~
These pieces are all from The Best of McSweeney's, a collection edited by Dave Eggers and Jordan Bass and published by McSweeney's in 2013. (There is also a deluxe box set edition available here.)
I live in St. Paul, Minnesota. A nice place where God tries to ice-murder all inhabitants every year.
--Letter from John Moe, pp. 14-15.
I used to think only poor people set fires. Two reasons for this: (1) I'd never known anyone whose house had burned down, and (2) when I worked for the Social Security Administration, "It burned up in a fire" was a common response to my request for documents.
--Letter from Mary Miller, pp. 15-16.
Five years ago, I played an angry gay teenager in a small coming-of-age film.
--Letter from Colleen Werthmann, pp. 20-21.
He is nine. The other boys and girls have been like this, together, since they were four. But he is new.
--From "New Boy," fiction by Roddy Doyle, pp. 39-57.
1. The population of Spokane, Washington, is 203,268. It is the 104th biggest city in the United States.
2. Even before the recession, in 2008, 36,000 people in Spokane lived below the poverty line--a little more than 18 percent of the population. That's about the same as it was in Washington, DC, at the time. The poverty rate was 12.5 percent in Seattle.
--From "Statistical Abstract for My Hometown, Spokane, Washington," fiction by Jess Walter, pp. 59-67.
My wife, the doctor, is not well. In the end she could be dead. It started suddenly, on a country weekend, a movie with friends, a pizza, and then pain.
--From "Do Not Disturb," fiction by A.M. Homes, pp. 89-111.
We drove there through a ferocious snowstorm, swaddled in old blankets and sleeping bags, because his car heater had gone out years before... I huddled up next to him and adjusted the radio stations as they faded in and out of range...
--From "We'll Sleep in My Old Room," a comic by Chris Ware, pp. 128-131.
The trouble happened because I was bored. At the time, I was twenty-eight days sober. I was spending my nights playing Internet backgammon. I should have been going to AA meetings, but I wasn't. . . . When I wasn't burning out my eyes on the computer, I was lying in bed, reading. I was going through the third Raymond Chandler phase of my adulthood. Read all his books in 1988, then 1999, and now 2007. Some people re-read Proust or Thomas Mann and improve themselves. Not me.
--From "Bored to Death," fiction by Jonathan Ames, pp. 361-386 (and his note on the story, pp. 359-360).
Bucks returned to Kenya in short order. He met a barmaid who became pregnant and left with him for Uganda, where they were soon estranged. For a while afterward he moved between that country and Kenya, once again attracting scrutiny for exporting protected snakes: his new specialties were Bitis worthingtoni and Bitis parviocula, highland adders from Kenya and Ethiopia. On New Year's Eve 2005, Bucks was arrested and thrown into a Kenyan jail. The official charge was something about illegal frogs in one of his terrariums, but Kenya now had a long list of grievances against him, as did Uganda and Ethiopia.
--From "Benjamin Bucks," nonfiction by Jennie Erin Smith, pp. 457-475.
I first met the Polack when she worked at Fort Worth Gold. This was before I learned the jewelry business myself and joined [my brother] Baron. I was only a customer when I met her, buying a stainless-steel Cartier for an institutional client of mine. It was almost Christmas, and the sales floor stood ten deep with buyers. It was the fat time.
--From "How to Sell," fiction by Clancy Martin, pp. 543-558.
Mama taught me better. She could give me a glare that brought me to my knees when she heard me talk about anyone without respect--especially Mabiordit. It was Mabiordit who had sheltered us when we came to Juba looking for Jal e Jal and ended up stranded, with nothing in Mama's purse but twenty pounds and a battered Nokia mobile that could receive calls but not make them.
--From "The Bastard," fiction by Nyuol Lueth Tong, pp. 589-602.
Wednesday, December 28, 2016
Friday, December 9, 2016
Two poems, short fiction, and a novel
~
When the men arrived, finally, to haul the big table away,
I ran my hand down the battered length of it, as if along
the flank of some exhausted workhorse, overcome
by a sudden rush of absurd remorse.
--From "Esposito & Son," a poem by Anna Scotti, The New Yorker (November 28, 2016), p. 38.
