Description
Book SynopsisDouglas Watson's debut story collection is chock-a-block with deaths, births, sea and land voyages, excursions to the library, philosophical asides, and things like wolves. People fall in and out of love, walk in and out of buildings, take two steps forward and two steps back. Futility is a theme of the book, but so is the necessity of trying. "Watson lards his metaphors with specifics." --Kyle Minor, The Missouri Review Douglas Watson holds an MFA from Ohio State University, an MA from Brown University, and works at Time magazine. His stories have appeared in Tin House (online), Sou'Wester, and Fifty-Two Stories. His second book, a novel called A Moody Fellow Finds Love and Then Dies, is due out in 2014 from Outpost19.
Trade Review"Modest in their ambitions and narrow in scope, these tales, in which, for example, a dragon bites off his own foot for having 'wronged beauty,' will stick with you."--Booklist review "What it means to live in the Era of Not Quite is to reach for a thing, and not quite seize it. And then to keep reaching."--The Journal "Watson's linguistics are described as "Cirque du Soleil for book nerds ... while this collection certainly is writerly, it isn't only for the insider club of MFA alums. Anyone who loves language will devour this book because linguistically, Watson does things with a sentence that are so subtle and masterful, you find yourself startled by their effects." -HTML Giant "Several of the stories in The Era of Not Quite... blend the surreal and a detached delivery together movingly, taking what reads like an aphorism and bending it back towards intimacy." -Vol. 1 Brooklyn Review "Watson's fabulist fictions make us laugh at ourselves, our incomplete longings, and irrational fears ... With a wicked humor and a sense of the absurd somewhere between Beckett and George Saunders, Watson makes us laugh while pointing out the irrationality of our desires." -Rain Taxi "When I read Douglas Watson's debut story collection, The Era of Not Quite, I was awash with a rare and nourishing feeling: that what I was reading was exactly what I needed to be reading at that time exactly. Each of his stories deals a dark and witty blow. The collection is alive with a searing sense of humor, with wild formal play. It cranked me up and it stomped me down. I've been recommending this book to everyone." -Heavy Feather "I read a handful of stories from The Era of Not Quite last night, then gobbled up a few more today, when I had some free moments. It's a truly standout collection, in the vein of some of the great satirists and absurdists, writers like Vonnegut, Barthelme, and Coover, a collection I'll certainly finish, go back to again."- Story 366
Table of ContentsContents Against Specificity 4 The Death of John O’Brien 16 The Era of Not Quite 19 Molly Rivers, 83, Held Outlandish Views 31 I’m Sorry I Lost the Scrap of Paper on Which You Outlined Your Plans for the Future 33 My Memoir 34 When the World Broke 35 Men 44 My Foot Is on Fire 47 The Man Who Was Cast into the Void 48 What I Did on My Summer Vacation 52 Special Advertising Section 61 Wolves 65 The Purest Note That Had Ever Been Sung 67 Two Country Gentlemen 76 The Cave 78 Pachyderms 82 Life on the Moon 84 Marcy Loves Joey 85 The Fate of Mothers 86 Narrative of the Life of Jacob Livesey 87 Author Sentenced for Life 89 New Animal 92 The Messenger Who Did Not Become a Hero 106 Acknowledgments 125
