Pegasus Downtown Staff Picks

Reading these stories is like being trapped in someone else’s dream.  It’s confusing, it’s fascinating, and you feel like maybe you aren’t supposed to be there, but you’re going to stick around as long as you can get away with it.  Throwing in as many peculiar situations as the subconscious can provide, Keret writes the strange into reasonable events, and vice versa, concluding each story with a stunning and bizarre twist .  Highly recommended!

Ever gazed up at the stars and wondered what lay beyond? Star Maker takes this notion to a whole new world and then some. One night, a man on a suburban hillside looks out at the stars and ponders existence (we’ve all been there), the next moment he is hurtling through space on the greatest of interstellar journeys ever imagined. Stapledon conjures up concepts, entities, worlds and universes so fantastical your brain will feel like it’s about to supernova. From planets populated by Nautiloids (giant whale-like vessels who traverse the vast oceans using membrane-enhanced sails) to the predetermined solar dance of the stars, this novel/mythology/future history of the universe will encapsulate, inspire and leave one feeling like a child who’s just seen a solitary shooting star flash across a clear night sky. Marlon

So you’ve read all of Dostoevsky, marveled at Bulgakov, got bored with Gogol, could never be bothered with Tolstoy and were wondering where to go next? Andrey Platonov was a prolific 20th century Soviet author who although a member of the communist party, saw most of his work banned for a lack of focus towards the collective. The title novella Soul follows a man returning to his Asian birthplace to search for and emancipate the tiny nomadic desert dwelling tortoise eating nation of Dzhan. Often surreal, introspective, sad and inspiring, Platonov is reminiscent of Camus in his eye for small details and his chief protagonist’s endless search for meaning in his and others existence. Marlon

You simply have to read Kurt Vonnegut before you can go on living.  Reading a Vonnegut novel is like sipping fine wine while cutting huge farts in a $100,000 car that you stole.  In other words he is brilliant, strange and silly all at the same time.  Boo-yah! --Tim

Remember being a little kid, when language was still kind of scary, smells were overwhelming, monsters were probably not real but you weren't sure, and interpersonal relationships only sort of  made sense? That's what Aimee Bender's short stories are like, except with more sex. She mostly uses language like a magic wand, except when it’s a hat pin to your butt. I love her. She is such a good writer that the last time I saw her read- at a bar in New York- I was afraid to talk to her so I drank a bunch of beer and then left. A hundred stars!

Max Brooks (World War Z: An Oral History) offers helpful tips for those uncertain of basic getting-through-the-day-after-the-zombie-holocaust essentials. How to pitch a Molotov cocktail, where to find shelter and hole up, leadership skills and lessons from the history and literature of the living dead are presented in this pleasing package, designed to be easily tossed into a backpack or the glove compartment of a truck about to run out of gas.~~Sean