Bonnie G.’s Reviews > The Anchor Book of New American Short Stories > Status Update

Scarlotti and the Sinkhole by Padget Powell - Funny, absurd, sad, really gross. An entertaining slice of drunken, horny, injured Florida redneck life. 4-stars

Up the Old Goat Road by Dawn Raffel
I rarely like microfiction, and I don't like it here. I don't know why I read this, and am not nearly invested enough to care. 1.5 stars.

Short Talks by Anne Carson. Brilliant glorious prose poems. 5-stars

"On Hedonism: Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead-calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls."

The Sound Gun by Matthew Darby. I try to judge a book at least partly on whether I think the author achieved what he set out to do. I think Darby did that. I hated the pretentious heavy-handed approach and can name a dozen other pieces, stories and novels, that I think told essentially the same story to the same end and did it much better, and which I definitely got more from. He ain't no Vonnegut. 2-stars

Where I work by Ann Cummins. It was a strong character sketch I guess, but a few pages of reaching across education and class divide to experience a poor uneducated (possibly developmentally delayed) young woman's failure and oddness is not really enough for me. 2-stars.

Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

This was not my first time reading this story, and every time I do I am gobsmacked. DFW would have been so much happier if his mind ever stopped. Simultaneously the most uproariously funny and guttingly sad story about sexual release and its difficulty in a world filled with paradox that has ever been written. 5 stars.

Down the Road by Stephen Dixon. I just realized I never put in a comment or star rating for this which I read several days ago. I thought it was an interesting exercise, We sort of tunnel inside the head of this man who is having a moment where he has to choose his own survival over that of another. I didn't love it but it was well done. 3/5 stars.

Someone to Talk To by Deborah Eisenberg: Art and commerce and love and ethics cannot mix. The secret to a happy life is to get a bit lucky and stay where luck placed you and to not feel things. The secret to art is to experience the world fully and feel everything. Impossible. 5-stars.

Tiny Smiling Daddy by Mary Gaitskill - I love Mary Gaitskill's work and this was no exception. We see an old Midwestern man so contained by his anger and relentless need for control that he shuts out the world, including his daughter whose lesbianism he treats as a personal attack. When she writes an article about their relationship he has to fight to compartmentalize and redirect fault. Heartbreaking. 5-stars

Two Brothers by Brian Evenson - This is the perfect iteration of what it is trying to be. It is repulsive, horrifying, disgusting, soul-killing, but perfect. I never ever want to read it again. 5-stars.