Excuse Me While I Disappear: Stories

by Joanna Scott

Ranging across history from the distant past to the future, Scott tours the many forms our stories can take, from cave wall paintings to radio banter to digitized archives, and the far-reaching consequences of our communications.

In Venice in the Late Middle Ages, a painter's apprentice finds a way to make his mark on canvases that will survive for centuries. In the near future, after the literary canon has been preserved only on the cloud and then lost, a scholar tries to piece together a little-known school of writers committed to using actual paper. In present day New England, a radio host invites his electrician to stay for dinner, opening up new narrative possibilities for both men.

Written in prose so naturally elegant, smooth, and precise that it becomes invisible, Excuse Me While I Disappear asks what remains of our stories—as individuals and civilizations—after we are gone.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 20, 2021

About the author

from the backcover:
Joanna Scott is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Rochester. She has also taught in the creative writing programs at Princeton University and the University of Maryland. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship during the writing of Arrogance.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Joanna^^Scott

Reviews

[April D]

A wonderful and varied set of short stories - I’ll definitely seek out more of her work.

[Rachel S]

A collection of stories about how we tell stories, ranging from cave drawings to a future where writing on paper is illegal. The events in each short are often recounted second-hand, or years after it originally took place; they aren't concerned with the truth (can a baby disappear and reappear within a few minutes on a subway train?), but creating a new, shared reality between the teller and the listeners.

[Rick]

This peaked with its third story,
"The Knowledge Gallery,"
and I contemplated four stars early on.
I will sample more Joanna Scott.

[Mark Wenz]

I picked up this book from the “New Fiction” section at the library, having never heard of the author. I thought I would give it a shot because the book was short, and I love short stories. Scott did not disappoint. Her style differs from most of the writers I read as it’s broader in scope (some stories are set before the Renaissance), frequently based on true stories, and highly varied in theme and genre (magical realism, realism, historical fiction) and told by a variety of narrators. There isn’t a single story I didn’t enjoy reading, but here are my favorites:
“Dreaming of Fire,” set in the 15th century, about a boy with an active imagination and a wandering mind who upsets the “powers that be.”
“Principles of Uncertainty,” which attempts to capture the various perspectives of people on a subway car when a baby suddenly disappears.
“The Maverick,” told from the point of view of a bear whose owner made it plunge into Niagara Falls in a barrel. Strange!
“Teardrop,” about a woman who takes her niece to a museum, where the niece chips a teardrop off a painting, leaving the woman unsure whether or not to report the incident to the proper authorities.
“Excuse Me While I Disappear,” in which a handyman misjudges a customer’s kindness. Later he finds out that he customer has a radio show on which he tells the story of the overbearing, doltish repairman who insinuated himself into the radio show host’s life--when the repairman simply thought that the customer was being kind.
“When Drummers Drum,” set between the two world wars in a seaside village in Italy. The story has three main characters, all of whom experience a parade through town in highly different ways. The American tourist thinks it’s a display of patriotism, like a 4th of July parade; little does she realize that the police captain in town arrests a local writer, a man with whom he attended school when they were children, because of his dissenting beliefs. The story sets the stage for the rise of Mussolini and fascism in Italy. This was an enjoyable set of stories, and I recommend them unhesitatingly. Grade: A-

[지훈]

Although I enjoyed reading this book, I wasn't especially moved by any one story or component. Maybe I set too high of an expectation based on the title (which I absolutely adore), or I was expecting a different type of short story collection, but I thought that the pieces themselves, while very well-written and stylistically great, were overall aggressively plain. This might be a good book to do for book club for alternative perspectives, but reading it on my own felt mundane more than anything else.

I think in the end, it wasn't a bad collection but it wasn't incredible either. I definitely wanted more from each piece, both in terms of depth and development. It certainly felt like scratching the surface of a deeper and much more promising work.

[Deena Lipomi]

Short stories covering time periods from the ancient past to near future, where words were discovered and where words disappeared, fill this volume. The through line of these tales is one of storytelling through writing and art, which gives it a meta feel, especially since the author slips what the reader assumes is her first-person true account into at least one of them. They are all quiet, literary tales, meant for reading slowly and pondering. A nice collection.

[Judy]

I enjoyed these well-crafted short stories that transported me from the distant past, through the present, and into the future. The common thread of communication ran throughout. I appreciated Joanna Scott's ability to flesh out characters and settings in a limited number of pages.

[Chai]

Each story was uniquely deep and heart filling or depleting in their own ways. Short stories that ask the reader to think and be with the character in their shoes are hard to do. And here, the author does it in nearly all the stories. Don’t know how it ended up in my Libby, but grateful it did.

[Sofia]

Standout stories for me include "The Limestone Book," "Dreaming of Fire," and "The Silver Pearl." I confess, several of the stories in this collection left me wanting... more? More development, more explanation, more... something. But perhaps that's by design?

[Sarah Bennett]

Not my thing!

[Rebecca]

favourite stories: dreaming of fire, excuse me while I disappear (🥺), & when drummers drum. overall loved it all

[Lana]

A fascinating and enjoyable set of stories loosely related by a deep respect for the written word. Some use magical realism, some historical events, but all are inventive and thought provoking.

[Hannah Yoshinaga]

DNF

[Anita Wills]

Didn’t finish

[Jacqueline]

All over the place with this one.

[Emma]

2.5

[Gayl]

something about the narration prevented my engagement with these stories. decided to stop

[Christine]

DNF- this was not for me