Shadow Traffic

by
Richard Burgin

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Shadow Traffic (eBook) Pub. Date: 10/3/2011 Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
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Shadow Traffic (New Edition) Pub. Date: 9/29/2011 Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

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Overview

The New York Times Book Review has praised Richard Burgin’s stories as "eerily funny... dexterous... too haunting to be easily forgotten," while the Philadelphia Inquirer calls him "one of America’s most distinctive storytellers... no one of his generation reports the contemporary war between the sexes with more devastating wit and accuracy." Now, in Shadow Traffic, his seventh collection of stories, five-time Pushcart Prize winner Richard Burgin gives us his most incisive, witty, and daring collection to date as he explores the mysteries of love and identity, ambition and crime, and our ceaseless, if ambivalent, quest for truth.

In "Memorial Day," an aging man at a public swimming pool recalls a brief but momentous affair he had with a young British woman in London thirty years ago and the paradoxical role his recently deceased father played in it. In the highly suspenseful "Memo and Oblivion," set in the near future in New York, two rival drug organizations engage in a dangerous battle for supremacy—one promoting a pill that increases memory exponentially, the other a pill that dramatically eliminates memory. "The Interview" centers on a B-movie starlet married to a much older and more famous director and her tragic yet comic interview with an ambitious but conflicted young reporter.

Shadow Traffic justifies the New York Times’ claim that Burgin offers "characters of such variety that no generalizations about them can apply" and why the Boston Globe concluded that "Burgin’s tales capture the strangeness of a world that is simultaneously frightening and reassuring, and in the contemporary American short story nothing quite resembles his singular voice."

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Burgin (The Conference on Beautiful Moments) taps into humanity at its weakest in his seventh collection of darkly captivating stories. Gritty realistic scenarios, such as “The Dolphin,” in which a bystander attempts to persuade a fellow drinker at a strip club not to murder one of the dancers, mix uneasily with more surreal stories in the style of parables, such as “Memo and Oblivion,” where the world is divided into factions of people who take prescription drugs to either remember or forget. Burgin deftly exposes his characters’ most sacredly held fears with a tenderness that makes the reader exalt in their small triumphs. In one of the standouts, “Mission Beach,” a single father on vacation with his 12-year-old son in San Diego contemplates the breadth of his love for the boy as he spends hours with him in the surf at the expense of a possible romantic interlude. Burgin shows admirable range in this collection, which is hugely varied in both style and form, and while there are clear standouts, there’s not a single throwaway. (Oct.)

Booklist

Burgin skates along the edge of realism and dark fantasy in fiction so supremely well made that all manner of fancy and menace is readily ingested.

More Reviews (9) Fewer Reviews

Broad Street Review

Richard Burgin continues to have his finger on the pulse of modern experience as do few others and Shadow Traffic shows him at the top of form, refining a vision that, story by story and volume by volume has made him a master of contemporary short fiction and a prince of our disorder.

Chicago Tribune

A writer at once elegant and disturbing, Burgin is among our finest artists of love at its most desperate.

CRIMINALELEMENT.com

Shadow Traffic is a shockingly splendid example of psychological noir. No contemporary writer of the short story creates better characters than Richard Burgin. In Shadow Traffic, Burgin manages to cram a novel’s-worth of character into each of these twelve tightly-woven stories, giving us unforgettable character psyches that defy simple classification.

Huffington Post

He is certainly one of our best short story writers, with a clarity of style and thinking that's become increasingly rare in these days of workshop artificiality. The Conference on Beautiful Moments was one of the best story collections of recent years, and Shadow Traffic is more than a worthy successor.

— Anis Shivani

Industrial Worker Book Review

The virtues of this book are endless... Shadow Traffic is a special book, one worth repeated readings...It is an example of of a pattern for great literature. It is a horizon far ahead of the majority of short fiction writers working today.

— William Hastings

Industrial Worker Review

Shadow Traffic is a special book, one worth repeated readings, one worth taking to the bar to read over eight beers and a whiskey on a rainy day. It is one to pass around. It is an example of a pattern for great literature. It is a horizon far ahead of the majority of short fiction writers working today.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Burgin has an instinctive feel for the things in everyday life that are just a little bit wrong.

Review of Contemporary Fiction

Burgin's prose is invigorating. Bravely and imaginatively, he characterizes that feeling of being adrift in a consumer-driven society and is particularly astute and funny dealing with the male viewpoint.

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Each of these astounding tales resonates in a unique way, and it's not surprising that Burgin has won five Pushcart Prizes for his short stories.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781421402734
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date: 9/29/2011
Edition description: New Edition
Pages: 280
Sales rank: 1,205,244
Series: Johns Hopkins: Poetry and Fiction
Product dimensions: 5.80 (w) x 8.40 (h) x 1.10 (d)

Meet the Author

Richard Burgin—teacher, critic, editor, and composer—is best known for his short fiction. He is the author of fifteen books, including Fear of Blue Skies, The Spirit Returns, and The Conference on Beautiful Moments, all published by Johns Hopkins . He is founder and editor of the award-winning literary journal Boulevard and a professor of communication and English at Saint Louis University.

