Dinner with Osama

Marilyn Krysl

Description

Advance Praise for Dinner with Osama

“Marilyn Krysl is one of our most gifted, quirky, and delightful storytellers—unpredictable, funny, and wildly inventive in wondrous ways. Her new collection shows her at the top of her form as she details the ordinary, the absurd, and the apocalyptic in outrageous and deeply affecting ways.” —Jay Neugeboren, author of 1940 and News from the New American Diaspora

“Marilyn Krysl’s astonishing Dinner with Osama somehow finds the intersection between deep anguish at the state of the world and brilliant, caustic, and hilarious sociopolitical satire of America post-9/11. Its effrontery is peculiarly female, its fierce intelligence that of a mother—or even (‘Are We Dwelling Deep Yet?’) a Great Mother—who needs to save and feed the world however she can. Its north and south must be ‘Mitosis,’ Krysl’s heartbreaking life history of a young Dinka woman whose way of life, and source of food, have been destroyed by civil war in Sudan; its east and west is surely the title story, in the voice of a politically irreproachable matriarch of Boulder, Colorado, who does her part by extending a dinner invitation to Osama—yes, that Osama—through her ‘pal’ Abdullah at the local gyros stand; and Osama not only receives it, he accepts. Israelis and Palestinians, ‘conflict’-addicted cliché-mongers of the creative writing workshop, violent extremists of every stripe, and above all the wealthy consumerist left are all skewered in this miraculous collection.” —Jaimy Gordon, author of Bogeywoman and She Drove Without Stopping

“We may have to invent a new term––‘the political lyric,’ perhaps––to describe the ‘airy speech and inspired story’ in Marilyn Krysl’s brilliant new collection of short fiction, Dinner with Osama. What holds all the fiction together, as much as the impassioned political and cultural concerns that inform them, is the writing, which is lyrical in the best sense, lyrical as in musical, expressive, and vivid.” —Ed Falco, author of Sabbath Night in the Church of the Piranha: New and Selected Stories

Sujets

• Literary
• Literature
• General officer
• General
• Short Stories
• Fiction
• 2008

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268084554
• Langue: English

Extrait

D IN N ER WITH O S A M A

the richard sullivan prize in short fiction

Editors William O’Rourke and Valerie Sayers

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

Acid,Edward Falco

In the House of

Blue Lights,

Susan Neville

Revenge of Underwater Man and Other Stories, Jarda Cervenka

Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling,

Maura Stanton

Solitude and Other Stories,

The Irish Martyr,

Arturo Vivante

Russell Working

Dinner with Osama,Marilyn Krysl

M A R I LY N K RY S L

D I N N E R W I T H O SAMA

University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2008 by Marilyn Krysl

Published by the University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 www.undpress.nd.edu All Rights Reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Krysl, Marilyn, 1942– Dinner with Osama / by Marilyn Krysl. p. cm. — (Richard Sullivan prize in short fiction) ISBN-13: 978-0-268-03318-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-268-03318-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) I. Title. PS3561.R88D56 2008 813'.54—dc22 2007050580

This book is printed on recycled paper.

F M YO R S F R I E N D SU DA N E S E — may they find peace and justice here in this country, and in Sudan.

C ONTENTS

Acknowledgments

P A RT I

Dinner with Osama

ix

3

Are We Dwelling Deep Yet?

P A RT I I

Cherry Garcia, Pistachio Cream

Belly

54

Heraclitus, Help Me

Air, A Romance

79

67

16

35

P A RT I I I

Mitosis

85

Welcome to the Torture Center, Love

viii

Contents

107

A CKNOWLEDGMENTS

The following stories have been previously published in slightly different form:

— “Dinner with Osama” wonNimrod’s Geraldine McLoud Commendation for Fiction.

— “Cherry Garcia, Pistachio Cream” wonPrairie Schooner’s Lawrence Foundation Award for fiction. — “Belly” appeared inNotre Dame Review. — “Heraclitus, Help Me” appeared inAmerican Literary Re- view.

— “Mitosis” appeared inWashington Square.

— “Air, A Romance” appeared as a letterpress chapbook produced by Tree Bernstein.

— Parts of “Welcome to the Torture Center, Love” appeared inFugue.

I am grateful to the McDowell Colony, where I wrote “Wel- come to the Torture Center, Love”; to the University of Colorado,

ix