Books Ben Read

Divorcer by Gary Lutz

I spent four years in a college fiction program being told that Gary Lutz is a “writer’s writer.”  At least four of my teachers had me read from his Stories in the Worst Way. I don’t disagree.  I bought this at a reading of his in Crown Heights.  But it wasn’t fabulous.  It sounds better coming out of his mouth then it does on the page (pages don’t makes sounds.  Whatevs!)

No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July

Can you put a price on art?  I mean, really.  Can you?  ART?  REALLY?

Yes, three dollars.  Because that is how much I paid for my copy of No One Belongs Here More Than You.  This was another tremendous find from my favorite-and-totally-secret-Brooklyn-book-gathering spot.  I had just seen July’s newest film, which (spoiler alert) is narrated by a cat, and I was jonesing for more ethereal, inaccessible Miranda July wackiness. 

In my experience, most people do not like July’s work.  I understand.  It can be sickeningly twee and pretentious and weirdly paced.  If you can’t stomach it, don’t read this book.  These stories are essentially sixteen spec scripts for her next movie (and although I’m four years late on the No One… train, I’m certain her most recent book is nearly identical in execution).

But if you dig experimentation and magical realism and twee and a dash of literary overzealousness, get on it!  July holds her own against the best— Lorrie Moore, Gary Lutz, Aimee Bender, what have you.  In fact, she employs a style that I found downright mystifying.  I get the sense that her stories gather all the details that another writer would never care to mention.  And she omits the details, like names and settings and objects and their significances, that they would.  And it works!  It almost works sixteen times!

Stories V! by Scott McClanahan

(SEXY LADY ALERT!: there is a picture of a sexy lady on the cover of this book.)
I go to a lot of readings.  There are good readings and there are bad readings.  This is because there are good readers and there are bad readers.  Bad readers are very, very hard to endure.  Generally, if a writer has some kind of shtick or schlocky gimmick, they give terrible readings: a few names come to mind.  When Scott McClanahan began to read, I thought he was going to be one of those writers.

He’s not!  He was heavy on shtick, yes.  He walked up to the microphone at Franklin Park (whose reading series I heartily endorse) looking like Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket, with a heavy Appalachian accent (real?) and a stilted cadence that made him sound like the autistic kid in Mercury Rising (totally fake).  I was ready to hate whatever he was about to read.  But it was very, very good.  He even used props!  If you have a chance to see McClanahan read, do it.

They were selling copies of this, his most recent collection of short stories at an Unnameable Books-sponsored table at the bar.  All of his books are published on McClanahan’s own “Holler Presents” imprint, which he prefers to shopping his stories around because he says he can “sell a hundred out of the back of his truck for five dollars each.”  I bought it.  Then I chatted with him about West Virginia (where he lives, and which I had visited) and Maryland (Where I have lived, and which he has visited) and Interstate 70 (which I have driven on and which he has driven on) and he inscribed the following in my copy:

“Ben, thanks for coming.  My great aunt lived in Glen Burnie.  Scott McClanahan.”

The stories in this book are very shticky.  One is “written” in “invisible ink.”  One is a message to bloggers who may write negative reviews of his work.  Many last only a few sentences.  Some have alternate endings.  Not all are good.  But a few of them are great and the book is only five dollars, so, you know, I liked it.

Short People by Joshua Furst

It would be necessary for me to preface whatever I’m about to write (and who knows what that will be?  I’m a loaded gun, y’all!) with a brief disclaimer about my relationship to this book.  As you may or may not be aware, I have spent the past two years as joint caretaker of an historic mansion in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.  It is (was, actually; I’m about to be made homeless.  Give me a job and a place to live!) a student job, and there’s a sort of weird, hidden tradition of the few students who have ever even been aware of the property in leaving behind certain objects for their successors to find.  For that reason, I have in my possession a great many issues of Right On! magazine from the early 90s.  It is also how I received this book.  I found it in a pile of garbage in the third floor hallway.  I have my suspicions as to who left them there, but I’ll keep them to myself. 

Joshua Furst was a professor at the writing program I attended, one celebrated enough that he was advertised strenuously in course packets when I applied to the school.  I never took one of his classes, and sometime during my Junior year he was let go amidst a good deal of protest from his former students.  I only met him once, at a party after he was fired.  Our interaction was, in polite terms, less than savory.  But I found this book he wrote and I read it.

It’s not bad!  It’s a collection of short stories about children.  Some get a little boring.  A few are great (The Good Parents is, by far, the best).  All are groan-worthy; Furst seems enamored of the whole “people-are-inherently-evil-and-nothing-good-ever-happens” concept, and he makes it clear in these stories.  In one, a deadbeat dad accidentally goads his eldest son into eating a whole lobster shell.  In another, two prepubescent siblings dry-hump naked.  And so on.  Stay tuned  to this blog to hear about Furst’s other book, which I found in a different pile of garbage in an abandoned office.