“Date Night” with Amelia Gray

A new short story by Amelia Gray, author of THREATS:

“The woman and man are on a date. It is a date! The woman rubs a lipstick print off her water glass. The man turns his butter knife over and over and over and over and over. Everyone has to pee. What’s the deal with dates! The man excuses himself to go pee. At the table, the woman scratches her forearm a little too hard, and a slice of skin peels up with her fingernail. She tries to smooth it back, but it doesn’t go even when she presses her palm to it. It curls around itself like a pencil shaving. The woman is dismayed.”

(Read the rest at BOMBLOG.)

Some good news today: I am very pleased to announce Frank Bill’s Crimes in Southern Indiana is longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. (At €25,000 for the best book of short stories it is among the world’s largest prizes for a short story collection.)

Some good news today: I am very pleased to announce Frank Bill’s Crimes in Southern Indiana is longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. (At €25,000 for the best book of short stories it is among the world’s largest prizes for a short story collection.)

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Need 50 Short Story Recommendations?

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Ira Glass reads Etgar Keret’s short story “What Animal Are You?,” from the new collection Suddenly, A Knock on the Door. (You can read the full story over at Omnivoracious.)

I now humbly request Mr. Glass read the audiobook for every novel and short story collection we’ve ever published.

Airports are such interesting laboratories of human interactions—reunions and farewells on public view.
Mathilda Savitch author Victor Lodato, in an interview with The New Yorker about his recently published short story “P.E.”
I really haven’t been to that many literary shindigs, not in recent times, though it does seem to me that there may have been a few, far in the past, where dancing took place. Generally, those sorts of events are fairly tame, and over early.
Donald Antrim, in an interview with The New Yorker’s Deborah Treisman about his short story “Ever Since.”
There’s a new Etgar Keret short story in Guernica: “Tell me a story,” the bearded man sitting on my living-room sofa commands. The situation, I must admit, is anything but pleasant. I’m someone who writes stories, not someone who tells them. And even that isn’t something I do on demand. The last time anyone asked me to tell him a story, it was my son. That was a year ago. I told him something about a fairy and a ferret—I don’t even remember what exactly—and within two minutes he was fast asleep. But here the situation is fundamentally different. Because my son doesn’t have a beard, or a pistol. Because my son asked for the story nicely, and this man is simply trying to rob me of it.

There’s a new Etgar Keret short story in Guernica:

“Tell me a story,” the bearded man sitting on my living-room sofa commands. The situation, I must admit, is anything but pleasant. I’m someone who writes stories, not someone who tells them. And even that isn’t something I do on demand. The last time anyone asked me to tell him a story, it was my son. That was a year ago. I told him something about a fairy and a ferret—I don’t even remember what exactly—and within two minutes he was fast asleep. But here the situation is fundamentally different. Because my son doesn’t have a beard, or a pistol. Because my son asked for the story nicely, and this man is simply trying to rob me of it.

16 years, 9 short stories

“After you settle in as a university professor, things really start to take off. Over the next five years, you write and publish four more stories (at roughly once/year, that’s twice as fast as you published the previous five). You win an NEA Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Residency, two MacDowell residencies, and one of those four stories (which is actually nonfiction) is published in Best American Essays. In 2011, your collection, which you title after that first best American story, is finally published; and that same year you win a Whiting Award and are long-listed for the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award. At 52 years old, you are a ‘debut author.’ Nine stories; 16 years in the making.

“And the book is damn good.”

“I was born in Brooklyn, but I never lived there. All my life, however, I’ve been regaled with stories of the glory that was pre-war Brooklyn, and since these tales seemed to have very little to do with my own experience of the place, the Brooklyn of that era has always appeared to me as something of an enchanted isle—a fiction, really. Setting a story there—not in the literal, geographical Brooklyn but in the one of memory, of romanticized recollection—is my way of visiting a place that I suspect never really existed.” Alice McDermott, interviewed in The New Yorker about her short story “Someone.”

“I was born in Brooklyn, but I never lived there. All my life, however, I’ve been regaled with stories of the glory that was pre-war Brooklyn, and since these tales seemed to have very little to do with my own experience of the place, the Brooklyn of that era has always appeared to me as something of an enchanted isle—a fiction, really. Setting a story there—not in the literal, geographical Brooklyn but in the one of memory, of romanticized recollection—is my way of visiting a place that I suspect never really existed.”

