Best Worst American: Stories
(Adobe EPUB eBook, Kindle Book, OverDrive Read)
Winner of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award
These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than expected. There's humor, but it's going to hurt.
In "On Paradise," a petshop manager flies with his cat to Las Vegas to meet his long-lost mother and grandmother, only to find that the women look exactly like they did forty years before. In "The Spooky Japanese Girl is There For You," the spooky Japanese girl (a ghost) is there for you, then she is not.
These refreshing and invigorating stories of displacement, exile, and identity, of men who find themselves confused by the presence or absence of extraordinary women, jump up, demand to be read, and send the reader back to the earth changed: reminded from these short stories how big the world is.
If you are having problem transferring a title to your device, please fill out this support form or visit the library so we can help you to use our eBooks and eAudio Books.
Juan Martinez. (2017). Best Worst American: Stories. Small Beer Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Author Date Citation (style guide)Juan Martinez. 2017. Best Worst American: Stories. Small Beer Press.
Chicago / Turabian - Humanities Citation (style guide)Juan Martinez, Best Worst American: Stories. Small Beer Press, 2017.
MLA Citation (style guide)Juan Martinez. Best Worst American: Stories. Small Beer Press, 2017.
| Library | Owned | Available |
|---|---|---|
| Shared Digital Collection | 2 | 2 |
OverDrive Product Record
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/6852-1/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/6852-1/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/6852-1/AA0/213/2D/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/6852-1/AA0/213/2D/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- formats
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781618731258
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B01MT745S2
- name: Kindle Book
- id: ebook-kindle
- identifiers:
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781618731258
- name: OverDrive Read
- id: ebook-overdrive
- identifiers:
- mediaType
- eBook
- primaryCreator
- role: Author
- name: Juan Martinez
- title
- Best Worst American
- dateAdded
- 2017-05-26T13:15:00-04:00
- contentDetails
- href: https://link.overdrive.com/?websiteID=141&titleID=3091404
- type: text/html
- account:
- name: Sacramento Public Library (CA)
- id: 1151
- sortTitle
- Best Worst American Stories
- crossRefId
- 3091404
- subtitle
- Stories
- id
- aa02132d-b39f-460b-8f37-7e45c7116b18
- starRating
- 0
OverDrive MetaData
- isPublicDomain
- False
- formats
- fileName: BestWorstAmerican_9781618731258_3091404
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 214791
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781618731258
- rights:
- type: Copying
- value: 0
- type: Printing
- value: 0
- type: Lending
- value: 0
- type: ReadAloud
- value: 0
- type: ExpirationRights
- value: 0
- name: Adobe EPUB eBook
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-epub-adobe
- onSaleDate: 1/16/2017
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=aa02132d-b39f-460b-8f37-7e45c7116b18&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: BestWorstAmerican_3091404
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 0
- identifiers:
- type: ASIN
- value: B01MT745S2
- name: Kindle Book
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-kindle
- onSaleDate: 1/16/2017
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=aa02132d-b39f-460b-8f37-7e45c7116b18&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- fileName: BestWorstAmerican_9781618731258_3091404
- partCount: 0
- fileSize: 214812
- identifiers:
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781618731258
- name: OverDrive Read
- isReadAlong: False
- id: ebook-overdrive
- onSaleDate: 1/16/2017
- samples:
- source: From the book
- formatType: ebook-overdrive
- url: https://samples.overdrive.com/?crid=aa02132d-b39f-460b-8f37-7e45c7116b18&.epub-sample.overdrive.com
- creators
- role: Author
- fileAs: Martinez, Juan
- bioText:
Juan Martinez's stories have been published in McSweeney's, Glimmer Train, Conjunctions, Huizache, Ecotone, TriQuarterly, and broadcast on Selected Shorts. He lives in Chicago with his family and is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University. His website is fulmerford.com.
- name: Juan Martinez
- publishDate
- 2017-01-16T00:00:00-05:00
- isOwnedByCollections
- True
- title
- Best Worst American
- fullDescription
Winner of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award
These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than expected. There's humor, but it's going to hurt.
In "On Paradise," a petshop manager flies with his cat to Las Vegas to meet his long-lost mother and grandmother, only to find that the women look exactly like they did forty years before. In "The Spooky Japanese Girl is There For You," the spooky Japanese girl (a ghost) is there for you, then she is not.
These refreshing and invigorating stories of displacement, exile, and identity, of men who find themselves confused by the presence or absence of extraordinary women, jump up, demand to be read, and send the reader back to the earth changed: reminded from these short stories how big the world is.
- reviews
- premium: False
- source: Tom Bissell
- content: "Filled with droll, cunning, funny, and formally innovative stories that fall somewhere between stand-up comedy and literary fiction. These excellent works mark him as a writer both to read and watch."
- premium: False
- source: Rebecca Makkai, author of Music for Wartime
- content: "These 24 wide-ranging stories are the gut-punch kind: intense, innovative tales that skew your vision for the rest of the day. Martinez writes with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue, and his characters -- often alone and unloved, often haunted -- are worthy observers of both the horrors and wonders of this world."
- premium: False
- source: Jack Pendarvis, author of Movie Stars
- content: "I feel sure that some smart and appreciative person will praise Juan Martinez for his 'skewed vision,' but Martinez's view of the world is startlingly clear. It's just that the rest of us haven't caught up yet. Deep and comic and deeply comic, his is a collection of wonders for any human to enjoy."
