July 22, 2011
Is that the one that takes place aboard a doomed cruise ship?” “No, it’s a stories-within-stories kind of thing.” “I don’t think I’d like it. I’m more straightforward than that.” “Well, all right.
“Matinée” by Robert Coover in New Yorker (must be a subscriber)November 14, 2011
I’m finishing up a collection of short stories. They are all linked by the fact that I wrote them. That’s the gimmick, the hook.
Sam Lipsyte : The New Yorker (via peterwknox)
Best possible gimmick.
(via mcnallyjackson)
(via mcnallyjackson)
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#New Yorker #Sam Lipsyte #short stories
November 17, 2011
When we say that we love a writer’s work, we are always stretching the truth: what we really mean is that we love about half of it. Sometimes rather more than half, sometimes rather less.
Don DeLillo’s “The Angel Esmeralda: Nine Stories” : The New Yorker (via Kyle Minor)
Like a lot of ambitious TV, it has been a magnet for a small, oddball cadre of viewers, the ones who analyze comic beats in the manner of Talmudic scholars, wear T-shirts with slogans that only the elect will understand, and criticize tiny flaws in a thread that goes a thousand comments deep. The show succeeded. It found us. There just weren’t a lot of us. (via Culture Desk: “Community” Had Low Ratings. So What? : The New Yorker)
November 29, 2011
I love Clowes’ NYer covers.
Cover illustration for this week’s issue of The New Yorker by Daniel Clowes.
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#New Yorker #Daniel Clowes #bookstores
December 28, 2011
I really don’t know if Maya has fallen out of love with her husband or is just afraid that she has, or, maybe, is actually afraid that her husband has stopped loving her. I don’t know that because Maya herself doesn’t. If she knew herself and her feelings so well, I believe she would have chosen a more pragmatic hobby than writing.
The Book Bench: This Week in Fiction: Etgar Keret : The New YorkerJanuary 3, 2012
by Hobart friend, Julia Wertz! (via faux New Yorker cartoons)
January 22, 2012
But he did sternly forbid us two exercises: we were not to try under any circumstances to discover the true name of the Lord; we were not to think about the problem of infinity. It is unlikely that I would have done much speculation in either of these areas if I had not been so explicitly forbidden.
“Point of the Needle,” S. N. Behrman (The New Yorker, June 5, 1954)February 26, 2012
We haven’t been keeping up to date, but a couple of years ago, the New Yorker fiction podcast was something we looked forward to every month. Richard Ford reading Cheever’s “Reunion” was my introduction to the story, and I’ve listened to it at least a half a dozen times since. Joshua Ferris reading George Saunders’ “Adams” is another incredibly relistenable classic. Tobias Wolff read Stephanie Vaughn’s “Dog Heaven” and we weren’t familiar with her work before, but kind of fell in love with this story. Have since read and loved Sweet Talk and am excited about its rerelease.
Over at The Rumpus this morn, I interview my old teacher Stephanie Vaughn about the re-release of Sweet Talk. Somehow we also get to Amish people, intuition, and digging fiction ditches. If you don’t know Stephanie’s work, it’s time to know it.
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#the rumpus #Stephanie Vaughn #New Yorker #patrick somerville
May 3, 2012
Second person, I’ve always noticed, has the distinction of being both intimate and repellent at the same time. A quick way of drawing the reader close but also hard to sustain for any length of time. Only so much a person likes being addressed as “you” by a complete stranger. I knew I’d lose people with the approach, but I was going to lose people anyway. That’s the nature of fiction: despite all our lofty claims of universality, no piece of art is for everyone
Junot Diaz should practically be required reading for short story month.
The Book Bench: This Week in Fiction: Junot Díaz : The New Yorker
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#New Yorker #Junot Diaz #Miss Lora #Drown #Oscar Wao #shortreads #short story month
