Oh boy, is The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao an interesting, challenging, illuminating book. At first, I wondered if I would be at a disadvantage as I do not get most of the allusions to comic books (though the Tolkien, etc, is not lost on me)—still knowing these things is not necessary to find what you need in this book. I also initially worried over the footnotes—would they be a chore? Would I end up skipping them? Nope and nope. From the beginning, I looked forward to them and what they had to teach me—about the history of the Dominican Republic, about life.

So what about the story? Well, since two of the main characters (Yunior and Oscar) are writers, I’m tempted to call it at least partly a Künstlerroman—but if so, who is Diaz? Perhaps they both are–different sides of him, making one whole or who he was and who he might have become? Really, it is silly to speculate this way about fiction, but when a character in a book is a writer, it’s tempting. Still, this is not only a story about an awkward boy’s coming of age—it is also a story of family and survival and, most importantly, love. Big love. The biggest. The love which you risk everything for—the love you are willing to die for. The love that conquers all (perhaps even fuku).

Oscar is a poignant, painful, and lovable character–I felt for his awkwardness, his desire for love, his attempts at fitting in (the scene when he attempts to start the sci fi club when he is teaching was scorchingly painful to me), and his self-awareness which is in constant battle with his delusions. Equally impressive, are the female characters—specifically Oscar’s mother and sister. Their own brutal histories and sacrifices and survival are breathtaking, heartbreaking.

It’s a beautiful, luminous, and often humorous book told in only the way Diaz can—straight up and with no bullshit. Read it and you will learn something you likely did not know before.

Read about this site slushpilereader.com in P&W (The Democratic Approach to Slush). On the one hand, I think, eh, why not? I like democracy. On the other hand, it’s not something I would ever choose to do with one of my manuscripts–for many reasons, not the least of which is that I know (from personal experience) about how nutty/competitive people can get in any peer-based voting situation.

Speaking of slush piles… if you’ve ever read for one, you know how wacky and off the mark some of the submissions can be. Check out what they have to say about this at the VQR blog: Bad Submissions: The X Factor

SmokeLong Quarterly has just announced application information for the 2008 Fish Fellowship.

Duotrope is in the red zone for donations this month. I know you use their services, you know you use their services, so please consider sending buck or two their way.

Thanks.

The new FRiGG is here. I know I’m going to love it all, especially Three Stories by Patricia Parkinson and Al Green by Jeff Landon. Yeah.

Hello! Caketrain 05 is now available for order. Within you will find a piece by me entitled, “The Villager”.

In a side note: apologies to those of you who tagged me–I have been a bit distracted lately and haven’t had a chance to meme. sorry!

To celebrate the second anniversary of his book, Big Lonesome, Jim Ruland has started a new blog project. Starting with Night Soil Man, he will be discussing one story a day for thireen days, posting anecdotes about all kinds of things: how the stories were written, strange facts he uncovered during research, details about how they were published, and other details.

Sorry to be so long absent and quiet and whatever. Thanks to those of you who have been checking in and I’m sorry, again, for my silence.

Anyway, today I hope you will check out this gorgeousness from my friend Kathy Fish in Spork 6.1: He Once Had a Dog Named Dick Nixon and Other Stories (how can you resist with a title like that?!?!).

An intelligent, darkly humorous, often bleak, but ultimately hopeful book Ron Currie, Jr.’s debut God Is Dead is not to be missed.

I am not your God. Or if I am, I’m no God you can seek out for deliverance or explanation. I’m the kind of God who would eat you without compunction if I were hungry. You’re as naked and alone in this world as you were before finding me. And so now the question becomes: Can you abide by this knowledge? Or will it destroy you, empty you out, make you a husk among husks?

So sayeth the last remaining member of the feral dogs who feasted on God’s corpse after he had come to Earth as a Dinka woman only to die at the hands of the Janjuweed.

For me the above quote sums up this brilliant book—a collection of stunning, provocative fiction all essentially asking the same question—what would happen if the world believed that God was dead? Would things fall apart? Would there be war? Would parents idolize their children? Would the dogs who ate God become false prophets? Would priests commit suicide? All ideas which Currie explores as he weaves together the godless world.

But then maybe things wouldn’t be so bad. That maybe life as we know it will carry on after all–like it always had–God or no God. In “False Idols”, we learn this to be one reality:

And then a strange thing happened: nothing. Gradually we came to realize that the sun still rose in the morning and set at night, the tide still came in and went out on schedule, and we and everyone we knew (for the most part) were still alive and breathing. Talking heads and self-declared experts offered any number of theories, but the gist of it, intuited by most people, was this: God had created the universe and set it spinning, but it would continue chugging along despite the fact that he was no longer around to keep things tidy.

The potential message then becomes: whether God is alive or not, hope is precarious—short in quantity and easily ditched for the more readily available despair. You may find comfort in God, but this comfort can never be 100% safe or fulfilling, for how do you know he is who he says he is? How do you know he will not turn on you and eat you?

Basically: You don’t know and you can’t know. There is always a core choice to be made each day whether God lives or not and that choice is about getting out of bed and living a life in which the rising and setting of the sun is all you can count on is enough.

The narrators in the heartbreaking chapbook, The Sky Is a Well & Other Shorts, are all in search of something–comfort, nuturing, and, perhaps most of all, mother love. These are small girls, young women, adults with children of their own, who yearn for that moment of connection felt so keenly between parent and child. It is a feeling so hard to describe and yet Smith does so evocatively in her explorations of pinning down that moment of connection, or more often, that moment of loss in which the connection is gone forever.

I’ve read many of these stories separately before and loved them, but find them even more moving as they are here, in this collection. Each builds upon the next and while there is certainly a sense of melancholy within the whole, there is also a brilliant kernel of hope, of how she, the narrator, finds her bliss and that is within her own child.

You will be moved by these stories. Read them.

Do not be fooled into thinking the female protagonists in Pia Z. Ehrhardt’s knock-out debut, Famous Fathers and Other Stories, are passive. They are not.

This is not the 19th century—there is no awakening. This woman is not about to head into the ocean. She’s already there, already reborn, and she’s taken charge. She’s in control. She’s got her own place and she’s generous with her freedom.

But like the levee, the reservoir, the water tower, the bridges—she is contained, but just barely. And the men who believe they are restraining her, who believe they have the upper hand, aren’t and don’t. Even in the waterless landscape—the desert—she remains in control, because after all she lives. She rises again like Lazarus—and she is her own Jesus (not the fellow who gives her a ride to the hospital. He’s made to seem important, but we know she would have lived whether he came along or not).

Like the levees we are all so familiar with now in the post-Katrina world, if you make the wrong move, if you push her too far, the woman will break free. She will flood her restraints—she will take over your streets, your house. She will send you fleeing from the city you love. But she doesn’t do this in these stories—she keeps herself as much in check as she can stand. And why? Well, for love. Love is the ultimate prize, the gift. She will do just about anything for love—and truthfully she finds getting it from men easy enough.

So what is she seeking then? What is it that drives her? The key is in her relationships with other women—the mothers, daughters, sisters, friends, other wives—living and dead. These are the people who have power over her. These are the relationships that are tricky, that require finesse. These are the relationship which frustrate and devastate and maybe even leave her feeling powerless, though not beaten. She will keep at it, keep trying to understand because that is what will bring some relief to the hurt: empathy.

The famous fathers? Well, they’re really just a way to try to understand the distant mother—the one whose high-heeled footsteps you hear echoing on the floors down below you—walking away, loud on wood, on tile, and muted with carpet. But always—always—with the father following behind, and the daughter left to wonder if she will ever return.

An absolutely smashing collection which will leave you with Ehrhardt’s powerful and confident voice ringing in your ears. If you are anything like me, you’ll find yourself dog earing every other page so that you can go back and read a certain passage again, relish it. These stories will grab onto you and not let go anytime soon—and you won’t want them to.

Read it.

Oh, that’s just ME. WHAT? Yup, me.

I’m utterly humbled and speechless today as I received my contributor’s copies of The Kenyon Review, Summer 2007 issue within which I have a story entitled, “Have You Seen Us?”

It was a great thrill in this writer’s life when I received my acceptance for this story in February 2006 and now to see the story in print within these beautiful pages is no less a thrill.