Playlist for The Book of Disbelieving published at Largehearted Boy
“It might be a strange thing to say for the author of a collection of short stories called The Book of Disbelieving, but I believe in all kinds of things.”
Electric Literature: 9 Books with Fabulist Worlds that Push Boundaries
“The novels and story collections that I’ve included in this list range in scope, setting, tone, theme, and method, but they all do something similar: create worlds that defy expectation, that challenge our conception of the ordinary, that renew our understanding of the “fabulous.” But in all these authors’ work, the fabulous is not invoked merely for the purposes of sensationalism—as in The Book of Disbelieving, reality is being manipulated or exaggerated for thematic purposes, to explore some element of our shared collective existence that might have otherwise gone misunderstood or unappreciated.”
“The Memoir,” winner of the Calvino Prize for Fabulist Fiction, published in Miracle Monocle
“With her exercises and Marshall out of the house so she could rest, again [Irene] felt herself regaining strength, so she drove herself to the grocery store for the first time in months, Spector’s IGA, so she could use one of those electric carts on account of she couldn’t stand for too long. She was in the cereal aisle when she noticed that her own photo—herself, Irene Canter—was on a box of Wheaties. Not just one box of Wheaties but all the boxes. Was that really her? Couldn’t be. But—wait, wasn’t it? Not a recent photo but one taken a few years ago before she had the skin damage from sun exposure. On the back of the box, under the caption, “PROFILE IN COURAGE,” was that story of how Irene had saved her friends who were at risk of drowning at Lake Webster….It was a true story. She still got a thank you card once a year from Alicia Latham, one of the survivors, on the anniversary of the incident. But it happened twenty years ago, and no one except Alicia seemed to remember it any longer. Why had they only put it on a box of Wheaties now? And anyway, who told General Mills?”
Essay in the Washington Post on the ethical and political complexity of mendacity.
“If we want to inspire future leaders to be creative, we must figure out how to harness the liar’s ingenuity and bravado — the fearlessness in the face of reality and willingness to assert that what has been accepted as true might not be the truth after all. To do this without lying — to go beyond reality while maintaining a grasp on the distinction between fact and fantasy — that is the visionary’s calling.”