Crack Books

Birds of America: Stories by Lorrie Moore
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If I ever take it upon myself to do something insane like spending another 30 grand to get an MFA in Creative Writing, I’d want Lorrie Moore to be my thesis advisor and writing mentor. Ever since I first read her short story “How to Become A Writer,” I knew we were literary soulmates. Her cheeky tone, her sarcastic and bitterly black humor, her characters stuck in stupid Midwestern towns bearing unironic newspaper headlines like “Normal Man Marries Oblong Woman”… these were all somehow familiar to me, yet so unexpected from a writer who is considered part of the “literary” genre of fiction. Can you really write cuss words in your fiction? Can crazy people really be heros? Yes and yes, says Lorrie Moore. And goddamn if those things won’t take you to the top, too. Fuck the naysayers.

Birds of America is an excellent collection of short fiction by an unconventional writer. They’re all about modern forms of insanity which, really, are signs of sanity in an insane world. At least that’s how I’d describe them. I’m sure the literary types are shaking their snoots and dipping their piggy tails in ink to scribble some nonsense right now about some highfalutin’ themes and messages and other such dreck, but screw ’em.

Who needs an MFA from an accredited university when you’ve already majored in Life at L’Ecole aux Frappes Dures?