristics, firmly establishing Lopez as a contemporary writer to look up to..." read the rest at The Rumpus [ http://therumpus.net/2010/12/asunder/ ]

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

We saw Lopez read a story from this collection, about a man with a geographic tongue, at a small room in a DC bar that was sort of like a treehouse almost, and that made us want to get this collection. And it's good, and funny, and strange-- if you don't know Lopez work, a lot of the pleasure is in the working out of strange grammatical conceits. So, in the case mentioned above, what does a geographical tongue mean, and how many ways can you phrase the question-- and then there's a turn, but really it's a new term, which is in its way generative of more sentences. Most of the stories are told from the same vantage point, that of a smuggish man who thinks he's kind of suave, though the stories themselves don't really challenge or confirm that notion. The stories are spring-loaded, if you're into that kind of thing. I am, for a while, but these might be a little too samey for me to read one-after-another.

This collection also includes a novella in parts, which sort of has some of the same elements, but this time there's kind of a macro structure, too, mostly in terms of the three characters, which then grows to four and threatens but never really commits to five. If the shorter stories evoke Padgett Powell, the novella bears a kinship to Pete Markus, but funnier.

[Andrew Tolve · Rating 3 out of 5]

I heard Robert Lopez read in Brooklyn and was blown away. The cadence of his writing, the wonderful attention to sounds and nuance, the poet's economy and word play. It was all there in this story collection as well, though somehow I found it all a bit disappointing compared to the experience of hearing him read in person (and this from someone who generally hates hearing fiction read aloud). It struck me that his characters in the story collection were incredibly disconnected, with each other and themselves. A character uncertain of himself, his setting, his deeds, his purpose, his state of being is a recurrence throughout. There's no doubt that these sorts of characters make you think, take pause and at times gasp, but I could never quite shake the feeling that the fiction they resulted in was weird as fuck, especially when these characters were juxtaposed in such rapid succession over the course of 200 pages. Lopez is definitely worth reading, and even more so listening to, but I would be tempted to start with his novel first.

[Matthew Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

With all the oddities roaming through Robert Lopez's work, it's easy to forget that behind each story is a writer mesmerized by language and writing about words - their rhythms and irregularities, the different ways they can be twisted, how they work together and what it sounds like when they're broken. Collecting twenty-nine pieces that, from sentence to sentence, read bleak to black-humored to all-too-familiar, Asunder is Lopez at his tinkering best.

[in8 · Rating 3 out of 5]

great as far as collections go, i've just been in a funk lately with collections. I've enjoyed most of these stories here and there, or hearing him read them, but all at once can be overwheliming. The last Blind Betty series are the best part. He's a damn good writer, no doubt about that. If you haven't read Lopez start with Kamby Balongo Mean River or Part of the World.