Fiction. In his second collection of short fictions, the fiercely original Gary Lutz details a fresh assembly of gravely wayward fusspots, downhearted smart alecks, tank-town boulevardiers, virtuosos of loneliness, underloved lovelies of unstable, contestable gender. Desperate for human contact, Lutz's unforgettable characters listen for noises coming through the walls as well as collect the scraps of hair and skin their lovers have left behind. Written in a tonic prose of singular precision, the twenty-four gorgeously perverse, intensely moving stories of I LOOKED ALIVE place Lutz at the forefront of contemporary fiction's depictors of affection gone awry.
Author City: GREENSBURG, PA USA
Gary Lutz is the author of DIVORCER, STORIES IN THE WORST WAY, I LOOKED ALIVE, and Partial List of People to Bleach.
Reviews and Other Links
interview by Dylan Nice @ Wag's Revue
Reynard Seifert @ Thought Catalog
Alissa Nutting @ FANZINE
David Varno @ BOMBLOG
“What you often hear about Gary Lutz is that he writes astonishing sentences. I think that's true. I also think it undersells the brilliance of what Lutz does. The insanely tight, compressed sentences build into insanely tight, compressed stories that show us what America and contemporary life can feel like, at their darkest core. Gary Lutz is a master—living proof that, even in our cliché-ridden, denial-drenched, hype-driven age, true originality is still an American possibility.”
—George Saunders
“Gary Lutz is a revolutionary force in American writing, reinventing prose fiction with sentences that always deliver on their extravagant promises. His new collection is even stronger and funnier than his first, a feat I’d presumed impossible. Lutz’s stories reside at the messy, linty, futile core of everything—and he's there, too, at first a tiny figure, waving demurely, but then the nearer we get to truth, the larger Gary Lutz looms, godsome.”
—Sam Lipsyte