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Archive for the ‘Flash Fiction’ Category

Thomas King–“Not Enough Horses” (The Walrus, July/August 2004)

Posted in Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Culture Shock, Flash Fiction, Funny (ha ha), Native Americans, Romance, The Tragically Hip, The Walrus, Thomas King on February 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Road Apples (1991).

A cleverly designed cover signals an amazing album inside. After the vast improvements of Up to Here, Road Apples rocks and is the first of the Hip’s most great and cohesive records from this period.

The one-two punch of the opening rockers “Little Bones” and “Twist My Arm” is sublime.  And Downie has really found his voice at this point.  Those initial two songs show the kind of complexities the band will add on future discs.

The rest of the disc is really successful raw, bluesy rock.  The guitar solos are longer and more substantial (songs like “Bring It All Back” showcases Rob Baker soloing skills).  And the bulk of the rest are songs that could be staples of any classic rock station.

But they mix up the styles a bit as well.  “Cordelia” is a brooding, intense song, that builds from a quiet intro into a rocking chorus, the kind of song which later albums will showcase.  “Long Time Running” is a grooving ballad.   And “Fiddlers Green” is a pretty acoustic number.  The final track, “The Last of the Unplucked Gems” is another mellow acoustic track, but it foreshadows some of the great songs the band would write in the future.

Road Apples is a hugely successful disc, although for my tastes it’s on the next two albums that The Hip really hit their excellence.

[READ: January 26, 2011] “Not Enough Horses”

This second flash fiction of The Walrus’ 2004 Summer Reading Issue has a similar “problem” as the first one. It actually feels too long to be flash fiction.  True it is only one page and, since it is mostly conversation, it is very brief.  But the story is actually rather detailed, something which I feel doesn’t quite belong in flash fiction.

Indeed, it is a simple enough story:  a young man would like to marry a Native woman.  He goes to the woman’s father and begins offering him gifts for his blessing.  The father says that in the past the gift would have been horses, although the boy’s first gift is kittens. (more…)

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Camilla Gibb–“You Go First” (The Walrus, July/August 2004)

Posted in Camilla Gibb, Canadian Content, Canadian Music, Death, Flash Fiction, Humiliation, Lydia Davis, Made in Canada, Short Story, The Tragically Hip, The Walrus on February 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE TRAGICALLY HIP-Up To Here (1989).

Up to Here is a pretty big leap from their first EP.  There’s more guitar soloing (not grandiose solos, just little guitar noodling in the songs “Blow at High Dough,” which was used wonderfully for the show Made in Canada (also known as The Industry).

Downie’s voice is more in keeping with what we’d come to know later, and lyrically the songs are esoteric and interesting.

“Blow at High Dough” opens the disc with a very cool guitar intro (“They shot a movie once, in my hometown”) “I Believe in You (Or I’ll Be Leaving You Tonight)” a not terribly good song has some proto-Downieisms: spoken passages, stories in a breakdown of the song, but the subject matter is not that exciting.  Of course, it’s hard to sound good when you’re followed by “New Orleans is Sinking” another fantastic song that still sounds great today (especially in their live versions).

“38 Years Old” is a surprisingly moving song with some slides guitars…a nod to their country/folk roots that they tend to bury under raw rock guitars.

But even some of the less memorable, less exciting songs have great aspects to them.  Songs like “She Didn’t Know” are pretty standard rock songs.  Better than average, but not exceptional.  But the band puts little things into them that bring them up from the mundane: the guitar licks, the backing vocals (slightly R.E.M.-ish).

Even “Boots to Hears” which sounds a bit too much like John Mellencamp in the intro really wins you over by the end (the lyrics are great).  For what really is a debut album, it’s solid and shows great songwriting skills and promise.

They still haven’t quite gotten the hang of cover art yet, though.

[READ: January 26, 2011] “You Go First”

This was the first of four flash fictions in this issue.  Flash fiction doesn’t really have a definition per se (except that it is very short).  There are some masters of flash fiction who can write very compelling stories with astonishing brevity.  These stories are all short (one magazine page a piece), but they feel kind of bloated compared to the writers like Lydia Davis.

