Ben Tanzer's Blog, page 24

The New York Stories is Research Notes at the Necessary Fiction and the thanks are boundless and true.

Seriously. Big thanks to Steve Himmer and the whole Necessary Fiction crew. Excerpt? Word.

"All of which is to say, that the research for a collection like this takes place in my head, and it’s all about memory, what I remember, and what I trust to be true, and finding which stories fit together, even if no one else sees them fitting together quite like I do.

It’s also about wondering about how things work, or might have worked. Why certain decisions get made, why someone punched someone in the face or broke-up with someone when they did? When people choose to communicate, and when they just pause, stumbling over their words and actions, more focused on trying not to fuck-up what’s happening right before them, then on taking a chance to see what might happen if they just took a chance.

This research is about possibility, and looking to the future even as I look back, or a kind of future anyway, a parallel one, where people both real and make believe, grow-up, move on, get lost, and sometimes get found again."

Friday, yo.

The New York Stories is awesome blurb from the endlessly awesome Tim Horvath.

"Long before the floodwaters start to build in Ben Tanzer's New York Stories, we sense their looming presence--the characters themselves drift and swirl about this dying town, trapped in the eddies of past indiscretion, borne along by longings and regrets, snagged upon their betrayals and petty resentments. Yet while one might be tempted to write them off as premature ghosts, here they live on, and like Carver's, these characters call to us from across the barstool, the pool table, the couch, the car seat. And by the end, Tanzer has made a convincing case that a deluge of stories might be the very thing to save us." --Tim Horvath, author of Understories and Circulation

And more to come. Not to mention more information at CCLaP for those who want it.

We are Night Swimming and The New York Stories excerpt at the REVOLUTION JOHN.

I am also quite appreciative to the Sam Slaughter and Sheldon Lee Compton and the whole Revolution John crew for making it so. Excerpt? Word.

"I open the window on the back porch and begin pushing and prying the plywood off that covers it. At first there is no give, but soon there is movement, cracking, and a web-like splinter racing along the board as it bends, then shatters in my bare hands.

I’m hit with a blast of muddy air as a tree branch immediately pushes its way through the window, followed by the fecund, swampy smell of the storm as it blows through the backyard, tossing the smaller trees and bushes to and fro.
When the board is in pieces at my feet, I remove my shirt, wrap it around my hand, and punch through the remaining glass which is hanging before me like jagged teeth.
After step I carefully step through the window, my jeans and Air Jordans still on, little rivulets of blood now streaking down my back, I lower myself into the flood waters that are crashing their way down South Mountain and cascading through the neighborhood.
I hold onto the window frame for one moment, then two, and then take a deep breath before letting go and swimming into the maul of water now surrounding me."

This Book Will Change Your Life - This Must Be The Place by the Sean H Doyle.

We are pool and bed and elevator and stairs and laundry room and read and on the train on the bus in the kitchen doing dishes sweeping the floor and read and we are walking the children to school and making sure they are showered and read and in the office and on the phone and blogging and Tweeting and making sandwiches and depositing checks and read and watching The Americans and taking a shower and brushing our teeth and read and at one time we sat next to our dying father and we were writing his obituary and we heard his last calm breath after so many not calm ones and we were flying home to visit our mother after she was diagnosed with cancer and assaulted on 125th on beautiful spring day and smoking something laced with something and watching people eat peanut butter off of the rug and having a panic attack on the train platform as we rushed to pick-up our son at school and driving in a snowstorm and cars were swerving off of the road in front of us and disappearing into the night blacking out one last time on our bathroom floor and my son being slid into the MRI machine because his spine might not be descending and Sean H Doyle knows all of this because he is our Williams S. Burroughs and This Must Be The Place is his Junky and our Junky because he is our freaker shaman oracle and he knows and he's been there and our fathers are dead but there is write and read and memory and love and breathe.

Mystery Show. Killing it.

Now do hit it. It will most certainly change your life.

This Book Will Change Your Life - How To Carry Bigfoot Home by the Chris Tarry.

Can somthing be heartbreaking, yet delightful? Why not? But what should we call that? Which is not to say that everything requires a label, but to name it, is to know it, and to know it makes it something. But does Chris Tarry the author of the heartbreaking, yet delightful short story collection How To Carry Bigfoot Home even care about any of that. Why should he? That's our job. His job is to write about stay-at-home fathers who kill dragons, sea monsters who offer the chance at redemption and academic programs that ensure mystical beasts such as Bigfoot can lend university positions. And isn't that enough? It is, when Tarry writes likes this, and pulls off the trick of making us smile, while also writing some of the saddest shit we've read in some time. Tarry does something else quite lovely as well as we spend our time wallowing in monsters and folk lore, he sneaks in some more straight forward, or realistic joints, hence keeping the reader on our toes. And kudos for pulling that off Chris Tarry. He also makes a series of subtle comments about manhood, and what it looks like when there is not work, and our expectations are not met, and we have to ask ourselves if this is enough, whether it's taking care of our kids, or honest work. Especially when in so many ways the world doesn't care. Because if no one cares, does any of it it even matter? We don't know if Tarry answers these questions, but he poses them, delightfully, and heartbreakingly, and how can we ask for more than that?

"Immediate, approachable, and human." A most appreciated The New York Stories review indeed.

Quite so frankly it is. Excerpt? Word.

"When read all together, the patchwork Tanzer weaves can finally be truly appreciated. It reminds me of Don Carpenter's The Class of '49 – which, if you know Carpenter, is high praise. Tanzer's characters weave in and out here, and the fictional town of Two Rivers very much becomes a character of its own. As for the people – they run the gamut from fully broken or insane to pensive and almost content. Their relationships are laid bare as fragile and tenuous arrangements, forever just a twist (or storm) from breaking apart." 

Other Fathers, Other Rooms is so happening and so geeked we are.

It really us, and here is what Jason Tucker and Amy Monticello from the Other Fathers, Other Rooms brain trust has to say about it:

"Other Fathers, Other Rooms will be a print anthology of new literary nonfiction focusing on the less-told stories of contemporary fatherhood. Right now, we're gathering those stories, and we want to hear yours."

For more details do go here. And beside that, do hit it, it just might change your life.

(The ARC of) The New York Stories is The Pear Lady and most stoked we are.

Excited screams! Look what I just got in the mail! TY dear @BenTanzer looking forward to gently opening soon.