In September 1999, American author Paul Auster and a producer from
America's National Public Radio came up with an idea. They would
launch the National Story Project, asking for short stories that
could be read on the radio. There were two requirements. First, the
author must never have been published before. And secondly, the
stories must be true, or, as Auster puts it in his introduction,
'true stories, that sounded like fiction'. The result was this
remarkable collection, 180 stories chosen from over 4000
submissions. From just a few lines long to a few pages at most, the
entries are testament to the voice of the ordinary American man and
woman. Each is a perfect, small detail - a snapshot - from the
writer's own life. Everyone has something extraordinary to relate.
'Vic bought the python after a very bad week at the halfway
house...' begins one story, 'Early in my career as a crime-scene
cleaner...' starts another. These may be ordinary people, but their
experiences often border on the bizarre. They also speak of things
greater than themselves. Although they focus in on a small detail,
each piece illuminates its time. One tale describes how the local
leader of the Klu Klux Klan was unmasked by his dog on a march;
another tells how a man lost his mother's watch against the
backdrop of Pearl Harbour. These stories, so small and personal,
demonstrate how no-one lives in isolation; everybody's life is
unavoidably touched by great events and movements. These are not
writers with a capital 'W'. Yet their very simplicity of language
is their strength; not one piece is overwritten, and adjectives are
sparse. There is no artifice and no attempt at being overtly
literary. We often deride amateur writing. But this collection
shows that there is, after all, a little piece of writing in
everyone. Review by Dea Birkett (Kirkus UK)
Chosen by Paul Auster out of the four thousand stories submitted to
his radio programme on National Public Radio, these 180 stories
provide a wonderful portrait of America in the twentieth century.
The requirement for selection was that each of the stories should
be true, and each of the writers should not have been previously
published. The collection that has emerged provides a richly varied
and authentic voice for the American people, whose lives, loves,
griefs, regrets, joys and sense of humour are vividly and honestly
recounted throughout, and adeptly organised by Auster into themed
sections. The section composed of war stories stretches as far back
as the Civil War, still the defining moment in American history;
while the sequence of 'Meditations' conclude the volume with a true
and abiding sense of transcendence. The resultant anthology is both
an enduring hymn to the strange everyday of contemporary American
life and a masterclass in the art of storytelling.
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