Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day [Paperback]

Ben Loory (Author)

Book Description

Release date: July 26, 2011

"Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is that rare find--a book that excites the reader. These tales are hilarious and vertiginous in the calmly absurd manner of Lydia Davis, Jack Handey and Etgar Keret. With his first book, Ben Loory proves he's already a master of the sleight of hand." -Stewart O'Nan, author of A Prayer for the Dying

Loory's collection of wry and witty, dark and perilous contemporary fables is populated by people--and monsters and trees and jocular octopi--who are motivated by the same fears and desires that isolate and unite us all. In this singular universe, televisions talk (and sometimes sing), animals live in small apartments where their nephews visit from the sea, and men and women and boys and girls fall down wells and fly through space and find love on Ferris wheels. In a voice full of fable, myth, and dream, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day draws us into a world of delightfully wicked recognitions, and introduces us to a writer of uncommon talent and imagination.

Contains the story "The Duck," as heard on NPR's This American Life, and "The TV," as published in The New Yorker.

"This guy can write!" -Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The 40 cheerfully ominous stories in this collection feel like collaborations between Tex Avery and Franz Kafka." -Publishers Weekly

"...lonely, haunting, and dreamlike..." -Gary K. Wolfe, Locus Magazine

"Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day might be the best collection of wonder and amazement I have ever read." -Michael Jones, Blogcritics.org

"...loopy yet lovely..." -Elle Magazine

"One of a kind: a thoroughly entertaining antidote to rigid thinking and excessive seriousness." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

From the Inside Flap

"Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is a book that comes alive when you read it. It will stand on its own, pet your hair while you sleep, and hold the umbrella over your head in the rain." -Aaron Dietz, author of Super

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Books; Original edition (July 26, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0143119508
• ISBN-13: 978-0143119500
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 0.6 x 7.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #213,084 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ben Loory's fables and tales have appeared in The New Yorker, on This American Life, and live at Selected Shorts. His book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day (Penguin, 2011) was a selection of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. He lives in Los Angeles, California.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars pure distillate of story July 26, 2011

By Maureen de Sousa

Format:Paperback

Raymond Chandler once said that a "good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled." When I first came to read Ben Loory's stories five years ago, I began to see just what Chandler meant. For me, these stories were, and are, a revelation: in some ways so modern, their brevity suited to our contemporary attention span, so easily consumed sitting on the subway, while wondering how a particular tale might end (I never could guess what would happen next), and yet so familiar: so like the fables, and myths, the sagas, and the dreams and the twilight zones that I have loved, that they feel they must have existed before Ben wrote them.

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is pure distillate of story, boiled down to the essential words that unfurl inside and take up residence, and the disarming restraint of their sinewy form only serves to bring me in closer so that I'm collected inside them, as they are inside this book, as they collect inside my memory, as they make laugh (oh so hard), cower (equally hard), and smile (hardest there is). They make me feel, for those moments when I am in them, that I have a reprieve from this world, and have really lived these stories myself, that I was part of them and those sublimely surreal other worlds that we are still left to discover in this looryverse.

The most visceral moments in reading are the ones to wait for, so absorbing you can almost reach out and touch the taut atmosphere, and the tension of the tale resolves itself inside you. Ben's book is full of these moments, told with a direct simplicity and metre; his words wash over you, delightful and unexpected, like a convenient sprinkler on an unbearably hot day. This writing is no inch of ivory but more a paint-with-water book, the paint inked on in defined lines, just enough, mind, and you simply add your own water to a world that becomes more vivid and real every moment, and then you wipe off the brush, or eye, if need be.

I don't want to give too much away in this review about what you will read in these pages: I will not point out favourites (though i do have them)because each of the stories has its own secrets at its core, and it's how we reflect these stories on ourselves that we come to love one or another best. I will say that these pages are a pastiche of the paranormal mixed with some magic, deepened by dazzling darkness, populated with people, trees, ducks, tvs, the sea, and the breeze, so very many things and beings changing, and they morph before our eyes, and as the characters change, we change too.

If it's not clear by now, this is an exhortation to people that might read this review: I recommend you get this book the minute it comes out. I'm hard on books, but I know what I like, and I love this. I knew at first reading that there was something very special in these stories. I know you will find charm, and enchantment, some anxiety, some sorrow, some sweetness, and occasionally hope here. This is a breathtakingly lovely collection of little stories, so full of nighttime and day, so spare and so fine, I cannot now imagine living my life without it, and can't for the life of me, think why you should either.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars This book will pet your hair while you sleep July 26, 2011

By Aaron Dietz

Format:Paperback

Ben Loory's Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is a book of fairy tales for adults. Kind of. The tales have this sort of secret ingredient in them that makes you feel incredibly wise when you read the book. Like, while you're reading it, you might think, "Of course I don't know why that man did that thing in this story, but I feel like I'm almost smart enough to figure it out even though it's an unsolvable puzzle. Take that, person-who-got-better-grades-than-me-in-elementary-school!"

When Ben Loory read a piece from the book in Denver, my girlfriend and I both cried. When Ben Loory sent me the manuscript for a blurb, I held it in my heart each night for a summer while my girlfriend was in Taiwan. Oh, to get through the day and have stories from this book awaiting you!

Here's the blurb I wrote:

"Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is a book that comes alive when you read it. It will stand on its own, pet your hair while you sleep, and hold the umbrella over your head in the rain."

None of those claims are outrageous in the least.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Short stories that stay with you LONG after you read them... July 26, 2011

By K. McCombs

Format:Paperback

Here's the thing about the stories in Ben Loory's collection Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, each one will make you feel something different. One of them made me cry with its sad beauty. Another scared the bejeezus out of me with its quiet terror. Another made this desert rat of a girl long for the ocean. And still another made me laugh out loud with delight. Some of them torture you with their brevity...wait, you say, that's it? But I want to know more! But Mr. Loory doesn't tell you more. And it's ok really. Only giving you that bit that he's giving you and making that bit so very powerful is what keeps his stories with you for days and days after you've read them. Pondering...imagining...weighing.