Reply All: Stories

by Robin Hemley

Overview

Reply All, the third collection of award-winning and widely anthologized short stories by Robin Hemley, takes a humorous, edgy, and frank look at the human art of deception and self-deception. A father accepts, without question, the many duplicate saint relics that appear in front of his cave everyday; a translator tricks Magellan by falsely translating a local chief's words of welcome; an apple salesman a long way from home thinks he's fallen in love; a search committee believes in its own nobility by hiring a minority writer; a cheating couple broadcast their affair to an entire listserv; a talk show host interviews the dead and hopes to learn their secrets. The ways in which humans fool themselves are infinite, and while these stories illustrate this sad fact in sometimes excruciating detail, the aim is not to skewer the misdirected, but to commiserate with them and blush in recognition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253001801
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	06/04/2012
Series:	Break Away Books
Pages:	218
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.00(h) x 0.70(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robin Hemley is Director of the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa and author of eight books. His essays and fiction have been published in the New York Times, New York Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune.

Table of Contents

The Warehouse of Saints
Magellan Stew
Local Time
St. Charles Place
The 19th Jew
The List
The Underwater Town
Redemption
Devotion
Dead Silence
Reply All

What People are Saying About This

"Reply All is a thrilling collection: laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad and deeply in touch with the profound humanity underneath the increasingly bizarre surface of our culture. And one of the basic great things about this book is that it brilliantly demonstrates the paradox of art: if you embrace the zeitgeist with compassionate humanity and finely observed detail, you end up writing a book that will endure. Reply All will endure. "

Melissa Pritchard]]>

In this collection of stories, Reply All, Robin Hemley continues to be a literary phenomenon, dazzlingly incapable of one dull or inelegant thought, of anything less than a tender yet adamantine wit. No social vagary, no human yearning, theologic or profane, no human behavior, pathetic, comic or sublime, escapes Hemley's mercurial intellect or compassionate reach. Individually and cumulatively, the stories in Reply All charm us with their magnificent range. This is a polyphonic, wild, irresistible collection, grafted of divine madness and worldly grace.

Melissa Pritchard

In this collection of stories, Reply All, Robin Hemley continues to be a literary phenomenon, dazzlingly incapable of one dull or inelegant thought, of anything less than a tender yet adamantine wit. No social vagary, no human yearning, theologic or profane, no human behavior, pathetic, comic or sublime, escapes Hemley's mercurial intellect or compassionate reach. Individually and cumulatively, the stories in Reply All charm us with their magnificent range. This is a polyphonic, wild, irresistible collection, grafted of divine madness and worldly grace.

Robert Olen Butler

Reply All is a thrilling collection: laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad and deeply in touch with the profound humanity underneath the increasingly bizarre surface of our culture. And one of the basic great things about this book is that it brilliantly demonstrates the paradox of art: if you embrace the zeitgeist with compassionate humanity and finely observed detail, you end up writing a book that will endure. Reply All will endure.

Editorial Reviews

"Reply All is a thrilling collection: laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad and deeply in touch with the profound humanity underneath the increasingly bizarre surface of our culture. And one of the basic great things about this book is that it brilliantly demonstrates the paradox of art: if you embrace the zeitgeist with compassionate humanity and finely observed detail, you end up writing a book that will endure. Reply All will endure."—Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories

"In this collection of stories, Reply All, Robin Hemley continues to be a literary phenomenon, dazzlingly incapable of one dull or inelegant thought, of anything less than a tender yet adamantine wit. No social vagary, no human yearning, theologic or profane, no human behavior, pathetic, comic or sublime, escapes Hemley's mercurial intellect or compassionate reach. Individually and cumulatively, the stories in Reply All charm us with their magnificent range. This is a polyphonic, wild, irresistible collection, grafted of divine madness and worldly grace."—Melissa Pritchard, author of Disappearing Ingenue, Late Bloomer and The Odditorium.

"In an exciting return to fiction, Hemley, touching and funny, creates sympathetic characters who are deeply flawed but just as deeply human."—Booklist

From the Publisher

In an exciting return to fiction, Hemley, touching and funny, creates sympathetic characters who are deeply flawed but just as deeply human.

Booklist

"In an exciting return to fiction, Hemley, touching and funny, creates sympathetic characters who are deeply flawed but just as deeply human. "

Booklist

"In this collection of stories, Reply All, Robin Hemley continues to be a literary phenomenon, dazzlingly incapable of one dull or inelegant thought, of anything less than a tender yet adamantine wit. No social vagary, no human yearning, theologic or profane, no human behavior, pathetic, comic or sublime, escapes Hemley’s mercurial intellect or compassionate reach. Individually and cumulatively, the stories in Reply All charm us with their magnificent range. This is a polyphonic, wild, irresistible collection, grafted of divine madness and worldly grace." —Melissa Pritchard, author of Disappearing Ingenue, Late Bloomer and The Odditorium.

Melissa Pritchard

"Reply All is a thrilling collection: laugh-out-loud funny and achingly sad and deeply in touch with the profound humanity underneath the increasingly bizarre surface of our culture. And one of the basic great things about this book is that it brilliantly demonstrates the paradox of art: if you embrace the zeitgeist with compassionate humanity and finely observed detail, you end up writing a book that will endure. Reply All will endure." —Robert Olen Butler, author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain: Stories

Robert Olen Butler