short story shorts.

general update

currently reading: murphy by samuel beckett

purchased: the book of illusions & the brooklyn follies by paul auster; anna karenina by tolstoy; waiting for jake by china mieville; fragile things by neil gaiman



haruki murakami the elephant vanishes
it seems to be the most subtle tweaks and turns he takes into the fantastical. plots stripped down to the luscious, evocative story-meat. i've thought about more than one of these stories after reading, and even bought a new copy of anna karenina because of one. do i recommend it? you bet.

tatyana tolstaya white walls
amazing what the right translator can do. unlike the slynx (which was engaging enough but lacked the visceral phrasing to sink my teeth into) many of the short stories were fluid and lovely and i guess it's some of the best writing i've let into my head for awhile now. hard to ignore the familiar russian depression. to sum it up i finished her stories, terrified of getting old but really, very enchanted.

raymond carver call if you need me
i tend to have a difficult time appreciating stories with carver's domestic theme. if murakami is subtle, carver is ten times as subtle with his quirks. it is a lot of adultery, a lot of divorce. however, all of his stories are consistently, solidly well-written, and well-crafted. plenty thuds of disappointment in people. very real, very gentle storytelling.


lydia davis varieties of disturbance
this lady's brain sets my jealousy meter off big time. one my favourite translators when it comes to most french lit (especially anything blanchot), married to paul auster, and tied to a number of incredible accomplishments. i've admired her for many moon. i didn't realize, until rhianna read and then seethed, that lydia davis's book wasn't really a collection of "short stories". like proust and blanchot, her writing is extremely observational. the story is composed of her, describing or breaking things down while a story colours itself in, in the background. honestly, your enjoyment depends on how much you enjoy kicking back and reading archived detail and analysis.

for example: she breaks down, in staggering detail, a collection of letters sent from a 3rd grade class to a fellow student in the hospital. for pages she organizes her labours, discussing and comparing their grammar, their sentence structures, the level of sensitivity or aggression in their vocabulary... to me? oh, boy, do i like it. but if organization and description alone don't do it for you, trust me (or rhianna) that you're bound to think it's a frustratingly boring wad of words that go nowhere interesting (if they go anywhere at all).


woody allen mere anarchy
all i can really say is that it's insane how much humour this man can pack into a handful of words. the way he writes plots may get formulaic after awhile, but the detail, the characters and the way he lines up elements like dominoes for the length of the story and sets them off in a chain reaction in the last gasp...it all works to pull his stories off in interesting ways.