Funeral Platter
Stories
Greg Ames
- 266 Pages
- October 24, 2017
- ISBN: 9781510725836
Description
From the author of Buffalo Lockjaw comes a mordantly humorous collection of taut, off-the-wall, and heartbreaking short stories. A young girl aspiring to be a ventriloquist using a burnt log as a dummy; Franz Kafka and Sartre cruising a seedy bar, trying to pick up chicks; a lighthearted retired couple stages and executes their own funeral; a son lovingly prepares and brings corn chowder to his parents, whom he keeps in a cage in his backyard. This collection—peppered with moments of violence and tenderness—touches on political satire, social disillusionment, and the joy and perversity of human love.
In the tradition of Etgar Keret, Greg Ames’ prose style ties together the absurd hilarity and deep anguish of the situations his characters find themselves in. These wildly inventive stories will appeal to readers who thirst for a unique, deeply humane voice.
In the tradition of Etgar Keret, Greg Ames’ prose style ties together the absurd hilarity and deep anguish of the situations his characters find themselves in. These wildly inventive stories will appeal to readers who thirst for a unique, deeply humane voice.
Authors
Greg Ames's debut novel, Buffalo Lockjaw, won the Book of the Year Award from the New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association (NAIBA). His work has appeared in the Best American Nonrequired Reading, Southern Review, McSweeney's, Catapult, and The Sun, among others. He splits his time between Brooklyn, New York, and Hamilton, New York, where he is an associate professor of English at Colgate University. He can be found at www.gregames.com.
Reviews
Praise for Funeral Platter
"In his acclaimed debut novel, Buffalo Lockjaw, Ames explored the tension surrounding assisted suicide with droll irreverence. With the same wickedly absurd lens, his first story collection finds humanity in the darkest and most unexpected places. His is a world filled with precocious but deluded youth; passionate but aimless, sometimes scheming lovers; historical figures misplaced in time; and innocent strivers. . . . Ames’ characters are at once vile and charming; together, their stories humorously capture the angst-ridden, tentative business of connecting with others.” --Booklist
"In an era full of wildly smart and varied Buffalo-bred literary talent from all over the stylistic map, Ames is one of the wildest, most unexpected and best."--Buffalo News, editor's choice "Funeral Platter is a wonderful, witty collection of very funny and unusual short stories. Its singular characters, truly inventive premises, and manic, propulsive prose make for breakneck reading. Yet, without you knowing how it happened, these stories become genuinely insightful about our darkest secret: our loneliness." --Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Stone Arabia
"Greg Ames' trick, his sleight of hand, is to somehow take the absurd and make it vanish into tenderness, to pull laughter out of the particulars of cruelty, and to give each gorgeously rendered sentence a living human tongue. Every story here is its own cabinet of wonders. Funeral Platter is hands down one of the best collections I've read in years."—David Ryan, author of Animals in Motion and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano
"Vivid, witty and surprising, Greg Ames's stories will move you in unexpected ways."--Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs
"If you think you’re ready for Ames’s life-changing brand of unhinged literary brilliance, first make sure that you’re someplace where it’s socially acceptable to lose your shit."— J. Robert Lennon, author of Familiar and Broken River
"The stories in Greg Ames' Funeral Platter are dispatches from another planet, a planet that resembles ours, populated by people who look like us, but who are weirder, more unhinged, more dangerous than we are, or at least weirder, more unhinged, more dangerous than we like to think we are. A glorious book—hilarious, unnerving, one of a kind."—Brock Clarke, author of The Happiest People in the World
"I can't say I've ever encountered a collection of stories as wildly varied as Funeral Platter. And so very funny too. This is a book where the ghosts of Kafka and Twain meet up with the likes of Carver and Barry Hannah who are all sitting around the campfire spinning tales of dark humor and candor. Each story told is a radical departure from what has come before it and what comes after. And yet, and then, there is the voice and vision behind each story that belongs entirely to Greg Ames. Bottom line here: This book is a thrill ride into what it means to be alive and stumbling in a world where to be bruised and confused is its own kind of fuel for amusement."—Peter Markus, author of The Fish and Not the Fish
"The stories in this collection never ceased to blow my mind. Funeral Platter is a must read. One of the best collections out there." —Kim Chinquee, author of Oh Baby and Veer
"A hilarious albeit at times unsettling rendition of contemporary middle-class life in America. This is the real deal. The stories are honest, visceral, utterly original, charming, relentless, poetic, memorable. An expertly woven, subtly interlinked collection, written with great narrative command, Funeral Platter will strike a chord with readers as it struck a chord with me."—Chinelo Okparanta, author of Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Tree
