Martha Wilson, "A Short Story About Nova Scotia"

This is not a short story about Nova Scotia.

(from Anderbo)

When I say that this story might be a joke, I mean that in order for it to be art or a joke, it must be public.

Yo dawg, I heard you like meta in your meta. At first I was like eh, okay, this'll be some deconstructionistastic rabbit hole, and I was right, except for the eh, because this was actually kind of fun, even surprising. I could see this being really funny in a live setting. Just sitting here with it on my computer, it was more of a quiet intellectual exercise, and it worked that way, too.
You can read it here.
More on Martha Wilson here.
I found my way to Anderbo via this Esquire blog post on Great Online Literary Magazines.

Benjamin Nugent, "Ollie the Owl"

Jerky fratboys anger an owl monster when they stick a strap-on on it.

(from Tin House, Vol. 10, #3)

The rafters are covered with little cuts, like somebody chucked a lawnmower at the ceiling a few times.

Oh hell yes. It's like I've been searching for a story like this. It's funny, scary, fucked up, it's utterly ridiculous. I mean, essentially, these dudes conjured up an ancient demon by being too disrespectful. It's a frat house. The place should be crawling with monsters summoned by assholism. But it's spooky, and I took the monster with the strap-on seriously.

Mary Miller, "Pearl"

A recently separated woman stays with her parents and tests the waters.

(from Big World)

I let him talk and talk, didn't let on that he could bend me over right there, that I didn't need to hear his sob story. He had no idea how small my world had become.

I loved this story, it's weird and sad. Kinda charming, too. The trick is the sentences. They're quick and smart. Miller really knows when to tell you and when to let the mystery linger.
And, hah, this story has a deleted scene!?

Sue Miller, "Slides"

When David and Georgia were married, he liked to take pictures of her naked. During the divorce, custody of the slides became an issue.

(from Inventing the Abbots and Other Stories)

This story was like a kick to the gut. I saw myself in all the characters. I don't think you've got to get old to feel old, but it helps. If you have the chance to read this, I suggest you do, kinda late at night, when you haven't talked to somebody for hours. Worked for me.

I bought the book used last year when a shop called Molly's here in Philly closed down. This was the first time I opened it, and when I did, a liquor store receipt fluttered out. It's from October 28, 2000. It's got a name on it. I hope Judith bought the three bottles of Chardonnay, the Pinot Grigio and the Crown Royal for a Halloween party, and that she had a good time. I hope the line that says Account Balance 0.00 is merely some default setting, and that she didn't actually spend her last $54 even on liquor at Suwannee Beverage Superstore in Northern Georgia. Or that she did and it was the right move.

Molly Gaudry, "July in Cincinnati"

He brings ice cubes to bed.

(from Dogzplot Flash Fiction)

As I often find myself doing with really short pieces, I read this one twice. I like it. It's a woozy mix of cold and hot. There's something heavy about it, too. The sentences run thick with words, clumps of them. Hard to think concretely about a story like this.
Read it yourself, twice, here.
Visit Molly Gaudry's blog, here.

Damon Galgut, "The Lover"

A South African guy travels though Africa and hangs out with Europeans.

(from The Paris Review, #187)

In a few ways, this reminded me of another Damon Galgut story, "The Follower," published in The Paris Review in 2005. (I wrote about it here.) Both stories concerned relatively wealthy white South African men traveling around with no set schedule and sparking up befuddling relationships with European men. Both, also, perform an interesting literary trick, switching between first person and third, sometimes mid-sentence, without making me wanna barf a scarf. Galgut's got skills, and while I didn't care much for his rare deviations into abstraction, I found myself pleased that the journey and the story kept going, page after page, country after country, in a decidedly imperfect arc. Which was perfect.
You can read a little bit of this story here.

Mary Miller, "Not All Who Wander Are Lost"

A woman starts hanging with the pathetic older man from class, in addition to her boss and a chef from the restaurant where she is a terrible waitress.

