orange juice by timothy willis sanders is out on awesome machine press this year. it is around 45 pages of short stories, and the stories are between 2 and 8 pages longtopics include a lot of relationships, wwe smackdown (the game), listening to pimp c. in a car, dogs, and seeing titanic in theaters
the tone is minimalist and concrete including a lot of brand names. the verb tense and point of view change between stories. the tone reminds me most of zachary german in eat when you feel sad
my favorite story is “driver’s license.” in the story, there are descriptions of carl checking his email
It’s Monday. Carl checks his email. There’s an offer of discounted hotel rates in Cancun. There’s an evite to a robot theme party. The party requires attendees to dress up “like your favorite robot.”
Carl’s mother forwarded a chain email. It’s a series of quotes from Andy Rooney. “I think if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it’s not a phobia, it’s an opinion.” The quotes are followed by pictures of kittens and the Pledge of Allegiance.
and
Carl gets home from work. He checks his email. Heath Miller sent Carl a Facebook invite to a housewarming party. Carl thinks, “Haven’t talked to Heath Miller in 10 years.” The housewarming party is in Nebraska. Carl clicks Maybe Attending. Carl’s mother forwarded a chain email. It’s in Comic Sans. There’s a picture of a cross over a schoolhouse. “When they took prayer out of school, students started shooting.” A spam email says “Party with the horse team she takes for a long walk!”
the end of the same story felt very powerful to me. in the scene, jill had left her id at carl’s house
Carl looks at her ID. He thinks the photo is pretty. Jill is 5’9”. She is 122 pounds. She lives three blocks from him. Carl types Jill’s address into Google Maps. He goes into “Street View” and zooms in. The house is white and the mailbox is stuffed with envelopes.
the book has a creative commons license, and it is $8 in the u.s.a.
the first thing i knew about orange juice was from an email from timothy: “the cover features a kitten and the title is comic sans because THAZZWUZZUP”
here is timothy willis sanders’ blog and twitter; here is a story from the book; here are reviews of orange juice by stephen tully dierks and zachary german; here is the orange juice page on awesome machine press’ website
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