"In his acclaimed debut novel, Buffalo Lockjaw, Ames explored the tension surrounding assisted suicide with droll irreverence. With the same wickedly absurd lens, his first story collection finds humanity in the darkest and most unexpected places. His is a world filled with precocious but deluded youth; passionate but aimless, sometimes scheming lovers; historical figures misplaced in time; and innocent strivers. . . . Ames’ characters are at once vile and charming; together, their stories humorously capture the angst-ridden, tentative business of connecting with others.” --Booklist
"In an era full of wildly smart and varied Buffalo-bred literary talent from all over the stylistic map, Ames is one of the wildest, most unexpected and best."--Buffalo News, editor's choice "Funeral Platter is a wonderful, witty collection of very funny and unusual short stories. Its singular characters, truly inventive premises, and manic, propulsive prose make for breakneck reading. Yet, without you knowing how it happened, these stories become genuinely insightful about our darkest secret: our loneliness." --Dana Spiotta, author of Innocents and Others and Stone Arabia
"Greg Ames' trick, his sleight of hand, is to somehow take the absurd and make it vanish into tenderness, to pull laughter out of the particulars of cruelty, and to give each gorgeously rendered sentence a living human tongue. Every story here is its own cabinet of wonders. Funeral Platter is hands down one of the best collections I've read in years."—David Ryan, author of Animals in Motion and Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano
"Vivid, witty and surprising, Greg Ames's stories will move you in unexpected ways."--Claire Messud, author of The Emperor's Children and The Woman Upstairs
"If you think you’re ready for Ames’s life-changing brand of unhinged literary brilliance, first make sure that you’re someplace where it’s socially acceptable to lose your shit."— J. Robert Lennon, author of Familiar and Broken River
"The stories in Greg Ames' Funeral Platter are dispatches from another planet, a planet that resembles ours, populated by people who look like us, but who are weirder, more unhinged, more dangerous than we are, or at least weirder, more unhinged, more dangerous than we like to think we are. A glorious book—hilarious, unnerving, one of a kind."—Brock Clarke, author of The Happiest People in the World
"I can't say I've ever encountered a collection of stories as wildly varied as Funeral Platter. And so very funny too. This is a book where the ghosts of Kafka and Twain meet up with the likes of Carver and Barry Hannah who are all sitting around the campfire spinning tales of dark humor and candor. Each story told is a radical departure from what has come before it and what comes after. And yet, and then, there is the voice and vision behind each story that belongs entirely to Greg Ames. Bottom line here: This book is a thrill ride into what it means to be alive and stumbling in a world where to be bruised and confused is its own kind of fuel for amusement."—Peter Markus, author of The Fish and Not the Fish
"The stories in this collection never ceased to blow my mind. Funeral Platter is a must read. One of the best collections out there." —Kim Chinquee, author of Oh Baby and Veer
"A hilarious albeit at times unsettling rendition of contemporary middle-class life in America. This is the real deal. The stories are honest, visceral, utterly original, charming, relentless, poetic, memorable. An expertly woven, subtly interlinked collection, written with great narrative command, Funeral Platter will strike a chord with readers as it struck a chord with me."—Chinelo Okparanta, author of Happiness, Like Water and Under the Udala Tree
Praise for Greg Ames
“I’m excited about this novel for a few reasons. One, Ames opens with a great quote from Flannery O’Connor’s under-appreciated novel Wise Blood: 'Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.' Two, it’s set in Buffalo, New York, which is full of frustrated artists, frustrated young people, and thousands of psychiatric patients who were given one-way bus tickets when they were released from New York City mental hospitals in the early eighties (Buffalo was the last stop). Three, the premise of a son trying to decide whether to help his Alzheimer’s-stricken mother commit suicide is provocative and memorable.” —The New Yorker
"In this beautifully observed debut, a son wrestles with the possibility of assisted suicide for his mother, stricken with Alzheimer's . . . A novel about hard choices and doing the right thing that is modest, moving and true."—Kirkus, starred review
"The voice of this novel invites you right in, and Ames knows how to build up the world with a light hand while still getting to the complicated and painful ways we muddle through. Funny and fresh and generous." —Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
"Buffalo Lockjaw, like its charming, bitter screw-up of a narrator, reaches finally for larger meaning, and succeeds. Greg Ames has written a brazen and tender book about a city and a scene, a mother and a son, and the beauty and pain of several kinds of love." —Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
"In Buffalo Lockjaw, Greg Ames manages to evoke place and expose the complexities of character in a single swift phrase. It is a funny-sad, heartbreaking, hypnotically readable debut." —Adrienne Miller, author of The Coast of Akron
"Greg Ames has written a beautiful novel. It is infused with dark comedy and pathos and great, hardboiled prose. In Buffalo Lockjaw, love of one's parents and love of one's hometown mix powerfully with the mad undertow of loss that seems as inevitable in life as gravity. I'm honored to share a last name -- no relation -- with such a wonderful writer." —Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!