(from Big World)

Everything around him seems phallic, and I'm not sure which one of us is the pervert.

Loved this story. Mary Miller is kicking so much ass right now.

Tayari Jones, "LaKeisha and the Dirty Girl"

A girl who collects books loses one. Then she sees a similar looking book in the hands of a Dirty Girl.

(From McSweeney's 28)

LaKeisha accuses the Dirty Girl of being a thief and has her dragged away by a cop. Turns out it's a different book. Wah-wah. As with the rest of the little books in this collection, this is supposed to be a fable, but of course it lacks the part where the jerk learns a lesson. I think it's best to pick one of these up every once in awhile, when I want a quick one.

Here's Tayari Jones site.

John Edgar Wideman, "Microstories"

Lots of little stories. Duh.

(from Harper's, Oct. 2008)

Did I read like a dozen short stories today, or none? These could easily be called vignettes, scenes, meditations, what have you. Some of them read like poetry — scattershot, pretty, wordy, jumping around between subjects and ideas, sometimes losing me or setting my brain in one direction while my eyes still go through the motions. Free from the confines of the "story" these pieces run wild, strangely theoretical then crisply material, and often worth the time brief time it takes.
Read one of them here.

Mary Miller, "Fast Trains"

A rather cold couple takes a winter vacation.

(from Big World)

He's a slightly sad, slightly emasculated dude who likes to shoot b.b. guns and hides his coupons. She's a slightly sad-sacking girl lady who believes she is putting up with a lot and maybe she is. They're an interesting couple but the story was just okay.

Louise Jarvis Flynn, "Everybody's Fine"

Two sisters and baby brother gather at the fortified super-house of their sister Nell.

(from Zoetrope All-Story, Winter ’08-’09)

Who likes to read about rich people? It feels like an outdated thing, stories of mundane little moments in the life of privileged wasps. "Everybody's Fine" could have used a bit of humor, a hint that somehow at some level these people knew they were ridiculous. It's not that it's not well-written — it was — I just didn't care a whole lot about what happens to Percy, Nell, Sue, Dalton, et. al. I guess I'm the snob.

Mary Miller, "Even the Interstate is Pretty"

Two very different sisters are hanging out downtown.

(from Big World)

My sister is inside watching a movie and bleeding. I don’t bleed anymore. It’s not something I thought I’d miss. My mother refers to the whole situation as my apparatus. When I’m quiet she asks if it’s because of my apparatus, and sometimes, in the middle of a conversation, she’ll put her hand on my arm and say: just because you don’t have your apparatus doesn’t mean you’re not a woman.

Loved this story. It's funny and dark and sad and confused. And quick. The dialogue serves real function, nudging the plot and getting the most out of every word. I get these characters, I feel for them, I puzzled over them. Yes! Stories should make you think! To thinking!

You can read a slightly different version of this story here, or you can wait until February when Big World comes out Short Flight / Long Drive, the good people who publish Hobart. They sent me an advance copy and I am grateful.

Brandi Wells, "Bicycles"

Living next to a bicycle thief is not so bad.

(from Hobart #9)

Who is our narrator? A woman or a man? I think it's a woman. I like her interactions with Mike, both put up with each other in charming ways, simple stuck-together ways. It's a sweet and respectful little set-up. Good stuff.

This is Brandi Wells' web site. This is her other site. She kinda scares me.

Gary Lutz, “Devotions”

A guy recounts he failed marriages.

(from Stories in the Worst Way)

Okay, what the hell did I just read? The guy lists his ex-wives — the one he got along with, the drunk, the one who used to live above him — but it's all vague and puzzling. I like that the upstairs neighbor follows him around the apartment, but in general I don't know what's going on. That's cool though.
You read it here and tell me.

Joyce Carol Oates, "Pumpkin Head"

A recent widow is visited by the strange younger man at the co-op.

(from The New Yorker, Jan. 12, 2009)

She wondered if the strange glistening to the air had always been there but in her previous, protected life she hadn’t noticed it.

