Posts Tagged ‘Fiction’
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Etgar Keret, Suddenly, A Knock on the Door
The thin house–a house four feet wide and occupying a space between two buildings in Warsaw–isn’t a likely candidate to entertain the guests who show up unexpectedly and demand a story from the author on the spot in the title story of Etgar Keret’s latest collection, Suddenly, a Knock On the Door. While it would not be able to hold the action of the piece, it does explain the style of the Israeli author’s storytelling: as Steven Kurutz of The New York Times writes, the thin house, built with Keret in mind, is “small but complete.” There are a total of thirty-six stories contained within the 188 pages of the book, an average of five pages per story, though as we know averages work, many come in much shorter, with some barely stretching over one page. In these brief pieces, Keret packs in whole worlds.
- In: Fiction | Words
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To My Ex-Best Friend:
Thank you for the invitation to your Baby Barbecue. The invite (not to mention the title) surprised me. Never would I have expected to be included. But there, tacked on to the lengthy recipient list’s tail end, was my old email address, one I stopped using three years ago, one you in fact suggested that I retire because suzyQT, a remnant of my college days, screamed immature. How fortunate that I met you so soon after I moved to New York. You hoovered out of me almost all my sloppy traits, leaving an empty shell to fill with trimly tailored attitude. But I reserved one part, high up and out of reach, and kept it alive without knowing what it was. That bit would come in handy years later when I finally recognized it: my own damn self.
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Stewart O’Nan, The Odds
The odds of a marriage proposal being accepted are 1 in 1.001, i.e. nearly perfect. The odds of a married couple making love on any given night are 1 in 5. The odds of a married couple reaching their 25th anniversary are 1 in 6. Such stark, if not totally surprising, probabilities provide both the chapter headings and the thematic glue of Stewart O’Nan’s sharp and sad new novel, a love story wrapped in a heist wrapped in a rumination on risk, reward, and regret.
In less than 20 years, O’Nan has written 13 novels, including Snow Angels, which became a 2007 movie starring Sam Rockwell and Kate Beckinsale. His four nonfiction books include a manual on writing co-edited with John Gardner, whose The Art of Fiction is a Bible on the MFA circuit. His papers are already archived at Cornell University’s library. In other words, he’s a workhorse and a writer’s writer, and in The Odds, he makes the art of fiction seem effortless.
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Rajesh Parameswaran, I Am An Executioner
Hyphenated-American fiction writers often face an unfair conundrum. If they focus on race or ethnicity, they risk being pigeonholed or fetishized or deemed spokespeople for their racial or ethnic group. If they avoid these topics, they risk charges of cultural treason. In his dark, imaginative, and engrossing debut short story collection, Yale Law graduate Rajesh Parameswaran splits the difference: embracing his Indian heritage yet transcending that heritage with universal themes of love and loss.
To be sure, I Am An Executioner has plenty of Indian culture. There are arranged marriages, culture and caste clashes, saris and chappels, and mouthwatering meals of chutney, samosas, and okra. The narrator of one story is a tiger; another is an elephant. Yet not all of the stories star Indian or Indian-American characters. And even when they do, Parameswaran seems eager to subvert cultural clichés. In the title story, the narrator, never ethnically identified, speaks in what seems like a parody of Indian English: “Normally in the life, people always marvel how I am maintaining cheerful demeanors.” In another story, the hapless hero is an unemployed computer salesman who pretends to be a doctor –that stereotypical Brahmin profession – with disastrous results. In “Demons,” an Indian-American woman tells a neighbor that her dead husband on her living room floor is doing yoga, saying: “That is, you know, one of the things we do in India.” And the gullible gringo swallows the story.
It was Clay who suggested that they invite another couple for that last weekend. His college roommate Craig and his wife Lisa had recently transplanted themselves from Golden, Minnesota for the more harried pace of New York. Because the three weeks Olivia and Clay spent in Wellfleet differed little from their lives in the city—just the two of them and the alley cat they’d adopted the year before—it was without hesitation that Olivia agreed to the intruders. She said it would give her a reason to get the house in shape for the summer renters. She hadn’t known Craig and Lisa long but unlike Clay’s other friends they were unpretentious and uninterested in art openings and coffee appointments with moderately famous—but fading—artists like Clay or other young, promising artists with whom Olivia often shared gallery space. Even though they lived in the same city it seemed as if their worlds were still so very far apart. Craig worked a nine to five in a suit somewhere in midtown and Lisa taught long division to third graders. They reminded Olivia of people she had known growing up and Clay seemed to like the idea of having a friend around who was still impressed by his decision to take photographs of decaying urban landscapes.