- premium: False
- source: Hannah Tinti
- content: "A little out of the ordinary. . . . He takes this very unnatural environment and changes it into a landscape."
- premium: False
- source: Etgar Keret
- content: "I loved it."
- premium: False
- source: Tom Bissell
- content: "Twenty-four semiexistential short stories that have appeared in the likes of McSweeney's and Selected Shorts from Colombia-born writer Martinez. The author has an interesting way of injecting absurdity into everyday life and humor into the phantasmagorical in this wide-ranging, mostly engaging collection of tall tales. . . . there are also occasional moments of grace. . . . Some are just flat-out funny. . . . Martinez even makes the frightening funny. . . . promising debut collection of short stories, some unique in their execution."
- premium: True
- source:
- content:
December 1, 2016
Twenty-four semiexistential short stories that have appeared in the likes of McSweeney's and Selected Shorts from Colombia-born writer Martinez. The author has an interesting way of injecting absurdity into everyday life and humor into the phantasmagorical in this wide-ranging, mostly engaging collection of tall tales. The first story, "Roadblock," tells of a spinster aunt who keeps setting the narrator's things on fire. A few are merely dashed-off entertainments, like the poetic but aimless "Strangers on Vacation: Snapshots" or "Your Significant Other's Kitten Poster." "Machulin in L.A." finds an aspiring filmmaker narrating a strange run-in with the bride at a wedding. It doesn't end well: "That's it. They're married. Bastards." The strange, heavily Russian-accented narrator of "Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote" is later explained in the final story, "Best Worst American." In the meantime, readers can be entertained by events at the most literary karaoke bar ever: "First we start with Don Quixote. But soon we branch to postmodernist stuff, because customers want, and customers is always accurate: They say, Barth! Barthelme! Pynchon! Coover! We say, OK. We say, is good." But there are also occasional moments of grace, like this from the end of one of the autobiographical-sounding stories, "Souvenirs from Ganymede": "These are ancillary mysteries. They are peripheral to the business of living but crucial, because they keep us going. They're part of the mystery train, the threads tying us together, the ghosts of fingerprints: they are at the heart of beauty. They are light falling in certain rooms on certain mornings." Some are just flat-out funny; "The Lead Singer is Distracting Me" finds a Keith Richards-like guitarist pondering a different life. Martinez even makes the frightening funny, as in "The Spooky Japanese Girl is There for You," in which a Ringu-like wraith becomes an almost pedestrian nuisance. An uneven but promising debut collection of short stories, some unique in their execution.COPYRIGHT(2016) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
- popularity
- 23
- links
- self:
- href: https://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L1BWwAAAA2I/products/aa02132d-b39f-460b-8f37-7e45c7116b18/metadata
- type: application/vnd.overdrive.api+json
- self:
- id
- aa02132d-b39f-460b-8f37-7e45c7116b18
- starRating
- 0
- images
- cover:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-100/6852-1/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img100.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- thumbnail:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-200/6852-1/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img200.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover150Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-150/6852-1/AA0/213/2D/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img150.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover300Wide:
- href: https://img1.od-cdn.com/ImageType-400/6852-1/AA0/213/2D/{AA02132D-B39F-460B-8F37-7E45C7116B18}Img400.jpg
- type: image/jpeg
- cover:
- isPublicPerformanceAllowed
- False
- languages
- code: en
- name: English
- subjects
- value: Fiction
- value: Literature
- value: Science Fiction
- value: Short Stories
- publishDateText
- 01/16/2017
- otherFormatIdentifiers
- type: ISBN
- value: 9781618731241
- mediaType
- eBook
- shortDescription
Winner of the inaugural Neukom Institute Literary Arts Award
These are the best Americans, the worst Americans. In these stories (these cities, these people) there are labyrinths, rivers, wildernesses. Voices sound slightly different than expected. There's humor, but it's going to hurt.
In "On Paradise," a petshop manager flies with his cat to Las Vegas to meet his long-lost mother and grandmother, only to find that the women look exactly like they did forty years before. In "The Spooky Japanese Girl is There For You," the spooky Japanese girl (a ghost) is there for you, then she is not.
These refreshing and invigorating stories of displacement, exile, and identity, of men who find themselves confused by the presence or absence of extraordinary women, jump up, demand to be read, and send the reader back to the earth changed: reminded from these short stories how big the world is.
- sortTitle
- Best Worst American Stories
- crossRefId
- 3091404
- subtitle
- Stories
- publisher
- Small Beer Press
- tableOfContents
Roadblock
Strangers on Vacation: Snapshots
Machulín In L.A.
On Paradise
Domokun in Fremont
The Women Who Talk To Themselves
Customer Service at the Karaoke Don Quixote
Your Significant Other's Kitten Poster
Well Tended
Souvenirs from Ganymede
The Coca-Cola Executive in the Zapatoca Outhouse
Correspondences between the Lower World and Old Men in Pinstripe Suits
The Lead Singer Is Distracting Me
Errands
Liner Notes for Renegade, the Opening Sequence
Hobbledehoydom
My Sister's Knees
The Spooky Japanese Girl Is There For You
Big Wheel, Boiling Hot
After the End of the World: A Capsule Review
Debtor
Forsaken, the Crew Awaited News from the People Below
Northern
Best Worst American- bisacCodes
- code: FIC019000
- description: Fiction / Literary
- code: FIC028040
- description: Fiction / Science Fiction / Collections & Anthologies
- code: FIC029000
- description: Fiction / Short Stories (single author)
