The things we do that make no sense / stories by Adam Schuitema.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schuitema, Adam, author.

Standardized Title:

Short stories. Selections

Language:

English

Genre:

Short stories.

Physical Description:

175 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

DeKalb : Switchgrass Books, an imprint of Northern Illinois University Press, [2017]

Summary:

We are guilty of actions that make no sense. We perform acts of beauty and acts of ugliness. We give in to hidden ambitions, latent hungers, and clumsy grasps at insight. At the heart of these stories are the rituals-grand and small-in which we humans partake; the peculiar gestures we hope will forge meaning or help us glean some sort of understanding. They may be formally ceremonial and spiritual, like the imposition of ashes in a darkened church. But often they are secular, private, and bizarre. A woman slips her son's old baby tooth into her mouth as he's led away to prison. A girl in a tunnel plays an invisible piano while bombs ravage the city above. A man with a laser machine creates a private galaxy to rekindle lost love. A daughter frantically searches a wax museum for her mother's second self. Set mostly in Michigan, the stories in this collection are woven through with the power of ritual and glimmer with lush descriptions and poignant dialogue. From both the everyday and the sacred, these characters piece together the strange mosaic of life. Book jacket.

Contents:

All of Your Vanished Men 3

Peering Through Blinds 17

Witch Whistle 21

Gunplay 45

Racking the Jack Pine Savage 48

Pink Blood 62

Stone Dust 65

The First Seizure 109

Last Year's Palms 111

Third-Down Conversions 124

Virgin Lands 127

Say Hot Really 141

Light Years 143

Coronations 153

Mercy Mercy Me 156.

ISBN:

9780875807638

0875807631

OCLC:

952138993