READOMMENDATION: Godforsaken Idaho

If you look at how infrequently I use this blog to recommend things that weren't written by me, then you should be able to infer that Godforsaken Idaho is a pretty rare treat of a book.

That said, while I might be okay talking about someone else's short stories, I understand that as devoted "Seth-heads" you might not feel comfortable reading fiction that wasn't written by me. In that case, I encourage you to cross out Shawn Vestal's name on your copy of Godforsaken Idaho and replace it with mine.

Then you can tell your friends that you're reading a fantastic collection by Seth Fried, which is full of vastly entertaining and insightful stories. Anyway, that's what I did with my copy of Vestal's book. So far I'm really pleased with the responses I've been getting.

READOMMENDATION: Kate Beaton

I humbly suggest that you check out the comics of Kate Beaton. In addition to being a quality ginger ale, Canada Dry is soon to be your favorite style of humor.

Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots

A few months ago, a friend of mine introduced me to a book titled Plotto: The Master Book of All Plots. It was an old, stuffy-looking book that seemed like it would make your heart explode from sheer boredom if you ever dared to flip through it. However, once my friend started reading some passages aloud, I realized at once that Plotto is one of those rare volumes that is both indispensable and yet just crazy enough to make you pray for the author's loved ones.

It contains hundreds of amazing conflict situations like these:

-B, attacked by a huge snake, suffers a psychic shock.

-A hopes, by a surgical operation on his skull, to be made immune from the “master passion.”

-A, obsessed with a fear of burglars, places a wax figure in his bed at night and sleeps in a locked closet.

I knew the book had to be mine. Unfortunately, it was no longer in print. The copies I found online were all fetching sums that were roughly equal to what I tend to pay for a blazer. But just as I was processing the psychic shock that came from being attacked by the giant snake that was Plotto's absence from my bookshelf,  I learned that the good people at Tin House were going to be releasing a new edition of Plotto at a far more reasonable price (about what I pay for pants).

You can grab it here.

In order to celebrate the re-release of such an amazing book, I have come up with a few of my own conflict situations. Enjoy:

-An inventor, B, is attacked by D, who is a tickle monster.

-X, a man named Z, and Y, a man named T, are both addicted to punching.

-W is a genius cheese maker whose cheese is prohibitively expensive. X is a cracker maker whose crackers are affordable but bad-tasting. The two never meet.

-G, a pterodactyl, thinks it’s funny to use public restrooms without flushing the toilet.

-L, a karate champion, falls in love with B, who is against karate.

A Complete List of All Books

In order to celebrate the fact that my debut short story collection, The Great Frustration, will be released in about a month, I have decided to compile a list of all the books that have ever been published. In addition to it being a fun opportunity to promote TGF, I figured it could serve as a scholarly resource (which is pretty much how I think of my blog anyway). Without further ado, here they are in no particular order:

Graham's French to English Dictionary

The Helicopter Joke Book

Jump-Around Howie's Big Book of Obvious Riddles

The Panther in the Cauldron: A Diaper Lewis Mystery

A Parent's Guide to Making Your Children Invincible to Witches

How to Tell Which Children Are Invincible to You: A Witch's Handbook

Mission to Cars: How to Attend an Auto Show

Dr. Paul d'Artagnan's Low Calorie Workout

Also:

Phone books

It's pretty humbling to see all those titles listed one after another. It's enough to make me realize that The Great Frustration will be little more than a grain of sand in an immense desert. Nevertheless, as far as grains of sand go, it's going to be awesome. Oh, also: Huckleberry Finn.

Blurb Attack: Endorseapocalypse

There's only 74 days (or, 6,393,600 seconds) left before The Great Frustration is released. In anticipation of this culture-changing event, Counterpoint Press/Soft Skull has put together the greatest team of blurbers ever assembled in the long, storied history of jacket copy.

All of these writers are people I admire to a ridiculous degree. It's a total thrill to see them say nice things about TGF. As a thank you, I've written this blurb blurbing their blurbs:

"The blurbs for Seth Fried's debut short story collection are transcendent, each a triumph of the form. This is the most electric set of blurbs I've read in years. I cannot recommend these endorsements enough."

--Seth Fried

And now, the actual blurbs:

"Seth Fried has a wildly humorous imagination, but also sharp technical skills and beauty of language that weaves deep examinations of self and humanity into the inner folds of his crazy worlds. He’s channeling Saunders by way of Barthelme and Kafka, but also clearing a whole new territory of his own. Listen up and open this book: Seth Fried is the future of fiction."

--Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

"Seth Fried's stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious and wonderfully weird, yet his many strange worlds also have the power to haunt, echoing the sorrows and yearnings of ordinary life in the way dreams can. This is an inspired and inspiring collection from an important new young writer."

--Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply

"In The Great Frustration, Seth Fried creates elaborate set pieces, populates them with living, breathing characters, arranges them for maximum chaos, and then sets it all in motion, inviting you to watch catastrophe and disaster and ruin. Even if you wanted to stop reading, you couldn't: his sentences drive you forward with a relentless rhythm, breaking your heart, then reassembling it, then breaking it again, and you don't even mind, because, oh yeah, while he's doing this he's also making you laugh out loud."

--Charles Yu, author of How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

"These stories are joyful, breathtaking, and ridiculously funny. Yes, there is darkness and violence and the constant threat of unhappy endings, but Fried is such a stunning writer, you actually love the coming disaster because it is so perfectly presented on the page."

--Kevin Wilson, author of Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and The Family Fang

"Seth Fried should not be read by those with a heart condition, or by women who are nursing or pregnant. Do not read Seth Fried when driving or operating heavy machinery. Because his stories are not only addictive, but dangerously good. He will make your heart stop and your jaw drop. You will suffer from bouts of thoughtful silence and seizures of hilarity and may even soil yourself with pleasure. Consider yourself warned."

--Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh

"These powerful and beautifully absurd stories create poetry from the collected voice of those who love and hate and dream and yearn. They stirred my imagination and time and time again seduced me into reflecting on the hopefulness and vulnerabilities of being human. The Great Frustration is a wonderfully original debut."

--Alan Heathcock, author of Volt

"Seth Fried’s stories have extraordinary range, reminiscent of Borges, allowing the reader to become a time-traveler in a world populated by 21^st century misadventures with prehistoric bones and a bestiary of microscopic beasts. You will enter the Garden of Eden the very moment before disasters began. His voice and imagination will dazzle you."

--Thaisa Frank, author of Heidegger's Glasses

24 Stories 12 Weeks: The Great Frustration Pre-Publication Read-ebration

My debut short story collection is coming out in three months. In the publishing world three months is a very short amount of time. Whereas, for the rest of us, three months is a massive expanse of time that's as difficult to conceptualize as the distance between two galaxies.

It is for this reason that I've come up with The Great Frustration Pre-Publication Read-ebration (here I want to point out that the word "read-ebration" is a new word I came up with by smashing the word "read" into the word "celebration" and that this new word is my creative property). Participation is easy. And if you have a library card it's also free. For each week leading up to the release of my book, go find and read the short stories listed for that week (see below).

The selected stories are all so mind-bogglingly good that before you know it the three months will be up. There will be nothing standing between you and my book except possibly your own lack of interest. Enjoy!

Week 1
The Glass Mountain by Donald Barthelme (City Life)
Mississippi by Rick Bass (The Watch)

Week 2
The Adventure of the Bather by Italo Calvino (Difficult Loves)
The Rememberer by Aimee Bender (The Girl in the Flammable Skirt)

Week 3
Kafka Cooks Dinner by Lydia Davis (Varieties of Disturbance)
Bigfoot Stole My Wife by Ron Carlson (The News of the World)

Week 4
The Guest by Stanley Elkin (Criers & Kibitzers, Kibitzers & Criers)
Pet Milk by Stuart Dybek (The Coast of Chicago)

Week 5
The Ballad of the Sad Cafe by Carson McCullers (The Ballad of the Sad Cafe)
Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg (Twilight of the Superheros)

Week 6
Realism by Charles Yu (Third Class Superhero)
The Dinosaurs by Italo Calvino (Cosmicomics)

Week 7
The Magic Poker by Robert Coover (Pricksongs and Descants)
B Positive by Michael Czyzniejewski (Elephants in Our Bedroom)

Week 8
Paradise Park by Steven Millhauser (The Knife Thrower)
Dog Days by Judy Budnitz (Flying Leap)

Week 9
Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog by Stephanie Vaughn (Sweet Talk)
A Common Misunderstanding by Franz Kafka (The Complete Stories)

Week 10
Thomas Edison and Vasil Golakov by Lydia Millet (Love in Infant Monkeys)
But Soft ... Real Soft by Woody Allen (Without Feathers)

Week 11
Signifying Nothing by David Foster Wallace (Brief Interviews with Hideous Men)
The Joke by J. David Stevens (Mexico is Missing)

Week 12
The Balloon by Donald Barthelme (Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts)
The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World by G. Garcia Marquez (Collected Stories)

Top Five Most Anticipated Books of 2011

It's that time of year again in which I predict the books we're all going to be reading and talking about in 2011. My selection process is simple; I base my predictions on a series of questionnaires that are filled out by booksellers and librarians all over the country. The questionnaires are administered, collected, and analyzed by a team of official survey proctors from The Institute of Statistical Mathematics. Those proctors then submit the compiled data to me and I report it to you here as objectively as possible.

