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The Fat Artist and Other Stories
The Fat Artist and Other Stories | Benjamin Hale
Prize-winning author Benjamin Hales fiction abounds with a love of language and a wild joy for storytelling. In prose alternately stark, lush and hallucinatory, occasionally nightmarish and often absurd, the seven stories in this collection are suffused with fear and desire, introducing us to a company of indelible characters reeling with love, jealousy, megalomania, and despair. As in his debut novel, The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore, the voices in these stories speak from the margins: a dominatrix whose longtime client, a US congressman, drops dead during a tryst in a hotel room; an addict in precarious recovery who lands a job driving a truck full of live squid; a heartbroken performance artist who attempts to eat himself to death as a work of art. From underground radicals hiding in Morocco to an aging hippy in Colorado in the summer before 9/11 to a young drag queen in New York at the cusp of the AIDS crisis, these stories rove freely across time and place, carried by haunting, peculiar narratives that form the vast tapestry of American life. Hales work has earned accolades from writers as disparate as novelist Jonathan Ames, who compared discovering his work to watching Mickey Mantle play ball for the first time; Washington Post critic Ron Charles, who declared him fully evolved as a writer, and bestselling author Jodi Picoult, who simply called him brilliant. Pairing absurdity with philosophical musings on the human condition and the sway our most private selves and hidden pasts hold over us, the stories in The Fat Artist reside in the unnerving intersections between life and death, art and ridicule, consumption and creation.
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DoonTheGoon
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Mehso-so

These stories were interesting, albeit a but tedious to read. At times it felt like Hale did so much research for these stories that he forgot to make them interesting. I wanted so bad to rate this a PICK... but it's just a hair closer to SO-SO for me.

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DoonTheGoon
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Been reading this collection of stories lately - so far they've proven to be quite unique, each with its own dark twist. I'm looking forward to finishing this.

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StaceGhost
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The fourth and final, but for a mere 100 pages. #24in48 was a complete success! I finished the last 400 or so pages of Empire of Things, crushed all 536 pages of Bonita Avenue, snacked on 272 pages of horror in Bird Box, and finished with 143 pages of Benjamin Hale's short stories for a grand total of 1,351 pages! Thanks to @24in48 and @Litsy for a lovely weekend! It was delightful reading and sharing with all of you! May your #tbr over-floweth 📚

Eyelit That cat figurine is awesome! 8y
StaceGhost Thanks @Eyelit! It's a puzzle box 🤓 8y
Eyelit And it just gets cooler! 😻 8y
BarbaraTheBibliophage Wonderful job! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 8y
18 likes1 stack add4 comments
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joe_hill
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Pickpick

I have read a brilliant short story which you should track down immediately. It is probably in Benjamin Hale's collection, The Fat Artist. The Fat Artist is probably not yet available. Don't worry and don't wait. You can find "Don't Worry, Baby" in The Paris Review 216. Get it now. Right now.

Liberty He's so awesome. 8y
Cyn.Microcosm If you recommend it, I must find it! 8y
92 likes18 stack adds2 comments
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Letlygirl
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Loved 'The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore' - so excited to see this on the new release shelf on my most recent library run.

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BibliophileArtichoke
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Amazing collection of short stories. Edgy, sometimes grotesque, but with such a poignant streak of humanity. Hale has a very unique literary voice, and his imagination is fascinating. Highly recommend.

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