A Twinge of Awesomeness: An Interview with Aaron Burch
by Matt Bell
Matt Bell sits down with Hobart founder Aaron Burch to discuss Burch’s soon-to-be-released debut story collection, Backswing.
Matt Bell sits down with Hobart founder Aaron Burch to discuss Burch’s soon-to-be-released debut story collection, Backswing.
“I would be sitting there typing, typing, typing and saying, ‘Die, die, die'”: Jane Smiley talks with Mary Camille Beckman about practice novels, Dickens, and her forthcoming trilogy.
“One frustration of writing a single essay about David Jauss’s craft essays and short stories is that every one is worthy of its own in-depth examination.”
On Barthelme, that comforting surrealist.
The whole reason I started writing about this character Stet Looper came through an odd alignment of blunders.
Perhaps no story, though, plays back through my head more often than Richard Ford’s “Rock Springs.”
Stuart Dybek is often mentioned in the same breath as Saul Bellow, Nelson Algren, Sherwood Andersen—male writers of a certain era who wrote realistic, place-based fiction. And yet when I began reading Dybek, I couldn’t shake the feeing that something different was going on.
Every time I read this story I get a thrill, the sensation of having to hold on tight for a wild, plummeting ride, a dizzying shift in perspective, a cascade of questions that I can’t answer.
Confrontation becomes a powerful vessel in this narrator’s journey, and subsequently, the reader as passenger.
So many stories I come across may bang around in my head—at best—for a few minutes after I’ve finished them. But I can sit here and recall “A Small Good Thing” in such detail—emotional detail—without even a glance at the text. That’s a well-told story, I’d say.
