One moron's attempt to steal the secrets of the world's greatest short story writers
i'm aiming to hit five subscribers and that includes my mom
Welcome to Short Stories: Wtf.
This is a newsletter so the first thing I’m going to do is put a big pink “Subscribe Now” button at the top like I’ve seen on Luke O’Neil’s (excellent) “Hell World”:
I’ve been trying to write a good short story for several years now. In an effort to make 2021 the year that it actually happens, I’m going to be revisiting my favorite short story collections and trying to figure out how the amazing writers who wrote them managed to write the amazing things that they wrote.
The current plan is to go through the following collections, take notes, and share some thoughts about them in this newsletter here:
Jesus’ Son - Denis Johnson
A Manual for Cleaning Women - Lucia Berlin
Airships - Barry Hannah
Homesick for Another World - Ottessa Moshfegh
Tenth of December - George Saunders
A Good Man is Hard to Find - Flannery O’Connor
Sixty Stories - Donald Barthelme
Wait Till You See Me Dance - Deb Olin Unferth
Girl with Curious Hair - David Foster Wallace
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere - ZZ Packer
A Collapse of Horses - Brian Evenson
Things We Lost in the Fire - Mariana Enriquez
That’s twelve collections, a number which was not intentional, but which might more or less line up with the twelve months of 2021. I plan to write a couple posts per book but honestly I have no idea how often those posts will come out since it’s going to be a busy year at my day job working on a certain wildly popular team-based shooter videogame.
As noted above I am a moron so I wouldn’t expect any particularly mind-blowing analyses out of this thing. I expect to quote a lot of passages and go “Wow” and maybe ask my friend Roy Graham, who is much smarter than me when it comes to “book stuff,” to explain wtf is going on there.
Where possible I will try to find free online links to the short stories I’m talking about but these are all great collections and if you decide to buy them and read along I do not think you’d regret that decision.
Okay here’s another one of those sweet pink buttons which you should feel free to click if the above sounds like you wouldn’t mind it in your email inbox!
And of course, please feel free to tell your friends!
Love, your good buddy,
Justin Groot :)