{"product_id":"the-dead-fish-museum-isbn-9781400077939","title":"The Dead Fish Museum","description":"Each of these eight burnished, terrifying, masterfully crafted stories is set against a landscape that is both deeply American and unmistakably universal. A son confronts his father’s madness and his own hunger for connection on a misguided hike in the Pacific Northwest. A screenwriter fights for his sanity in the bleak corridors of a Manhattan psych ward while lusting after a ballerina who sets herself ablaze. A Thanksgiving hunting trip in Northern Michigan becomes the scene of a haunting reckoning with marital infidelity and desperation. And in the magnificent title story, carpenters building sets for a porn movie drift dreamily beneath a surface of sexual tension toward a racial violence they will never fully comprehend. Taking place in remote cabins, asylums, Indian reservations, the backloads of Iowa and the streets of Seattle, this collection of stories, as muscular and challenging as the best novels, is about people who have been orphaned, who have lost connection, and who have exhausted the ability to generate meaning in their lives. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A must read for everyone who cares about literary writing, \u003ci\u003eThe Dead Fish Museum\u003c\/i\u003e belongs on the same shelf with the best American short fiction.“These evocative stories are dark and graceful, as deeply nuanced as novels. D’Ambrosio evokes lives of regret and resignation, and there’s never a false note, only the quiet desperation of souls seeking the elusive promise of redemption.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Miami Herald\u003c\/i\u003e“Charles D’Ambrosio works a rich, deep, dangerous seam in the brokenhearted rock of American Fiction. His characters live lives that burn as dark and radiant as the prose style that conjures them, like the blackness at the center of the candle’s flame. No one today writes better short stories than these.” —Michael Chabon“D’Ambrosio, who should be ranked up near Carver and Jones on the top tier of contemporary practitioners of the short story, manages to channel Carver’s deftly elliptical manner and Jones’ wounded machismo. Yet in this collection he marks out his own territory, using only the most steadfast and difficult of a writer’s tools–craft and character–and his own marvelously skewed lens.” —\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times Book Review\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e“The stories that make up \u003ci\u003eThe Dead Fish Museum\u003c\/i\u003e are lithe masterpieces of emotional chiaroscuro.” —\u003ci\u003eElle\u003c\/i\u003e“Impossible to put down. D’Ambrosio’s prose is fluid, even insinuating. Sentence leads on to sentence with a momentum that mimics the twisted logic of madness, the small steps and sudden turns that lead people from well-lit streets and into dark alleys.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Seattle Times\u003c\/i\u003e“Every other sentence is a masterpiece. Not a museum—type masterpiece, to be admired but not touched, to be treasured but not explored, but one you could find on a nature trail, created by the author but guided by the hand of God. . . . A reader will gain something rare after reading this book: a sense of wonder at the resilience of a human soul.” —\u003ci\u003eBloomsbury Review\u003c\/i\u003eCharles D'Ambrosio is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Point\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOrphans\u003c\/i\u003e, a collection of essays.  His fiction has appeared in \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Paris Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eZoetrope All-Story\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eA Public Space\u003c\/i\u003e.  Among other honors, he is a recent recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award.\u003cb\u003eThe High Divide\u003c\/b\u003eAt the Home I’d get up early, when the Sisters were still asleep, and head  to the ancient Chinese man’s store. The ancient Chinese man was a brown,  knotted, shriveled man who looked like a chunk of gingerroot and ran one  of those tiny stores that sells grapefruits, wine, and toilet paper, and  no one can ever figure out how they survive. But he survived, he figured  it out. His ancient Chinese wife was a little twig of a woman who sat in a  chair and never said a word. He spoke only enough English to conduct  business, to say hello and goodbye, to make change, although every  morning, when I came for my grapefruit, I tried to teach him some useful  vocabulary.I came out of the gray drizzle through the glass door with the old  Fishback Appliance Repair sign still stenciled on it, a copper cowbell  clanging above me, and the store was