There's Something I Want You to Do: Stories (Vintage Contemporaries)

From one of the great masters of the contemporary short story, here is an astonishing collection that showcases Charles Baxter’s unique ability to unveil the remarkable in the seemingly inconsequential moments of an eerie yet familiar life. Penetrating and prophetic, the ten inter-related stories in __There’s Something I Want You to Do__ are held together by a surreally intricate web of cause and effect—one that slowly ensnares both fictional bystanders and enraptured readers. Benny, an architect and hopeless romantic, is robbed on his daily walk along the Mississippi River, and the blow of a baseball bat to the back of his knee feels like a strike from God. A drug dealer named Black Bird reads __Othello__ while waiting for customers in a bar. Elijah, a pediatrician and the father of two, is visited nightly by visions of Alfred Hitchcock. Meanwhile, a dog won’t stop barking, a passenger on a transatlantic flight reads aloud from the book of Psalms during turbulence, and a scream carries itself through the early-morning Minneapolis air. As the collection progresses, we delve more deeply into the private lives of these characters, exploring their fears, fantasies, and obsessions. They appear and reappear, performing praiseworthy and loathsome acts in equal measure in response to the request—or demand—lodged in each story’s center. The result is a portrait of human nature as seen from the tightrope that spans the distance between dreams and waking life—a portrait that could have arisen only from Baxter’s singular vision. Readers will be stunned by his uncanny understanding of human attraction and left to puzzle over the meaning of virtue and the unpredictable and mysterious ways in which we behave From one of the great masters of the contemporary short story, here is an astonishing collection that showcases Charles Baxter's unique ability to unveil the remarkable in the seemingly inconsequential moments of an eerie yet familiar life. Penetrating and prophetic, the ten inter-related stories in There's Something I Want You to Do are held together by a surreally intricate web of cause and effect--one that slowly ensnares both fictional bystanders and enraptured readers. Benny, an architect and hopeless romantic, is robbed on his daily walk along the Mississippi River, and the blow of a baseball bat to the back of his knee feels like a strike from God. A drug dealer named Black Bird reads Othello while waiting for customers in a bar. Elijah, a pediatrician and the father of two, is visited nightly by visions of Alfred Hitchcock. Meanwhile, a dog won't stop barking, a passenger on a transatlantic flight reads aloud from the book of Psalms during turbulence, and a scream carries itself through the early-morning Minneapolis air. As the collection progresses, we delve more deeply into the private lives of these characters, exploring their fears, fantasies, and obsessions. They appear and reappear, performing praiseworthy and loathsome acts in equal measure in response to the request--or demand--lodged in each story's center. The result is a portrait of human nature as seen from the tightrope that spans the distance between dreams and waking life--a portrait that could have arisen only from Baxter's singular vision. Readers will be stunned by his uncanny understanding of human attraction and left to puzzle over the meaning of virtue and the unpredictable and mysterious ways in which we behave. From the Hardcover edition From a contemporary master of the short story: a dazzling new collection'his first in fifteen years' that explores the unpredictable and mysterious in seemingly ordinary experience. These interrelated stories are arranged in two sections, one devoted to virtues ("Bravery," "Loyalty," "Chastity," "Charity," and "Forbearance") and the other to vices ("Lust," "Sloth," "Avarice," "Gluttony," and "Vanity"). They are cast with characters who appear and reappear throughout the collection, their actions equally divided between the praiseworthy and the loathsome. They take place in settings as various as Tuscany, San Francisco, Ethiopia, and New York, but their central stage is the North Loop of Minneapolis, alongside the Mississippi River, which flows through most of the tales. Each story has at its center a request or a demand, but each one plays out differently: in a hit-and-run, an assault or murder, a rescue, a startling love affair, or, of all things, a gesture of kindness and charity. Altogether incomparably crafted, consistently surprising, remarkably beautiful stories "There’s something I want you to do.” This request—sometimes simple, sometimes not—forms the basis for the ten interrelated short stories that comprise this latest penetrating and prophetic collection from the winner of the PEN/Malamud Award and “one of our most gifted writers” ( Chicago Tribune ). As we follow a diverse group of Minnesota citizens, each grappling with their own heightened fears, responsibilities, and obsessions, Baxter unveils the remarkable in what might otherwise be the seemingly inconsequential moments of everyday life. "The ten inter-related stories in [this collection] are held together by a surreally intricate web of cause and effect--one that slowly ensnares both fictional bystanders and ... readers"--Dust jacket flap.