I’ve spent the past several days contemplating newly released lists. The first is Esquire’s list The 75 Books Every Man Should Read, and the second is One Story’s Top 10 Short Stories of All Time. The first, Esquire’s, caught negative attention for its lack of diversity: the only female on the list is Flannery O’Connor. The second, One Story’s, went fairly unnoticed insofar as I can tell.

I’m always confused by the notion of diversity as represented merely by color and gender. I often feel, and maybe incorrectly, that people who are immediately drawn to these more obvious lines of division have not spent much time around people from other cultures and social statuses. The concept of the “dead white male” feels entirely American to me. I’m more like black males from America than I am like white males from Russia. I’m more like women from Texas than I am like men from Vermont.

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Random examples, which in part represent the canon of Camp[ing]:

* “End-of-the-World” billboards
* Alex Jones’ Infowars
* The wife’s picadillo plate
* Eschatological sex

While we would agree that No. 4 is as as good a way to end it all as any, we give you the stories below to keep you entertained. At least until the next prediction, that is…

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It’s broken and it ain’t fixed. The boat’s been rocked and things have gone their own digital way. But there are many of us not conceding, maybe not enough. Still, a few of us, pushing ISBN numbers up. Our new car’s seven year warranty will get children to the library. And even if it takes another hundred thousand miles, we will always return our books. It’s such a simple thing, to follow one’s own dream of beautiful bookstores. And finishing those great novels, if you so wish.

I wrote a book called The Novelist and the Rapper (it used to have a different title). It is a book of short stories, or short stories and essays, or short stories and essays and miscellany, like FAQs. Some of the words I took from other books, like Colonel Harland Sanders’ autobiography, Life as I Have Known it has been Finger-Lickin’ Good. I took some of the words from the retirement letter of MC Humpty Hump, of “The Humpty Dance” fame. I took some of the words from the hip-hop group De La Soul, who were speaking about the time they got sued for taking some words or noises from the psychedelic rock band The Turtles.

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Mornings are reserved for simian stoops over toilet seats, treadmill agonies, and what the daughter calls “ugly eggs.” Afternoons, we run in sweat to catch the breathing man before his underwater dance. Evenings we sleep, barely, and in sparse dreams with jovial lips we spring on the parapets of icy flames, just for a taste. But even the daily grind will not consume us. We will endure, like the stories below. Enjoy.

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