The Great Frustration: Stories

by Seth Fried

Overview

“Fried’s stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious and wonderfully weird, yet his many strange worlds also have the power to haunt.” —Dan Chaon

In “Loeka Discovered,” a buzz flows throughout a lab when scientists unearth a perfectly preserved prehistoric man who suggests to them the hopefulness of life, but the more they learn, the more the realities of ancient survival invade their buoyant projections. “Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre” meditates on why an entire town enthusiastically rushes out to the annual picnic that ends, year after year, in a massacre of astonishing creativity and casualty. The title story illuminates the desires and even the violence that surges beneath the tenuous peace among the animals in the Garden of Eden.

Equal parts fable and wry satire, Seth Fried’s stories suggest that we are at our most compelling and human when wrestling with the most frustrating aspects of both the world around us and of our very own natures—and show why he has been called “one of the most exciting new voices in fiction” (Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe).

“He’s channeling Saunders by way of Barthelme and Kafka, but also clearing a whole new territory of his own . . . Seth Fried is the future of fiction.” —Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781593764166
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	05/01/2011
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Seth Fried is a fiction and humor writer. He is the author of the novel The Municipalists and the short story collection The Great Frustration. He is a recurring contributor to The New Yorker’s “Shouts and Murmurs” and NPR’s “Selected Shorts.” His stories have appeared in Tin House, One Story, McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, The Kenyon Review, Vice, and many others. He is also the winner of two Pushcart Prizes and the William Peden Prize.

Editorial Reviews

The 11 stories in Fried's debut have the vigor of adventures, taking place in settings as disparate as Spain in the time of the conquistadors, a king's harem, a city under siege, various scientific setups, and—in the case of the title story—the Garden of Eden. Such an imagination is refreshing, but even more rewarding is that the stories don't rely solely on concept or conceit, and trudge forward into the lovely mess of strong characters wedged into dramatic circumstance. The scientists in "Those of Us in Plaid" have a simple, though not easy, objective involving an obstinate monkey and a space capsule. Science is clearly one of Fried's major interests: "Loeka Discovered" follows a team of researchers reconstructing ancient history from bits of bone and other artifacts. The lengthy "Animalcula: A Young Scientist's Guide to New Creatures" offers 15 scholarly descriptions of minuscule fauna, creating a fictional microcosm and illuminating it with the surprisingly poetic inner life of the scientist studying his subjects. While Fried's stories run to the historical or technical, there's a strain of absurdism in his prose that combines pathos, unease, and dark humor to add depth and give these stories a sense of modernity and relevance. (May)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Great Frustration

"Certainly one of the most original and startling short story collections of the year. In most cases, Fried sets the tone from the get-go: “Last year, the people in charge of the picnic blew us up,” (from “Frost Mountain Picnic Massacre); “To begin with, I am a man,” (from “Life in the Harem”). Fried’s settings travel the globe and leap across timelines (including mythical ones, like the garden of Eden in the title story) with such dazzling skill that the reader simply surrenders to these highly-entertaining and thought-provoking stories." —National Book Critics Circle, “Small Press Highlights of 2011”

"Seth Fried’s The Great Frustration is the kind of collection that makes you seethe just a little bit over how well it’s conceived, constructed, and written. There are almost no sour notes throughout the eleven stories, and there are plenty of moments of sheer brilliance. Taking small quotients from the greats across every field of prose, Fried is at once channeling Carver, Kafka, Saunders, and Barthelme, while never fully embracing any of them. As debut collections go, The Great Frustration is on par with some of the very best . . . With this collection, [Fried] has, bit by bit, dismantled everything around us that we take for granted. From those pieces, he built an entire new set of rules and axioms, and then further made a whole new, little world that is almost exactly the same as the one that preceded it, just with slight, barely discernible, truly fantastic variations." —BOMB magazine

"Such an imagination is refreshing, but even more rewarding is that [Fried's] stories don't rely solely on concept or conceit, and trudge forward into the lovely mess of strong characters wedged into dramatic circumstance . . . there's a strain of absurdism in his prose that combines pathos, unease, and dark humor to add depth and give these stories a sense of modernity and relevance." —Publishers Weekly (starred)

“Seth Fried's stories are laugh-out-loud hilarious and wonderfully weird, yet his many strange worlds also have the power to haunt, echoing the sorrows and yearnings of ordinary life in the way dreams can. This is an inspired and inspiring collection from an important new young writer." —Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply

“Seth Fried has a wildly humorous imagination, but also sharp technical skills and beauty of language that weaves deep examinations of self and humanity into the inner folds of his crazy worlds. He’s channeling Saunders by way of Barthelme and Kafka, but also clearing a whole new territory of his own. Listen up and open this book: Seth Fried is the future of fiction." —Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

“Seth Fried should not be read by those with a heart condition, or by women who are nursing or pregnant. Do not read Seth Fried when driving or operating heavy machinery. Because his stories are not only addictive but dangerously good. He will make your heart stop and your jaw drop. You will suffer from bouts of thoughtful silence and seizures of hilarity and may even soil yourself with pleasure. Consider yourself warned." —Benjamin Percy, author of The Wilding and Refresh, Refresh

"These powerful and beautifully absurd stories create poetry from the collected voice of those who love and hate and dream and yearn. They stirred my imagination and time and time again seduced me into reflecting on the hopefulness and vulnerabilities of being human. The Great Frustration is a wonderfully original debut." —Alan Heathcock, author of Volt

"These stories are joyful, breathtaking, and ridiculously funny. Yes, there is darkness and violence and the constant threat of unhappy endings, but Fried is such a stunning writer, you actually love the coming disaster because it is so perfectly presented on the page." —Kevin Wilson, author of Tunneling to the Center of the Earth and The Family Fang

"In The Great Frustration, Seth Fried creates elaborate set pieces, populates them with living, breathing characters, arranges them for maximum chaos, and then sets it all in motion, inviting you to watch catastrophe and disaster and ruin. Even if you wanted to stop reading, you couldn't: his sentences drive you forward with a relentless rhythm, breaking your heart, then reassembling it, then breaking it again, and you don't even mind, because he's also making you laugh out loud." —Charles Yu, author of How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe

From the Publisher