{"product_id":"what-hes-poised-to-do-stories-isbn-9780061987403","title":"What He's Poised to Do: Stories","description":"\u003cp\u003e“Ben Greenman seems incapable of writing anything dry or familiar or expected. He is one of the most versatile, consistently surprising writers at work today.” —Dave Eggers \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA diverse and moving collection of witty, fabular, haunting stories about love, infidelity, and the vanishing art of letter writing—from the acclaimed novelist and \u003cem\u003eNew Yorker\u003c\/em\u003e editor Ben Greenman. Fans of the works of Keith Gessen, Ben Kunkel, Nathaniel Rich, and John Wray will find much to love in the beautiful, poignant stories of \u003cem\u003eWhat He’s Poised to Do\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003eBen Greenman is a writer of virtuosic range and uncanny emotional insight. As Darin Strauss has noted, \"Like Bruno Schulz, George Saunders, Donald Barthelme, and no one else I can think of, Greenman has the power to be whimsical without resorting to whimsy.\" The stories in this new collection, \u003cem\u003eWhat He's Poised to Do\u003c\/em\u003e, showcase his wide range, yet are united by a shared sense of yearning, a concern with connections missed and lost, and a poignant attention to how we try to preserve and maintain those connections through the written word. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eFrom a portrait of an unfaithful man contemplating his own free will to the saga of a young Cuban man's quixotic devotion to a woman he may never have met; and from a nineteenth-century weapons inventor's letter to his young daughter to an aging man's wistful memory of a summer love affair in a law office—each of these stories demonstrates Greenman's maturity as a chronicler of romantic angst both contemporary and timeless, and as an explorer of the ways our yearning for connection informs our selves and our souls.\u003c\/p\u003e | \u003cp\u003e“Greenman’s writing is wonderfully intimidating, bountiful yet compressed.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“What a fine and unique writer Ben Greenman is. I love his sentences, his precision. I feel like he’s absorbed and digested so much great literature, distilling it all to create his own fantastic universe of stories and ideas.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“This book is like a strobe light—in short, sharp bursts, Ben Greenman renders the world we know into something startling, hypnotizing, and downright trippy.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eDaniel Handler\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Ben Greenman’s prose is characterized by an effortless musicality. This collection finds him in peak form, simultaneously heartbreaking and hilarious. But it’s the beauty of his language that gets me.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eRhett Miller, lead singer, The Old 97s\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Ben Greenman’s masterwork of stories inspired by letters offers fresh insight into the mysteries of intimacy. A seriously brilliant and lyrical piece of modern fiction, with characters so alive and sincere and full of longing, they may climb out of the book and follow you home.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eSimon Van Booy, author of the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award-winning Love Begins in Winter\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Romantic and compulsively readable, \u003ci\u003eWhat He’s Poised to Do\u003c\/i\u003e will appeal to anyone who’s ever been in love, had a broken heart, or been misunderstood.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eAmy Sohn, author of Prospect Park West\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Ben Greenman’s \u003ci\u003eWhat He’s Poised to Do\u003c\/i\u003e is a terrific collection—a set of elegant, inventive dispatches that knock around space and time, and the wrenching gaps between people, to chart a world of previously unnamed moments and emotions.” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eJess Walter, author of The Financial Lives of the Poets\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e“Greenman offers quiet, serious stories lifted by occasional humor and linked by instances of written correspondence. ” - \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Harper Perennial","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44887975100645,"sku":"NP9780061987403","price":13.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780061987403.jpg?v=1730227859","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/what-hes-poised-to-do-stories-isbn-9780061987403","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}