The Emerald Light in the Air
Stories
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3.0 • 2 Ratings
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
Nothing is simple for the men and women in Donald Antrim's stories. As they do the things we all do—bum a cigarette at a party, stroll with a girlfriend down Madison Avenue, take a kid to the zoo—they're confronted with their own uncooperative selves. These artists, writers, lawyers, teachers, and actors make fools of themselves, spiral out of control, have delusions of grandeur, despair, and find it hard to imagine a future. They talk, they listen, they hope, they dream. They look for communion in a city, both beautiful and menacing, which can promise so much and yield so little. But they are hungry for life. They want to love and be loved.
These stories, all published in The New Yorker over the last fifteen years, make it clear that Antrim is one of America's most important writers. His work has been praised by his significant contemporaries, including Jonathan Franzen, Thomas Pynchon, Jeffrey Eugenides, and George Saunders, who described The Verificationist as "one of the most pleasure-giving, funny, perverse, complicated, addictive novels of the last twenty years." And here is Antrim's best book yet: the story collection that reveals him as a master of the form.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The seven gripping stories gathered in Antrim's (The Verificationist) long-awaited debut collection showcase the author's ability to employ surreal and traditional modes to describe the emotional demons plaguing his characters. The opening story, "An Actor Prepares," is about a dean at a "small liberal-arts institution" who shares his creepy experiences directing a twisted version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The quietly troubling "Pond, With Mud" draws out an awkward chance encounter between a man and his girlfriend's son's biological father in a train station. The remaining five stories speak to each other to form a sort of thematic saga, which portrays the nuanced connections between flawed but sympathetic characters. "Solace" highlights the pleasant early stages of a relationship, and follows a couple's romantic rendezvous in their friends' New York apartments; more seasoned pairs are entangled and on the brink of collapse, but maneuver around each other to achieve temporary harmony in "Another Manhattan," "He Knew," and "Ever Since." Antrim is well attuned to the idiosyncracies that define the rhythm of a relationship, and is particularly adept at giving shape to the complications that inevitably arise between lovers. A collection of great depth to be read, reread, and above all, relished.
