Something in My Eye
An “intriguing and highly original” debut short story collection—winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Booklist).
 
Michael Jeffrey Lee’s stories are bizarre and smart and stilted, like dystopic fables told by a redneck Samuel Beckett. Outcasts hunker under bridges, or hole up in bars, waiting for the hurricane to hit. Lee’s forests are full of menace too—unseen crowds gather at the tree-line, and bands of petty crooks and marauders bluster their way into suicidal games of one-upmanship . . .
 
In Something In My Eye, violence and idleness are always in tension, ratcheting up and down with an eerie and effortless force. Diction leaps between registers with the same vertiginous swoops, moving from courtly formality to a slang that is the characters’ own. It’s a masterful performance, and Lee’s inventiveness accomplishes that very rare feat—hyper-stylized structure and language that offer both clarity and turbulence, never allowing technique to obscure what’s most important: a direct address that makes visible those truths we’d rather not see.
 
“Lee’s stories are intriguing and highly original, with a bent toward the weird, both in character and worldview. He is a master of voice, portraying the lives of men who are lost, lonely, and disturbed.” —Booklist
 
“Lee is very successful in creating a dream-like, emotionally disconnected state throughout, with intentionally stilted dialogue and plots that tend to revolve around forms of symbolic gestures, physical violence, or sexual deviance.” —Publishers Weekly
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Something in My Eye
An “intriguing and highly original” debut short story collection—winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Booklist).
 
Michael Jeffrey Lee’s stories are bizarre and smart and stilted, like dystopic fables told by a redneck Samuel Beckett. Outcasts hunker under bridges, or hole up in bars, waiting for the hurricane to hit. Lee’s forests are full of menace too—unseen crowds gather at the tree-line, and bands of petty crooks and marauders bluster their way into suicidal games of one-upmanship . . .
 
In Something In My Eye, violence and idleness are always in tension, ratcheting up and down with an eerie and effortless force. Diction leaps between registers with the same vertiginous swoops, moving from courtly formality to a slang that is the characters’ own. It’s a masterful performance, and Lee’s inventiveness accomplishes that very rare feat—hyper-stylized structure and language that offer both clarity and turbulence, never allowing technique to obscure what’s most important: a direct address that makes visible those truths we’d rather not see.
 
“Lee’s stories are intriguing and highly original, with a bent toward the weird, both in character and worldview. He is a master of voice, portraying the lives of men who are lost, lonely, and disturbed.” —Booklist
 
“Lee is very successful in creating a dream-like, emotionally disconnected state throughout, with intentionally stilted dialogue and plots that tend to revolve around forms of symbolic gestures, physical violence, or sexual deviance.” —Publishers Weekly
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Something in My Eye

Something in My Eye

Something in My Eye

Something in My Eye

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Overview

An “intriguing and highly original” debut short story collection—winner of the Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction (Booklist).
 
Michael Jeffrey Lee’s stories are bizarre and smart and stilted, like dystopic fables told by a redneck Samuel Beckett. Outcasts hunker under bridges, or hole up in bars, waiting for the hurricane to hit. Lee’s forests are full of menace too—unseen crowds gather at the tree-line, and bands of petty crooks and marauders bluster their way into suicidal games of one-upmanship . . .
 
In Something In My Eye, violence and idleness are always in tension, ratcheting up and down with an eerie and effortless force. Diction leaps between registers with the same vertiginous swoops, moving from courtly formality to a slang that is the characters’ own. It’s a masterful performance, and Lee’s inventiveness accomplishes that very rare feat—hyper-stylized structure and language that offer both clarity and turbulence, never allowing technique to obscure what’s most important: a direct address that makes visible those truths we’d rather not see.
 
“Lee’s stories are intriguing and highly original, with a bent toward the weird, both in character and worldview. He is a master of voice, portraying the lives of men who are lost, lonely, and disturbed.” —Booklist
 
“Lee is very successful in creating a dream-like, emotionally disconnected state throughout, with intentionally stilted dialogue and plots that tend to revolve around forms of symbolic gestures, physical violence, or sexual deviance.” —Publishers Weekly

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781936747375
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Publication date: 01/31/2012
Series: Mary McCarthy Prize in Short Fiction
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 224
File size: 359 KB

About the Author

Michael Jeffrey Lee lives in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he earns his living as a typist, waiter, and nightclub singer. A frequent contributor to Conjunctions, he is also an associate fiction editor at the New Orleans Review. He is at work on a novel.
Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Warning Sign
Contemporary Country Music
Something in My Eye
If We Should Ever Meet
Whoring
Five Didactic Tales
1. The Lonesome Vehicle
2. The Great House
3. The Fast Meal
4. The Vengeful Men
5. The Strange Nurse
Repenting
The New Year
The Buddy
Murder Ballad
Last Seen
I Shall Not Be Moved
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