Olivia looked forward to a break in the monotony. She’d already gone through a stack of books, nearly finished two cases of wine and cooked the more complicated meals in her Moroccan cookbook. They had fucked spontaneously in the house’s numerous rooms and made the same tired jokes about being able to have a choice of which room to have sex in. In those slick, blissful moments they would hold each other close and contemplate a life together in the house year round just the two of them—maybe the cat. The idea of such a quiet life depressed her, and so it was with ease that she would return to their comfortable and familiar two-bedroom apartment in the city. The weeks in Wellfleet were lazy and decadent but life there felt small and was just enough of a fantasy that she was always glad to return to New York. In the city, things could change, they could expand.
- In: Interviews
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David Goodwillie (Photo: Candie Sanderson)
David Goodwillie is the author of the memoir Seemed like a Good Idea at the Time and American Subversive, a novel that centers on a home-grown terrorist plot. Before he wrote books, Goodwillie was briefly a minor league baseball player, then worked at Southeby’s, a private investigation firm, and a dot-com startup. I interviewed him over lunch at Sebastian Junger’s bar The Half King, where he was recovering from a gin-fueled literary party with “writers, editors, agents, and a lot of very bad dancing.” We discussed his past and present projects, writing and literature, politics and media, life and love, “generational malaise,” the magic of New York, and why it’s sometimes embarrassing to be an American.
I last saw you at your book party in 2010. What’s new?
David Goodwillie: I was on the book tour with American Subversive for a while, first the hardcover, then the paperback. Usually if you’re a novelist, a literary novelist, you don’t get to go on a paperback tour, but we [Aryn Kyle and I] were at a big literary dinner and saw that the head of our publishing house had had a few drinks and decided this might be a good time to approach her with a new marketing idea. So we pitched her on a joint tour of the West Coast, where I had not gone with the hardcover, and shockingly she said: “That’s a great idea.” So she sent Aryn and me out on this big tour, we started in Portland and went all the way down the coast. All kinds of stuff went wrong in a Grand Old Book Tour way. We lost our car. And we got to LA and Aryn met with her film agent and I met with some friends and everyone said ‘You guys just have to write a screenplay about it.’ So we have been for most of the year. It’s kind of a literary Sideways about two writers who disappear on a book tour and the publisher forgets about them when they’re on the road.
I’ve also been working on another novel, which is coming slowly, as they always do, and some magazine articles. I just finished an article for Popular Science about nuclear divers, these guys who work at nuclear power plant and dive down into irradiated water to fix stuff because all the power plants are so old. They’re basically single-handedly saving the nuclear industry patching and welding and moving fuel rods around. And in the process, of course, they’re all getting sick and there’s no real oversight of the industry. It’s an extremely dangerous job and a fascinating subculture to explore. So I spent a bunch of the summer at a nuclear plant in Michigan, researching and then doing interviews for this piece. Investigative journalism is a healthy thing for a novelist to do, it gets you back in the real world. It’s also a while between paychecks in the book world so it’s nice to keep your hand in it.
Jim Knable’s Sons of Dionysus: a lusty novel of myth, mirth, and music.
Chapter 12
A communal groan erupts when they all see me with my buzz cut.
What have you done?! screams Cassius, though he has done much the same, having had his own trademarked hair shaved recently.
Is it him? says Demetrius, a second year with a thick beard, who is known for dressing in women’s clothing.
It’s him, says Arthur, He’s back with us.
About time, says Moses. Pull up a chair.
Jim Knable’s Sons of Dionysus: a lusty novel of myth, mirth, and music.
Chapter 11
I make daily pilgrimages. One to the coffee house, one to the gate of the residential college. I know I don’t have time, nor should I be so obsessed as to stay for more than a minute or two. But I think if I come at the same time I saw Cassandra in both places each day, I will surely see her again. I casually pause, look at my watch, pretend to read a flyer, something to make me look like I am not waiting. She never appears.
Meanwhile, the parade up the bunkbed is in full swing. Our essay assignments are winding down and the dead week before finals approaches; the stress is eased and Arthur fills its void with sex. I don’t know what he gets from bedding women who are only using him as he uses them for love without love. Spring is swishing its short skirts in the air; Arthur chases them, in heat.
Sons of Dionysus, Chapter 11 (Read by David Jung)
My attendance at the Owl and allegiance to the SODs is flagging. It all seems like so much frivolity without substance these days. Arthur notes my absence casually, but he knows that I never made any official commitment to this group, as he did. He says everyone missed me at the Owl. I tell him to make sure to give them my regards. Formal and cold like that.
And still I make my pilgrimages. And still she does not appear.
I often go and stand before the statue, sometimes bring a book and read. I have decided that doing this does not count against my regular allotted pilgrimages. After all, being in this nook, I would never know if she passed by. Sometimes this thought drives me too crazy and so I dash away and look for her quickly in the big courtyard, then return to the statue. No one else seems to know about the little grove; I am always alone here. Then one day, I arrive and find evidence of lust in the green grass. A condom wrapper, a pair of soiled women’s underwear. I feel violated; someone has violated my sacred ground. I think of picking the offending articles up and throwing them out, then decide to leave them there. It is another sign, like being taken there in the first place. This sign says: I am grasping too hard at what comes to me only when it will. Only when she will. I do not return to the statue after that. I stop my pilgrimages, though I still make a point of spending time at the coffee house and occasionally I go out of my way to pass by her gate.