Gibb’s story actually feels a lot longer than it is.  It opens with us meeting the narrator’s next door neighbors, Carl the cremator, his obese wife Brenda and their son Jason.  The narrator doesn’t really like Jason, but he’s the only person who will hang out her because he wasn’t around for her birthday party last year.  At that party, her hippie parents encouraged everyone to play a game called Getting to Know Our Bodies. (more…)

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Lydia Davis–Five Stories from Flaubert (Harper’s, November 2010)

Posted in Death, Fears, Flash Fiction, Funny (strange), Gustav Flaubert, Harper's, Lydia Davis, Prefab Sprout, Record Labels on December 14, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: PREFAB SPROUT-Let’s Change the World with Music (2009).

This album was unreleased back in 1992 (it was supposed to be the follow-up to the wonderful Jordan: The Comeback).  Record label confusion left it shelved for many years.  It’s been released now because lead Sprout Paddy McAloon has been having health issues and won’t be releasing any new Sprout music anytime soon.  So he has released this album in what is essentially demo form.

Unlike many demos, though, this one is pretty fully realized.  It’s full of keyboards (where there might be strings for instance) and there are no backing vocals (or any other musicians), and yet for all of that, it doesn’t sound like a scratched out demo or a home-recorded cassette (and Paddy sings his heart out).  There are certainly moments (most evident in the drums at the beginning and end of songs) that sound kind of sparse, but the bulk of the disc is fully formed and quite well realized.

The opening is pretty odd, with Paddy (who normally has a soaring tenor voice) speaking a deep almost rap over a funky beat.  In fact, as the song continues, with Paddy’s voice returning to “normal,” that funky beat continues.  Nevertheless, but the time the sweeping dreamy chorus kicks in we’re back to less funky, more smooth sounding Sprout that I know and love.

Like Steely Dan, Prefab Sprout is not really meant to be enjoyed by the young.  It’s borderline treacly, it’s very sweet and earnest, an my high school self would have scoffed at my enjoying them at all.  And yet for all of that, the songwriting is really magical.  There is religious imagery all over the disc, but it’s there to convey the magical power of music.  And it’s entirely authentic.

And when you combine that with Paddy’s voice its adult contemporary music that is still interesting (certainly too interesting to be played on pop radio).  I think the real key to the success of the disc is the unpretentious, unforced and completely unironic joy that Paddy gets from music.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.

[READ: November 14, 2010] “Five Stories from Flaubert”

I really enjoyed Madame Bovary many many years ago when I read it.  Recently, writer Lydia Davis translated Madame Bovary and her translation is supposed to be exceptional, light years above the translation that I read.  One of these days I plan to read her version.  In the meantime, I’ve got these little short short stories.

I had a hard time deciphering what these little stories were, exactly.  The introduction says that they are “adapted from letters Flaubert wrote to his lover.”  So I guess Flaubert gets a co-writing credit?  There’s a couple more stories online at The Paris Review (but you need to buy the issue to get all ten). (more…)

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Jonathan Franzen–“Breakup Stories” (New Yorker, November 8, 2004)

Posted in Accept, Eurovision, Flash Fiction, Funny (ha ha), Gwar, Jonathan Franzen, Lordi, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story on November 30, 2010| 2 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: LORDI-“Hard Rock Hallelujah” (2006).

When browsing the Wikipedia entry on Gwar, I learned that the Finnish band Lordi (of whom I’d never heard) won the 2006 Eurovision song contest with what is essentially a Gwar-lite stage show.

Unlike Gwar, this Lordi song is extremely catchy and easy to digest (as all Eurovision songs tend to be).  But like Gwar it is fairly heavy and the band are in outrageous costumes (think glam period Kiss with crazy death-monster masks on–how does he sing with all that crap on his face?).

The singer has quite the voice (he sing/speaks in a cookie monster style (but audible–a sort of radio-friendly version of cookie monster) but he also hits very high notes).  The song is an anthemic sing-along like many metal songs from the early 80s (although it’s also pretty heavy).  And, if you listen closely to the bridge it’s sounds a bit like Abba’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme”.  It’s pretty cheesy and that’s clearly why it won Eurovision, and yet I find that after listening to it twice, I was humming it all day.

It’s fun to hear the comments after the song (I wish the recording was longer), but even more amazing is that they won with 292 points (the highest victory ever).  I’m so delighted for them (and for Eurovision that this preposterousness won).

A recent interview sounds like they have gotten heavier than this in recent years (“Bite It Like a Bulldog” kind of sounds like Accept).

