It would be easy to assume that Interstate comes across as a kind of MFA writing exercise: in eight different sections, tell and retell the horrific story of a shooting on an interstate, in which a father and his older daughter watch his younger daughter die. But this is not some postmodern versi...
Gould Bookbinder, the protagonist of Stephen Dixon's novel, Gould: A Novel in Two Novels is not a nice man. When we first meet him, he is an opportunistic college freshman in the process of seducing a girl whom he later impregnates. This is just the first of several pregnancies for which Gould ac...
Stephen Dixon's stories and novels have an original, immediately recognizable sound and feel –a weird blend of Franz Kafka and Frank Capra. Readers of his previous work will find in 14 Stories that same wry, inventive, knife-edged humor that has come to characterize his distinctive style. With an...
This collection, a nonbaker's dozen of what the author calls post-Frog fictions, work written since his novel Frog - a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Prize - was completed in 1991, is about loss, mainly: culture ("The Rare Muscovite"), allurement ("The Caller"), reliabi...
In the ten stories that comprise Friends, Dixon, a two-time National Book Award finalist for his novels Frog and Interstate, writes with his unusual flair, wit, and gentle irony. Through Will and Magna, characters he first introduced in his first collection Time To Go, Dixon offers many insights ...
A fast-paced novel told heavily through dialogue, "Garbage" examines just how far one is willing to go to live under his own terms.
But maybe I missed something. I don’t think I did. Though maybe something small but important. Right now I can’t think what that could be. Anyway, I love remembering the incident. And that’s all it is, an incident, but one of my favorites with her. It was all in about five minutes. Six, seven, bu...
Don waited for him at the Columbus Avenue corner of their block but his father came up from the Amsterdam Avenue corner and was home an hour before Don gave up his wait. “We’ve a little baby,” Don said on the phone. “Well, of course, little. Well, not of course ‘little.’ It could’ve been a big ba...
It’s a long train ride up or seemed that way but now looking back she sees it couldn’t have been more than an hour and a half, maybe two. The trains were very old, the windows were still open in the hot weather then; the passenger cars were more like very long subway cars going above ground, but ...
She wakes up, complains of pains. He says “We all have them now and then and mostly early morning or late evening. Just take a couple of aspirins,” which she does. The pains continue. Then trouble walking. First she almost trips, then she trips. She calls it an accident. Then she almost trips and...
Snow started this morning when he was taking the trolley to work, let up, his boss told him to go to the Capitol, which was his regular beat, and get a few stories and interviews and about ten choice minutes apiece from some hearings going on, then from the office window of a congressman he was i...
221-224 Page 221.1 don’t know if I can write it. It’s taken me almost two years to get to this page. I don’t have anything more to say. The novel’s run flat. I don’t want to go on with it. But after 221 pages? 220 I mean. And it’s not true I don’t want to go on with it. I do. I’m sure I can too, ...
Nothing unusual. Car driving alongside his, two guys in it. Looks at it, passenger in front smiles at him, he smiles back, looks front, car stays even with his, looks over, no particular reason, just something to do on the road, passenger talking to the driver, he accelerates a little to get ahea...
Still that car commotion, but now just a half block off and smaller. I start for it but get just one step. “Dennis?” “Yes, uh, excuse me?” “Dennis? It is Dennis. Dennis, it’s Harold. How are you?” “I’m sorry, you have to have the wrong number. Person.” “Dennis, stop it, I said it’s Harold. Tell m...
MR. GREENE. It was a beautiful day, clear and dry, the orchards soaked by the early-morning downpour and smelling of fallen fruit and fresh buds. Life fantastic, I thought, when something hard was shoved into my back and a voice said don’t turn around. “Don’t turn what?” I said, turning around an...