An Assortment of Short Story Collections Et Al

As Promised to Inigo Laguda months ago

Yes, the above picture is indeed me.

A few months ago I had just discovered the sucking hole in the universe that is Notes on Substack. It immediately supplanted Twitter and several other social network platforms/doomscroll holes, because I was actually finding people who liked writing.

This was during one of the now quarterly exoduses from Twitter because it’s run by quite possibly the most evil person to ever live. (Make me a coherent case for how a ketamine snorting, apartheid reminiscing, man who manages to flail his way to being the richest person on the planet and also somehow the stupidest shitposter ever is not possibly the greatest evil to ever exist and I’ll be glad to hear it. He’s the single stupidest smart person on the planet, I’m not denying his obvious intellectual horsepower. I’m saying he’s a fucking idiot.) The only people who refuse to leave seem to be every single publisher, editor, writer, friend, etc. that I’m connected to in independent publishing.

I get it, building your brand took years. It’s hard for sub 25k follower accounts to jump platforms. But can we at least acknowledge that this is the greater of MOST evils. Just, you know, staying on Twitter while people run away and acting like nothing is really all that wrong?

But, in the infinitude of the morning scroll I passed a not curated for IG stack of BOOKS on a note. The note was from Inigo Laguda. He was asking for suggestions for books of short fiction. I replied that I’d be right back.

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Several months later

The year is almost over, my best friends are mostly dead, and my enemies are in power.

None of these things seem likely to change in the immediate future: but I can at least make good on THIS ONE THING even if I owe a few people I deeply admire and consider colleagues, friendly acquaintances, fam, tribe, or peers book reviews and I’m terminally late on a short story I desperately want to write.

A Selection of Books of Short Stories for the Consideration of Inigo Laguda as Promised by Emil Ottoman Some Time Ago

And so I will begin. There is no rhyme or reason to the order, this list is not exhaustive, or complete (even to my own library, now I have to consider what dead friend had what book when they offed themself and whether a book may have been lost, left in another state, or eaten by hungry cats. May you never face these problems.) This is just a pile of books I enjoyed, some are out of print, some are never out of print, some are obscure, some aren’t even short stories. But, nevertheless, onward.

Knockemstiff by Donald Ray Pollock

I discovered this book when it came out because it was pushed by Chuck Palahniuk and I was on his website when it was just called The Cult for short, and the forums were cliquey and the book suggestions flowed like wine and you read whatever the fuck he blurbed or suggested because hey, I vibed with him.

Donald Ray Pollock got a degree in creative writing after the age of fifty and after having retired from a paper mill he’d worked at his whole life. A recovering alcoholic, this is as grimy and dirty as American Hillbilly Noir gets. It is also beautifully written. The second short story is one of the single most disturbing shorts I’ve ever heard read aloud at a book event, and it left the audience in shocked silence, every mouth a rictus expressing some form of very violent and primordial disgust. Which is to say the short story was spectacular. Best read in one sitting. This is the ugliest side of small town Americana I’ve ever read.

Burnyouthefuckalive by B.R. Yeager

Don’t let the cover fool you, it’s all one word. This is a collection of short stories by B.R. Yeager (mea culpa, yes, he’s a friend of mine, he just happens to be a fantastic author. We met when I interviewed him for Elle Nash’s now sadly discontinued Witchcraftmag lit mag. We did the interview in two two hour long Zoom sessions on successive weeks and the interview I was able to put together was schizophrenic, but fun to suss from the wreckage of the conversation.) You’re just going to have to trust me, this is an interesting, inventive, and honestly at times real fucking disturbing book of shorts. Ben’s prose is so sharp it could cut god. Nothing makes sense. Comparable tangentially to Ballard, if Ballard grew up in New England and was a punk horror fan from birth, drenched in Lysergic.

Nudes by Elle Nash

This printing of the book is no longer in circulation. Both author photos feature Elle with an AK74, need I say more? (mea culpa 2, Elle is a friend. But she’s also the queen of the Indie literary underground, so get fucked. She IS that good.) These stories sometimes hurt to read. There is a poem about being swallowed by a whale if I remember correctly that didn’t seem out of place. There is one story that originally appeared in New York Tyrant that is too accurately detailed in explaining various violences that can be perpetrated against the human body. Another short volume of razor sharp prose. Elle doesn’t waste words in her prose, so everything hits like a hollowpoint to the gut when you’re being hugged by a friend.

Heartbreaker Stories by Maryse Meijer

I’d read her experimental novel printed on black paper (Northwood) I saw she had a book or two of short stories out. Don’t read this while you’re depressed. OK? I promise you it won’t help.

No Tiger by Mika

You want to gleam the cube, you want weird, you want delirium inducing? I read this when it was pre-print. Mika is fucking awesome. This is only 69 pages long and I promise something in here will fuck your brain up.

The Ice At The Bottom Of The World by Mark Richard

Short stories so tight and so cutting that you will come back to them again, and again, and again, just to read the words. The stories are tight. The writing is immaculate. It won the PEN in 1990 for a reason. I will never not recommend this book if you only know of minimalist writing from Chuck Palahniuk, or Gordon Lish (If you want to get really weird, Mark Richard’s short novel, Fishboy, is… Well it’s fucking surreal. Trivia, he was a friend of and one of the favorite authors of Jackie Onassis, weird world.)