Good on ya Finland.

[READ: November 8, 2010] “Breakup Stories”

I’ve been reading a lot of Franzen’s non-fiction in the New Yorker, so it’s nice to get back to some of his fiction.  Because even though the non-fiction is great, the fiction shows how creative Franzen can be.

This piece is, as the title suggets, a series of breakup stories.  It’s really five vignettes about how various couples broke up.  There’s “our friend Danni” and “Danni’s college friend Stephen” and “Ron” and “Stephen’s cousin Peter” and “Peter’s friend Antonia.”  The “stories” come across mostly as character studies in bad behavior.

Danni’s husband can’t admit that he doesn’t want children (and he takes the cowardly way out, what a cad).  Stephen’s fiancée hates that he devotes so much of his time to helping nuns (that’ a funny story).  Ron is a serial monogamist.  He hits it big with an inheritance and tries to settle down, but when he finds out that he can’t, he loses more than the woman he stayed with for six whole months.  Peter cheats on his wife and tries to make the three of them have a “French-style family relationship.” (more…)

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Amy Hempel–“The Orphan Lamb” (Harper’s, September 2010)

Posted in Amy Hempel, Arcade Fire, Flash Fiction, Harper's, The Daily Show, Yuck! on August 17, 2010| 1 Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ARCADE FIRE on THE DAILY SHOW: “Ready to Start” & “Month of May” (2010).

My friend Lar recent wrote a scathing review of Arcade Fire’s new album.  I haven’t heard it at all, so I can’t talk about it.  However, these two songs are from the new disc.

I have to say on first listen neither one wowed me the way their earlier tracks did.  However, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, their live show is really incredibly energetic and fun (even confined to the small set of The Daily Show).

This was especially evident with the second song, which opens with a megaphone and features lots of screaming.  The live set up includes two drummers and two violins. They are truly a band to behold onstage.

We’ll just have to see about The Suburbs though.

[READ: August 15, 2010] “The Orphan Lamb”

I was pretty turned off by the opening paragraph of this story (a rather over-the-top gruesome account of bloodletting).  But since the whole story is only three paragraphs, I decided to proceed.

And I’m glad I did.  The second paragraph gives a nice twist to the bloodletting of the first, adding a huge dose of humanity. (more…)

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Diane Williams–“Ten Stories” (Harper’s, May 2010)

Posted in Diane Williams, Flash Fiction, Harper's, Holidays, Short Story, Sonic, South, Sweet Tea, The Dead Milkmen, Waffle House on April 18, 2010| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE WAFFLE HOUSE Jukebox, Williamsburg, Va (2010).

My family doesn’t normal eat in chain restaurants.  We’d much rather buy local.  So, even if TGIF is good, we don’t know that.  And we pretty much never eat anywhere that has a drive through.  It’s a silly principle, but we have so few principles, that we can usually stick to it.

The big exception comes when we travel!  Especially to the south.  Because there is nothing as exciting as the Waffle House or the Sonic logo.  (I want to do Hardee’s but the Dead Milkmen have spoilt it for me).  And, mmm, sweet tea!

Anyhow, we were enjoying the awesome Pecan Waffles at a Waffle House in Virginia and the quiet jukebox suddenly shouted Turn It Up!  And proceeded to play some kind of honky tonk song.  We were startled.  But it did add some ambience to the place.

I’ve no idea who the singer was or what song it was, and I’m not about to track it down.  But what started off as a pretty obvious twangy honky tonking song ended up being quiet enjoyable.  The guitars were pretty rocking, there was a wild solo at the end, and then the song was over.

It wasn’t quite as enjoyable as the biscuits and gravy, but it was fine nonetheless.  Although the sweet tea was a little too sweet.

