Stories in the Worst Way

Fiction. Short Stories. Originally released by Knopf in 1996, Lutz's rigorously innovative debut barely made a ripple in the mainstream publishing world. Meanwhile, however, the book attained a cult status, and its influence has grown tremendously in the years since its appearance, disappearance, and reappearance. "Gary Lutz is a sentence writer from another planet, deploying language with unmatched invention. He is not just an original literary artist, but maybe the only one to so strenuously reject the training wheels limiting American narrative practice. What results are stories nearly too good to read: crushingly sad, odd, and awe-inspiring"--Ben Marcus. Thirty-six stories on unpleasant characters creating unpleasant situations. The story, In Waking Hours, is on a corporate type who vents his hate of people by mimicking them, while in Slops a professor exploits a bowl disorder to keep people away. Some stories are only a few sentences long. What could be worse than having to be seen resorting to your own life?