OCR Text |
Show Thursday, August 28.2008 Arts Shortfictionfor your free time Usually when people say something is "interesting" or "different," they just mean "weird," STAFF WRITER and I guess this book is all three. It's definitely Once school starts, there's usually only enough unlike anything I've ever read before—different time and energy after work and homework to enough that it takes a moment to get into the feel read 10 or so pages each night, and trying to of the book. And from there, you might have a tackle a novel at that speed is pretty much out tough time with the random, seemingly unnecesof the question. But then there are so many mar- sary erotic twists (phone sex between two sisters, •?'•':y,ik-''C\-?':-!* t. velous collections of short stories in the world anyone?). But each story is unique and thought that you can enjoy reading and still have time to provoking, illuminating small aspects of daily make money and get good grades, maybe even life and presenting you with believable characsleep. Short stories and essays are all the fun of ters (all with their strange secrets, of course). reading without any of the commitment. Here July tries a lot of different techniques, and ocare some recommendations to ease you into the casionally the stories feel more like performance art, but each confronts you with something new school year. to ponder. This would make a good book for a When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sebook club, as you'd have plenty to talk about. daris (Little, Brown and Company, 2008) Sedaris' sixth book, released this summer, is The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas by Davy a synthesis of all his previous books and maybe Rothbart (Simon & Schuster, 2005) his most eclectic collection yet. There are the Davy Rothbart is better known as the creator S-'r : familiar, funny and poignant stories about Se- of Found magazine (made entirely of writing daris's personal life for which he's famous—his found and sent in by ordinary folk), and this colalternately functional and dysfunctional family, lection of stories definitely has that same "look his childhood in Raleigh, N.C., and his extensive how sad and beautiful we all are in our randomdrug use—alongside descriptions of his semi-lit- ness" kind of feel. That said, it's pretty good. Alerate life in France and his experiences as a writ- though the stories' different characters all have er on tour, the subject of his more recent books. the same voice and each story has a similar feel, Then there are random essays, like "Buddy, Can Rothbart taps into a part of 20-something life " • :*t\ . • You Spare a Tie?" which is Sedaris's personal that feels so familiar and yet hasn't really been treatise on fashion ("Time is cruel to everything fictionalized. Like the part where you fall in love but it seems to have singled out eyeglasses for with a girl but it's doomed from the start, and you special punishment"), or "What I learned," an go to her party anyway and meet her boyfriend, absurd essay on attending Princeton in the days and you try to make some grand gesture but you before Jesus Christ and double-majoring in patri- just wind up walking the streets alone at night in ida State University's World's Best Short Story cide and matricide. The last quarter of the book, the cold and then you go home, and it's 3 a.m. and contest, which has been going since 1986. TAirns well-titled "The Smoking Section," is an account your roommates are watching a bad movie on TV out you can pack a lot into only a few paragraphs, of Sedaris's recent attempt to quit his pack-and- so you decide to move across the country. Like or less (a story by Amy Hempel is a single sena-half per day smoking habit in Tokyo. This is Kerouac's On The Road, but more relevant. tence). The range of subject matter and tone is classic Sedaris and the best of the book. It had Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Really Short quite wide, but all the stories share the feeling of me giggling on a packed UTA bus at 8:30 in the Stories edited by Jerome Stern (W.W. Norton & a snapshot of someone else's life. Look for "Baby, morning. Baby, Baby" by U English Professor Francois CaCompany, 1996) No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories Each of these stories is 250 words or less, mion and "Grief by Utah native Ron Carlson. by Miranda July (Scribner, 2007) drawn from the winners and runners-up of Flors.custen@chronicle.utah.edu Sarah Custen Miranda J |