https://www.newyorker.com/books/flash-fiction/blue-island-stuart-dybek
Stuart Dybek writes almost elusively of blue-collar Chicago, where he grew up. In this story, an older mentor (Romy) gives him advice on how to win back a girl. "Just ask her to go walking," he advises. And the narrator does. Dubek perfectly captures the city with all its smells, sights, tastes. Although he has lived in Kalamazoo, MI for many years where he teaches at Western Michigan University, he still walks the streets of Chicago. He has many collections of stories and poems.
9 comments:
Interesting...the first Dybek I read was his "Horror Movie" (The Magazine of Fantasy and SF, Jan '76--the first issue I saw, but not the first I read), which is set in ab inner city, but I'll have to Go Look to ensure it was Chicago...pretty sure it wasn't Kalamazoo...and I have enjoyed everything I've read by him.
I have one from me today, and this one from a recurring guest:
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2024/01/guest-ssw-paul-di-filippo-on-space.html
Don't know him. Sounds interesting.
My short story reading was down to 615 last year after two very high years. I read 42 volumes of stories, down from 60 the previous year. The authors I read for the first time this year include Mary Ladd Gavell, Rudolph Fisher, Edith Pearlman, Edith Maxwell, Edward P. Jones, Helen Ellis, Tod Goldberg, Mary Lavin, Lore Segal and Lucia Berlin. (7 out of 10 are women)
Currently reading Lawrence G. Blochman's second collection of Dr. Coffee stories.
A really good group of new authors. I haven't read Fisher or Goldberg.
One of the poet laureates of blue-collar Chicago and easy to read.
Fisher was a doctor who wrote during the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. Goldberg is Lee Goldberg's younger brother.
Thanks for the listings and for the Dybek video! But, what about his voice suggests Chicago to everyone who might hear him, and immediately?
Patti, my WEDNESDAY'S SHORT STORIES post is up. Sorry for the lateness but Diane took me on a long errand run this morning.
Happy 2024. Mine is Christmas Peacemaker by Virna Sheard
https://ahotcupofpleasureagain.wordpress.com/2024/01/04/first-read-of-2024-the-christmas-peacemaker-by-virna-sheard-1900/
I liked that story. I will look around and see if I can find more stories by him.
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