"It’s nothing in a manner of speaking. As in nothing to worry about."— A Worrisome State of Bliss
"Sitting up quickly, with the sheet wrapped like a scarf around her caffeinated face, she reminded Dane of one of those unsettling fairy-tale creatures, maybe Little Red Riding Hood."— A Worrisome State of Bliss
"Change is terrifying but also a good thing. Like trying out a new coffee blend."— A Worrisome State of Bliss
In the harrowing— and very funny— opener, “The Dane Colony”, a man finds himself the host for an ever-growing population of ants— and makes a surprising decision. In the title story, a provocative meditation on longing, writing and manipulattion, a powerhouse of a New York editor can’t help editing the lives of her husband and lover. And in the collection’s daring centerpiece, “Incident at the Minettas”, Thomas Frank, a war photographer put out of work by peace, comes to New York City to wake up to the sight of his mother being murdered. What ensues is a surreal-all-too-real search through the institutionalized absurdity of post 9/11 New York. Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, Kafkaesque in thought and Nabokovian in style, these thoroughly contemporary stories explore from very different angles what it means to live in the new era, the War-at-Home era.
In dem erschĂĽtternden – und sehr lustigen – EröffnungsstĂĽck „The Dane Colony” findet sich ein Mann als Gastgeber fĂĽr eine stetig wachsende Ameisenpopulation wieder – und trifft eine ĂĽberraschende Entscheidung. In der Titelgeschichte, einer provokanten Meditation ĂĽber Sehnsucht, Schreiben und Manipulation, kann eine mächtige New Yorker Lektorin nicht anders, als das Leben ihres Ehemanns und Liebhabers zu redigieren. Und in dem gewagten HerzstĂĽck der Sammlung, „Incident at the Minettas”, kommt Thomas Frank, ein durch den Frieden arbeitslos gewordener Kriegsfotograf, nach New York City und wacht mit dem Anblick seiner ermordeten Mutter auf. Was folgt, ist eine surreale – allzu reale – Suche durch die institutionalisierte Absurdität des New York nach dem 11. September. Verstörend, aufschlussreich und urkomisch, kafkaesk im Denken und nabokovianisch im Stil, erkunden diese zutiefst zeitgenössischen Geschichten aus sehr unterschiedlichen Blickwinkeln, was es bedeutet, in der neuen Ära zu leben – der Ära des Kriegs-zu-Hause.
The stories all have a life of their own:
The Dane Colony was first published as The Bug Story in a limited private edition in May 2015 by Troll Toast Editions, New York, subsequently it became part of the English and German edition of Every Cripple a Superhero (Limmat Press 2020 / Penguin Press 2022); Manikin was published in the 2016 January/February issue in Quadrant; Incident at the Minettas is a radical reimagination of the novella A Few Familiar Things, which appeared in a limited signed and numbered edition in 2003 in Remise Verlag, Switzerland, 2003, in the author’s English and, as Einige vertraute Dinge, the Author’s German, with drawings by Oliver Krähenbühl. You Look Terrific Tonight was first published in The Means, in November 2005 and, in the author’s German, in Motte im Datenkleid: Schweizer Autorinnen und Autoren schreiben Science (Non) Fiction-Geschichten, edited by Margrith Raguth, Benteli Verlag, Berne, Switzerland,2005. The “Deleted Scene” on p. 199 was published under the title Habitat in A Meaningful Life with Bucket I-VIII, a collection of short prose and photographs, Lumpish Press, Greensboro, NC, 2015.
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Die Erzählungen führen ein kühnes Eigenleben:
