Fiction. This expanded second edition of Pelton's stories adds 7 new pieces, including "Republicans and ErectileDysfunction," doubling the size of a book our advertisements already call "required reading in the future." "Pelton's short fictions problematize the reality of postwar America by asking us to think beyond what we've come to know as numb spectators of the electric box and bored participants in the theater of our own absurd lives"--Review of Contemporary Fiction. "This masterful kaleidoscopic hall of mirrors is a vivid tableau of our multiple life's other side. Lucky you've got Ted Pelton minding the store"--Robert Creeley. "Pelton's voice asserts itself with power and grace, and the stories take forms that take off"--Rain Taxi Review of Books.

ENDORSED BY JACK CHAPEAU 2 AN EVEN GREATER EXTENT

Literature & Fiction

Pelton, Ted

Contemporary

Starcherone Books

Poetry. Fiction. A first-of-its-kind collection of hybrid prose-poetry and flash-fiction featuring 61 of today's foremost innovative writers, including Kim Addonizio, Stuart Dybek, Lydia Davis, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Brian Evenson, Raymond Federman, Geoffrey Gatza, Laird Hunt, Harold Jaffe, Kent Johnson, Gary Lutz, Cris Mazza, Joyelle McSweeney, Christina Milletti, Ander Monson, Daniel Nester, Ethan Paquin, Aimee Parkison, Elizabeth Robinson, Martha Ronk, Nina Shope, Eleni Sikelianos, Jessica Treat, Diane Williams, and many more. "Perhaps the writers in this anthology will be thoughtof as PP/FF writers. Perhaps poets, fiction writers, or followers of Orpheus. I would argue that strict adherence to given conventions of form and genre are delibilitating to a writer's creativity and do a disservice to readers. Genre is easier to teach, to quantify and review, but what does it have to do with creating new art?"--Peter Conners, from the introduction.

PP/FF: AN ANTHOLOGY

Poetry

Fiction. PETER: AN (A)HISTORICAL ROMANCE, a controversial new novel by one of our most important, innovative, and uncompromising authors re-envisions Herman Melville's Pierre in 1999 Los Angeles. An orphaned child of privilege, Peter enjoys a snug existence full of things--to eat, to wear, and to play with. But his world is rocked when he meets a young Palestinian woman, Reham, who claims to be Peter's half-sister. DeShell's excessive, digressive opera of objects follows these two to Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Gaza City, teetering on the razor's edge between obsession and rejection, fascination and disgust. "A trenchant indictment of everything rampant materialism sought to co-opt in the late 1990s--love, individuality, history, cultural identity"--TimeOut Chicago. "By turns hilariousand harrowing, Peter is pure dynamite"--Laird Hunt.

PETER: AN (A)HISTORICAL ROMANCE

DeShell, Jeffrey

United States

Fiction. The winner of the 2nd annual Starcherone Fiction Prize, a blind-judged open competition, Nina Shope's debut collection of three novellas demonstrate stunning range and intensity. In the title novella, a young woman learns that her mother is dying and finds herself stalked by nightmarish figures--the hideously transformed maiden, Arachne, an upside-down man in a Miro painting, and the spiders that hatch and haunt the text like tumors--all coinciding with the emergence of her own sexual awareness. With "In Urbem," Shope imagines an archetypal ancient city, that city beneath the pavement of all modern cities, in fantastic prose reminiscent of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Finally, "Hagiographies" explorestwo intense female friendships, both of which are suddenly and arbitrarily shattered, in a wildly inventive narrative proceeding by means of juxtaposed images rather than sequential events. "The dazzling debut of an immensely talented and big-hearted writer"--George Saunders.

HANGINGS: THREE NOVELLAS

Shope, Nina

Fiction. Jewish studies. For decades, Raymond Federman has been dazzling readers with his unique brand of "surfiction"--throwing zany words all over the page and inserting himself into every fiction, often through such zany alter egos as Moinous and Namredef. Now comes the greatest self-reverential work of all as Federman spins all manner of tales of various parts of his own body, recounting his childhood in France, adult life in the U.S., Jewish heritage, and career as a writer, with no effort made to distinguish between fact and fiction, memory and imagination. Previously published in France as Mon corps en neuf parties, Federman's masterpiece is now available for the first time in English, with augmented translation by the author and accompanied by ten photographs by Steve Murez.

My Body in Nine Parts

Federman, Raymond

History & Criticism

Fiction. "Aimee Parkinson's stories always surprise us, telling of the search for elusive identities, the quest for slippery selves and for what it means to be human, a woman. An exciting and memorable new voice"--Robert Morgan, author of GAP CREEK. "These are stories both about the difficulty and the intense suddenness of human connection, about the profound link that exists between being in love and being alone"--Brian Evenson.

Woman with Dark Horses

Parkison, Aimee

Literary

Fiction. THE MAN IN THE STRETCHER brings together 40 previously uncollected stories by this avant-garde playwright, poet, and fictionist, one of the most relentlessly and funnily experimental writers of our time. "Kenneth Bernard is one of the most gloriously antic fiction writers we possess. Think of Salvador Dali or Giorgio de Chirico having written stories instead of painting and you are half way there. His pages have simultaneously awed and delighted me for years"--David Markson.

THE MAN IN THE STRETCHER: PREVIOUSLY UNCOLLECTED SHORT FICTION

Bernard, Kenneth

Short Stories & Anthologies

Fiction. Gothic twists and pop-up trivia from the day-before-yesterday mark these ten fairytales of female lives. At turns reminiscent of Angela Carter, David Lynch, and Isak Dinesen, Nicolette de Csipkay's debut collection signals a fresh, versatile talent worthy of wide attention. "This is a polished gem of a book. Exquisitely written, elegantly imagined, de Csipkay's stories are dreams hardened into dagger points. From the pleasure trip that becomes a little too Kafkesque to the floral sacrifice that turns deadly, de Csipkay's precise and dazzling prose twists and mutates, serpentine, from fairy tale to gothic horror, from banality to peril. Populated by unforgettable characters, in a style too fierce to be false, BLACK UMBRELLA STORIES is simultaneously enchanting and disturbing, and is an absolutely orginal debut"--Jeffrey DeShell.

BLACK UMBRELLA STORIES

De Csipkay, Nicolette

Fiction. In occupied France, an adolescent boy, pushed into a closet as his family is taken by Nazi soldiers, accidentally escapes the death camps. As an adult, "Federman," at once the novelist himself and a literary character, wonders what it means to re-tell this experience, if it can be re-told, or if the reduction of one's story or life to a single moment isn't the greatest of all horrors. Since its initial publication in 1979, THE VOICE IN THE CLOSEThas been hailed as one of the great experiments of prose ficiton: a single sentence, concrete recit of wrenching emotional impact. The new bilingual edition of the text features French and English versions newly revised by the author, with an introduction by Gerard Bucher and an end note by Theodore Pelton.

The Voice in The Closet/ La Voix Dans Le Cabinet De Debarras

Fiction. A man slowly loses everything to his pushy, guitar-playing roommate. Bobby Fischer hears Lenin coming out of the mouth of Buddy Ebsen. But to focus on individual moments like these in Theodore Pelton's debut collection of stories is to deny the dreamlike quality with which images shift on and off our mental screens. "The effect generated by these pieces is nearly visceral--powerful and not easily forgotten . one of the most potent experiences I've had reading literature"--Cris Mazza. "This masterful kaleidoscopic hall of mirrors is a vivid tableau from our multiple life's other side. No joke, folks. These are the echoes about two minutes after the initial blast. And you thought it was beer? Lucky you've got Ted Pelton minding the store"--Robert Creeley.

ENDORSED BY JACK CHAPEAU

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