Daily Bookshot: The Ben Greenman letters?

The Ben Greenman letters?, originally uploaded by Robert Burdock.

You could be forgiven for thinking that this is a shot of a stack a letters posted sometime recently from the US city of Boston. However, if you did think that, then you’d be wrong. Rather, this is a shot from the opening page of the titular story in New York-based writer Ben Greenman’s latest story collection, What He’s Poised to Do (Harper Perennial).

The ‘postmark’ is cleverly employed on the title page of every short story within the collection, to designate place (Boston becomes Paris, Harlem, North Africa, Australindia etc.), and to also add to the theme of correspondence. And that’s important because not only are the stories contained within this latest collection from Greenman based around the powerful topics of ‘love, infidelity, and the yearning for human connection’, but all have been inspired by written communication.

Although I’m hugely excited about reading this collection (partly because of Greenman’s short story writing reputation, and partly because Simon Van Booy called What He’s Poised to Do ‘a seriously brilliant and lyrical piece of modern fiction’), I’ve only dipped into the opening story so far. But based on my exposure to that story alone (a story which comes across as thought-provoking, creative and as Van Booy would say, ‘lyrical’) I can tell that the reading road ahead is going to be something of a thrilling and memorable one.

This is one of six short story collections I begin working my way through starting this week. So be sure to keep up with my progress in all the usual places. Meantime I invite you to not only pop along for a dig around Ben Greenman’s website and to add him to your following list on Twitter, but to also pop along to the Letters With Character website. This is a companion site to Greenman’s collection. It invites readers to submit letters from themselves (or any other real person) to any fictional character, and I think it’s pretty darn ingenious (both in terms of concept and in the responses that have come back from fellow readers).

And when you’re through with the Letters With Character website, then head on over to the Fifty-Two Stories website where Cal Morgan not only generously serves up one of the stories from the What He’s Poised to Do collection (To Kill The Pink), but he also dishes up two older stories from Greenman too (The House as Rita Sees It and On the Weekends Sometimes). What a guy!

Oh and one last comment before I go. I love the deckled page edges in this and a number of other Harper Perennial titles. This is a feature I’ve not seen often employed on UK titles (I may be wrong please let me know if I am), but it’s one that I’d certainly love to see used more often. It’s rustic-licious!!

Harper Perennial | June 2010 | $13.99 | PAPERBACK | 208 PP | ISBN: 9780061987403