Brace thyself: The collected short fiction of the inestimable Deborah Eisenberg (who doubles as a 2009 MacArthur "Genius" Fellow) is newly published, a fact which I hope doesn't indicate that she is through with her art. Short fiction is her specialty, yes, but the Eisenberg 27 published stories fill 992 pages. I can't wait for them all (pages, I mean).
In celebration of the book, NPR profiles Eisenberg and her work -- noting immediately that she is a "rare bird" for dedicating herself to short stories.
Picador Vice President and Publisher Frances Coady championed the anthology through a protracted wait for publication rights. "Publishers and booksellers all too often regard [the short story] as a warm-up exercise for a novel," Coady says. "And Deborah Eisenberg proves just how wrong this view can be. Her prose is exquisite. She is emotionally acute. She has a passionate following and it seems a great injustice to me that her readers have not, until now, been able to find all her work in one volume."
"Warm-up exercise." We've heard that before, right, readers?
Fascinating by-the-way details I learned from the NPR piece? Eisenberg dates Wallace Shawn. That feels right. Also? Eisenberg's cessation of smoking cued her writing career; she needed a new outlet for her anger. Which only makes me wonder how many other would-be geniuses are out there who are meeting their emotions through cigarettes rather than through words.
Something new, every day.
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