January 29, 2008
Must
I’ve been reading bits and pieces lately, but some of it has been incredible. Last night was reading aloud from The New Quarterly 105 “Umbrella” and “Knife” by S. Isabel Burgess who, according to the internet, is also a Ph.D. student in nonlinear physics and pattern formation. Which isn’t all that surprising, actually, and her poems are amazing.
In terms of short fiction, from My Mistress’s Sparrow is Dead I’ve fallen in love with “Some Other Better Otto” by Deborah Eisenberg, and now her collection Twilight of the Superheroes is a must must. (Today I told RR that some days it is my to-read list that keeps me from jumping out my office window).
Online: 12 or 20 Questions with Lynn Coady (whose Mean Boy you might remember how I loved.)
Some Other better Otto is an amazingly good story, isn’t it? It’s definite the best one in Twilight of the Superheroes, which is a very good collection.
Eleanor Wachtel interviewed Deborah Eisenberg recently on Writers and Company. The interview is probably still on the site. At the beginning of the story Wachtel mentions that Eisenberg has been compared to Alice Munro, a comparison I don’t really get. Except that they both write short stories that have universes as big as those of novels. But Munro’s short stories feel more whole just as they are. While I felt that almost every story in Twilight (except Otto) really should’ve been a novel.