The Era of Not Quite

by Douglas Watson

Overview

Douglas Watson's debut story collection is chock-a-block with deaths, births, sea and land voyages, excursions to the library, philosophical asides, and things like wolves.

Within the pellucid surface of these stories moves a surprising warmth and affection. People fall in and out of love, walk in and out of buildings, take two steps forward and two steps back. Life is discovered on the moon, only to make the earth feel more lonely. Futility is a theme of the book, but so is the necessity of trying. These spare, intricate stories bring a masterful edge of truth to a bleak and tender world.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781938160103
Publisher:	BOA Editions, Ltd.
Publication date:	05/07/2013
Series:	American Readers Series , #19
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Douglas Watson is the winner of the first annual BOA Short Fiction Prize. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Ohio State Universityand an MA in history from Brown University. He works at TIME magazine and has also done editorial work at Sports Illustrated, The Journal, and two academic journals, The New England Quarterly and Current History. Stories from The Era of Not Quite have appeared in Tin House (online), Sou'Wester, and Fifty-Two Stories.

Table of Contents

Contents


Against Specificity 4

The Death of John O’Brien 16

The Era of Not Quite 19

Molly Rivers, 83, Held Outlandish Views 31

I’m Sorry I Lost the Scrap of Paper on Which You
Outlined Your Plans for the Future 33

My Memoir 34

When the World Broke 35

Men 44

My Foot Is on Fire 47

The Man Who Was Cast into the Void 48

What I Did on My Summer Vacation 52

Special Advertising Section 61

Wolves 65

The Purest Note That Had Ever Been Sung 67

Two Country Gentlemen 76

The Cave 78

Pachyderms 82

Life on the Moon 84

Marcy Loves Joey 85

The Fate of Mothers 86

Narrative of the Life of Jacob Livesey 87

Author Sentenced for Life 89

New Animal 92

The Messenger Who Did Not Become a Hero 106


Acknowledgments 125

Editorial Reviews

In his debut collection of stories, Watson offers allegories that plumb the contradictions of reading, writing, and human desire. Many of the 23 stories have the lilt of fairy tales gone awry, as in “When the World Broke,” about a contest for a story that can fix the world, or “The Purest Note That Had Ever Been Sung,” about a boy who braves a dragon for his beloved. In “The Messenger Who Did Not Become a Hero,” a man offers unwelcome wisdom to the people of a fantasy kingdom, and in the funny “What I Did on My Summer Vacation,” a teacher tells her class of the bloody vengeance she took on her cheating husband. Watson’s heightened, bleak reality often turns surreal, as in “My Foot Is On Fire” and “Wolves,” and the tendency persists into condensed thought experiments like “My Memoir” and “Pachyderms.” Watson’s characters, meanwhile, are shorn of personality and specificity, becoming the aimless desiring machines of “Against Specificity,” “Men,” and the title story. The many clever conceits, however, are undercut by self-indulgence. While indebted to the likes of Beckett and Saunders, the book can’t quite stand on its own. Agent: Anne Borchardt, the Georges Borchardt Literary Agency. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Modest in their ambitions and narrow in scope, these tales, in which, for example, a dragon bites off his own foot for having ‘wronged beauty,’ will stick with you.”—Booklist review

"What it means to live in the Era of Not Quite is to reach for a thing, and not quite seize it. And then to keep reaching."—The Journal

"Watson’s linguistics are described as “Cirque du Soleil for book nerds … while this collection certainly is writerly, it isn’t only for the insider club of MFA alums. Anyone who loves language will devour this book because linguistically, Watson does things with a sentence that are so subtle and masterful, you find yourself startled by their effects.” -HTML Giant

“Several of the stories in The Era of Not Quite… blend the surreal and a detached delivery together movingly, taking what reads like an aphorism and bending it back towards intimacy." -Vol. 1 Brooklyn Review

“Watson’s fabulist fictions make us laugh at ourselves, our incomplete longings, and irrational fears … With a wicked humor and a sense of the absurd somewhere between Beckett and George Saunders, Watson makes us laugh while pointing out the irrationality of our desires.” -Rain Taxi

"When I read Douglas Watson’s debut story collection, The Era of Not Quite, I was awash with a rare and nourishing feeling: that what I was reading was exactly what I needed to be reading at that time exactly. Each of his stories deals a dark and witty blow. The collection is alive with a searing sense of humor, with wild formal play. It cranked me up and it stomped me down. I’ve been recommending this book to everyone." -Heavy Feather

"I read a handful of stories from The Era of Not Quite last night, then gobbled up a few more today, when I had some free moments. It’s a truly standout collection, in the vein of some of the great satirists and absurdists, writers like Vonnegut, Barthelme, and Coover, a collection I’ll certainly finish, go back to again."- Story 366

From the Publisher