An Elemental Thing Essays by Eliot Weinberger

Fitting. I rotated the picture upside down. Exactly what this book of essays did when I found it. Weinberger elevates the essay to raw, beautiful art rendered in prose so concise and cutting it may as well be fiction. He also translates Chinese poetry, and writes about politics (mid ‘00s, Bush commentary mostly.) This volume includes a history of the life of the Prophet Mohammed that is impossible to put down, it’s compelling, it’s simplified, and it reads like an acid trip. If you want to write good essays, go read everything this man has ever written and start stealing from him. Duh.

Bit Rot Short Fiction and Essays by Douglas Coupland

He coined the term “Generation X” He has several other books of short stories and essays, this is just the one I had close to hand. Any of them are good. (Polaroids of the Dead, Life After God) He’s worth reading. Not every book, but a very interesting Canadian.

Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton

I’m going to be honest, this book is just delirium inducing. I don’t know if it’s in print anymore. I don’t know why I have three of her collections of short stories, I don’t even know if I bought them or they materialized on my shelf. But, worth checking out even if the cover is… Well… It is what it is. (If this has PNW vibes, it’s probably for a reason)

Red Flags by Charlene Elsby

Charlene Elsby is funny, generous, intelligent, and quite possibly insane, I’d call her a friend, she’d probably call the police, but she also may be reading this... See all those page flags? Yeah, she sent me a gift box filled with magic and I owe her a review and a care package back. Short stories from the perspective of people who are actively dying. Including a reprint of her first chapbook, from 2006? When she was 22? The story around the chapbook is wild. It’s bold of a writer to splay their younger guts like this. I think she was 21-22 when she wrote the chapbook. It’s interesting because you can see what will eventually become some of her hallmarks, and some early experimentation, but what eventually became her voice is basically there already.

BAX Best American Experimental Writing by Various

This just happens to be 2016, but if you want to see what real experimental writing looks like, go find a copy of whatever year of this you can find. OK? Then feel bad that it’s confusing, but slowly grow to love it.

Memories of the Future by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky

You will never know how many times it took me to get the pronunciation of his name correct (three. That’s a lot for me.) He was a suppressed Russian surrealist author that they tried to purge but he said fuck you and kept writing. If you have issues with complex grammar and syntax that is meant in some way to both disquiet and disturb you just for how it exists on the page, aside from the content, then go find this. Seven stories of pure fuckin’ Soviet Madness. (He also did a more modern version of Baron Von Munchausen that is fucking amazing.)

Reasons to Live by Amy Hempel

Amy Hempel is the minimalists minimalist. This is the first of her books that I was able to get way, way, back in I believe 2001? 2002? It was hard to find. Even though yes, Amazon did exist. It did not exist for books that had fallen out of print or had short print runs (yet) Wait. Hold on.

The Collected Stories by Amy Hempel

Known to take a week or two to write ONE sentence, Amy Hempel’s entire output up to a decade ago fit into one 500 page book of tight, compact, hilarious, heartbreaking, exquisite short stories. Go get it.

No one belongs here more than you Stories by Miranda July

She’s making waves for her novel from this year, and rightly so, but her book of debut short stories was equally breathtaking. I quote this book nearly every day. The quote, I shit you not, “live the dream potato.”

The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector

If I need to explain why anyone should read this and they have a mind they consider attuned to capital L Literary fiction but they don’t think this is something they should read, they should go home and cut off whatever hand they write with.

A Writers Diary by Dostoevsky

So before he was sent to gulag Dostoevsky got sent there for a circular that he produced. This contains a lot of those broadsheets, along with diary entries and other errata. It’s worth it because it’s Dostoevsky. If you don’t like Dostoevsky, you have a right to that opinion, but you’re fucking wrong.

The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

You can open up this book to any page and find something to read. This got me through some shitty dark nights of the soul in prison. I can’t recommend it more for that alone. Also, Akhmatova was a VERY interesting character (see also, William T Vollman, Europe Central)

The Police Log II The Nimrod Imbroglio From the Pages of The Arcata Eye

Go far enough north in Northern California and you hit some weird fuckin’ shit. Arcata is a university/acid/hippie town, the police blotter in the local paper is so surreally funny and wild that even though 1312 until I die, mostly this is taking the shit out of the cops. It’s just fuckin’ funny.

Inigo Laguda

if you really want this, it can be hard to find because it was printed locally in Northern California and I’d send you one of my 2 or 3 original copies.

The Collected Fictions of Borges

Do I need to explain or can we skip along? No explanation needed? Cool.

Gutshot stories by Amelia Gray

A lot of these stories are like getting stabbed repeatedly. I don’t know why I’m that sort of masochist. The prose is lovely. The cover is cool. It’s another one you can devour, and probably will, pretty fast.

Make Something Up: Stories You Can’t Unread by Chuck Palahniuk

A lot of these were tour short stories. When he goes on reading tours, he’s always working on a short story. Literature as performance art. It’s much more varied than a lot of people would think who only know of his work from Fight Club or Choke (maybe Lullaby or Diary even) And as of now in the United States, it is the most banned book of the 21st century. Way to go Chuck.

House of Psychotic Women an Autobiographical Topography of Female Neuroses in Horror and Exploitation Films by Kier La-Janisse

This is film criticism. It’s also autobiography. It’s also a brick. It was for Elle Nash’s goth book club. It is worth reading. That’s all. No, that’s it, it’s just good.

Amygdalatropolis by B.R. Yeager

ARX-Han wrote Incel. In 2017 Yeager wrote Amygdalatropolis. I’m going to get Incel by Han and do a side by side of both of them, but this novel, is, disturbing. And very short, an impressive feat.

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Well, shit, I ran out of pictures.

That’s the end of the post.