What a surprising string of moodswings this story is. The initial horror gives way to intrigue. Will there be romance? A philosophical argument? We're so wrapped up in Hadley's head that Anton's agenda is, appropriately, a shock. More horror. This is like a thoughtful little Halloween chapter. An indie short wherein Michael Myers tries to explain himself a little, not that it helps his case. And not that Anton is a monster. In a modern horror story like this one, though, he'll have to do.
Read it here.

Ben Greenman, "Helpmate"

A husband recounts a lifetime of anecdotes and infidelities in a letter to his wife.

(from Correspondences)

As with "Hope," I'm having trouble summing this story up, or figuring what exactly I am taking from it. It was a thoughtful and entertaining thing to read, and that's plenty, but that hardly explains "Helpmate" or why it's effective. It feels right that somebody, an asshole, perhaps extraordinarily so, would reach a breaking point and write a letter like this. It's not like the guy's apologizing for his assholiness. In fact, the whole exercise is hilariously self-serving and the wife, once she gets past the heartache, will have good reason to say good riddance.
You can listen to Greenman reading this story here.
Hotel St. George Press has a crazy web site, a big old Clue house.

Ben Greenman, "Hope"

Thomas keeps writing love letters to his dreamgirl.

(from Correspondences)

He keeps writing to Yamila, despite the fact that in many ways he's moved on. Despite the fact that he doesn't send the letters. I'm not sure who's telling this story, some kind of historian, a person who has a lot of the information but definitely not all of it. Puzzling and touching. I think I'm going to like this collection.

Michael Martone, "An Accident"

An insurance adjuster (I think) goes to the scene of a train vs. truck accident.

(from Double-Wide)

Sort of a gentle, quiet story. But most of all, a jumbled one, skipping through time and space. Sometimes the leaps were a little, not jarring, but off-putting. Because the piece is so short, you kinda feel like you're getting all the info at once. Read it here.

Stuart Dybek, "Death of the Right Fielder"

After the right fielder stops throwing balls back, the players go out there and find him dead.

(from The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Fiction)

Yeah, and then they bury him right there where they found him. They don't even know why he died. You should read this story.

Gary Lutz, “Pavillion”

A guy travels around lecturing about his "new angle" on family starting.

(from Stories in the Worst Way)

I came up with a new angle on how to start a family, an entirely new way of going about the business of it, and went from place to place—parking lots and boardwalks, mainly—to talk up the talking points. I had pass-outs, outgivings—‘literature’ was the word people liked. There was a fifteen-minute presentation and a forty-five-minute presentation, and, for some reason, the longer one always went over better. People wanted to stand through such things.

What a funny, messed up little story. Which is something, I gather, you can say about everything Gary Lutz does. I'm not sure how this "new angle" works, but it's kinda gross and insane. Good stuff. Lutz gets a lot of things done with very few words, and leave some of the weirdest stuff to the imagination.
The Believer and Bookslut have both interviewed Gary Lutz.

Julian Barnes, "The Limner"

A deaf-mute portrait artist works on his last commissioned work.

(from The New Yorker, Jan. 5, 2009)

Mr. Tuttle had been argumentative from the beginning: about the fee—twelve dollars—the size of the canvas, and the prospect to be shown through the window. Fortunately, there had been swift accord about the pose and the costume. Over these, Wadsworth was happy to oblige the customs collector; happy also to give him the appearance, as far as it was within his skill, of a gentleman. That was, after all, his business. He was a limner but also an artisan, and paid at an artisan’s rate to produce what suited the client.

I knew what it was to limn, but not what it was to be a limner, before I read this story. It's an interesting thing, the life of a traveling artist, one who will never make more than a pittance for his impressive work and philosophical considerations. Well, this limner had them, anyway. There's a thin brushstroke between harmless flattery and sinful dishonesty when it comes to painting these ugly, aspiring aristocrats.
Read the story here.
More on Julian Barnes here.