Before leaving, he explained his plan to the maid and the cook. Buenos Aires is falling apart; I'm going to the ranch, he said. They talked for hours, sitting at the kitchen table. The cook had been to the ranch as often as Pereda, who had always said that the country was no place for a man like him, a cultivated family man, who wanted to make sure that his children got a good education. His mental images of the ranch had blurred and faded, leaving only a house with a hole in the middle, an enormous, threatening tree, and a barn flickering with shadows that might have been rats. Nevertheless, that night, as he drank tea in the kitchen, he told his employees that he had hardly any money left to pay them (it was all frozen in the bank--in other words, as good as lost) and the only solution he had come up with was to take them to the country, where at least they wouldn't be short of food, or so he hoped.
--From "The Insufferable Gaucho," a short story by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, published in The New Yorker (October 1, 2007) and in the short story collection The Insufferable Gaucho (New Directions, 2010), pp. 9-41.
In 1954 he began to train with the Ama, Japanese women diving in the tradition of their mothers and grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers, "sea women" seeking fish and pearls in the depths of the Pacific.
--From "Sine of the Sea" (parts I-IV), fiction by Clare Boerigter, First Class Literary Magazine, November 28-December 2016. A link at the bottom of the page will lead to the next segment.
I had been driving for less than an hour when I began to feel ill. The burning in my side came back, but at first I decided not to give it any importance. I became worried only when I realized that I no longer had the strength to hold onto the steering wheel. In the space of a few minutes my head became heavy, the headlights grew dimmer; soon I even forgot that I was driving. I had the impression, rather, of being at the sea, in the middle of the day.
--From The Lost Daughter, a novel by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2008).
It it what it is; heart packed in cotton balls and stored
for winter, or like clothes that no longer fit but still might.
--From "Ouroboros," a poem by Sonya Vatomsky, first published in Menacing Hedge (Spring 2015) and reprinted in her chapbook My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015).
When the men arrived, finally, to haul the big table away,
I ran my hand down the battered length of it, as if along
the flank of some exhausted workhorse, overcome
by a sudden rush of absurd remorse.
--From "Esposito & Son," a poem by Anna Scotti, The New Yorker (November 28, 2016), p. 38.
Before leaving, he explained his plan to the maid and the cook. Buenos Aires is falling apart; I'm going to the ranch, he said. They talked for hours, sitting at the kitchen table. The cook had been to the ranch as often as Pereda, who had always said that the country was no place for a man like him, a cultivated family man, who wanted to make sure that his children got a good education. His mental images of the ranch had blurred and faded, leaving only a house with a hole in the middle, an enormous, threatening tree, and a barn flickering with shadows that might have been rats. Nevertheless, that night, as he drank tea in the kitchen, he told his employees that he had hardly any money left to pay them (it was all frozen in the bank--in other words, as good as lost) and the only solution he had come up with was to take them to the country, where at least they wouldn't be short of food, or so he hoped.
--From "The Insufferable Gaucho," a short story by Roberto Bolaño, translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews, published in The New Yorker (October 1, 2007) and in the short story collection The Insufferable Gaucho (New Directions, 2010), pp. 9-41.
In 1954 he began to train with the Ama, Japanese women diving in the tradition of their mothers and grandmothers and great-great-grandmothers, "sea women" seeking fish and pearls in the depths of the Pacific.
--From "Sine of the Sea" (parts I-IV), fiction by Clare Boerigter, First Class Literary Magazine, November 28-December 2016. A link at the bottom of the page will lead to the next segment.
I had been driving for less than an hour when I began to feel ill. The burning in my side came back, but at first I decided not to give it any importance. I became worried only when I realized that I no longer had the strength to hold onto the steering wheel. In the space of a few minutes my head became heavy, the headlights grew dimmer; soon I even forgot that I was driving. I had the impression, rather, of being at the sea, in the middle of the day.
--From The Lost Daughter, a novel by Elena Ferrante, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein (Europa Editions, 2008).
It it what it is; heart packed in cotton balls and stored
for winter, or like clothes that no longer fit but still might.
--From "Ouroboros," a poem by Sonya Vatomsky, first published in Menacing Hedge (Spring 2015) and reprinted in her chapbook My Heart in Aspic (Porkbelly Press, 2015).
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