In this Book
- How
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: The Ohio State University Press
- Series: The Ohio State University Prize in Short Fiction
summary
If every story is born of a question—How did we get here? How do you make your arm do that?—the stories in Geoff Wyss’s How search for answers to the mysteries of an astonishing range of characters. The narrator of “How I Come to Be Here at the GasFast” explains why he hasn’t left a truck stop in the two days since he scratched a winning lottery ticket. In “How to Be a Winner,” a sports consultant browbeats a high school football team with his theory of history and a justification of his failed coaching career. Lost in the mazes they’ve made of themselves, Wyss’s characters search for exits on ground that shifts dizzyingly from humor to pathos, from cynicism to earnestness, from comedy to tragedy, often within the same sentence. Although propelled by a razor-sharp, contemporary voice, Wyss’s stories—many set in a New Orleans unknown to television and tourists—have more in common with Chekhov and O’Connor than with “Treme.”
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. 2-5
- Acknowledgments
- pp. vii-viii
- How to Be a Winner
- pp. 1-5
- Child of God
- pp. 6-18
- Exit Strategy
- pp. 19-32
- In This Procedure
- pp. 33-35
- How to Be a Better You
- pp. 49-55
- Profession of the Body
- pp. 56-68
- Kids Make Their Own Houses
- pp. 81-97
- How I Come to Be Here at the GasFast
- pp. 98-102
- Saints and Martyrs
- pp. 103-120
Additional Information
ISBN
9780814274545
Related ISBN(s)
9780814251836
MARC Record
OCLC
868220118
Pages
135
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No