I Like Being Killed: Stories [Hardcover]

Tibor Fischer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2000

Fiendishly funny and dark, here is a Canterbury Tales for the millennium, a vision of the New Europe where the young and bright live ultra-hip lives of noisy desperation

Tibor Fischer has been called "a Joseph Conrad with jokes" (The Sunday Times, London). Now he earns the title again with a story collection that ranges from the blackest, high-voltage humor to sober and moving pessimism about the sorry condition of humans at the new millennium.

Here are those left behind by the vacuous nineties: a failed software designer who cannot connect with others, a failed artist, a failed cowboy, a failed solicitor-seducer, a bookseller primed for failure as he tries to read every book in the world, and a venomous stand-up comedienne who has fallen from grace. From London to the French Riviera, from Hamburg to Romania, in the new Europe only the ruthless succeed: the weak are cowed by the strong, the rich fleece the poor, and the ugly is bested by the surgically enhanced.

Reveling in the absurdities of his characters' predicament's, Fischer rescues them from a relentlessly dark fate. Laced with exuberant narrative and matchless comic invention, I Like Being Killed reveals the struggle of intelligence to make sense of our twentry-first century world.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

When it comes to snappy, devastating titles, nobody can beat Tibor Fischer. Calling his new collection I Like Being Killed is enough of a provocation to begin with. But once you've gotten past the title page, you're confronted with seven brilliantly dubbed pieces, from "We Ate the Chef" to "Portrait of the Artist as a Foaming Deathmonger" to the peevish "Then They Say You're Drunk." As all this might suggest, Fischer--best known for Under the Frog and The Collector Collector--is a writer of tremendous dexterity, whose prose surges forward with an irrepressible energy. This fluency tends to push him to the very darkest edges of the black-comic spectrum, and occasionally into the realm of jarring callousness.

Take his opening novella, for example. "We Ate the Chef" starts innocuously enough in Cambridge Circus, but somehow spirals into a Cote d'Azur thriller, climaxing in a particularly ungracious (but utterly appropriate) orgasm. In "Then They Say You're Drunk," Fischer, an adopted South Londoner, explores the quite plausible proposition that Brixton "must have more headcases per square inch than any other place in the world." His portrait of "today's guest nutter" is an alarming bit of urban naturalism:

Walking up to the bus stop, Guy reflected that someone with his trousers around his ankles, trying to eat his shirt, wouldn't normally have troubled him much. It was the size of the shirt eater rather than his activity that was perturbing. Six three and big, big, big; they obviously didn't spare the carbohydrates at the bin. What concerned Guy was that if the shirt eater wanted something to wash down his victuals, and mistook Guy for a can of Tennant's and tugged firmly on his pull tab, Guy couldn't do much about it.

Not too strong in the empathy department, is he? Still, among the casual (and comedic) cruelty there's more than a hint of seriousness. It was Jean-Paul Sartre, another cheery type, who defined hell as other people. But Fischer's narrator in "Ice Tonight in the Hearts of Young Visitors" has other ideas: "I assure you if there is a hell, it will be the most solitary of confinements and cold." --Alan Stewart

From Publishers Weekly

Sharply drawn and often cruel, much-heralded novelist Fischer's first book of short fiction presents a gallery of cynical, angry eccentrics. Some of his desperate, wisecracking English protagonists seize on oddball projects to shape their lives; others are just desperate for cash or sex, or even a comfy place to spend the night. Fischer (Under the Frog; The Collector Collector) offers two novellas and five short stories. The first and longest, "We Ate the Chef," follows resentful, penurious JimAa former rock band manager, now a failing Internet businessmanAas he joins rich acquaintances on the French Riviera. Their hijinks finally let Jim test his "theory that blondes had better breasts than brunettes." Fischer's shorter work is stranger and better. "Portrait of the Artist as a Foaming Deathmonger" starts off as an ebullient killer's tale of his exploits; neither the man nor his trade are what they seem. "Bookcruncher" gives us a well-educated Englishman adrift in New York on a lonely lifetime mission. "Then They Say You're Drunk" surveys the petty criminals and pub drunks of an urban neighborhood "painfully short of warm, goodwill-like emotions" through the eyes of its quick-tempered narrator. The title novella describes a few days in the life of Miranda Piano, a London stand-up comedian who "lived for cock." A failed benefit concert and a surprising trip to Scotland give Miranda the energy to do what she's always wanted to do to her trusting boyfriend. It's hard to call Fischer's work satire, because he provides so little to balance his characters' cynicism; his crisp prose suits those characters perfectly. His stories belong in the abrasive tradition of British comic-novel mayhem, somewhere between Will Self and Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim; readers who find those authors compelling ought to give Fischer a try. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Metropolitan Books (September 12, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805066012
• ISBN-13: 978-0805066012
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,650,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Twice Disappointed, May 14, 2002

By 

Martin Wachter (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Like Being Killed: Stories (Hardcover)

I was excited to find this book when it first appeared in the Amazon catalog. I loved Mr. Fischer's previous titles and have bought many duplicates to give to friends and family. Unfortunately, these stories are neither very interesting nor inventive. In fact, they bare more resemblance to filler articles in more-upscale magazines. Furthermore, I'd purchased the identical collection earlier which bore the title "Don't Read This Book If You're Stupid". If you're a fan, buy it used and don't expect too much. I still have both copies........

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite there, March 15, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: I Like Being Killed: Stories (Hardcover)

While there are moments in several of the stories where the reader
will say 'yes!' or 'that's what I've been trying to articulate,' these
moments do not make a satisfying book.

The stories are interesting
studies of men in bad circumstances. However, they run much too long
to hold the reader's attention without interruption. The plights are
notable, but the characters lack qualities that allow you to empathize
with them. You find yourself wondering why the author didn't allow
something good to happen (by luck or by sheer force of will on the
part of the character) to prevent some of the stories from having
whiny lead characters. I read this book on the bus, and often found
myself becoming more interested in freeway traffic than the
stories.

After reading this book, reading additional titles by this
author is not high on my priority list.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Darker Side Of An Observant Mind, September 13, 2000

By 

"r_mutt" (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Like Being Killed: Stories (Hardcover)

If you haven't read any Fischer... start... NOW!!! If you have read him before, then I probably don't need to coerce you into reading this one. This collection of short stories is the darkest thing Tibor has published. All of the characters face futility, are aware of it, and have no idea how to deal or to change it. There is no Eddie Coffin here (from the Thought Gang). Instead you have a collection on the brink, trying to find some purpose to the ticking clock that has lead us into the new millenium. Not that this book is by any means merely a somber tomb of anxiety. There are some extremely funny passages as anyone who has read Tibor will know to expect, but this book doesn't find humor in the mindless slapstick. It feels around for it in the dark crevices of humanity. There isn't a story in this volumn that doesn't carry it's weight, just as Atlas had to carry his. I highly recommend you read Tibor. You may not want to start with this one (try Under The Frog or the comic The Thought Gang), but do get to this one. You wont regret it and if you do, does it really matter? Ask the Bookcruncher