"I call and leave a message because I just don't want to see her tonight. There are nights like that, when I don't want to see her-partly because I am who I am and partly because she is who she is. Lately it's been more because she is who she is than because I am who I am, but I can't tell her that. . . ." So begins "I Leave A Message," one of 18 pieces in K. B. Dixon's collection, My Desk and I. Ranging freely from the fractured character sketch to the political satire, from the study of strained relationships to office angst, these are stories that take liberty with the form in the hope of refreshing it. Short on sentimentality, but not necessarily on sentiment, the characters in this collection-a girl in a coffee shop, an obsessed fan, a Little League pitcher-offer comic, thought-provoking takes on life as it is lived in the corners of a culture preoccupied with the hoopla of a brand-named now.
| |||||||||||||||
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
K. B. Dixon has published poems, stories, and essays in a number of journals. He has written visual arts reviews for The Oregonian, and he was, for a time, a regular columnist for both Scene magazine and Metro magazine. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"Mother. She is a gaunt woman with strange ideas about nutrition. She is obsessed with vegetables—broccoli in particular. Apparently if you eat enough of it you will live forever and have beautiful skin."
ANDREW (A TO Z)
ANDREW (A TO Z)
"I’m having trouble exercising. I’ve been doing sit-ups, push-ups, and deep knee bends for some time now, but lately I find myself being lured away from my regimen by the pleasures of the bottle. Is this a sign that I’ve started to concede something? As I have fewer and fewer days left to me the idea of seizing them has gotten more attractive. If no one comes to the end wishing they’d spent more time at the office, neither do they come to it wishing they’d done one more set of jumping jacks."
TWENTY-EIGHT DAYS
"First find a painter. It’s not as easy as you might think. Ask your artist friends if they know anyone. They won’t be offended that you haven’t asked them—they are abstractionists and performance whatnots and clearly dozens of isms beyond this sort of thing. Be persistent. Eventually someone will admit to knowing someone who will admit to knowing someone who will admit to knowing a figurative painter. Get this painter’s name. Talk to him. His political opinions will be appalling—the neanderthalic excrescencies of talk-radio—but his artistic judgments astute. Visit his new show."
HOW TO HAVE YOUR PORTRAIT PAINTED
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
K. B. Dixon's work has appeared in numerous magazines, newspapers, and journals. The recipient of an OAC Individual Artist Fellowship Award, he is the author of four novels: The Sum of His Syndromes, Andrew (A to Z), A Painter's Life and The Ingram Interview as well as the short story collection, My Desk and I.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Max Planck of literature,
By
This review is from: My Desk and I (Hardcover)
After reading "My Desk and I", I was puzzled. I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. I asked myself how come? It's not like me. My taste runs to books written at least a century ago. I figure if its been around that long, it must have merit. I'm a slow, plodding reader. I can't afford to waste effort and time on something I am likely to abandon after wading through a tedious 100 pages or so. An even bigger puzzlement was: what was it I just read? No doubt the literati assign special descriptive words for books of this sort (assuming there are any). Is it "stream of conscience"? Post modernism? Post realism? Post deconstructionist? I've never attended a literature course, so I haven't the foggiest. The author's story lines, to the extent there are any, go nowhere. Furthermore, they deal in the banal, the trivial, the fleeting day to day, moment to moment, minutiae of everyday life. It doesn't seem to matter. This writer quite obviously cares not a twit about plot. His arena consists of the thoughts and feelings we have when nothing important is
going on. Such feelings as blind ambition, heroic struggle, love, fear, envy, and hate are for those lesser lights who require a hook to hold your interest. Dixon will have none of that. Yet, hold your interest he most assuredly does -- through craftsmanship, through insight. If Tolstoy might be compared to Copernicus, the architect of the big picture, of the churning, smashing, exploding, revolving, massive universe, then Dixon's world is that of Max Planck on a quiet day, the peeper into the hidden, the unseen, the sub-atomic infinitesimal, which comprise the building blocks of all there is. Reading Dixon is not just a delight; it's a revelation of our inner selves.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organize and find favorite items. |
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
