Great new(ish) stories from around the Web. Forget work for a minute and read some fiction. It’s good for you.

– The shoe was not a literal shoe but a shoe-shaped apartment, a long centre hall ending in a crimp. From above, it looked like a boot lain on its side. She rented, but two grandsons would later buy the place. Her upwardly mobile desires were reserved for progeny, though naturally some children succeeded where others didn’t. “Neither tragedy nor triumph,” she told herself, “just a life.” — J. David Stevens in The Journal

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The Price Is Right

Richard Price is in Seattle this week, speaking on a double bill that will investigate his unusual and powerful ability to write novels, telescripts and screenplays. What’s interesting to us — beyond Price’s obvious awesomeness — is a man who’s notoriously bad at speaking publicly trying to hold sway over an audience. Of course, if interest is high, most anybody can control an audience’s attention. But it’s worth watching, especially when you think about constructing narratives, how Price pulls it off. Who knows, in his telling of the Writing Life he may actually show more than he tells. In other news, Dan Chaon talks to The Review Review about submitting to literary magazines, an author tries to find out what Jesus, really, would do, and a new book — flush with sexual affairs and exotic locations — is charred in The Complete Review. Still hungry? Good, there’s more: Alice Munro speaks! When India is in turmoil the Virginia Quarterly Review follows, and an author goes round for round with a bunch of Oregon toughs. Finally, Mavis Gallant dreams of bad prose and Granta reconsiders Rushdie, who, on this after-holiday Monday, is determined to let his feathers fly. — Kevin Murphy

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The turkeys have all gone to pasture, the families dispensed. We are thankful for an indulgent and leisurely holiday. But now it’s back to work. OK, not quite yet. It’s only Saturday, after all. So, until we really fire up the afterburners, let’s review the stories, poems, and literature news that made this week so gravy.

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Back then I didn’t know

that I would miss them so dearly

those women behind the counters

of accomplished age bathed

in Chanel and flaunting

their red French twists.

They had long, pale necks above

white, angora sweaters where

well-structured braziers held

each sharp breast separate,

rigid, and unyielding.

They wore black pencil skirts

just below their knees

and from there the seams

of their stockings drew

a perfectly straight line

to their black stiletto heels.

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Thank You For America!

Clichés are clichés for a reason, or so the adage goes. The same can be said for stereotypes. We hosted a foreign exchange student back in high school: you could’ve pulled him out of an 80’s movie. At 17 he had a full beard and his fondness for Poison, jeans and American flag jackets arrived straight from the mind of John Hughes. Regardless, understanding American boys is difficult, which is why so many scholarly investigations on the topic remain pertinent. See The Chronicle of Higher Education for details. Onward, we go from watching reality TV in a pharmacy to addressing Facebook’s friending phenomenon, and then to Joan Didion, whose work, depending on how you read it, either serves as one cliché after another or a matronly premonition for the young literati. Speaking of clichés, what does it take to write about writing from a foreign place? The Stranger surmises. Finally, authors writing essays is a regular happening — Zadie Smith explores why. Our judgment? Thumbs up! – Andrew Geer

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