(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.
I could not get through those. Short as they were. I read the first three or so and moved on. Did they ever congeal to something more than annoying?
I read Inventing the Abbots years ago (almost 20?) when I was about 20, and loved that. I still worry about being a guy and loving that and some other “chickish” short story books, but I did really like it. The Mary Miller book sounds great. I’ll have to pick that up.