What Are You Looking At?: The First Fat Fiction Anthology by Donna Jarrell (Engl

Description: What Are You Looking At? by Donna Jarrell, Ira Sukrungruang This bountiful feast of fiction and poetry by top contemporary American writers looks at the perennial American obsession: fat. Includes works by Andre Dubus, Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and others. FORMAT Paperback LANGUAGE English CONDITION Brand New Publisher Description This anthology of thirty works by some of our best contemporary American writers looks at our perennial American obsession: fat. Its everywhere, all around you, and maybe even on you. Now, Americas consuming passion at last has its own anthology. From Andre Dubuss delicious story of a young woman more comfortable in her fat body than her thin one ("The Fat Girl"), to Tobias Wolffs tale of bonding over pancakes ("Hunters in the Snow"), Dorothy Allisons poem about food and love ("Dumpling Child"), Peter Careys surreal tale of a fat-man revolution ("The Fat Man in History"), Wesley McNairs poetic celebration "Fat Heaven", and George Saunderss "The 400-pound CEO," this bountiful feast of fiction and poetry will ensure no reader ever looks at fat quite the same way again. Including stories and poems byDorothy Allison Frederick Busch Peter CareyRaymond CarverJunot DíazAndre DubusPam HoustonJill McCorkleGeorge SaundersTobias Wolff Back Cover Here i s f a t i n a l l i t s g l o r y a n d g randeur-a l a r g e - h e a r t e d c e l e b ra t i o n o f t h e h u m a n s p i r i t a n d e a c h i n d i v i d u a l s u n i q u e va l u e , re g a rd l e s s o f s i z e . This anthology of thirty works by some of our best contemporary American writers looks at our perennial American obsession: fat. From Andre Dubuss delicious story of a young woman more comfortable in her fat body than her thin one ("The Fat Girl"), to Tobias Wolff s tale of bonding over pancakes ("Hunters in the Snow"), Dorothy Allisons poem about food and love ("Dumpling Child"), and Peter Careys surreal tale of a fat-man revolution ("The Fat Man in History"), this bountiful feast of fiction and poetry will ensure no reader ever looks at fat quite the same way again. Donna Jarrell is a self-described fat American whose fiction won Case Western Reserve Universitys prestigious Kennedy Prize for Outstanding Creative Project. She lives with her family in Columbus, Ohio. Ira Sukrungruang is a first-generation Thai-American. His stories have appeared in Witness, Indiana Review, Another Chicago Magazine, and numerous other literary journals. He teaches creative nonfiction at State University of New York-Oswego. Author Biography Donna Jarrell is a self-described fat American whose fiction won Case Western Reserve Universitys Kennedy Prize for Outstanding Creative Project. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. Ira Sukrungruangs work has appeared in numerous literary journals. He lives in Oswego and teaches at State University of New York-Oswego. Table of Contents Contents Acknowledgments Introduction FREDERICK BUSCH Extra Extra Large JUNOT D Review Quote This singular and delightful anthology of stories and poems told by and about "fat" people is compelling in its honesty and surprising in its range-morbid narratives of murder and dark compulsions mingle with thoughtful reflections upon fatness in relation to family, friends, and culture. Andre Dubuss "The Fat Girl" follows Louise, who loses weight and loses herself in the process. Jill McCorkle presents sweet revenge in "Crash Diet." Peter Careys "The Fat Man in History" is a bizarre and mysterious tale of a small clan called the Fat Men Against the Revolution that ends with cannibalism and a twist. Like any addiction, the focus is rarely on the poison of choice but rather on the relationship of the addict to himself and his environment and is ultimately a commentary on the complexities of a world where people are constantly trying to "find themselves" amidst a confusing array of social conventions. But the real joy of this anthology is that there is no "message" or moral that is thrust upon the reader, only stories attempting to illuminate aspects of the human condition-as all good stories should. Highly recommended. Excerpt from Book FREDERICK BUSCH Extra Extra Large What the hell, try it once or twice. Lust after everyone. Live in a sexual lather awhile. Dine on the double veal rib, the lobster fricassee, the quail. Drink Latour. And order dessert. Baby: order anything you want. Baby: order everything. Bernie and I look like nearly identical twins, from time to time. Hes the one with the more attractively broken-looking nose. He has a strong bald head, sloping shoulders, long arms and wide hands. His legs, if you were fitting them into designer jeans, arent quite as long as fashion might require. He cocks his bearded chin (more chestnut, less