The Origin of Doubt: Fifty Short Fictions

The Origin of Doubt is a collection of flash fiction that represents the best of the genre. Each story is a gem, a glimpse into moments of yearning and unexpected perception, instants that many of us might otherwise miss. Nathan Long writes with a confident and assured hand, his sensibility generous and insightful. These are stories of male and female desire, of love and longing and loss. They are told to us like secrets, each simple moment a revelation that generates surprise and wonder. Reading them is sheer delight. —Patricia Smith, The Year of Needy Girls

Long is a writer of focused and developed gifts, of a fecund imagination, at home in crossing genres as form and content make their evolving demands. These works span the gamut from traditional to queer trans-genre forms, marvelous to behold in times like these when political discourses and abuses of language have sunk to unforeseen lows. —Timothy Liu, author of Of Thee I Sing (Poetry Book-of-the-Year Award from Publishers Weekly) and Don't Go Back To Sleep

The stories in The Origin of Doubt are superb examples of realism—accessible in style and replete with nuance, exuding an omniscient wisdom that is profound yet humble. Long has a special knack of presenting an oblique or mundane situation and making it momentous; stylistically, his use of significant detail is sharply effective, and his figurative language rich and resounding with meaning. —John Parras, author of Fire on Mount Maggiore

Reading the fifty incisive fictional incisions of Nathan Alling Long’s deft The Origin of Doubt, I found myself flashing on the origins of smithing samurai katana and wakizashi blades, the edgiest of edges, patiently folded, flattened and peened time and time again to strike out a sword honed to microscopic tolerances, thicknesses of molecules. These sharp and stropping fictions are cut and cutting and finely inscribe the margins and boundaries of the cauterized categories of age and gender. —Michael Martone, author of Michael Martone and Winesburg, Indiana