Small Odysseys

A new thing! I’ve loved Selected Shorts for so long—-actors reading short stories!—-and I was so thrilled when they picked Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote for their show, and then years later when they commissioned Best Worst American, which ended up being the title story for my book.

For their 35th anniversary they asked 35 writers to come up with stories. I’m so excited to participate. Hannah Tinti edited, Neil Gaiman wrote the foreword, and Algonquin books will be publishing it on 3 March 2022. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written. Check it out! Pre-order, please!

Sighting: Pnin in Best American Stories 2013

Elizabeth Tallent on her story "Wilderness," and on professor types in fiction (as seen in the back matter of 2013's Best American Short Stories): "Maybe it mattered less, but there was also the grain-of-sand/oyster vexation of fictional professors' almost always being assholes, with Pnin as the fantastically lovable exception to the rule. In fiction, professor is predatory, student is prey. This ironclad dyad goes to bed without caring much about the intricacy, anxiety, and comedy of teaching. So there's room" (337).

The same anthology also features Lorrie Moore's "Referential," a tribute/take-off of Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols."