Ben Mauk has won perhaps the best-named award I’ve ever heard of, the Spur Award for Short Nonfiction, from the Western Writers of America. His winning work was the wonderful article “States of Decay,” which I posted about last September. Here’s the Pulitzer Center’s announcement about the win. Congratulations, Ben!
Tag: Ben Mauk
While growing up in Texas meant that fanciful notions of 19th century cowboys acculturated into my head too young for me to recall any sources, I do remember my introduction to the 20th century Atomic West. It was from Tom Lehrer’s 1953 tune, “The Wild West Is Where I Want to Be,” unmistakably satirical even to a child’s ears, wherein he sings: Along the trail you’ll find me lopin’ / Where the spaces are wide open / In the land of the old A.E.C. (yee-ha!) / Where the scenery’s attractive / And the air is radioactive / Oh, the wild west is where I wanna be. I had to ask my father to explain the acronym for the Atomic Energy Commission.
From prospectors to the Manhattan Project to artifacts of Cold War industry, the American West has existed in my mind as a kind of mottled antique, retro-futuristic in those places where it isn’t simply retro. So it was with great interest that I read Ben Mauk’s new longform piece in Harper’s, “States of Decay: A Journey through America’s nuclear heartland.” Ben has visited the wellsprings of the Atomic Age, explored disused mines, talked to the people still inhabiting its ghost towns and superfund sites. It’s a fascinating read, full of resentment, nostalgia, and unhealthy doses of radiation.
Back outside, Lucas held his Geiger counter up to his face. This was apparently a favorite pastime of rad heads, but even Lucas seemed startled by the figure: around fifty times background, the result of the radon progeny that had caught on condensation in his beard. “Wow,” he mused, taking a selfie with the counter against his mouth.
“You might want to think about shaving,” Jennifer said.
Fiction
- “Kingdom by the Sea” by Amy Parker – I was lucky enough to see an early draft of this story, a glorious, intense reimagining of Lolita. It’s like a literary vivisection, using scalpels historical, critical, fictional to slice away twitching layers of Humbert Humbert and extract a personal narrative for Dorothy Haze.
- “The Invention of Separate People” by Kevin Brockmeier – Kevin is one of our greatest living fantasists, and if you’ve never read him before it’s time to start. This story was originally published in Unstuck, and is about a world where people are themselves, yes, but also everyone else. Everyone is one person, until someone (everyone) begins to learn how to be separate.
- “Skin Suit” by Janalyn Guo – The main character is a lump of dark, amorphous matter that must wear taxidermied suits to appear human, but its parents are two planes of brilliant light, and it’s time for a family reunion.
- “Horror Story” by Carmen Machado – This time Carmen’s penned a creepy tale of crumbling relationships and haunted houses. Read it in the dark.
- “The Game of Smash and Recovery” by Kelly Link – It’s a Kelly Link story. That should be all you need to know, but I’ll add that this story is Kelly’s take on space opera, and dedicated to Iain M. Banks.
Nonfiction
- “How A Wedding Party Survived Hurricane Patricia with Tequila, Pool Noodles, and More” by Tony Tulathimutte – Tony was in Mexico for a destination wedding that just happened to be in the path of the strongest hurricane ever recorded. Features people taping boogie boards over windows, playing dominoes because it’s the only game that won’t blow away in the wind, and a groom who decides to simply not believe in hurricanes.
- “The Ballad of Murder Eyez: In Germany with Syria’s Refugee Rapper” by Ben Mauk – A study of the recent history of Syria, as reflected in the life of the country’s first rap mogul, now displaced in Germany.
Poetry
- “Ode, Her” by Knar Gavin
We need a word for the feeling of being unable to keep up with the art output of all one’s clever friends. Here’s a start. More to come.
Fiction
- Inscape by Yaa Gyasi – Gifty, a middle-aged literary scholar, must start caring for her Ghanaian mother, who believes she has been tasked by god with writing the next books of the bible. An immigrant and person of lost faith, Gifty revisits a lifetime of identity struggles as she learns her mother anew.
- Tobacconist by Anna Noyes – a short short about a family man who fantasizes about, and then fantasizes about not fantasizing about, the affections of a stranger.
- Woman at Exhibition by E. Lily Yu – I heard Lily read this at ICFA. A woman becomes part of an ambiguous history when she is moved by compulsion to eat an Edward Hopper painting on display at the Whitney. A story about gender politics and relationships between artists.
- Subduction by Paul M. Berger – Oliver has a memory that only goes back four weeks and a compulsion to visit areas of geological instability. The engraved wristwatch he was wearing said he was a hero, but he can’t remember why, so he pawned it. And littering the edges of his incomprehensible life are small things with big teeth that no one else seems to notice.
- The Fisher Queen by Alyssa Wong – Lily is fifteen, a deckhand on a trawler, and too old to believe anymore the family legend that her mother was a fish. A beautifully written story of disillusionment.
Nonfiction
- Unmasking the Glow by Alea Adigwame –Swirling and imagistic rumination on sex work and self regard. “I think, or, at least, like to think, that, at the substratum of my allure, rests an exhaustive knowledge of the contours of shame that permits me, ever increasingly, to revel in the lavishness of my imperfections, instead mincing them into everythingness with an analytical santoku. Self-compassion, I have learned, is communicable.”
- Don’t You Want To Be Normal? by Mary Anne Mohanraj – About the tangled assumptions regarding bodies and femininity that Mary Anne encountered when considering, in light of her breast cancer, whether she wanted to continue being a person who has breasts.
- Interruptions: Roman Singer’s Kitfox Experimental by Ben Mauk – A review in hyperliterate fragments of an art installation in which a plane spins in air, nose pointed down at the people who must choose how to view it from below.
- Farewell to Meat by Ben Mauk – This time Ben is in the Czech Republic to take in Masopust, a traditional carnival discontinued under communism and now resuscitated for tourist dollars. “The rivalry between the towns has been loudly advertised to all newcomers. Now a stage was formed and the villages’ respective bears performed a competitive ritual dance. The mayors delivered impassioned speeches urging peace between the villages while puppets throttled one another in the background.”
- Some Assembly Required by Jessie Hennen – The author sits down in IKEA to record an existential crisis prior to moving back in with her parents.
- Three reviews in Vice by Tony Tulathimutte: East of Main Street: Taking the Lead is a Refreshing Look at Asian-Americans in the Media, The New David Foster Wallace Movie Would Probably Make David Foster Wallace Really Uncomfortable, and Chris Farley and the Weight of Comedy. (The DFW movie review, naturally, is footnoted.)
I have many of them, and they just keep on writing things you should read. Also I’m instituting an new tag, My Friends Write Things, to link all these posts together. I’ve propagated it back through my archives, so clicking that will lead you to a trove of work from my most-loved people.
Fiction
- “The Husband Stitch” – Carmen Machado, one of the best fantasists writing today, in Granta with a gorgeous story inspired by Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
- “Mothers” – Carmen Machado again, because she is a force of nature. This time in Interfictions, with a story about two women in a broken relationship who make a baby. Carmen has put personal experience at the service of fiction with astonishing force and efficacy. You can read a little about the writing of this story on her blog.
- “Becoming” – Anna Noyes in Guernica with a story from the point of view of a chimpanzee being raised as a human. I was lucky enough to see an early draft of this memorable story in workshop, and am thrilled it’s found a home.
- “Quality of Descent” – Megan Kurashige in Lightspeed with a story about a man meeting a woman who definitely has wings, and may or may not be able to fly.
- “Ideal Head of a Woman” – Kelly Luce in Midnight Breakfast with a story about a museum employee who has an unusual relationship with a piece of sculpture.
Nonfiction
- “The Gospel of Paul” – Ariel Lewiton writing in the LA Review of Books with a profile of bookseller and new author Paul Ingram. In addition to being a gorgeous portrait of a fascinating man, this is also the best record of the culture of Iowa City that I’ve read.
- “Did Eastern Germany Experience an Economic Miracle?” – Ben Mauk writing in the New Yorker about regional economic variations in Germany 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
- “Freedom to Fuck Up” – Thessaly La Force interviewing Merritt Tierce about her novel Love Me Back, discussing pregnancy, abortion, and sex in fiction.
- “Reconciliation” – Monica Byrne on the need for reconciliation between the United States and Iran, and how that can begin with connection between individuals. If you’re an American and her article makes you want to visit Iran yourself, she’s also written a how-to for U.S. citizens on her blog.
Poetry
- “The New Ways” – Amal El-Mohtar in the inaugural issue of Uncanny Magazine.
- “The Mermaid of Lincoln Park Lagoon” – Valya Dudycz Lupescu in Strange Horizons.
Nonfiction:
- “Bowling for Love” – Deborah Kennedy, on the perils of online dating.
- “Kosher for Gentiles” – Elizabeth Weiss writes in The New Yorker about the latest purchase of Manischewitz and the branding power of “kosher.”
- “Free Will in a Closed Universe” – Karen Burnham reviews Greg Egan’s ultra-hard-SF Orthogonal trilogy for the New York Review of Science Fiction.
- “The Garbage Comes from the Garbage” – That was Evan James’s original title for this brilliant piece about a Grindr-mediated date.
- “So Many Ways to Die in Syria Right Now” – Neil Gaiman writes about the things he saw when he visited a camp for Syrian refugees in Jordan.
- “Meghan McCarron on Karen Joy Fowler” – Meghan wrote a lovely piece about Karen and her work for the Literary Mothers project.
Fiction:
- “How to Get Back to the Forest” by Sofia Samatar – A visceral SF short story about the industrialization of education and those people who sometimes flash through your life with a bravery you’ll never match.
- “History” by Thomas Gebremedhin – Thomas was one of a very few of my Iowa contemporaries with whom I never managed to share a workshop. So it was a delight to finally encounter his fiction in this lonely, lyrical little story.
- “Stethoscope” by Ben Mauk – Ben I had workshop with many times, and this is one of the most memorable stories I’ve read in draft form. Seriously, it has stuck in my head for three years now. This is a long, free excerpt, with the full text available to subscribers to The Sun.
My friends are talented and prolific! Look at their things!
NONFICTION:
- “Luxury Shopping, From The Other Side of the Register” – In December Carmen Machado wrote for the New Yorker about what it’s like to be working retail during the busiest shopping days of the year.
- “Bummed Out and Ugly” – Alice Sola Kim with a beautiful and personal remembrance of Philip K. Dick.
- “Crossroads and Coins: A Review of Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light” – Amal El-Mohtar writing for NPR, another quite personal piece. Having recently read the book myself, I can confirm that it is as delightful as Amal claims.
- “Scattered Leaves” – Ben Mauk writing for the New Yorker about the current practice of dismembering ancient manuscripts and selling individual pieces of them on eBay, as well as the long history of “book breaking.”
- “To Flip a Flop” – Also in the New Yorker, Elizabeth Weiss writes about the economics of the broadway show, using the example of the largely unsuccessful Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark.
FICTION:
- “The Glitch” – Rebekah Frumkin shows off her talent for claustrophobic interiority and familiarity with 64-bit Zelda games in this story at Granta.
- “The Engineers” (pdf link) – Rebecca Rukeyser with a story in the Massachusetts Review of expatriate courtship in South Korea.
New things for you to read!
- The incomparable Ted Chiang has a new story up at Subterranean. This one is titled “The Truth of Fact, The Truth of Feeling,” and is about language, writing, and memory.
- My clever friend Ben Mauk wrote an essay on Amazon.com’s entry into online arts sales that was published by The New Yorker.
- Carmen Machado had a story published in Tin House back in July that I neglected to link to. This one is called “Miss Laura’s School for Esquire Men.”