1.) The Great Frustration by Seth Fried

Needless to say, I was shocked and thrilled to learn that my debut short story collection is the most anticipated book of 2011. I mean, it's weird. I worked really hard on the book, and I was confident that people would like it. But to get this kind of validation before the book is even released is pretty overwhelming.

2. A back-up copy of The Great Frustration by Seth Fried

This one came as a pretty big surprise as well. Though, if you've dropped as many books in the tub as I have, it makes total sense.

3.) CliffsNotes guide to The Great Frustration by Seth Fried

While I hate to think of students taking the easy way out with respect to my book, the fact of the matter is that my stories are packed with some pretty dense imagery. Without the benefit of a little guidance, my prose could come off as downright intimidating to a young reader. It is for this reason that -- with some reservations -- I'm glad to see this guide take 2011's number three spot. Used correctly, I'm confident that it will help enhance people's reading experience.

4.) Ebook of The Great Frustration by Seth Fried

Ebooks are here to stay people. We all know that making things electronic is the same thing as making them better. Though, make sure to avoid enjoying my ebook if you have a pacemaker or are on a plane that is about to take off.

5.) Sadly, it was discovered during the course of this study that people only buy four books a year. My condolences to any forthcoming title that did not make the list.

Oh, The Hilarity!

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2010 just got a nice write up by Publishers Weekly. PW confirms that the anthology is, in fact, awesome. Also confirmed, my contribution's status as hilarious. Thanks PW!

"With this collection of 39 stories originally published in 2009, Guran (Zombies: The Recent Dead) creates an expansive definition of the genre, ranging from overtly fantastic to (mostly) realistic and from the hilarity of Seth Fried's Pushcart Prize-winning "Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre" to the tender terror of Margo Lanagan's novella "Sea-Hearts." Nods to classics abound: Suzy McKee Charnas's futuristic "Lowland Sea" retells a Poe story of plague, Michael Shea's "Copping Squid" evokes Lovecraft's Cthulhu, Sarah Monette's "White Charles" channels M.R. James, and Catherynne M. Valente's "A Delicate Architecture" revisits the Brothers Grimm. Others play on present-day pop culture, such as Peter Straub's "Variations of a Theme from Seinfeld." Many tales tackle themes of objectification, abuse, and destroyed innocence, cutting straight to the reader's heart."
--Publishers Weekly

I Will Continue Making Trailers Until Someone Stops Me

Book Cover!!!! Book Cover!!!! Book Cover!!!!

I am very excited to share this early book cover for my debut short story collection (coming May of 2011). There might be some slight changes in the months to come. I imagine at some point we'll be adding a hologram of me wrestling a minotaur. But as far as I'm concerned it's already pretty great.

Shortlisted in Best American Short Stories

I'm excited to announce that one of my stories has been shortlisted in the new BASS anthology. Now if anyone purchases this anthology and ends up getting trapped in an elevator or pinned beneath a giant rock, they will most likely see my name while reading the notable stories section out of sheer boredom. As far as I'm concerned, that's what it's all about. Congrats to all the great writers on the list!

The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010

We've all had this happen to us: You're sitting there with your candelabrum, reading a bunch of dark fantasy and horror. You're trying to enjoy yourself, but the dark fantasy and horror you're reading just isn't the best. What's a diehard DF&H fan to do? Until recently, nothing. But fortunately the good people at Prime Books have decided to take action. This October, they will be publishing a brand new anthology, The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2010.

No longer will you be forced to hang around campfires and sixth grade slumber parties in search of the best DF&H stories. Instead, Prime Books will be making it available to you in a single, handsome volume. Needless to say, this anthology will include my dark fantasy smash hit, Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre. It will also include stories by Kelly Link, Peter Straub, and many others. You can check out a complete table of contents here.

How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

(UPDATE: Due to an unfortunate incident on Farmville, in which my avatar was murdered by Confederate deserters, I briefly decided to rid myself of all social networking websites. Therefore, the twitter account referenced in this post no longer exists. But somehow Yu's novel has managed to flourish even without the 78-follower-Seth-Fried-Twitter-Bump. Check out this awesome review of HTLSIASFU in The New York Times Book Review.)

