I can’t remember when I first fell in love with the Average American Male, Mr. Kultgen’s first book. Regardless, it’s many years later, and in The Average American Marriage we meet up again with the narrator from that same book and he is still the video game loving, high velocity masturbator that gladly objectifies women, while delivering deadpan descriptions of the sad world around him.…
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It has been a very long time since I finished a novel and yelled, “that was awesome!” When you savor a book, carry it with you, let it steal moments of your day, stop yourself from finishing it, you’re lucky.…
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Kurt Vonnegut: Letters Edited and with an Introduction by Dan Wakefield There is a great moment in Dan Wakefield’s introduction to Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, it’s early on when he reveals that Vonnegut loved the underdog, and the reason’s are very clear.…
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“The Idea of Marcel” from the collection Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino University of Iowa Press I don’t really do fantasy realism.…
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From the collection Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino University of Iowa Press It doesn’t matter what you’re doing. Put this collection at the top of your list.…
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From the collection Safe as Houses by Marie-Helene Bertino University of Iowa Press I hear the Iowa Workshop is a place where you go to become a writer, at least one of them.…
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From the collection, The Theory of Light and Matter by Andrew Porter Hard to say why I only just discovered this writer.…
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from Middle Men: Stories by Jim Gavin Simon & Schuster 2/13 I won’t discuss the third story in this collection, “Elephant Doors”, as there is just too much for me to spoil.…
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from Middle Men: Stories by Jim Gavin S&S – 2/13 In the second story, “Bermuda”, we meet another down on his luck loser named Brian.…
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Ben Schrank is the author of three books: Miracle Man, Consent and the forthcoming Love is a Canoe which goes on sale 1-13.…
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from Middle Men: Stories by Jim Gavin S&S – 2-13 As my son would say, “seriously?” This collection is dominating my life right now, and I picked it up almost by accident at a trade show, so, yeah, seriously.…
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I have to be honest, I have never really read The Paris Review, and that’s not a big deal. Right? I just don’t remember to read it.…
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It will forever mystify me, why I have not read Ms. Abbott before now. There is a moment right at the start of a novel, usually twenty or thirty pages in, where you say to yourself, “oh, I love this.”…
Read MoreHere at the blog we always review what we want, and rarely get pitched anything. Well, that’s a lie; we get pitched stuff all the time.…
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It’s hard to write a book about the end of world and make the reader feel good about it. I avoided this book for a while, it’s whimsical cover, and the seemingly wafer thin plot.…
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from When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald Ms. Ringwald takes the reader up to thirty thousand feet with this second story, Redbud.…
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from When It Happens to You by Molly Ringwald It took only a few minutes to realize that Ms. Ringwald can write, but I was hesitant just the same.…
Read MoreIt’s been a really long time since I’ve sat down to read a story in The New Yorker. Justin Taylor has been skirting the edges of my literary paradigm for a long time, years almost.…
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I fell in love with A.M. Homes, and to know me is to know I love her writing almost as much as Zadie Smith’s work.…
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My collection grew. I turned to guy fiction for a long time, Paul Auster, Tim O’Brien, Raymond Carver, and Richard Ford.…
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I started collecting contemporary American fiction about twenty years ago. I was living in a small closet apartment on 28th and Broadway in NYC; the bathroom was down the hall.…
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The Paris Review is putting together a collection of short stories called Object Lessons: the Paris Review presents The Art of the Short Story.…
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It’s embarrassing. What I have in front of me would shock you. First, Maria Semple has a new book about to hit shelves, Where’d You Go Bernadette, (Little Brown), and if you follow the blog, you know I love Maria in a sisterly way.…
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