[READ: April 17, 2010] “Ten Stories”

Since I’ve been on vacation, I thought I’d come back with a simple, easy story.  This turned out to be ten stories, all of about 3 pages.  And, even though Williams recently won the Pushcart Prize (for a different story), I really got nothing from this collection at all. (more…)

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McSweeney’s #33: The San Francisco Panorama (2009)

Posted in Adrian Tomine, Airlines, Alia Malek, Andrew Sean Greer, Art, Art Spiegelman, Big Star, Book Reviews, Books about music, Books about writers, Brent Hoff, Caddyshack, Canadian Music, Cars, Carson Ellis, Children's Books, China Miéville, Chip Kidd, Chris Adrian, Chris Ware, Comic Strips, Constellation Records, Daniel Handler, Dave Eggers, Deb Olin Unferth, Dicky Murphy, Dip-in Books, Do Make Say Think, Don DeLillo, E.L. Doctorow, Edna O'Brien, Entertainment Weekly, Essays, Flash Fiction, Food, Free Speech, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Geoff Nicholson, George Saunders, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, Greed, Harper's, J. Malcolm Garcia, J.G. Ballard, James Franco, Jessica Abel, Jon Scieszka, Jonathan Safran Foer, Kara Walker, KPOO 89.5--San Francisco, CA, LGBTQ, Mary Williams, Matthew Klam, McSweeney's, Meatballs, Michael Chabon, Miranda July, Mogwai, New Yorker, Newspapers, Nicholson Baker, Prospect, Rachel Maddow, Roddy Doyle, Salman Rushdie, Seth, Seth Fried, Short Story, Sports, Stephen King, The Blues Brothers, The New York Times, The Onion, The Walrus, Tom Bissell, Travel, Universities, Violence, Wajahat Ali, War, Wholphin, William T. Vollmann on January 16, 2010| 8 Comments »

SOUNDTRACK: DO MAKE SAY THINK-Other Truths [CST062] (2009).

I’ve always enjoyed Do Make Say Think’s CDs.  They play instrumentals that are always intriguing and which never get dull.

But this CD far exceeds anything they have done so far (and  they’ve done some great work).   There are only four tracks, and they range from 8 to 12 minutes long.  Each track is named for a word in the band’s name: Do, Make, Say, Think.  And each one is a fully realized mini epic.

“Do” sounds like a gorgeous Mogwai track.  While “Make” has wonderfully diverse elements: a cool percussion midsection and a horn-fueled end section that works perfectly with the maniacal drumming.  “Say” is another Mogwai-like exploration, although it is nicely complemented by horns.  It also ends with a slow jazzy section that works in context but is somewhat unexpected. Finally, “Think” closes the disc with a delightful denouement.  It’s the slowest (and shortest) track, and it shows that even slowing down their instrumentals doesn’t make them dull.

It’s a fantastic record from start to finish.  This is hands down my favorite Constellation release in quite some time.

[READ: December 2009 – January 13, 2010] McSweeney’s #33.

The ever-evolving McSweeney’s has set out to do the unlikely: they printed Issue #33 as a Sunday Newspaper.  It is called The San Francisco Panorama and, indeed, it is just like a huge Sunday newspaper. It has real news in (it is meant to be current as of December 7, 2009).  As well as a Sports section, a magazine section and even comics!

[DIGRESSION] I stopped reading newspapers quite some time ago.  I worked for one in college and have long been aware that the news is just something to fill the space between ads.  I do like newspapers in theory, and certainly hope they don’t all go away but print issues are a dying breed.  When I think about the waste that accompanies a newspaper, I’m horrified.  Sarah and I even did a Sunday New York Times subscription for a while, but there were half a dozen sections that we would simply discard unopened.  And, realistically that’s understandable.  Given how long it took me  to read all of the Panorama, if you actually tried to read the whole Sunday paper, you’d be finished the following Sunday (or even two Sundays later).

Their lofty goal here was to show what print journalism can still do. And with that I concur heartily.  Even if I don’t read the newspaper, the newspapers as entities are worth saving.  Because it is pretty much only print journalism that finds real, honest to God, worthy news stories.  TV news is a joke.  There is virtually nothing of value on network TV.  Fox News is beyond a joke.  CNBC is sad (although Rachel Maddow is awesome!) and even CNN, the originator of all of this 24 hour news nonsense still can’t fill their airtime with non-sensationalized news.

Obviously, there are some decent internet sites, but for the most part they don’t have the budget to support real news investigation.  You either get sensationalized crap like Drudge or rebroadcasts of real news.

So, print is the last bastion of news.  And you can see that in journalistic pieces in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Walrus, Prospect and, yes, in newspapers.

