Search Results for: fiction

Frogs

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] An aunt recalls how she met her husband. (From Mo Yan, 2012 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.)

“‘If you want to know why I married Hao Dashou, I have to start with the frogs. Some old friends got together for dinner on the night I announced my retirement, and I wound up drunk – I hadn’t drunk much, less than a bowlful, but it was cheap liquor. Xie Xiaoque, the son of the restaurant owner, Xie Baizhua, one of those sweet-potato kids of the ‘63 famine, took out a bottle of ultra-strong Wuliangye – to honour me, he said – but it was counterfeit, and my head was reeling. Everyone at the table was wobbly, barely able to stand, and Xie Xiaoque himself foamed at the mouth till his eyes rolled up into his head.’”

Author: Mo Yan
Source: Granta
Published: Oct 11, 2012
Length: 14 minutes (3,591 words)

[Fiction] A father uses his lottery winnings for an extravagant birthday party for his teenage daughter:

September 3rd: Having just turned forty, have resolved to embark on grand project of writing every day in this new black book just got at OfficeMax. Exciting to think how in one year, at rate of one page/day, will have written three hundred and sixty-five pages, and what a picture of life and times then available for kids & grandkids, even greatgrandkids, whoever, all are welcome (!) to see how life really was/is now. Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passé? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? Last night dreamed of two demons having sex and found it was only two cats fighting outside window. Will future people be aware of concept of ‘demons’? Will they find our belief in ‘demons’ quaint? Will ‘windows’ even exist? Interesting to future generations that even sophisticated college grad like me sometimes woke in cold sweat, thinking of demons, believing one possibly under bed? Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading this, if you want to know what a ‘demon’ was, go look it up, in something called an encyclopedia, if you even still have those!

Am getting off track, due to tired, due to those fighting cats.

“The Semplica-Girl Diaries.” — George Saunders, The New Yorker

More by George Saunders

The Semplica-Girl Diaries

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A father uses his lottery winnings for an extravagant birthday party for his teenage daughter:

“September 3rd: Having just turned forty, have resolved to embark on grand project of writing every day in this new black book just got at OfficeMax. Exciting to think how in one year, at rate of one page/day, will have written three hundred and sixty-five pages, and what a picture of life and times then available for kids & grandkids, even greatgrandkids, whoever, all are welcome (!) to see how life really was/is now. Because what do we know of other times really? How clothes smelled and carriages sounded? Will future people know, for example, about sound of airplanes going over at night, since airplanes by that time passé? Will future people know sometimes cats fought in night? Because by that time some chemical invented to make cats not fight? Last night dreamed of two demons having sex and found it was only two cats fighting outside window. Will future people be aware of concept of ‘demons’? Will they find our belief in ‘demons’ quaint? Will ‘windows’ even exist? Interesting to future generations that even sophisticated college grad like me sometimes woke in cold sweat, thinking of demons, believing one possibly under bed? Anyway, what the heck, am not planning on writing encyclopedia, if any future person is reading this, if you want to know what a ‘demon’ was, go look it up, in something called an encyclopedia, if you even still have those!

“Am getting off track, due to tired, due to those fighting cats.”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 8, 2012
Length: 35 minutes (8,979 words)

“Cold Pastoral.” — Marina Keegan, The New Yorker

See more #fiction

Cold Pastoral

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] A college student grapples with the death of her on-and-off boyfriend:

“We were in the stage where we couldn’t make serious eye contact for fear of implying we were too invested. We used euphemisms like ‘I miss you’ and ‘I like you’ and smiled every time our noses got too close. I was staying over at his place two or three nights a week and met his parents at an awkward brunch in Burlington. A lot of time was spent being consciously romantic: making sushi, walking places, waiting too long before responding to texts. I fluctuated between adding songs to his playlist and wondering if I should stop hooking up with people I was eighty per cent into and finally spend some time alone. (Read the books I was embarrassed I hadn’t read.) (Call my mother.) The thing is, I like being liked, and a lot of my friends had graduated and moved to cities. I’d thought about ending things but my roommate Charlotte advised me against it. Brian was handsome and smoked the same amount as me, and sometimes in the morning, I’d wake up and smile first thing because he made me feel safe.

“In March, he died. I was microwaving instant Thai soup when I got a call from his best friend, asking if I knew which hospital he was at.

“‘Who?’ I said. ‘Brian,’ he said. ‘You haven’t heard?'”

Source: The New Yorker
Published: Oct 5, 2012
Length: 28 minutes (7,023 words)

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: GQ, Allure magazine, The Rumpus, 5280 Magazine, New York Magazine, fiction from The New Yorker, plus a guest pick from Scott Young.

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: Texas Monthly, The Wilson Quarterly, Smithsonian Magazine, Chicago magazine, New York Magazine, fiction from Outlook India, and a guest pick from Jessica Misener.

[Fiction] A young boy and his nuclear family leave their extended family in a remote village for the city slums:

One cold, dewy morning, you are huddled, shivering, on the packed earth under your mother’s cot. Your anguish is the anguish of a boy whose chocolate has been thrown away, whose remote controls are out of batteries, whose scooter is busted, whose new sneakers have been stolen. This is all the more remarkable since, wealth-obsessed though you will come to be, you’ve never in your life seen any of these things.

The whites of your eyes are yellow, a consequence of spiking bilirubin levels in your blood. The virus afflicting you is called hepatitis E. Its typical mode of transmission is fecal-oral. Yum. It kills only about one in fifty, so you’re likely to recover. But right now you feel like you’re going to die.

Your mother has encountered this condition many times, or conditions like it, anyway. So maybe she doesn’t think you’re going to die. Then again, maybe she fears it.

“The Third-Born.” — Mohsin Hamid, New Yorker

See more #fiction picks

The Thirteenth Floor

Longreads Pick

[Fiction] The stigma and allure of a building’s 13th floor:

“In the end, our building’s thirteenth floor went to an American company. The floor’s flats were turned into serviced apartments for Rafell Inc’s expat workforce. It was a direct deal with the builder. None of us earned any commission. In the vacant space where our kids once played carrom and table tennis, where our drivers and servants took afternoon naps and where our youngsters held Saturday night dance parties, now people with names like Brenda and Wesley slept, ate, and watched television. The watchmen claimed the Americans would be up all night sometimes. Maybe it was the differing time zones and residual jet lag that caused their insomnia. It was more likely, however, that the walls of their thirteenth floor flat had retained memories of our laughter, our screams, our amorous whispers and stifled sobs, making the air still crackle with the excitement and anticipation that we had come to associate with that derelict floor.

“In the end, when it was time to dismantle the table-tennis table and move out our discarded furniture to make way for the Americans, we realised we loved the thirteenth floor more than our own plush, over-furnished flats.”

Source: Outlook India
Published: Oct 20, 2008
Length: 6 minutes (1,745 words)

Vicissitudes, CA

[Fiction] A story about an unemployed ethnomusicologist, gray whales, and Miranda July:

‘Garfield was my favorite president,’ said Brandon.

‘James A. Garfield?’ said Kara. ‘President from March to July of 1881?’

‘From Ohio?’ she said.

‘That’s the one,’ said Brandon.

He said: ‘I think he would have proven to be an effective leader if he’d been given the chance.’

Charles put his hand on Kara’s knee.

‘That’s funny,’ said Charles. ‘Garfield’s killer, Charles Guiteau, is my favorite presidential assassin, and it’s not just because we share a name.’

“Vicissitudes, CA.” — Bryan Hurt, New England Review

More fiction