I realize now that I've succumbed to lemming status. Is it really short story month? Who can say? I don't know that it is. But I thought - what the hell, I love short stories, I love short story collections, and they are so maligned these days that whether it really is short story month or not is sort of beside the point. Right? And because I'm a blogging maggot (I know, I know, I said I was done with that...but clearly there is residual pain) and I am less inclined to provide proper critical analysis of books and the writers who write them, it seems important to try and shine the light on writers and/or books that are not currently in the limelight, not currently making their rounds in many fair cities across the nation (again, I ask, why do I keep employing "fair city"? what do i mean by it? what does "fair" even mean when paired with city? especially a city like Los Angeles which has been, as of late, extraordinarily unfair to it's citizens? i must explore this in another post...) for all to read and see. It is also May 24th which means I've been terrible about providing a post or two a week about short story collections I love. Since I pulled them all out on May 1st and they've been sitting on my desk (pulling faces at me) all month, I feel the need to tell you all about them and then put them back on their shelves so that I might move on with my life. Find new short story collections. Have a cleaner desk. Make way for still more books to loom before me (and no doubt pull faces) as I type, what have you.
(My, that was a long first paragraph. I should have broken it up, but where?)
Without further ado, here are the short story collections I've not yet gotten to but don't want to forget before the month is over (I'm saving a few for next week, when I've convinced myself I'll have "more time"...we'll see how that goes):
- The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender - Seriously. F-ing. Brilliant. Make your way to a bookstore near you and purchase it. No other words will do it justice. Except, well...she's quite funny. Which I dig. Double dig.
- Sleep by Stephen Dixon - I love his novels. It took me awhile to get into his short stories. But they grow on you, as all of Stephen's stuff does.
- Out of the Girls' Room and Into the Night by Thisbe Nissen - I liked this collection so much that I went right out and got Nissen's novel The Good People of New York. I liked her short stories better.
- Drown by Junot Diaz - Wow. Super wow. He was one of the first short story writers that made we want to write short stories.
- Lucky Girls by Nell Freudenberger -- I read this collection while traveling in tropical climates and this collection features stories in sweaty, oppressive tropical heat. Not sure that was it or not, but I loved this collection and think of it fondly.
- The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes - I'm a sucker for Barnes, despite the fact that several friends have recently taken me to task for loving him blindly, regardless of missteps like Love, etc. and England, England. Whatever. I dig him. This collection is no exception.
- Oblivion by David Foster Wallace - I dig him more than Barnes. Or equally. Or equally blindly.
- Birds of America by Lorrie Moore - I've already told you of my love affair with Moore. This is just more of Moore. Oh so good.
- Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid by Tibor Fischer - He had me at the title. I have an on again/off again thing with Tibor (can I call him that?)...his stuff is either very good or very not my thing. Loved Thought Gang (loved!), loved Under the Frog. Not a huge fan of Collector Collector (perhaps because of my loyalties to John Fowles and his Collector) and several other things he's written. But I dug this collection, violent as it was/is.
That's all I'm willing to share at the moment. I've got a few more goodies up my sleeve that I'll hope to cover next week. Ah! Barthelme, let me count the ways I love you...
