American Innovations: Stories

First Edition, 1st printing. Bright, clean & tight copy, unread, in AS NEW condition. "In one of the intensely imaginative stories in Rivka's (sic) Galchen's AMERICAN INNOVATIONS, a young woman's furniture walks out on her. In another, the narrator feels compelled to promise to deliver a takeout order that has incorrectly been phoned in to her. In a third, the petty details of a property transaction illuminate the complicated pains and loves of a family. The tales in this groundbreaking collection are secretly in conversation with canonical stories, reimagined from the perspective of female characters. Just as Wallace Stevens's 'Anecdote of the Jar' responds to John Keats's 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' Galchen's 'The Lost Order' covertly recapitulates James Thurber's 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,' while 'The Region of Unlikeness' is a smoky and playful mirror to Jorge Luis Borges's 'The Aleph.' The title story, 'American Innovations,' revisits Nikolai Gogol's 'The Nose.' By turns realistic, fantastical, witty, and lyrical, these marvelously uneasy stories are deeply emotional and written in exuberant, pitch-perfect prose. Whether exploring the tensions in a mother-daughter relationship or the finer points of time travel, Galchen is a writer like none other today." [jacket copy] "Rivka Galchen writes about the strangeness of being alive--not that anyone has any other state to compare being alive to, which doesn't make it any less strange. She writes with intelligence, wit, and great originality. These stories are amazing."--Roz Chast. "Rivka Galchen is like the pinball wizard of American letters, with a narrative voice that can ricochet from wonder to terror to hilarity in the breadth of a breath. These ten stories of profound loss and profound joy give the Kantian sublime a key lime twist, and reveal what happily haunted space cadets we all are in the echo chamber of our 'ordinary' American lives. You'll feel compelled to read Galchen's sentences to strangers on buses. The delicacy and brilliance of what she is doing doesn't yet have a name."--Karen Russell. Pristine hardcover w/brilliant corners & crisp edges, a square & tight binding, wrapped in a near Fine (tiny nick) & intact jacket featuring an impossible photograph.…