Fiction. THE HYPOTHETICAL MAN is a darkly humorous collection of stories featuring an assortment of anonymous characters--A, B, and S--all with problems. They work undercover at an amusement park in Illinois or else they work at a secret government facility that would prefer not to be named. They attend a freewheeling sales meeting with death masks on the wall. Some raise pigs, others race goats. One lives in a suburban home where he watches his wife with another man. They are, together, misled, misunderstood, and mistaken often, but their pursuit of answers never ends.

The Hypothetical Man

Literature & Fiction

Maliszewski, Paul

Weil, Ryan

Short Stories & Anthologies

Trnsfr Books

Bridge is a literature, arts and culture journal published out of Chicago. Our first issue includes works of original fiction, poetry, essays and a number of hybrid forms, including travelogues, and group-composed shorts. For more on Bridge, check out our website, where new, shorter work by Bridge print edition contributors appears weekly. Or almost weekly.

Bridge: Stories and Ideas

Arts & Photography

Workman, Michael

Chernoff, Maxine

Lanier, Chris

Zograf, Aleksandar

Gibbons, Reginald

Pollack, Neal

DOMINI, JOHN

Charles, Bryan

Inez, Colette

Vonnegut, Kurt.

Golus, Carrie

Douglas, Thax

Walzer, Kevin

Badikian, Beatriz

Furtak, Rick

Gaughran, Tracey

Hamilton, Greg

Juros, Jake

Kendrick, Monica

Leick, Karen

Leming, Warren

Newberry, Jim

Purcell, Greg

Sparks, Rennie

Syverson, Ralph

Timberlake, Ben

Timmons, Susan

Trykv, Cheryl

Welch, Patrick

Architecture

Bridge Magazine

Joe Mitchell's Secret

Comics & Graphic Novels

Featherstone, Steve

How To Create Comics & Manga

Princeton Architectural Press

Why would two poets invent a fake writer, complete with a fake oeuvre and compelling life story, and then submit their fabrication to a literary magazine? Why might a biographer claim to have interviewed Howard Hughes and collaborated on the reclusive billionaire’s autobiography despite never having met him? Why would a journalist concoct an eight-year-old junkie and then write an article about him, later winning a Pulitzer Prize for her invention? Why might memoirists pretend to be a Holocaust survivor, a gang member, and a recovered addict with a prison record? And why do we believe such wild fictions that masquerade as the truth? Why are we forever getting fooled by frauds?
 Paul Maliszewski explores the teeming varieties of fakery, from its historical roots in satire and con artistry to its current boom, starring James Frey and his false memories of drug-addled dissolution and the author formerly known as JT LeRoy with his fake rural tough talk. Journeying into the heart of our fake world, Maliszewski tells tales of the New York Sun’s 1835 moon hoax as well as his own satiric contributions to a newspaper—pieces written, unbeknownst to its editor, while the author worked there as a reporter. For anyone who has ever lied or been lied to, Fakers tells us much about what we believe and why we still get conned.
 The essays in Fakers explore: 
<ul>
<li>Jayson Blair’s faked New York Times stories, about Jessica Lynch and much else </li>
<li>Early American con artists </li>
<li>Oscar Hartzell and the longrunning Drake’s fortune scam </li>
<li>Internet hoaxes about man-eating bears </li>
<li>Han van Meegeren’s forged Vermeers </li>
<li>Clifford Irving’s fake autobiography of Howard Hughes </li>
<li>Michael Chabon’s fictionalized version of his early years </li>
<li>Binjamin Wilkomirski’s fabricated Holocaust memoir </li>
<li>In-depth interviews with three fakers: journalist Michael Finkel, painter Sandow Birk, and performance artist Joey Skaggs</li>
</ul>

Fakers: Hoaxers, Con Artists, Counterfeiters, and Other Great Pretenders

History & Criticism

The New Press

"You want me to tell you what sets Maliszewski apart? The answer is probity. The answer also is decency. Here's another answer: modesty, tact, exactitude, pertinence, reverence, wit. All told, Maliszewski has all the graces, which is why I, in my old age, am renewed and schooled by him. Oh, and another thing: Paul Maliszewski takes no crap."Gordon Lish
At a campground, a divorced father confronts a man he believes hurt his daughter. A devoted student traces a winding path through the snow, searching for the next most beautiful thing. Two brothers watch their father tinker lovingly with his homemade robots. In Paul Maliszewski’s debut story collection, men and women struggle to do right. They argue. They think. They think again. They have odd dreams. Often they fail at being good, and yet, on occasion, they realize moments of true kindness. In language that is at once simple and supple, plain-spoken and arresting, these twenty-eight stories describe complete lives in sharp detail, lives we may recognize as not unlike our own.
Paul Maliszewski has published essays in Harper's, Granta, and Bookforum, among other magazines. His stories have appeared in The Paris Review, One Story, and BOMB and have been awarded two Pushcart Prizes. Fakers, a collection of essays, was published by The New Press in 2009. He lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and son.

Prayer and Parable: Stories

United States

Fence Books

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Books by Maliszewski, Paul