Well-intentioned but often thin praise pieces.
Famous writers riff on their favorite short stories.
Dubus III asked 50 working writers to write a brief essay praising two short stories. Joyce Carol Oates selects John Updike’s “A&P” and Ralph Ellison’s “Battle Royal,” and Paul Harding spotlights a pair of John Cheever classics: “The Swimmer” and “The Jewels of the Cabots.” While it’s pleasant enough to read seasoned writers celebrating their inspirations, the project has its shortcomings. Because Dubus invited his contemporaries to contribute, the selections tend to gravitate to writers in the New Yorker mold from the second half of the 20th century. Selections are dominated by the likes of Raymond Carver (cited three times), Russell Banks, Jamaica Kincaid, and so on. Many contributors also have their own stories praised by others—Michael Cunningham, Tobias Wolff, Jayne Anne Philips, Stuart Dybek, Ron Carlson, and more—which exacerbates the insular vibe. The better pieces break free from either effusions of praise or workshop analysis and make more adventurous selections or statements. Lois Lowry’s commentary on Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” is a pathway for a discussion of her own experience with grief; Dagoberto Gilb’s piece on Juan Rulfo and Tomás Rivera is both an appreciation and a critique of the American literary canon; Phil Klay opens his piece on Dostoyevsky’s “The Grand Inquisitor” by recalling a near-death experience; and Cunningham blends an essay on the limits of teaching fiction writing with a lucid study of James Joyce’s “The Dead” and its iconic ending, “one of the greatest paragraphs produced by human hand.” Some of the authors share writing prompts, suggesting this book is intended as a teaching tool; in most cases here, though, it may be enough to take their recommendations on faith and go directly to the stories themselves. Other contributors include T.C. Boyle, Meg Wolitzer, Richard Russo, Lauren Groff, Ann Beattie, and Junot Díaz.
Well-intentioned but often thin praise pieces.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9781567927696
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Godine
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2023
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.
In which the veteran humorist enters middle age with fine snark but some trepidation as well.
Mortality is weighing on Sedaris (Theft by Finding: Diaries 1977-2002, 2017, etc.), much of it his own, professional narcissist that he is. Watching an elderly man have a bowel accident on a plane, he dreaded the day when he would be the target of teenagers’ jokes “as they raise their phones to take my picture from behind.” A skin tumor troubled him, but so did the doctor who told him he couldn’t keep it once it was removed. “But it’s my tumor,” he insisted. “I made it.” (Eventually, he found a semitrained doctor to remove and give him the lipoma, which he proceeded to feed to a turtle.) The deaths of others are much on the author’s mind as well: He contemplates the suicide of his sister Tiffany, his alcoholic mother’s death, and his cantankerous father’s erratic behavior. His contemplation of his mother’s drinking—and his family’s denial of it—makes for some of the most poignant writing in the book: The sound of her putting ice in a rocks glass increasingly sounded “like a trigger being cocked.” Despite the gloom, however, frivolity still abides in the Sedaris clan. His summer home on the Carolina coast, which he dubbed the Sea Section, overspills with irreverent bantering between him and his siblings as his long-suffering partner, Hugh, looks on. Sedaris hasn’t lost his capacity for bemused observations of the people he encounters. For example, cashiers who say “have a blessed day” make him feel “like you’ve been sprayed against your will with God cologne.” But bad news has sharpened the author’s humor, and this book is defined by a persistent, engaging bafflement over how seriously or unseriously to take life when it’s increasingly filled with Trump and funerals.
Sedaris at his darkest—and his best.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-39238-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2018
PROFILES
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