gray, than mine) and raises his slightly more peaky brows, and he sights at you down his nose-like a boxer, calculating when to duck his chin, when to pop you with the jab. If you took my brother for a fading, spreading middleweight, youd think of me as a heavyweight working to drop down a class. Bernie insisted I was reducing because of happiness in love. "Believe me," I told him, "it might be love, but it isnt any pleasure." Bernie was under stress of his own, but it made him expand. He looked swollen with vitality, pink and broad and fit for coping. He wasnt vital, coping, or fit. As his waist widened and mine declined, as his face broadened and mine diminished, our heavy heads and thick whiskers, large nose, small eyes mounted by brows that look like accent marks in a foreign language, matched each others as our bodies did. I thought this as we sat in Bernies living room, in his little house in the bright countryside that rings suburban Philadelphia. We were part of the litter of the night before, I thought, two lightly sweating, pale, hungover men who rubbed our brows, took our glasses off and wiped them on the tails of our shirts-to no avail: the spots were in, not on, our vision-and nursed at light beer, waiting to feel better. The beer tasted thin and fizzy, and I kept thinking, while I watched him considering me, Well both be fifty one of these days! Bernie nodded judiciously. His lips frowned in evaluation and then turned up in approval. He said, "Bill, youre looking good." I said, "For a dead person." "You keep up the regimen," he said, "and youll be svelte. Does Joanne make sandwiches for you, with bean sprouts in them, on homemade whole-wheat bread? Youre so lucky. Does she nag you to drink mineral water and kiss your earlobes when you push your plate away?" "This is a professional woman, Bernie," I said. "This is a lawyer. Instead of a pacemaker, shell get an egg timer installed. I call her up because I have a sudden need to croon vapid remarks about passion, and she tells me, Bill, I dont have time." "Well," he said, "its tough for women in the law. The guys are waiting for them to make a mistake. They call it the Affirmative Action Grace Period-usually its about five minutes long, I hear." "No, shes good. They wanted her. They use her for the tough cases. Felony drug stuff. Shes mean. She can be." "And this is the person youre making a physical comeback for?" I said, "How do you pick the women you love?" "Right," he said. "Pow. Youre right." "Im sorry, kid." "No," he said, "youre right. Theres Rhonda checking me out-long distance, of course-for one more open wound to lay the salt in, and Im telling you how to pick lovers." "You realize something? Im forty-four years old. Youre forty." "Possibly," he said. "And were sitting around here in boxer shorts, talking about the dangers of dating. We- Bern: we ought to maybe grow up." He closed his eyes above the soft, dark skin of their sockets, and he slowly nodded his head. "Youll get through this, Bern," I said. "Oh, of course," he said. He opened his eyes, and I couldnt meet them. "And you," he said, "youll get through your-your-" "-happiness," I said. Showered and changed, I sat in the car as Bernie made the ritual inspection. Our father had always done this when one of us drove off-the pausing to prod with a toe, but not kick, each tire; the squinting at belts and pipes and filters under the hood. Bernie even checked my oil by wiping the dipstick on his fingers, his fingers on his pants. Then he gently lowered the hood and latched it, smiling his assurances with our fathers expression of grave pleasure. "Looks like everythings under there," he said, coming to my window. He leaned in, and we kissed each others bearded cheek. Bernie patted my face as he withdrew. I made for I-95, climbing north and east, leaving Bernie to his heat, his solitude, his turn-of-the-century woodwork, his turn-of-this-centurys architecture software and computer. I thought of how you arent supposed to die of, starve for, fatten on behalf of, or mime Linda Ronstadt songs about, love. Yet I was consuming too few calories for comfort and strength, I was groaning situps on the clammy floor of my apartment, because of what I thought of as love. And Bernie was going the other way, and because of a dark, intense and brilliant woman named Rhonda, who, with real sadness, I think, and with a regret that hurt Bernie as much as her determination, had left. Someone hugs a middle-aged man, or suffers him to seize at her, while someone else gives him back the house keys, and hundreds of pounds of American flesh begin to shift. I stopped on the road at one of those joints that tried to look like another of those joints. I ordered the garden salad under plastic, and a diet soda. I ate in the car so I wouldnt smell the hamburgers frying. I sighed, like a man full of salted potatoes. What