SHORT STORY REX Sept 2025
1. “The Heartbreak Hotel on Plutonic Planet”, Carolyn Zhao
Got sucked in by this one’s sort-of free-associating whimsy, its deceptively naif je-ne-sais-quoi. People who get their heart broken go to the planet Pluto, apparently, and on Pluto, we’re briefly endearing or something, all arthouse indie romcom vibes, with shout outs to a lady who lives on the moon and to “the guy they named Pluto after” but like I said there’s deception in this naivete and this hotel’s je-ne-sais-quoi is actually hiding something that goes beyond mere heartbreak
2. “Tiger Driver ‘91”, James McPherson
Ah, the wrestling…i havent followed any of it in decades but some relic of fascination remains…anyway, this brutal story is about two brothers, the older of whom is so crazy for the wrestling (“wrestling daft”, as the younger words it) that it gets him into deep, deep trouble. i’m taken back to late nights in my early childhood with my own older brother, staying up to watch Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling or whatever it was called then. Imagine young NMW as a kid almost but not quite too scared to watch the Road Warriors march up to ringside to the not-yet-familiar (to me) robot voice and groaning guitars that open Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man”, too squeamish to watch the blood pour down from Abdullah the Butcher’s forehead—”an obscene act,” as MacPherson writes, “captured on video not meant for his eyes”. The spectacle reproduces itself in the hyperfixated mind of the spectator, as a metaphor for the violence and fakery and crushing disappointment with society at large. A VHS cassette becomes a window to a better world elsewhere, a lifeline to something more noble and real
3. “Inclement Weather,” John Chrostek
Chrostek (editor/artist behind the beautiful online literary magazine Cold Signal, author most recently of the book Feast of the Pale Leviathan) offers us this little doozy which oozes desperation and delusion in equal measure:
The lectern of the conference room is emanating darkness. Profits are down. I know this because we all know this. There is no escaping the revelation. I yearn to feel anything other than concern, but the senior regional marketing director is speaking and tears are flowing down his face. We are running out of new markets to sell our tiny jackets.
I’m reminded for whatever reason of Barthelme, of absurd human beings committing absurd acts for reasons which are also absurd but also inescapably human
4. “El ojo en la garganta”, Samanta Schweblin
Early on as I was reading Samanta Schweblin’s latest short story collection El buen mal (Good and Evil in the English-language edition), I mentioned to some online buds that I wasn’t enjoying it as much as I’d hoped. Judging from this collection and the previous one (Siete casas vacías), Schweblin appears to be shedding the more genre-adjacent traits of early work like the sci-fi of Kentukis (Little Eyes), the eco-horror of Distancia de rescate (Fever Dream) or the insidious Weirdness that surfaces throughout Pájaros en la boca (Mouthful of Birds), settling instead into a more austerely realist mode.
From the start of El buen mal, the tools of literary realism are trained on the domestic, the nuclear family, while never losing sight of the tragic. Oh, there’s tragedy aplenty (big and repeated content warnings for attempted suicide, child death, even cat death if that’s an issue). And on my first read of these first few stories I saw glimpses, at least, of the qualities that endeared me early on to Schweblin: the studied, implacable, almost Apollonian approach to suspense (see “Bienvenida a la comunidad”), or the upsetting perspectival jolt that closes “Un animal fabuloso”. But by the time I’d finished “William en la ventana” (we'll file this one under Writers writing about writing retreats), the sensation had gotten to be kind of like watching a locksmith of unparalleled skill using their newest, most freshly honed instruments, but they're unlocking a box that was not the one I’d hoped to have opened.
Then I got to “El ojo en la garganta”.
I don't know, maybe I'm just an easy mark for this variety of devastating father/son stories, being that I am a member of both categories, and while I haven't experienced this level of misfortune I do have some experience with ambulance rides, hospital stays, diagnoses, etc. So, there’s that. Not that my subjective personal response diminishes my appreciation of the technical achievement here. There's such a neat legerdemain with the POV, the stretchy first-person narrator whose perspective on his father matures as the story goes on, a narrative voice at times omniscient and, in at least one moment, the exact opposite of omnipresent. Along the way we get casual asides about lithium batteries and old Argentinian road safety campaigns and yes, some emotional devastation. As the epigram of the collection, a quote from Silvina Ocampo (whom ive also recommended here) says, “Lo raro siempre es más cierto” which you could translate as “That which is strange is always more true.” I guess for me at least the weirder Schweblin makes it, the truer it will always feel.
NOT-A-STORY REC: some Stereolab songs
Was on a roadtrip recently and Stereolab is of course some of the greatest driving music ever made, and at some point amid all the organ drone and motorik I said to myself “you know what, though, I really really like when Stereolab does songs in 7/4” (okay let’s see if it will embed video properly this time)
I know there’s this earlier one, for example:
And this later one:
Anybody know any other Stereolab songs in 7/4? Link ‘em in the comments! Am I doing this right, is this ‘driving engagement’? Wait buttondown doesn’t do comments oops nvm
Book review rec: Goodnight Moon
No i’m not reviewing a book, nor even recommending a book, I am merely linking without further comment to Sasha Brown's Goodreads review of Goodnight Moon from seven years ago
goodnight nobody indeed