Ceci n'est pas un blog

Thank you Dave Eggers for The Best of McSweeney's 2. As far as I can tell this collection is not available in America. The introduction is, among other things, a call for Europeans to go forth and create a million little literary journals, to foster the short story and essay the way thousands of university presses and starving small press publishers and idealistic young people with access to paper and a stapler do in the States. He acknowledges Granta, a lovely quarterly, but as one sentinal in an otherwise lonely place for the literary short form.

The collection is available on all the Euro-Amazon's and in bookstore's throughout our fair city on the fjord.

Thank you Dave Eggers for giving me permission not to like everything in the collection. The introduction, among other things, allows that in a collection of this nature, not every story will be suited to every reader. And this was true for me. One long story didn't ring true and I didn't connect with despite the usual good sign of many monkeys. Another otherwise excellent story became graphic enough in it's medical descriptions that I had to skip a good deal. Like surgery on TV, there ought to be an early warning system that prevents the sqeamish from even surfing over it.

But it is not to say that these are not well crafted, they are. And what's more, the vast and diverse remainder was filled with images and stories and sentences that will stay with me until my mind starts slipping into my oatmeal and my sense of time becomes detached from the linear track it's been on.

• It's not how they hung an elephant but why and what came before even that.
  
• The sentence "Gregor Samsa ducks into a phone booth, this is a job for a Giant Insect." almost made me snort tea.
  
• The tale of the stolen chapters was eloquent and real.
  
• And while my ex-hippy parents aren't quite the mesa climbing mother in torquise of the Woman who Sold Communion, I recognise her. I've met her shadow in the real world.

And there's more moments that stand out but those are the ones with me now.

Somewhere there's a story lurking about the man who cut my hair yesterday. He's an Iraqi who has lived in Oslo for four years, he speaks excellent Spanish, very good English, and quite good Norwegian. He reads trade magazines on Digital Photography. His wife and child are here but parents and brothers are back in Iraq. He calls every week but it's not enough. He wonders whether they could get citizenship in the US. I can't help wondering whether he came as a political refugee, whether the occupation by the Americans has brought any new opportunities or only different hardships for his family. I can't help wonder where he learned his Spanish and how many other customers he can address in their native tongue. He asked me how much they charge for a cheap haircut in Texas and whether a work visa is difficult to come by.

Tomorrow I'll bake a pie. Apple. Swedish style.