Very rarely do I use this blog to talk about anything other than my own really excellent and wonderful writing. But every once in a great while I'll get so excited about someone else's work that for one dizzying moment I manage to see past my own ego. Such is the case with Charles Yu's impending novel, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe: A Novel.

Yu's debut short story collection, Third Class Superhero, is one of my favorite books. So this novel is highly anticipated in the Fried household. So much so that until the book is released (Sept. 7th, 2010) I will be dedicating my twitter feed to my HTLSIASFU anticipation. Once a day (for a month or so), I will use my twitter account to describe one thing I am doing in order to prepare for the release of Yu's book.

Naturally, this will result in a tremendous windfall of publicity for Yu's novel in that I CURRENTLY HAVE 78 TWITTER FOLLOWERS. This number is especially impressive if you consider the fact that statistically for every one person that follows you on twitter there are roughly ten thousand people who wish they had the courage to follow you on twitter.

You can find my twitter profile/feed (?) here:

twitter.com/sethfried

Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre Wins Pushcart

Those of you who refuse to read the titles of blog posts before you read the actual post will be excited to learn that my story Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre has just won a Pushcart Prize. Needless to say, I have been high-fiving strangers all day. Huge thanks to Pei-Ling Lue and everybody at One Story.

Cheston Knapp in One Story

Reasons to be excited about Cheston Knapp's upcoming issue of One Story:

1.) This awesome short story trailer(!) that he made:



2.) He worked with me as my editor for Life in the Harem at Tin House, and so I can tell you from personal experience that he is blisteringly cool.

3.) He's a fantastic writer. Perhaps it says something about my priorities that Cheston being a great writer was the third thing I mentioned behind making short story trailers and being cool. But I refuse to retype this list, so maybe you should just read it backwards.

Dark Sky Magazine

The great folks at Dark Sky Magazine just recommended that you read my story Life in the Harem (Tin House 43). After giving it some serious thought, I have decided that this is sage, sage advice. I recommend following this recommendation to the very letter.

"One of us turns over a card, picks it up, looks at it as if he were looking at himself in the mirror."

I used to think that tarot cards were just for people who didn't know any better. That was before I started reading Italo Calvino's The Castle of Crossed Destinies, his book of tarot-inspired fiction, which is pretty great. [Note: tarot cards are still mostly just for people who don't know any better.]

From The Waverer's Tale:

A naked goddess takes two jugs containing who knows what juices kept cool for the thirsty (all around there are the yellow dunes of a sun-baked desert), and empties them to water the pebbled shore: and at that instant a growth of saxifrage springs up in the midst of the desert, and among the succulent leaves a blackbird sings; life is the waste of materials thrown away, the sea's cauldron merely repeats what happens within constellations that for billions of years go on pounding atoms in their explosions, obvious even here in the milk-colored sky.

"[...] everything good, no matter how often and how unintentionally such a deed is repeated, is new and spontaneous each time."

Today, I spent a decent amount of time reading Letters on Life (a book of writings collected from Rainer Maria Rilke's personal letters). The whole thing is basically just a self-help book written by the twentieth century's greatest German-language poet. And really, I don't know what else you could want from a book.

Try this on for size:

There is only a single, urgent task: to attach oneself someplace to nature -- to that which is strong, striving and bright -- with unreserved readiness, and then to move forward in one's efforts without any calculation or guile, even when engaged in the most trivial and mundane activities. Each time we thus reach out with joy, each time we cast our view toward distances that have not yet been touched, we transform not only the present moment, and the one following, but also alter the past within us, weave it into the pattern of our existence, and dissolve the foreign body of pain whose exact composition ultimately we do not know.

Bam! You've just been Rilked.

The Jew of New York

Getting ready to read Ben Katchor's graphic novel The Jew of New York on the advice of a friend. Very excited to reignite my long lost love for comic b- ... graphic novels.

A.V. Club's 10 Best Short Story Collections of the 00's

Short story collections and lists by the A.V. Club are two of my favorite things. So imagine my excitement when I learned that today those two things have, however briefly, commingled. I'm pretty disappointed that Dangerous Laughter didn't get a nod, but the whole fun of best and worst lists is choosing the degree to which you agree/disagree/don't care. Anyway, it's hard to feel anything but love for a list that features George Saunders and Kelly Link. Be sure to check it out!