Counterbalance

Short Story Month Kick-Off: Must-Read Collections

It's short story month again. This now seems a far more official endeavor than previous years. There's even a hashtag.

I had grand ambitions for this month before this month arrived with a thump. Before it arrived with deadlines. And huge novels I promised I'd read. On deadline.

I still have grand ambitions for this month. I do love a good short story collection, as you know.

So instead of waiting until I write something gorgeous and brilliant and witty and wise or waiting to realize I might not anytime soon and would then delay the sharing of the goodness of two collections I've come to love, I figured it would make more sense to simply share. Just share the good bits and get on with it.

So, here are the first two "good bits" I'm getting on with:

• Death is Not an Option by Suzanne Rivecca - A story collection I called "kick-ass" before I'd even finished it. Then I interviewed her. Then I finished the collection and it seemed even more kick-ass. If you've not read this collection yet, I can't think of a better month to make this happen.
• If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This by Robin Black - A story collection I loved. Swooned over. I tweeted about it. Robin Black tweeted back. She was lovely and I was giddy. Then I incorrectly blogged about it and made a complete ass out of myself. While it is fine to laugh at my expense (it was...ouch), it is not fine to ignore this scrumptious collection because I'm an ass. Go. Read. Now.

So those are the first two good bits I'm sharing for Short Story month. I've even created a handy little sidebar to share all my #ssm2011 picks. You can also see the other one which has been hanging out over on the right for, what, three years? Five? Still good collections.

More soon. But if you only read two collections this entire month, you'd really do well to read these. Once you do, I'd love to talk with you about them.

Reader-Writer Moment #479 (Updated)

Robin Black's short story collection If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This is scrumptious. Depth in story, depth in character, interesting way of getting us from point A to B every time. I've not read stories like this in a long time and I'm wondering why people aren't jumping up and down about this collection. Black has a rare ability to capture those moments in our lives that we can't quite admit to ourselves, an ability to see clearly that which often goes unsaid but is deeply felt. I read many books each month and often admire the writing or the story but don't feel connected to the work on a personal level. Not so with this collection, not so. 

A few passages that resonated with me in particular and that showcase Black's ability to beautifully capture nuance and unspoken emotions:

"If only, Shiroyama dreams, human beings were not masks behind masks behind masks. If only this world was a clean board of lines and intersections. If only time was a sequence of considered moves and not a chaos of slippages and blunders."

                                        
 

"Family life. Looking back, it seems like a dance, a four-person minuet comprised of steps toward and steps away, approaches and retreats, ending, finally, with each of them standing entirely alone."

                                      
 
"She always loved this time of day. George also loved this time of day. Some of their best hours together had been passed sitting in this room, her living room, both of them reading, waiting for the sun to drop from view, the daylight to fade, staying there, in that early darkness together, not switching on a lamp, not yet. Tacitly agreeing to fight the evening off. Fight every ending off. Live within all the transitions for every possible second."

           from Robin Black's If I Loved You, I Would Tell You This

Gorgeous, no? Get thee to a bookstore.

Update: Yikes! Gracious readers have pointed out that the first passage above is, in fact, NOT from Robin Black's short story collection. What is it from? David Mitchell's A Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. How do I know this? Because I screwed up the order of my Kindle "Clippings"...something I have trouble with often. I never know if the quote I want is before or after the book information. Much as I'd like to blame Kindle's UI (seriously, you should look into that Amazon), I have to hang my head rather shamefully and take the blow full-on. Wow. So - yeah. Although the "Shiroyama" character should have been a tip-off...I mistakenly quoted David Mitchell and called it Robin Black's work. So. Embarrassed. You. Don't. Even. Know. But if I had to accidentally mistake your work for another's...um...not bad, eh? :) 

Suzanne Rivecca Does LAist

As you know, I'm a fan of Rivecca's debut short story collection Death is Not an Option. I had a chance to exchange some email questions with her and the result is up at LAist now - go check it out. Here's a sneak peek:

Your short story collection explores a very specific emotional territory. Each character has an interesting journey from the lies they've been telling themselves to an arrival at emotional honesty. An arrival at seeing themselves and others for who they really are and what that means for their future. This is something that folks often take years of therapy to fully recognize and own. Yet, in these stories, we are seeing characters at that exact moment of realization, at the precise point in their lives where this shift occurs. What about this shift, this moment of realization, interests you?

I'm intrigued by how, more often than not, those "a-ha" moments are fleeting, just momentary flashes of grace, and people don't really recognize or feel their impact until years later. In most of my stories, that shift is too much for the characters to process and they aren't able to translate it into action.  But that moment of standing at the precipice of some huge and potentially disturbing mystery is one of the most ennobling moments I can think of. It's like standing in front of a burning bush. In that light, we are all fleetingly burnished with meaning. 

Rivecca will be reading on Sunday at 7pm at The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery Barnsdall Art Park as part of The New Short Fiction Series.

