BRIEFS is a groundbreaking new collection of "microstories" from celebrated author John Edgar Wideman, previous winner of both the Rea and O. Henry awards saluting mastery of the short story form. Here he has assembled a masterful collage that explodes our assumptions about the genre. Wideman unveils an utterly original voice and structure-hip-hop zen-where each story is a single breath, to be caught, held, shared and savored. A relief worker's Sudan bulletin, a jogger's bullet-dodging daydreams, your neighbor's fears and fantasies, an absent mother's regrets-Wideman's storytellers are eavesdroppers and peeping Toms, diarists and haiku historians. The characters and compass points range from Darfur to Manhattan, from Pittsburgh to Paris, but the true coordinates these stories chart are the psychic and emotional fault lines beneath our common ground. BRIEFS is an unforgettable map of the lives we inherit, those we invent, and the worlds we wander between first and last loves.
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Wideman explores the varieties and tonalities of short stories in this collection of “briefs,” which include streams of consciousness, ponderings, musings, and haiku poems. Many carry snippets from his own life, including lamentations on the high incarceration rates of black men and sorrow at the murder his son committed in his teens. The physical geography is broad and wide: Brittany, France, to Pittsburgh, New York, Arizona. The sensibilities are often urban: an old man’s ire at youth snatching down the net from the basketball hoop, displaced racial hatred, anger, and fear. The interior geography is just as wide, and deep. On writing, Wideman comments on the occasional unbelievable cruelty of writers, and learning to cut back on long works, “settling for the satisfaction of well-wrought miniatures.” That is an apt description of this collection. And like any collection, some briefs are better than others, for some meandering thoughts don’t hold together well without an overarching coherent story. But then Wideman has looked ahead and anticipated reviewers’—and readers’—reactions with a brief on reviewing short stories. More keen observation and introspection for Wideman fans. --Vanessa Bush
--This text refers to the
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This review is from: Briefs (Paperback)
BRIEFS is a groundbreaking collection of "microstories" from celebrated author John Edgar Wideman, previous winner of both the Rea and O. Henry awards saluting mastery of the short story form.Here he has assembled a masterful collage that explodes our assumptions about the genre. Wideman unveils an utterly original voice and structure- hip-hop zen-where each story is a single breath, to be caught, held, shared and savored. A relief worker's Sudan bulletin, a jogger's bullet-dodging daydreams, your neighbor's fears and fantasies, an absent mother's regrets-Wideman's storytellers are eavesdroppers and peeping Toms, diarists and haiku historians. The characters and compass points range from Darfur to Manhattan, from Pittsburgh to Paris, but thetruecoordinatesthese stories chart are the psychic and emotional fault lines beneath our common ground. BRIEFS is an unforgettable map of the lives we inherit, those we invent, and the worlds we wander between first and last loves.
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