I wanted to do was go back inside and call Bernie up and ask him if he remembered the time that our fathers heart, swollen and beating unreliably, and independent of our fathers needs, had first been diagnosed. Bernie, from his high schools public phone, had called me at college. Hed said Dr. Lenczs name, and that occasioned a long and difficult silence into which we breathed wordless telephone noises for relief. Hed been the doctor who attended our mother. Hed helped us be born, visited our school-day sickbeds, torn out our tonsils, lectured us on sexually communicated diseases, eased our mother-mercy-killed her, Bernie once said he suspected-and now he was fingering our fathers flawed heart. In the silence and static, I in New Hampshire and he in New York each knew what we thought: things could look up awhile, with doctors, but then they always come down. Id traveled home by bus, Id met him secretly at the Port Authority-hed liked it, I remembered, that we were both playing hooky-and then, taking turns with my overnight bag, wed stalked our father. What can you do when you fear the man you know you cant protect, and whom you seek to shelter from his own internal organs? We needed to be underneath his skin, yet we sought to avoid his mildest displeasure. I usually called him sir. Bernie still called him Daddy. And we followed him. Since he was at his office, we ended up standing on lower Broadway, or pacing in front of Trinity Churchs wrought iron fence. At the lunch hour, we trailed him to a Savarin and watched him prod what seems now to have been poached fish. We trailed him back to his office building and watched him into his elevator car. I was broad and strong, pimple-faced, with a head of dark hair. Bernie was only slightly shorter than I, but very lean, his face full of shadows. We talked little, looked at everything, and waited until half past five, when our father emerged, one of hundreds of men there in dark blue Brooks Brothers suits and gleaming black wingtips. "Never wear brown shoes with blue," hed warned me when I left for college, "and treat every woman with reverence." We watched his dark fedora as it rode on the large bald head that was fringed in the same pattern, I thought while I drove, as Bernies and mine. We pushed and pulled at each other on the rush hour subway, we instructed each other in the tradecraft of spies, his learned from TV shows, mine from the Geoffrey Household novel Id read on the bus. At home, once we let him enter, then made our announcement of intentions, he seemed pale, weak, thin, pleased, and unsurprised. He sat in his shirt and tie while I fried the liver Id instructed Bernie to buy. Somebodys mother, maybe even mine, had said that liver gave you strength. We sat, then, not eating, to watch our father try to chew what amounted to everything we could offer him. The sum of our courage and ability, all we could assay, was on that thistle-pattern platter from Stengl of Flemington, New Jersey-gristly, charred, oily, raw. And what he gave us in return, I wanted to say to Bernie, was his serious attention to the inedible. He let us, in our fright, push him around a little, as he pushed the liver around on his plate, bending his identical head to what we had served. Bernies Rhonda was tired, she had said. She was in her thirties, and too young to be so tired, she had said. She was afraid that Bernie tuckered her out by needing so much. "What else do you love people for?" Bernie had asked me during our weekend. Wed been walking into an art theater to watch the Truffaut film made from the Henry James story where Truffaut rants for about two hours. Good ranting, by the way: I could still remember the rhythms, and the splendid woman who loved him unrequited. "Need," Bernie had said as he bought our tickets. "Love is need." That made sense. I thought of my daughter, Brenda, and her dis Details ISBN0156029073 Short Title WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT Language English ISBN-10 0156029073 ISBN-13 9780156029070 Media Book Format Paperback DEWEY FIC Year 2003 Author Ira Sukrungruang Edition 1st Pages 288 Subtitle The First Fat Fiction Anthology DOI 10.1604/9780156029070 Imprint Wadsworth Publishing Co Inc Place of Publication Belmont, CA Country of Publication United States AU Release Date 2003-09-08 NZ Release Date 2003-09-08 US Release Date 2003-09-08 UK Release Date 2003-09-08 Audience Age 14 Publisher Cengage Learning, Inc Publication Date 2003-09-08 Audience Teenage / Young adult Edited by Ira Sukrungruang Imprint US Mariner Books Publisher US HarperCollins We've got this At The Nile, if you're looking for it, we've got it. With fast shipping, low prices, friendly service and well over a million items - you're bound to find what you want, at a price you'll love! TheNile_Item_ID:12630434;

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