In which we look forward to a book entitled Single, Carefree, Mellow
A long time ago we read Nothing But You, a collection of love stories from the New Yorker. The anthology includes some emotionally-charged work by V.S. Pritchett, William Trevor, Mavis Gallant and other masters of the story. Our favorites are the Laurie Colwin story A Country Wedding, which became part of the Frank and Billy stories (much like Salinger’s A Slight Rebellion Off Madison became part of The Catcher in the Rye); The Nice Restaurant by Mary Gaitskill, with its memorable closing line (“..the bright beauty of the massive flower arrangement fairly hit her in the eye.”), Woody Allen’s The Kugelmass Episode, which we’d memorized before it was anthologized, and How To Give The Wrong Impression by Katherine Heiny, whom we were reading for the first time.
That story stood out from the rest because it had a feeling of giddiness, the kind rom-coms aim for but hardly ever manage. We looked forward to reading more from Katherine Heiny.
Just as we were about to forget, she released her first collection of stories, Single, Carefree, Mellow. Bookstores, please stock up. Yes, we can get the e-book right now, but we want that fresh ink on paper smell.
The audiobook publisher put out an excerpt:
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
February 15th, 2015 at 23:59
Very glad to see that book in your post!
Nothing But You is inside my top 3 anthologies of all time, for
1) the variety (happy, smart, sad, funny, pensive, magical realism, magic, etc), unlike the other collection of love stories edited by Eugenides which seems all melancholy,
2) and there seems to be no fluff added just to complete a collection.
I checked my copy and saw stars in the table of contents (to mark the remarkable stories to me) beside: how to give the wrong impression, yours (robison), blackbird pie (carver), nice restaurant, how old, how young (o’hara), song of roland (kincaid), kugelmass, elka and meir (bashevis singer), a country wedding, ocean ave (chabon), dating your mom (frazier), sculpture 1, and eyes of a blue dog (garcia marquez). The book also prompted me to buy all New Yorker anthologies that i can find. Nothing But You remains the best one even in this bunch, published over the years (Fierce Pajamas is next). The book is not available in Kindle, sadly. Best to buy through Amazon when a friend is traveling to the US.
February 16th, 2015 at 00:02
the new heiny collection is indeed in kindle! will buy.
talaga bang ‘took more than 22 years to write’ ito? wow.
February 17th, 2015 at 12:01
turmukoy: Welcome back. We saw an exhibition of Nabokov’s papers. He would put grades next to the titles in the table of contents (He was a teacher). In one anthology (we forgot to note the title) he awarded A’s to only two stories: J.D. Salinger’s and his.
He also wrote on index cards, which is a great idea. You can shuffle scenes around. It is particularly good for writing screenplays.