Haven't yet picked up her debut collection and won't be able to see in her in LA? You are in luck. I'm giving away my hardcover copy of her book to one lucky reader. Leave your "entry" in the comments and tell me why you'd love to have this collection sent your way. A randomly-selected winner will be announced on Monday so get your comments in by midnight PST on Sunday & spread the word - or don't, if you want to be selfish like that!

If you're in LA, come on out to the reading Sunday to support a great writer! Be there or...

How Suzanne Rivecca Awakened the Reader/Writer Within (Yes, Again)

 

Simple: a kick-ass short story collection. So kick-ass, I'm saying it's kick-ass before I've even finished it. 

Why is it so kick-ass? It is honest, funny, sad, painful, straight-up storytelling with awkward, messed-up, self-conscious characters at its core. No fancy deconstructions, no look-at-what-i'm-doing-there-right-there-in-that-chapter tomfoolery, no meta-themes and overarching themes and subgenre themes melding together to create the stuff of a thousand and one grad student papers gone bad. Instead, Rivecca offers characters who are honestly struggling, honestly telling it like they see it, honestly trying to sort their shit out. How refreshing after months of plowing through theory and meta, meta, meta lit.

Why does it matter? I've been on a non-blogging, non-reading, non-writing, non-loving-books-at-all jag. Again. For the umpteenth time. Call me a jaded reader. An unproductive writer. Whathaveyou. I'd lost the spark. Rex, while fascinating in many ways, felt like an exercise in what literature could be if we all tried very hard to make it so. A puzzle to deconstruct and re-make and discuss at dinner parties. Same with Shields (but that's a separate matter) after awhile. I wondered if it was me or what I was reading or both. Hell, Tinkers didn't move me. I kept skipping pages and pages thinking, I'm bored. Bored to tears with the Pulitzer prize-winning novel that all those I respect & admire have praised loudly, effusively. The only reading of any kind that has wowed me in any way since Maggie Nelson's excellent Bluets is the street-style photo compendium The Sartorialist by the fantastic Scott Schuman. Seriously.

So: For long-time readers, you know the drill. You get my gig. You are totally hip to this dip in readerly-writerly interest. I lose interest with the seasons (sometimes more often, on good years...less) and a book and a trip (thank you NYC) often conspire together to yank me right out of my complacency and place me firmly back on solid reading/writing ground. The most recent book to yank me out of my nonsense is Rivecca's debut short story collection Death Is Not an Option. Go check it out & let me know what you think. Would love to chat you up about it before I fall into another fashion blog coma.

Knock Me Stiff

So here's the thing: This book came highly recommended, so I went into it with high expectations (always a surefire way to ruin a book) and I knew from the get-go that it's not the kind of book I tend to love (subject matter, whathaveyou) but is more a kind of a book that I might learn something from, technically, structurally, or otherwise.

The verdict: Damn. Double-damn. Donald Ray Pollock can write short stories that knock you off your feet. I have not had this experience in a long time (not since Roy Kesey's collection) and I'm jumpy and anxious to share these stories with anyone who will read them. These are tough characters with ugly lives, wayward folks who seem always to make the wrong, often terribly disturbing, choices. Oh, but the way they do it is fantastic.

Lovely surprise: This collection of stories features characters from all over Knockemstiff. While there is roughly one story primarily devoted to each character, they tend to appear in other stories as well...often years later. In a roundabout way, you get more information, more history and more "story" about a character in story #8, even though they were introduced in story #1.  A very lovely technique and it really works here (sometimes this kind of thing can feel a bit forced) because it allows you to see the 30-year arc of a person, rather than just the immediate situation of one story.

This is really brilliant writing and I'm thrilled to have had the chance to read his work. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Litty Bittys

• Lydia Millet will be reading at Book Soup tonight @ 7pm. Her new book kicks ass, as I've noted before, (I believe the phrase holy hell was used) and she is lovely to chat with at hot, sweaty festivals.  Go forth and enjoy.
• I am very sad to be missing the Pen World Voices Festival that kicks off in New York today. Like, so sad, I'm checking flights and things.
• Another new Etgar Keret short story in LA Weekly. It's becoming a thing.
• Speaking of Keret, during the two hour commute from the LA Times Festival of Book back to my hood downtown on Saturday night (no, it really shouldn't have taken that long), I heard a brief mention of an Etgar Keret film.
• I miss David Foster Wallace and here's why: see cell 4.
• I'm suffering from LATFOB panel write-up overload. LATFOB-fatigue has set in. (It is only Tuesday.) I'd rather go read a book, or write one.
• The literary pranksters in LA don't quite get their way and I kind of dig the whole thing.

Paul Theroux's Little Pieces

I'm just barely back (flu + a middle ear infection will get you every time) but wanted to share:

If you've ever, ever, had trouble compressing your complex plot lines and characters into a novel or, more to the point, a short story, Paul Theroux's "Twenty-Two Stories" in the April Harper's (not yet online, so go pick-up a copy) should turn that all upside down.

I, on the other hand, have the opposite problem: my stories are often very focused on one small moment in time and I sometimes feel they're too simple, too compressed.  Theroux's stories, some only four paragraphs, beautifully capture the essence of a good story in such a small space that I'm inspired tenfold.  In these brief stories, you can see the bones of structure and how so much can be communicated with so little.