But enough.  What about THIS newspaper?  Oh and unlike other McSweeney’s reviews I’ve done, there is NO WAY that I am writing a thorough comment on everything in here.  There’s just way too much.  Plus, there are many sections that are just news blurbs.  Larger articles and familiar authors will be addressed, however.  [UPDATE: January 18]: If, however, like Alia Malek below, you bring it to my attention that I’ve left you out (or gotten something wrong!) drop me a line, and I’ll correct things.

There is in fact a Panorama Information Pamphlet which answers a lot of basic questions, like why, how and how often (just this once, they promise!). There’s also a Numbers section which details the size, scope and cost of making this (it shows that with an initial start up, anyone could make a newspaper if they talked enough about what the readers were interested in). (more…)

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Periodical: McSweeney’s

Posted in A.M. Homes, Art, Books about music, Books about writers, BritLit, Consumerism, Contests, Corporate skewering, David Foster Wallace, Death, Essays, Fables, Fantasy, Flash Fiction, Funky Web Sites, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), George Saunders, Graustarkian Romance, Hollow Earth, Irish Writer, Joyce Carol Oates, Language, Legendary Saga, McSweeney's, Meta, Michael Chabon, Music, Postmoderism, Roddy Doyle, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Socratic Dialogue, Stephen King, Suicide, The Believer, The Collins Library, They Might Be Giants, Wholphin, Whore Dialogue, Word usage on November 25, 2009| Leave a Comment »

17Many many years ago, I discovered Might magazine.  It was a funny, silly magazine that spoofed everything (but had a serious backbone, too).  (You can order back issues here).  And so, I subscribed around issue 13.  When the magazine folded (with issue 16–and you can read a little bit about that in the intro to Shiny Adidas Track Suits) it somehow morphed into McSweeney‘s, and much of the creative team behind Might went with them.

The early volumes (1-5 are reviewed in these pages, and the rest will come one of these days) are a more literary enterprise than Might was.  There’s still a lot of the same humor (and a lot of silliness), but there are also lengthy non-fiction pieces.  The big difference is that McSweeney’s was bound as a softcover book rather than as a magazine. And, I guess technically it is called Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern as opposed to Timothy McSweeney’s Internet Tendency. (more…)

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Donald Barthelme–“Among the Beanwoods,” “Heather,” “Pandemonium” (Harper’s, November 2007)

Posted in Donald Barthelme, Flash Fiction, Funny (strange), Harper's, Jill Sobule, McSweeney's, Missoula, MT, Postmoderism, Short Story on October 18, 2009| Leave a Comment »

harper novSOUNDTRACK: JILL SOBULE-California Years (2009).

caliSo Jill Sobule had the first hit single called “I Kissed a Girl” (that was sung by a woman).  And it was sort of a novelty hit, which is the kiss of death for any songwriter.  After most people forgot about her, I followed her career for a while.  And I found her follow up to “I Kissed a Girl,” Happy Town, to be a superb album and the follow up to that one, Pink Pearl ,was also really good.  And then she fell off my radar.

California Years is the first album that she self-released (and self-financed).  And it finds Sobule in find voice.  Her voice still sounds fantastic: strong and dusky, with a sly wink. When I first listened to the disc, I enjoyed it immensely.  Further listenings have revealed some flaws to me, which have lessened my enjoyment somewhat.  But before I nitpick, I’ll mention the highlights.

The first three songs are just top of the line.  “Palm Springs” opens the disc with a wonderful air of freedom.  “San Francisco” is another cool folky song, typical Jill.  These two are followed by one of Sobule’s excellent rocking/sarcastic/snotty songs, “Nothin’ to Prove” (catchy and snarky!).

After a few tracks, “Wendell Lee” resumes the fun with a list of all the people she’s dated and what they’re up to now.  “Mexican Pharmacy” & “Spiderman” are two fun/funny songs that close the disc nicely.  The final track is a list of all the people who gave her money to make the record.  It’s a catchy little tune even if you’ll never even try to remember the lyrics.

But there are a few clunkers on the disc. “Where is Bobbie Gentry,” when I first heard it, it was fun to guess that Bobbie had written “Ode to Billie Joe” (I didn’t know she had written it).  And this sort of update to that song (which I actually don’t like that much anyhow) sounded like a good idea, but on repeated listens it seems forced and rather silly (especially the “I was the baby…”) line.