Alice McDermott, interviewed in The New Yorker about her short story “Someone.”

“Labyrinth” by Roberto Bolaño

They’re seated. They’re looking at the camera. They are captioned, from left to right: J. Henric, J.-J. Goux, Ph. Sollers, J. Kristeva, M.-Th. Réveillé, P. Guyotat, C. Devade, and M. Devade.

There’s no photo credit.

They’re sitting around a table. It’s an ordinary table, made of wood, perhaps, or plastic, it could even be a marble table on metal legs, but nothing could be less germane to my purpose than to give an exhaustive description of it. The table is a table that is large enough to seat the above-mentioned individuals and it’s in a café. Or appears to be. Let’s suppose, for the moment, that it’s in a café.

The eight people who appear in the photo, who are posing for the photo, are fanned out around one side of the table in a crescent or a kind of opened-out horseshoe, so that each of them can be seen clearly and completely. In other words, no one is facing away from the camera. In front of them, or rather between them and the photographer (and this is slightly strange), there are three plants—a rhododendron, a ficus, and an everlasting—rising from a planter, which may serve, but this is speculation, as a barrier between two distinct sections of the café.

The photo was probably taken in 1977 or thereabouts.

But let us return to the figures. On the left-hand side we have, as I said, J. Henric, that is, the writer Jacques Henric, born in 1938 and the author of “Archées,” “Artaud Travaillé par la Chine,” and “Chasses.” Henric is a solidly built man, broad-shouldered, muscular-looking, probably not very tall. He’s wearing a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his forearms. He’s not what you would call a handsome man; he has the square face of a farmer or a construction worker, thick eyebrows, and a dark chin, one of those chins which need to be shaved twice a day (or so some people claim). His legs are crossed and his hands are clasped over his knee.

Next to him is J.-J. Goux. About J.-J. Goux I know nothing. He’s probably called Jean-Jacques, but in this story, for the sake of convenience, I’ll continue to use his initials. J.-J. Goux is young and blond. He’s wearing glasses. There’s nothing especially attractive about his features (although, compared with Henric, he looks not only more handsome but also more intelligent). The line of his jaw is symmetrical and his lips are full, the lower lip slightly thicker than the upper. He’s wearing a turtleneck sweater and a dark leather jacket.

Beside J.-J. is Ph. Sollers, Philippe Sollers, born in 1936, the editor of Tel Quel, author of “Drame,” “Nombres,” and “Paradis,” a public figure familiar to everyone. Sollers has his arms crossed, the left arm resting on the surface of the table, the right arm resting on the left (and his right hand indolently cupping the elbow of his left arm). His face is round. It would be an exaggeration to say that it’s the face of a fat man, but it probably will be in a few years’ time: it’s the face of a man who enjoys a good meal. An ironic, intelligent smile is hovering about his lips. His eyes, which are much livelier than those of Henric or J.-J., and smaller, too, remain fixed on the camera, and the bags underneath them help to give his round face a look that is at once preoccupied, perky, and playful. Like J.-J., he’s wearing a turtleneck sweater, though the sweater that Sollers is wearing is white, dazzlingly white, while J.-J.’s is probably yellow or light green. Over the sweater Sollers is wearing a garment that appears at first glance to be a dark-colored leather jacket, though it could be made of a lighter material, possibly suède. He’s the only one who’s smoking.

Read the rest of the story in The New Yorker

Etgar Keret, The Girl on the Fridge via overtakelessness  Now you can go make some art.

Etgar Keret, The Girl on the Fridge via overtakelessness 

Now you can go make some art.

(via somethingoutofsomething)

Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, seven different ways. The Brazilian cover makes it look like a gritty procedural, doesn’t it?

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
track Gary Shteyngart Reads Etgar Keret
artist Etgar Keret
album Suddenly, A Knock on The Door

Gary Shteyngart—novelist, Twitterer, and illiteracy advocate—reads “What, of This Goldfish, Would You Wish?” from Keret’s collection Suddenly, A Knock on The Door.

Should you find yourself inspired by Keret’s words (or, for that matter, Shteyngart’s voice), I recommend Something Out of Something, our design contest with BOMB Magazine.