Books › Short stories
Short stories
First published 1981 · 464 pages
A surreal, fragmented carnival ride through the anxieties and absurdities of modern life, built entirely out of linguistic acrobatics.
What it feels like
Reading this collection feels like walking through a modern art museum where the exhibits are constantly shifting, talking back to you, and occasionally dissolving into thin air. The pace is brisk, driven by short, fragmented bursts of narrative that refuse to behave like traditional stories. Instead, you are immersed in a surreal, intellectually playful mood where the absurd is treated with deadpan seriousness and the mundane is elevated to high art. The prose is a masterful collage, smashing academic jargon against pop culture debris to expose the hilarious, tragic failures of human communication. It is a disorienting but deeply rewarding experience, designed for readers who delight in postmodern rule-breaking and find comfort in the wry, melancholic humor of existential dread.
- Mood
- surreal
- disorienting
- intellectually playful
- melancholic
- Tone
- wry
- absurdist
- ironic
- playful
- detached
- Pace
- brisk
- Themes
- absurdity of modern life · failure of communication · urban alienation · fragmentation of reality · linguistic play
- The writing
- The sentences are sharp, fragmented, and wildly inventive collages that smash high-minded philosophy into mundane pop culture.
- The arc
- The reader is initially disarmed by bizarre, laugh-out-loud scenarios, which slowly give way to a profound, lingering sense of existential melancholy.
- Who it's for
- Perfect for lovers of postmodernism and literary rule-breakers who prefer their fiction to be a puzzle of language rather than a straightforward plot.
Content notes
- existential dread
- satirical violence
About the book
Chablis -- On the deck -- The genius -- Opening -- Sindbad -- The explanation -- Concerning the bodyguard -- Rif -- The palace at four A.M. -- Jaws -- Conversations with Goethe -- Affection -- The new owner -- Paul Klee -- Terminus -- The educational experience -- Bluebeard -- Departures -- Visitors -- The wound -- At the Tolstoy Museum -- The flight of pigeons from the palace -- A few moments of sleeping and waking -- The temptation of St. Anthony -- Sentence -- Pepperoni -- Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby -- Lightning -- The catechist -- Porcupines at the university -- Sakrete -- Captain Blood -- 110 West Sixty-first Street -- The film -- Overnight to many distant cities -- Construction -- Letters to the editore -- Great days -- The baby -- January.
Description from Open Library.
Books like Short stories
See why they match
BluebeardKurt VonnegutAn aging artist's wry, rambling confession that peels back layers of cynicism to reveal a deeply beating, humanist heart.
A supposedly fun thing I'll never do againDavid Foster WallaceA hyper-articulate, deeply neurotic plunge into the surreal and exhausting landscape of American leisure.
Jesus' sonDenis JohnsonA hallucinatory, jaggedly beautiful stumble through addiction that somehow finds moments of profound grace in the gutter.
Brief Interviews With Hideous MenDavid Foster WallaceA dizzying, darkly hilarious plunge into the neurotic, self-justifying minds of profoundly alienated people.
The mezzanineNicholson BakerA hyper-focused, footnote-laden love letter to the overlooked mechanics of everyday life that turns a simple escalator ride into a philosophical odyssey.
Lost in the funhouseJohn BarthA dizzying, self-aware labyrinth of language that constantly pulls back the curtain on its own creation.