cold, the lights weren’t even on. I  went to the bin and picked through the grapefruits and found one that  wasn’t bad, a yellow ball, soft and square from sitting too long in the  box, and then I went to the counter. The Chinese man wasn’t there. His  tiny branchlike wife was sitting in her chair, all bent up. I searched my  pockets for show, knowing all along that I’d be a little short. I came up  with twenty-seven cents, half a paper clip, a pen cap, and a ball of blue  lint. I put the money in her hand and she stared at it. By the lonesome  sound my nickels and pennies made when she sorted them into their slots I  also knew that the till was empty. I looked behind her through the beaded  curtain to the small apartment behind the shop. Next to the kitchen sink  was an apple with a bite out of it, the bite turned brown like an old  laugh.I held my grapefruit, tossed it up in the air, caught it.Where is he? I asked.She was chewing on a slice of ginger and offered me a piece, which I  accepted. In the morning, they chewed ginger instead of drinking coffee.Husband? I said.She blinked and spat on the floor. \u003ci\u003eMeiyou xiwang\u003c\/i\u003e, she said. \u003ci\u003eMeiyou xiwang\u003c\/i\u003e.She folded her hands, tangling the tiny brown roots together. \u003ci\u003eMeiyou  xiwang\u003c\/i\u003e, she said, touching her heart, and sending her hands flying apart.  Her singsong voice beat an echo against the bare walls. Her hands flapped  like a bat. I shook my head. Meiyou xiwang, she insisted. Huh? I said, but   I knew we could go on forever not making any sense. She hugged herself,  like she was cold. I didn’t know what to say. She’d traveled all this way,  she’d left China and crossed the ocean and come to Bremerton and opened a  little store and   put grapefruit in the bins and Mogen David on the shelves, but she’d gone  too far, because now she couldn’t tell anybody what was happening to her  anymore.I had two projects at the Home. I was reading the encyclopedia, working through the whole circle of learning available to man, as the  introduction said. I’d started with Ignatius Loyola, because I’m named  after him, and the Inquisition, and this led me right into the topic of  torture.My other project involved learning Latin so I could be an altar boy. I got  the idea one morning at Sacred Heart while I was staring at the cold altar  and the Cross and winking at the nailed-up Christ to see if He’d wink  back. Our priest said that he didn’t go for the vernacular because it was  vulgar. If you were God Eternal, he said, would you want to listen to such  yowling? He said that everything in the Church was a sign for something  else, and a priest was a man who knew all the signs, but an altar boy knew  a few of them, too. I looked around the sanctuary. With the snowy marble  slab of altar, the gilt dome of the tabernacle and its tiny doors, the  chalices and cruets, the fresh-cut flowers, the sparkling candlelight, the  sanctuary was like a foreign country, and if I knew the language I could go there.Several times I read the Missal as far as the Minor Elevation, the part of  the Mass just after you pray for the dead. \u003ci\u003ePer omnia saecula saeculorum.  Amen.\u003c\/i\u003e World without end. Amen. But I was trying to learn Latin with  phonetics—the Missal was Latin on one side, English on the other—and,  needless to say, my comprehension was zero, and I was always finding  myself back at the beginning, starting over.  \u003ci\u003ePer omnia saecula saeculorum, amen!\u003c\/i\u003eMost of our schoolwork focused on how to get into Heaven. Sister Eulalia,  the catechism nun, taught us about sin and the opportunities for  salvation. She was a short, wide old woman with thick glasses and blue  eyes that drifted behind them like tropical fish. She kept calling Jesus  the Holy Victim and the Word Made Flesh and the Unspotted Sacrifice. She  said that sacrifice didn’t mean to kill but to make holy. We are made in  the image of God’s great mystery but through our ignorance and despair our  vision is clouded. Salvation, she told us, is our presence in a bright  light where we at last become the perfect image and reflection of our  Creator.We saw a slide show on the scapular. A boy was riding by a gas station on  his bicycle. A man was pumping gas and a family was waiting in a car. Then  the gas station was blowing up   and the boy was flying through the air. Everybody died but   the boy, who was wearing his scapular. Sister Eulalia passed around blank  order forms and said to fill them out and bring $2.50 if you thought it  was prudent to have a scapular for yourself. I’d spent all my money on  grapefruits, though.At night, in bed, I practiced my prayers. We had to memorize so many at  the Home: Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be, Act of Faith, of Hope, of Love,  of Contrition. Praying either put me to sleep or made me think of girls.  