Book Description
From the award-winning literary magazine Tin House comes an indispensable collection of established and emerging fiction stars.
In just four short years Tin House has established itself as the most eclectic, exciting, and popular literary magazine in America today-writings from its pages have already been honored in Best American Stories, Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. Bestial Noise is the first collection of Tin House fiction, showcasing today's masters of the short form-David Foster Wallace, Amy Hempel, Mary Gaitskill, Ron Carlson, Jim Shepard, Helen Schulman, Jonathan Lethem, and Lydia Davis, along with Tin House discoveries David Schickler, Nancy Reisman, and Julie Benesh. These extraordinary, vital stories are a primer for the current state of cutting-edge fiction and confirm why the Village Voice declared that ' Tin House may very well represent the future of literary magazines.'
About the Author
Contributors include: Dorothy Allison, Max Ludington, Tom Barbesh, Chris Offut, Julie Benesh, Emily Ishem Raboteau, Kevin Canty, Nancy Reisman, Ron Carlson, Peter Rock, Lydia Davis, David Schickler, Stuart Dybek, Helen Schulman, Mary Gaitskill, Jim Shepard, Aleksander Hemon, Katherine Shonk, Amy Hempel, David Foster Wallace, Tara Ison, Lisa Zeidner, Yasunari Kawabata, James Kelman, Dylan Landis, David Leavitt, Fred G. Leebron, Jonathan Lethem, Michael F. Lowenthal
Bestial Noise: The Tin House Fiction Reader FROM THE PUBLISHER
"In just four short years, Tin House has established itself as the most eclectic, exciting, and popular new literary magazine in America." Bestial Noise is the first collection of Tin House fiction, showcasing today's masters of the short form - including David Foster Wallace, Amy Hempel, Mary Gaitskill, Ron Carlson, Jim Shepard, Helen Schulman, Jonathan Lethem, and Lydia Davis, along with Tin House discoveries David Schickler, Nancy Reisman, and Julie Benesh.
FROM THE CRITICS
Kirkus Reviews
Tin House has quickly become one of the countryﾽs most noticed literary magazines—and herewith some of its contributors. Colorful, lively, loud, and often sexy stories rule the day: Mary Gaitskillﾽs offering—from which the collection draws its title—describes the shock of a sudden pregnancy as a woman is surprised to find herself on a hormonal odyssey through pop culture and Cartesian thought in search of some form of truth and desire. A woman is willed a manﾽs skull in Chris Offuttﾽs "Inside Out," a pretense for the character to explore the trade of the dead with a mortician, an encounter bound to turn intimate as "Death produces an irrational need for tidiness and a surprising amount of spontaneous sex." Stuart Dybek explores the relationship between narrative and physical intimacy in a short-short, "Fiction;" Lisa Zeidner writes of a man ("Chosen People") who picks up women at the Holocaust museum by focusing on architecture instead of atrocity; Amy Hempel contributes another memorable short piece, "Beach Town," about a woman who finds a voyeuristic thrill in what she can see of her neighbors through the privet; and what starts as a fascination with a womanﾽs earlobe in Yasunari Kawabataﾽs "Her Husband Didnﾽt" grows through the course of an affair to a poignant lesson on the subtle trapdoors of love. Fred Leebronﾽs odd second-person-plural account of lives adjacent to celebrity ("We Are Not Friends") comes straight out of a Nicole Kidman headline. Other notable contributors include Tom Barbash, David Foster Wallace, Ron Carlson, and Dorothy Allison. Tin House has certainly made a name for itself by sticking to the basic tenet that you-know-what sells, one result beingthat some will find the variety of these stories not so varied. But there are plenty of strategies to choose from even if the subject stays the same, and not a few strong authors make an appearance. Sexy and worthwhile.
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