"Greg Ames, one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read, faces dead-on the most terrifying event in a person's life. Buffalo Lockjaw is frightening, heart-rending, and beautiful. I pay it my highest compliment: I didn’t want it to end." —Poe Ballantine, author of Things I Like About America
"Buffalo, N.Y., is as much a character as any of the slackers populating Ames's darkly humorous debut about a young man with a copy of Assisted Suicide for Dummies in his car and a 56-year-old mother with Alzheimer's who he believes wants to die. Ames's depiction of James's bedside concern for his mother straddles the line between caustically comic and wrenchingly emotional, while the wry riffs on family tension and the sad state of Buffalo that appear throughout this fine first novel don't undercut the serious consideration of murder or mercy for terminal patients.” —Publishers Weekly
“I’m excited about this novel for a few reasons. One, Ames opens with a great quote from Flannery O’Connor’s under-appreciated novel Wise Blood: 'Where you come from is gone, where you thought you were going to was never there, and where you are is no good unless you can get away from it.' Two, it’s set in Buffalo, New York, which is full of frustrated artists, frustrated young people, and thousands of psychiatric patients who were given one-way bus tickets when they were released from New York City mental hospitals in the early eighties (Buffalo was the last stop). Three, the premise of a son trying to decide whether to help his Alzheimer’s-stricken mother commit suicide is provocative and memorable.” —The New Yorker
"In this beautifully observed debut, a son wrestles with the possibility of assisted suicide for his mother, stricken with Alzheimer's . . . A novel about hard choices and doing the right thing that is modest, moving and true."—Kirkus, starred review
"The voice of this novel invites you right in, and Ames knows how to build up the world with a light hand while still getting to the complicated and painful ways we muddle through. Funny and fresh and generous." —Aimee Bender, author of The Girl in the Flammable Skirt
"Buffalo Lockjaw, like its charming, bitter screw-up of a narrator, reaches finally for larger meaning, and succeeds. Greg Ames has written a brazen and tender book about a city and a scene, a mother and a son, and the beauty and pain of several kinds of love." —Sam Lipsyte, author of Home Land
"In Buffalo Lockjaw, Greg Ames manages to evoke place and expose the complexities of character in a single swift phrase. It is a funny-sad, heartbreaking, hypnotically readable debut." —Adrienne Miller, author of The Coast of Akron
"Greg Ames has written a beautiful novel. It is infused with dark comedy and pathos and great, hardboiled prose. In Buffalo Lockjaw, love of one's parents and love of one's hometown mix powerfully with the mad undertow of loss that seems as inevitable in life as gravity. I'm honored to share a last name -- no relation -- with such a wonderful writer." —Jonathan Ames, author of Wake Up, Sir!
"Greg Ames, one of the funniest writers I’ve ever read, faces dead-on the most terrifying event in a person's life. Buffalo Lockjaw is frightening, heart-rending, and beautiful. I pay it my highest compliment: I didn’t want it to end." —Poe Ballantine, author of Things I Like About America
"Buffalo, N.Y., is as much a character as any of the slackers populating Ames's darkly humorous debut about a young man with a copy of Assisted Suicide for Dummies in his car and a 56-year-old mother with Alzheimer's who he believes wants to die. Ames's depiction of James's bedside concern for his mother straddles the line between caustically comic and wrenchingly emotional, while the wry riffs on family tension and the sad state of Buffalo that appear throughout this fine first novel don't undercut the serious consideration of murder or mercy for terminal patients.” —Publishers Weekly
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