Good stuff. I'm only an ear infection away from trying my hand at some shorter shorts myself.

New Etgar Keret Short Story: Freeze!

It is alarming, shocking, and downright...weird?...how much data you can miss in a week.  I might as well be in Tahiti sipping Tahiti Drink or a Hinano, blissfully aware that I'm unaware of all the data that is being posted and read and discussed and commented upon and re-discussed in my absence.

But this - this being here but being sick and missing out on so much that it's no different if I had been in Tahiti - this, in the words of Walter Sobcheck, will not stand, man.

How have I missed the new Etgar Keret story in LA Weekly? It posted on the 2nd! It is worth a read, as all his stuff is.  I'm guessing it is part of his forthcoming collection of short stories, The Girl on the Fridge, due out from FSG in April.

The obligatory teaser with gratuitous swearing and sexual innuendo:

"Suddenly I could do it. I’d say “Freeze!” and everyone would freeze, just like that, in the middle of the street. Cars, bikes, even those little motor scooters delivery guys use, they’d all stop in their tracks. And I’d walk past them till I found the prettiest girls. I’d tell them to drop their shopping bags or I’d take them off a bus, bring them home and fuck their brains out. It was great — it was really, really great. “Freeze!” “Come here!” “Lie down on the bed!” And after that, wham-bam. The girls I had were incredible, centerfold material. I felt fantastic. I felt like a king. Until my mother butted in."

I'm sure it's only a matter of time (or, more precisely, about as long as it will take me to read all those unread Google reader posts) before I learn that this has already been covered ad nauseum in my fever-hazed absence.

If I yelled "Freeze!" loudly and with purpose would it convince you I'm on the mend and will be back in better (always dicey to say "top" here, eh?) form soon?

Paris, je t'aime

Just saw the lovely collection of five-minute short films, Paris, je t'aime. Not only do the twenty different films offer up so many different views of Paris, they made me both wistful about visiting again (ah, Montmartre! we'll be back in our little flat soon, you wait and see!) and happy that I've visited at all.

What struck me most, however, about this collection of films was how akin they are to short stories. Starting halfway through the action, right in the middle of a moment. Ending in the middle of another. No clear resolution per se...not on either side of the story. But an engrossing glimpse into a moment in time. The way characters are introduced, the way so much about them is communicated in such a compressed amount of time - brilliant stuff and so closely tied to the structure of my favorite short stories.

I'm not a professor. I'm not a creative writing instructor. But if I could somehow teach a class on how these films represent the best of short story writing, I would. Really. Excellent, excellent stuff and I highly recommend it.

If the lure of short films as short stories doesn't offer quite the pull I'd hoped, I point you to the list of directors who participated in this collection:

Olivier Assayas		(segment "Quartier des Enfants Rouges")
Frédéric Auburtin		(segment "Quartier Latin") (transitions)
Emmanuel Benbihy		(transitions)
Gurinder Chadha		(segment "Quais de Seine")
Sylvain Chomet		(segment "Tour Eiffel")
Ethan Coen		(segment "Tuileries")
Joel Coen		(segment "Tuileries")
Isabel Coixet		(segment "Bastille")
Wes Craven		(segment "Père-Lachaise")
Alfonso Cuarón		(segment "Parc Monceau")
Gérard Depardieu		(segment "Quartier Latin")
Christopher Doyle		(segment "Porte de Choisy")
Richard LaGravenese		(segment "Pigalle")
Vincenzo Natali		(segment "Quartier de la Madeleine")
Alexander Payne		(segment "14th arrondissement")
Bruno Podalydès		(segment "Montmartre")
Walter Salles		(segment "Loin du 16ème")
Oliver Schmitz		(segment "Place des Fêtes")
Nobuhiro Suwa		(segment "Place des Victoires")
Daniela Thomas		(segment "Loin du 16ème")
Tom Tykwer		(segment "Faubourg Saint-Denis")
Gus Van Sant		(segment "Le Marais")

The list of collaborating writers and actors is equally impressive.

McSweeney's Issue 25: It's So Purty

The one-dimensional photo on McSweeny's site for their latest issue #25 doesn't do it justice - not even close. After beating four deadlines and with only a few measly ones now looming, it was a lovely, lovely delight to have my oh so nice postman Rodney call up to tell me there was a package. What was in the package? McSweeney's 25.

It is so tiny and compact and sparkly and shiny. Exactly the kind of distraction that could be dangerous right about now. 

The funky cover illustrations are by Leah Hayes, whose Holy Moly is worth checking out. Her forthcoming Funeral of the Heart is on my can't wait to read in 2008 list.

And for more yummy distraction: stories by Connor Kilpatrick, Steven Millhauser, Emily Anderson, Joyce Carol Oates, David Hollander, Alexander MacBride, Kenneth Bonert, Terry Wright, Chloe Hooper and Padgett Powell. 

Behold the shiny goodness: