Esquire: The Napkin Fiction Project
Retrieved March 18, 2008
For avid fiction readers… When I was poking around Esquire magazine earlier today I came across this:
Esquire: The Napkin Fiction Project
http://www.esquire.com/fiction/napkin-project/
It's an old story, we figured. Someone, in a bar somewhere, scribbling on a napkin in the failing afternoon light; the kind of story or list or note that might be crammed in a pocket and pulled out years later to tell something deep and forgotten -- perhaps life's most intimate first chapter, nearly lost forever. So we gave this spontaneous medium a shot. We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country -- some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories. We present most of them here -- from lush to spare, hilarious to terrifying.
"Before" by Charles Blackstone
"If a Stranger Approaches You with a Foreign Object" by Matt Marinovich
"The Queensboro Bridge" by Nick Costalas
"Raw Complexity" by Juan Martinez
"Ten Views of the Combat Zone (Boston, 1976)" by William Landay
"P.T.O. -- Please Turn Over" by Chris Paling
"The Professional Sasquatch" by Tao Lin
"Calcutta" by Bret Anthony Johnston
"The People’s Ballot" by Neil Smith
"An Island in December" by Je Banach
"Remember Chablis" by Ann Hood
"Novela Policial" by Leonardo Padura
"Dynamite Eyes" by Craig Davidson
"Quiz Night" by Scott Hutchins
"Great Inventions" by Nalini Jones
"Unfortunately, the Woman Opened Her Bag and Sighed" by George Singleton
"Dearest Elisha" by David J. Rosen
"Old Man, Young Girl" by Jonathan Ames
"Waiting by Godot: A One-Line Story-Play" by Alexander Motyl
"Dog Walking" by Binnie Kirshenbaum
"Ten Years Later" by Taylor Antrim
"Death of a Turtle Association: Napkin to Restaurant to Dinner" by Millard Kaufman
"A Decent Proposal" by Arthur Bradford
"A Finger Lost at Noon" by Ben Cake
"Sister Stella's Revenge" by Bud Wiser
"Wall Street Maestranza" by Buddy Kite
"Obsidian Jr. High--Tuesday--11 a.m." by Benjamin Percy
"Friend Request" by Marc Fittten
"Every Morning Begins Like This" by Samuel Prime
"The Rise and Fall of Circumcision" by N.D. Wilson
"Untitled" by Benjamin Anastas
"A Scene from the Uprising" by Adam Levin
"Untitled" by Julianna Baggott
"Mystery Date and To Whom It May Concern" by J.R. Moehringer
"Situating the Parents" by John Dufrense
"Paper Confession" by Christopher Sorrentino
"The Interpreter for the Tribunal" by Tony Eprile
"Elective Mute" by David Means
"Handful of Dust" by Jim Ruland
"Things I Absolutely Cannot Forget" by David Gilbert
"Guy Goes into a Bar" by John Biguenet
"Crowded and Alone and Without God" by Phil LaMarche
"The Napkin" by Madison Smartt Bell
"Conversation" by David Huddle
"Story for Esquire" by Joey Goebel
"Between Two Eye Clinics" by Vincent Standley
"That Old Dive on the Corner, #43" by Tyler Sage
"3 Belvedere Martinis, 4 Grey Goose" by Thomas Perry
"At the FEMA Hotel" by Tom Junod
"A Fable Beginning with an Ice Stick and a Concrete Embankment" by Kevin Brockmeier
"Jealous You Jealous Me" by Steve Bartheleme
"The Weight of Thrown Water" by Joe Wenderoth
"Cash to a Killing" by Manuel Gonzales
"Death in Egypt, October, 1942" by Brian Kiteley
"Questions for the Lawyer" by Wendy Brenner
"Another Dog" by John Richardson
"The War on Terror" by Michael Lowenthal
"Rome Adventure (1961)" by Tony Giardina
"The Holdup" by Andrew Sean Greer
"The Helpful Millionaire" by Jack Pendarvis
"Alameda County" by Daniel Alarcon
Interesting but I wish they would do more fiction - something more substantial than a literary sound byte. What good can you get from a hundred soundbytes? I'd rather see one long insightful story.
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