Once, I passed a girl a note during class and Sister Josephine, the  discipline nun, intercepted it and said someone my age doesn’t know the  least thing about love and shouldn’t use that word the way I did. That  kind of love is special, she said. It’s a rare gift from God, it’s the  consummation of a union, and it’s certainly nothing for children. Sister  Josephine called it The Marriage Act. It’s embarrassing for me to admit,  but she made me cry, she was yelling so much. I never sent another note.  Still, I attached a vague feeling of hope to different girls, a feeling  of, I don’t know, of whatever, that came out, some nights, when I said  prayers.We had to learn the prayers because we prayed for everything: we prayed  for food, we prayed for sleep, we prayed for new basketballs. Three times  a day, Sister Catherine, the food nun, took us to the church cafeteria for  our meals. Volunteer ladies served us—they were all old and kind and had  science-fiction hair, clouds of blue gas, burning white-hot rocket fuel,  explosions of atomic frizz. I loved the endless stacks of white bread and  the cold slabs of butter. When the nuns said I was underfoot, I went  downstairs and studied the encyclopedias or read Latin or went outside and  shot buses with my pump gun. Buses passed the Home every twenty-six  minutes. I built up my arm pitching rocks at a tree until a circle of  pulpy white wood was exposed in the bark. One afternoon I planted a  sunflower in a milk carton.I longed to go somewhere but there wasn’t anywhere good that I knew of.  Then one day I found the public-school yard.What’re you doing here, you stupid shit? asked one kid, a pudgy boy with  skin like a baby.He and some other boys pushed around me in a circle.The pudge said, Who are you?When I didn’t answer, he said, You’re one of those orphan bastards, right?The boys crowded in closer and I was afraid to speak. People could tell  you were from the Home by your haircut. We were all shaved up like the  Dalai Lama.Finally I smiled and mumbled, If you say so.What? the pudge said. I didn’t hear you.The circle of boys cinched like a knot. Their looming heads were way up in  the sky.Yeah, I said.After that I sat below the monkey bars and chewed a butter sandwich and  watched pudge-boy and his gang over by the water fountain with some girls  and I knew I was going to have to kick his ass sooner or later. Everything  else was new and strange but this seemed predictable and something I could   rely on.That spring the pudge had the nerve to try out for base-  ball. He wore brand-new cleats and threw like a fem and his mitt, also  brand-new, very orange and stiff, wouldn’t close. He might as well have  been standing in right field with a piece of toast. He dropped everything.  The second day of practice, we had an intrasquad game and I nailed him  three times. I just chose places on his fat body and threw the ball at  them. Eventually, pudge-boy was afraid to stand in the batter’s box. The  coach thought I had a control problem but I didn’t. My control was perfect.I whiffed nine guys and made the team and the pudge was cut. He walked  away, crying. I ran down the hill and jumped on his back. I hit him in the  face and the neck and beat on his ear over and over. You hear that? I  shouted. You hear that, you fat fucker? Now that I had him alone I was  insane. The pudge rolled away on the grass, holding his ear. Blood was  coming out. He was bawling, and I hawked a gob of spit right into his  black wailing mouth and said, You bastard.That night, I was asleep with the encyclopedia pitched like a tent over my  nose when Sister Celestine, the head nun, came in.Why weren’t you at dinner?I could hear the polished rocks of Sister Celestine’s rosary rattling as  she worried them between her fingers.She pulled the encyclopedia off my head.Won’t you talk? Sister said.She tucked a dry, stray shaft of hair back beneath her habit. Maybe you’d  feel more comfortable making a confession?I picked at the fuzzballs on my blanket.I just got off the phone with that boy’s mother, she said.She touched a cut on my lip and took a deep breath. She said, You called  him a name. Do you know what that name means?I shook my head.She took off her scapular and put it around my neck. Two small pieces of  brown wool hung on a cord, one in back, the other in front.I rubbed the wool between my finger and thumb.Stories","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304583221477,"sku":"NP9781400077939","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400077939.jpg?v=1767738952","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-dead-fish-museum-isbn-9781400077939","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}