Politically Inspired
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The news media can’t help but leave out a certain personal element from every story. Reading fiction gives us the freedom to envision unlikely connections between characters, overhear conversations in bedrooms and on neighborhood streets, focus in on a child’s thoughts, and linger in unfamiliar places. Politically Inspired is a collection of thirty original short stories, cartoons, and illustrations that illuminate many of the political events and questions of our time. Each of these inventive fictional worlds offers a new perspective on today’s politics of fear, desire, and destruction. We see the President of the United States wake up as a fifth-grader in Minneapolis, peek into a classroom where young boys wear burqas, and read an endearingly eccentric letter to a girlfriend lost on a hijacked plane. Both highly imaginative and deeply relevant, 'Politically Inspired' reveals the myriad ways in which politics shapes our everyday lives.“September 11, the War on Terror, the invasion of Iraq... Why not explore our new reality through fiction, the truest gauge of the national psyche? That was Elliott’s bright idea. And the result? A deeply impressive collection of 26 previously unpublished stories... A superb collection, without a single dud. Grab it.”— Kirkus Reviews (starred)
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Triggered by the post-9/11 changes in the political landscape, this erratic collection of 29 short stories offers new fiction from the likes of Charles Baxter, Anne Ursu, Mark Lee and a host of lesser-known authors from around the world. Edited by writer Stephen Elliott, the anthology begins with Ursu's playfully sardonic "The President's New Clothes." President Bush finds himself trapped in the body of a young Minnesota schoolboy who, despite Dubya's best efforts, can't get anyone to believe that the leader of the free world in Washington, D.C., literally has the mind of a child. Baxter's contribution, "Innocent," is a short dialogue about a man who, in fear of the horror and messiness of "getting involved," flees the scene of a deadly highway accident he has just witnessed a metaphor for America's attitude toward international conflict and cooperation. Lee's "Memo to Our Journalists" is a short, punchy list of editorial precautions to reporters in Iraq. It includes such pithy advice as "If you and your embedded unit are lost in the countryside and searching for the main road, remember that every adult in the world lies about most things much of the time. Look for a smart, honest nine-year-old." While many of the stories explore such worthwhile topics as the so-called "human shields" in Iraq, efforts to horde Cipro during the anthrax scare and post-apocalyptic sex after 9/11, some of the writing is painfully amateurish. The abundance of inexperienced authors on the roster causes some intriguing conceits to get lost in the shuffle; as an exercise in subversive fiction, this is an interesting if spotty experiment. FYI:A portion of the proceeds from the sales of this book will go to Oxfam America's humanitarian response in Iraq.