There’s another weird song in the middle section: “Empty Glass.”  What’s weird about it is that Sobule doesn’t normally hold notes for very long, she’s more of a quick singer.  And I think her voice doesn’t really hold up to the chorus of “empty glass.”  My final gripe is with “Bloody Valentine” which begins with the exact same chord structure and vocal melody line as the first song on the disc.  Whenever it comes on I start singing “Palm Springs.”  It also ends with a weird little “rocking” section which simply doesn’t suit the disc.

So, overall it’s something of a mixed bag.  But the highs outnumber the lows by a long shot, and the highs are quite high.

[READ: October 13, 2009] “Among the Beanwoods,” “Heather,” “Pandemonium”

I’ve had these stories lying around for quite some time.  When I first saved them it was because I had just read McSweeney’s #24 which had a Donald Barthelme section in it.  I had read these short pieces then, but they didn’t leave that much of an impact on me, so I decided to re-read them now.

“Among the Beanwoods” & “Heather” are from the 1970s.  And “Pandemonium” was written just before his death in 1989.

And it’s here that I admit that I really don’t know all that much about Barthelme (even having read the McSweeney’s issue).   And I can also admit that I don’t really “get ” him. (more…)

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David Foster Wallace–Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (1999)

Posted in Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, Chris Knox, David Foster Wallace, Demons, Digression, Flash Fiction, Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Harper's, Infinite Summer, John Krasinski, Marriage Trouble, McSweeney's, Meta, Record Labels, Sex, Short Story, Smarty Pants, Snapper, Straightjacket Fits, Suicide, Superette, Supernatural, The 3Ds, The Bats, The Believer, The Chills, The Clean, Topless Women Talk About Their Lives, Violence on September 29, 2009| 1 Comment »

hideousSOUNDTRACK: TOPLESS WOMEN TALK ABOUT THEIR LIVES soundtrack (2006).

topI learned about this soundtrack from a very cool article in The Believer (the beginning of which is online here).  In the piece, the author claims to have never seen the film (he was given the soundtrack by a friend) and he doesn’t want  to change his associations with the music by watching the film.  And now, I too can say I have never seen the film, and likely never will.  And I really enjoy the soundtrack too.

The soundtrack is sort of an excuse to showcase a bunch of bands from New Zealand’s Flying Nun record label.  Featured artists are The 3DS, The Bats, The Clean, Superette, Snapper, The Chills, Straightjacket Fits, and Chris Knox.

It’s nigh impossible to give an overarching style to these songs.  Even when the bands have multiple songs on the soundtrack, they are not repetitive at all.  Even trying to represent a genre would be difficult.  The opener “Hey Suess” is almost a surf-punk song, while Chris Knox’s gorgeous “Not Given Lightly” is a stunning ballad.  There’s a cool shoe-gazer song “Saskatchewan,” and some great simple indie rock (a bunch of other tracks).

The only thing these bands have in common is that they’re all from New Zealand.  And as with any large body of land, no two bands are going to sound alike.  Nevertheless, all of the bands fall under the indie rock umbrella.  It’s a great collection of songs that many people probably haven’t heard.  It’s worth tracking down for the great collection of tunes and, if all you know about New Zealand is The Flight of the Conchords.

[READ: September 24, 2009] Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

After finishing Infinite Jest I wasn’t sure just how much more DFW I would want to read right away (of course, seeing as how I have now read almost all of his uncollected work, that is a rather moot point).  But when I saw that John Krasinski (of TV’s The Office) was making a film of this book, I had to jump in and read it again.

Obviously, there are many questions to be asked about this film ().  Is it going to be based on all the stories in the book?  (Surely not, some are completely unrelated).  Is it going to be just the interviews? (Probably, and yet there’s no overall narrative structure there).  And, having seen the trailer, I know structure is present.  I’m quite interested in the film.  In part because I didn’t LOVE the stories.  Well, that’s not quite right.  I enjoyed them very much, but since they weren’t stories per se, just dialogue, I’m not afraid of the stories getting turned into something else.  The text isn’t sacred to me, which may indeed make for the perfect set-up for a film.

Anyhow, onto the stories.

The obvious joke is that the author of Infinite Jest has created a book with “Brief” in the title!  But indeed, many of these stories are quite brief.  Some are only a couple of paragraphs (which true, from DFW that could still be ten pages).  But, indeed, most of the interviews in the book are brief too (except the final one in the book, which is nearly 30 pages).   (more…)

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