White Dialogues - Softcover

Sims, Bennett

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937512630 ISBN 13: 9781937512637

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio, 2017

Synopsis

With all the brilliance, bravado, and wit of his award-winning debut, A Questionable Shape, Bennett Sims returns with an equally ambitious and wide-ranging collection of stories.

A house-sitter alone in a cabin in the woods comes to suspect that the cabin may need to be "unghosted." A raconteur watches as his personal story is rewritten on an episode of This American Life. And in the collection's title story, a Hitchcock scholar sitting in on a Vertigo lecture is gradually driven mad by his own theory of cinema.

In these eleven stories, Sims moves from slow-burn psychological horror to playful comedy, bringing us into the minds of people who are haunted by their environments, obsessions, and doubts. Told in electric, insightful prose, White Dialogues is a profound exploration of the way we uncover meaning in a complex, and sometimes terrifying, world. It showcases Sims's rare talent and confirms his reputation as one of the most exciting young writers at work today.

About this title

About the Author

Bennett Sims is the author of the novel A Questionable Shape, which received the Bard Fiction Prize and was a finalist for The Believer Book Award, and the collection White Dialogues. He is a recipient of a Michener-Copernicus Society Fellowship. His fiction has appeared in A Public Space, Conjunctions, Electric Literature, Tin House, and Zoetrope: All-Story, as well as in the Pushcart Prize Anthology. He has taught at Bard College, Grinnell College, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Review

"Anyone who admires such pyrotechnics of language will find 21st-century echoes of Edgar Allan Poe in Sims's portraits of paranoia and delusion, with their zodiacal narrowing and the maddening tungsten spin of their narratives."
--New York Times Book Review


"Sims's debut story collection elegantly explores the ordinary and fantastic terrors lurking in the deepest recesses of the psyche...This is a cerebral collection for fans of smart, philosophical fiction that is not afraid to follow thought experiments to their most chilling conclusions."
--Publishers Weekly


"These 11 cerebral, uncanny stories marry horror, pop culture, metafiction, and cinema, and the result is a collection unlike any other in recent memory. If you like David Foster Wallace, Godzilla, or both, you need this book."
--The Week


"There are some clever literary stunts scattered throughout this collection, but there's no doubting the inventiveness of the author's prose, pacing, and ability to build tension and occasionally dispel it with laughter... A deft collection of spooky fables that pivots from classic stylings to postmodern irony."
--Kirkus


"Bennett Sims blurs the line between madness and genius in his cerebral story collection...Showcasing an ingenious and darkly subversive mind, White Dialogues is a head-trip worth taking."
--Shelf Awareness

Edition details

• Publisher: Two Dollar Radio
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1937512630
• ISBN 13: 9781937512637
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 212