American - Writer | 1982 -
For a long time, since story collections look almost precisely like novels, I presumed that they were meant to be enjoyed in the same way as novels.
Ben Dolnick
TimeStoryLongLookMeant To Be
A short-story collection is harder to formulate pithy sentences about.
CollectionHarderSentencesAbout
A novel quite possibly won't be good and, even more possibly, will have not-good parts, but at least it won't shape-shift on you; at least you can say that you're halfway through and know that this maps onto some clear, visualizable chunk of narrative.
GoodYouKnowSayWillMore
A social worker named Cosette Rae, along with a therapist named Hilarie Cash, founded 'ReSTART' in what, until then, had been Rae's house.
HouseCashSocialAlongBeenUntil
Sometimes I think there ought to be a coat of arms for all of us who listen to Oberst's band Bright Eyes past the age of twenty-six. 'With Love and Shame,' the motto would read. The handwriting would be the cramped and tortured scribble of a high school freshman.
LoveAgeEyesMottoPastSchool
I know very well that to admit to loving Bright Eyes is to admit to having an overgrown brain region devoted to self-pity, sentimentality, regret, and a handful of other not very appealing emotional states.
EyesBrainRegretLovingAdmitKnow
I would love to love Saul Bellow, but by page fifty of 'Herzog', something within me has wandered into another room.
LoveMePageFiftyWithinRoom
Oberst is one of those musicians that some people hate in a visceral, biological way.
HatePeopleMusiciansWaySome
If you were placing bets on which author would write the tenderest, most moving book about fatherhood, Philip Roth would probably come in at the bottom of the list.
MovingBookYouWriteBottomCome
Upon reading the deeply serious opening of Scott Spencer's 'Endless Love', you will very likely laugh out loud. The tone is something like what you might find in a teenager's diary: verbose, feverish, furiously self-important.
LoveReadingLaughYouFindSerious
In the Children's Zoo, Enrichment meant presenting the goats with a trash can smeared with peanut butter or dangling keys at the end of a broomstick in front of the cow. The goats would knock their heads around the inside of the can and emerge giddy, peanut butter drunk.
ChildrenEndDrunkCowZooTrash
To write fiction is to think that you're doing it wrong - that your work habits are inhibiting you; that you've chosen the wrong subject; that you've chosen the right subject, but that someone else has, unbeknownst to you, already written exactly the book you're laboring over.
WorkBookThinkSomeoneDoingYou
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