Creative Types
and Other Stories
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist and “one of America's best and most interesting writers" (Stephen King), a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark—unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life
A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making.
In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises—writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The seven stories in Bissell's droll, thoughtful collection (after the travelogue Apostle) portray artistic people in the midst of unfortunate circumstances, often due to their own actions. After a man confronts a Roman tour guide during a honeymoon trip in "A Bridge Under Water," his wife hears the "sound of hope collapsing." Things don't fare much better in the title story when married couple Reuben and Bren hire Haley, a female escort. The three begin fooling around until Reuben kills the mood by criticizing Haley's Cla$$y Lady tattoo. Haley responds with a long story about an old friend she got the tattoo with, preserving her dignity as the couple's problems are revealed. Varying forms of comeuppance emerge for former schoolyard bully turned magazine editor in the effective though meandering "Punishment," and for a former lawyer for the Justice Department, accused of war crimes overseas for his advocacy of torture during the Iraq War in "The Fifth Category." "The Hack" sharply satirizes the entertainment industry, as an assistant for James Franco navigates a whirlwind of demands during Franco's SNL appearance. Each story demonstrates Bissell's talent for smooth, sparkling prose, arresting descriptions (a sweaty body smelled like "skin underneath a not-recent bandage"), and vivid characterization. Desperate, downtrodden, and self-absorbed, the protagonists are thoroughly human, and Bissell consistently transforms the reader's voyeuristic pleasure into unexpected sympathy.