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gradyharp

Posted October 27, 2011

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Twelve Uniquely Creative Stories: The Mind of Richard Burgin

SHADOW TRAFFIC is such a perfect title for this collection of short stories by the highly regarded writer Richard Burgin: these tales are like the conjurings of things that happen deep within our minds, not ready or felt apropos for communicating with strangers. Yet reviewing a collection of this sort seems almost unfair to the potential reader who will enter Burgin's world because giving even the most brief outline of a story just might spoil the effect of experiencing it first hand on the written page. Burgin seems to be in touch with the acidic relationships between men and women and nowhere is this more evident than in the acerbic story 'Do You Like This Room?' - an apparent early dating situation where the man and the woman exchange rather superficial conversations until some of the subcutaneous facts come to the surface and the result is near Hitchcockian. Or read 'Memorial Day' and be caught up in the geriatric swimming pool arena where thoughts of a man drift toward what may have been the distant past, or the very distant past that leaves him quite alone with the other gomers. 'Single Occupant House' lifts the curtain of the story in the opening paragraph: 'I would have stayed in the other place longer but the false teeth in the bathroom upset me. It was like walking along a beach looking for shells and suddenly seeing a dead lobster. A bad sign, a bad omen, so I knew I had to quit the house and go to the other I'd been considering on Silver Place. I couldn't even remember now why I hadn't gone there before and wondered what that said about me.' Now try to resist following this character's path into the rest of the story! There are portions of comedy and portions of the bizarre and strange in Burgin's stories. And just when you think you will be able to imagine the ending of the next story, up pops his ingenious surprise of a conclusion. He is entertaining, he makes us think, and he makes us keep the light on ... Grady Harp
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SAHARATEA

Posted October 19, 2011

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stories to ponder

"It would be too humiliating to face him on the playground if he stole my money."

Jeff is a self-made man: with his new condo and telecommuting job, cash, and good looks, he'd seem to have it all. Yet in the second story of this collection, "The Dealer", author Richard Burgin creates a complicated persona that is distinctly childish and insecure. But he's not simply a dumb guy; that would be too easy. Rather it's the disparity between his sense and naivete that makes the character so intriguing. It's not easy to write someone so complicated without the reader impatiently dismissing the character as stupid. Yes, he makes stupid choices, but it's the normal ones that are the most revealing.

In the story, "The Dealer", Jeff befriends a fast-talking musician that plays basketball in the neighborhood and conveniently supplies Jeff with pot. Of course, he has a cool name, "Dash", and appears to be the role model that the more conventionally successful Jeff aspires to. Yet, as shown in the quote above, their friendship seems to be based on more of a nine-year-old awareness than a grown man; while they play basketball at the school, the clue is that Jeff calls it "the playground". Burgin creates an uneasy relationship between the two that hinges on Jeff's unwitting struggle to find a friend.

My favorite of the collection is "Memo and Oblivion," a futuristic story about battling pharmaceutical companies, one of whom has created the pill "Memo" to restore every personal experience and memory to those that take it. "Oblivion" is marketed by another secret organization and promises "to obliterate only painful human memories." Immediately the contrast engages the reader: which would they choose? To be able to remember the first time you bit into an apple? Or to be able to completely erase a painful event?

As the two companies struggle with trade secrets and human testing, the level of tension arises as to what side effects the pills may create. Burgin pokes at different concerns, from legality to ethics, as his characters discover for themselves that all choices have consequences, no matter how well-intended. This story could stand alone and would make a great movie.

"Memorial Day" tells of a grieving son, left with money to burn, travelling to find a purpose for his suddenly empty life. In London, he meets a woman that defies his expectations, and vice versa. The two are strangely connected, and what ends up happening reminds the reader of the adage, "he who hesitates is lost".

While the stories are random and varied, all have a sense of humor and a wry look at modern life. They leave the reader sensing that they need to answer for themselves the questions that were cleverly proposed and threaded into the narratives.
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Shadow Traffic

Pick Up in Store

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All Available Formats + Editions

More About This Book

Overview

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Booklist

Broad Street Review

Chicago Tribune

CRIMINALELEMENT.com

Huffington Post

Industrial Worker Book Review

Industrial Worker Review

Philadelphia Inquirer

Review of Contemporary Fiction

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Product Details

Meet the Author

Customer Reviews

Rating Distribution

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Twelve Uniquely Creative Stories: The Mind of Richard Burgin

stories to ponder