Best worst American
Subtitle: stories
By: Juan Martinez
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 198
ISBN-13: 9781618731241
Subjects: Social life and customs; American National characteristics; Americans; Fiction
Work titles: Short stories
Description: "Praise for Juan Martinez: "A little out of the ordinary.... He takes this very unnatural environment and changes it into a landscape."-Hannah Tinti "I loved it."- Etgar Keret These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than ex-pected. There's humor, but it's going to hurt. In "On Paradise," a petshop manager flies with his cat to Las Vegas to meet his long-lost mother and grandmother, only to find that the women look exactly like they did forty years before. In "The Spooky Japanese Girl is There For You," the spooky Japanese girl (a ghost) is there for you, then she is not. These refreshing and invigorating stories of displacement, exile, and identity, of men who find themselves confused by the pres-ence or absence of extraordinary women, jump up, demand to be read, and send the reader back to the earth changed: reminded from these short stories how big the world is. Juan Martinez was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, and has lived in Orlando, Florida, and Las Vegas, Nevada. He now lives in Chicago with his wife, the writer Sarah Kokernot, and their son and two cats. He's an assistant professor at Northwestern University. His work and has appeared in Glimmer Train, McSweeney's, Ecotone, Huizache, TriQuarterly, Conjunctions, the Cossack Review, the Santa Monica Review, National Public Radio's Selected Shorts, Norton's Sudden Fiction Latino, and elsewhere"--

"These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than expected. There's humor, but it's going to hurt"--
Table of contents: title: Roadblock --; title: Strangers on vacation: Snapshots --; title: Machulín In L.A. --; title: On paradise --; title: Domokun in Fremont --; title: The women who talk to themselves --; title: customer service at the karaoke Don Quixote --; title: Your significant other's kitten poster --; title: Well tended --; title: Souvenirs from Ganymede --; title: The Coca-Cola executive in the Zapatoca Outhouse --; title: Correspondences between the lower world and old men in pinstripe suits --; title: The lead singer is distracting me --; title: Errands --; title: Liner notes for renegade, the opening sequence --; title: Hobbledehoydom --; title: My Ssster's knees --; title: The spooky Japanese girl is there for you --; title: Big wheel, boiling hot --; title: After the end of the world: A capsule review --; title: Debtor --; title: Forsaken, the crew awaited news from the people below --; title: Northern --; title: Best worst American.