I tell none of this to Arthur, none but that I saw her again and she remembered me.
That’s good, he says, did you get her number?
I mumble no and change the subject. Stupid Fool (me).
A fear is creeping in. As land on the watery year’s horizon comes in sight, I realize I have no plans for the summer but to return home. The fear turns to depression. The bed above shakes at night, my classes are losing luster, the new friends I made are fading from me as they share much more together now than I can share with them— memories of their tours, for one. I am only an outsider. Other friends I’ve managed to make here are superficial at best. I realize that until now, I have let the SODs consume my social life and College consume my intellectual life; now that both are threatening to disperse, I find myself without a foundation, and dreading that old self of mine that waits for me in my hometown. I have no one to talk to about any of this. At last I give in and call my parents.
Jeremiah? Is that you? It’s hard to recognize your voice after so long. Do you need money? Your mother and I just went to the movies. There was a kid in the movie who was just like you growing up. Always up to mischief.
I wasn’t like that as a kid, Dad. Is Mom around?
Jeremiah? Are you sick? Are you taking care of yourself? We’re so excited to have you back home with us.
For a moment, it actually sounds nice. The moment stretches. We keep talking. I am looking forward to the familiar, the sidewalks of my adolescence, the shops in the mall, the park where my friends would meet, everything that always bored me senseless. I feel a yearning.
You’re homesick, aren’t you, said my mother.
Maybe a little.
Good thing you’re coming home, then, isn’t it, she said.
And I felt that it was.
That night the bed shook above, waking me up. I could kill my roommate.
Melody.
Naked body by the side of the bed.
I talk with Arthur.
She listens to us and finds us sweet.
She’s older. Husband and kids. She exits, after posing like a god, reminding me of my sacred statue.
We should have our own rooms next year.
Arthur falls asleep, snoring.
Have our own rooms, but it sounds like he still pictures living in the same suite. Still living together. He is still my friend, my closest friend.
Jeremy, he says, having woken up again at about 5 in the morning.
What, what? I shake myself awake for him, my heart pounding with confused panic—Where am I? Who am I? Who’s talking to me?
I’m tired of meaningless sex.
I grunt my sleepy approval.
I think I really love that woman.
You don’t know her at all.
I know. But I have this feeling. I can’t describe it.
She said she’d forget us. She’ll forget you.
No she won’t. She’ll be back.
You’re absurd.
Maybe. But I think it’s fated.
He was asleep again shortly after. I was awake for good.
What does he mean by fated? How does he know about his own fate? What weird witches and wizards has he met out on the highway with his Satanic tribe?
What is my fate?
That day, I go get coffee at my coffee house. I sit and drink it in silence, not reading, focused on the door. If she comes in, one fate. If she doesn’t, another.
She does not come in.
I go to the barber shop next door and have the barber cut off all my long flowing hair.
Continue To Chapter 12
Jim Knable is a Brooklyn-based writer of plays, songs, prose, and the occasional screenplay. His plays have been produced at MCC Theatre, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Soho Rep, NYC’s Summer Play Festival and other regional theaters, and have been published by Broadway Play Publishing, Dramatic Publishing, Samuel French, Smith & Kraus and Playscripts, Inc. He released his solo album Miles in 2000 and Redbeard (2006) and Golden Arrow (2009) with his band The Randy Bandits.
Beeb Salzer (illustration) is an artist, set designer, and essayist based in San Diego.
Jim Knable’s Sons of Dionysus: a lusty novel of myth, mirth, and music.
Chapter 10
Charlegne was halfway to becoming Charles. The top half. S/he was still recuperating and would not be back with us for a little while longer. S/he sent reports to the group through Benjamin, who was still in recovery from his broken leg and the slight concussion he did actually sustain from being brained with the pig head. The spring tour south sounded eventful from the stories I heard. There was one arrest in Birmingham, something to do with disorderly conduct while wearing a diaper and pushing a shopping cart off a bridge.
Sons of Dionysus, Chapter 10 (Read by Jeff Wilser)
Jim Knable’s Sons of Dionysus: a lusty novel of myth, mirth, and music.
CHAPTER 9
I did not go back home for the spring break. The SODs left in their vans and cars, heading south for their tour. I stayed in our room, in defiant solitude. Very few students remained with me. Those who did were as solitary as I was. I saw them walking from a distance; we did not speak.
I made a routine of each day. I went for coffee in the morning, sat reading (where I had met Cassandra) for an hour. Then I ran, up to West Mountain and back. I bathed, read some more. If I had the inclination, I would go to a movie or watch one in our room. Every other day, I called an old friend or relative from home. It was in these calls that I learned the strange fate of my friend Max.
Sons of Dionysus, Chapter 9 (Read by Chris and Claire Dippel)
Frontier Psychiatrist 