{"product_id":"the-law-of-averages-new-and-selected-stories-9781582431574","title":"The Law of Averages: New and Selected Stories","description":"Twenty years ago Frederick Barthelme began publishing stories that turned readers' expectations on their heads. In \u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGQ\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere he published story after story that confounded the prevailing literary assumptions, treating our very ordinary lives with a new kind of careful and loving attention and imagination. He wrote intimate, funny, odd, detailed, laugh-out-loud stories about relationships that almost happen and ones that almost don't, about the ways we look at each other when we mean things we cannot bring ourselves to say. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eBefore there were slackers, or kids in parking lots, or stories that took the mundane seriously, there were these prescient stories by Frederick Barthelme. He took a post-ironic stance before the post-ironic had a name. He took fiction where few were then willing to go, took as his subject small romances, private fears, suburban estrangement, office angst, cultural isolation, apparently insignificant humiliations, and the growing information surplus (CNN is a sociological novel, he once remarked). He wrote--and continues to write--with a laser-surgery precision that stuns and delights both readers and critics. If he arrived at the new-literature party a little earlier than the other guests, he has not left early, and is thus well represented in \u003ci\u003eThe Law of Averages\u003c\/i\u003e, with old and new stories side by side, ready to give up their abundant pleasures.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFrederick Barthelme\u003c\/b\u003e was a founding member, with Mayo Thompson, of the art\/noise\/psychedelic rock band Red Krayola, and a painter and conceptual artist in Houston and New York in the late 1960s. He has published fiction and nonfiction in \u003ci\u003eFiction\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEpoch\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGQ\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePloughshares\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003ePlayboy\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eEsquire\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTriQuarterly\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNorth American Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eFrank\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Southern Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston Globe Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e, and elsewhere. The memoir, \u003ci\u003eDouble Down: Reflections on Gambling and Loss\u003c\/i\u003e, was co-authored with his brother Steven, and was a \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e Notable Book of the Year. The same honor was awarded his retrospective collection of stories, \u003ci\u003eThe Law of Averages\u003c\/i\u003e and his novel \u003ci\u003eElroy Nights\u003c\/i\u003e, which was also one of five finalists for the 2004 PEN\/Faulkner Award. In 2009 he published \u003ci\u003eWaveland\u003c\/i\u003e, a novel set on the Mississippi Gulf Coast a year after Katrina. In 2010 he won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Fiction.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Catapult","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50855549632786,"sku":"9781582431574","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b5ffce8d-000e-4131-8a47-5dec440c05a8.jpg?v=1737484384","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/the-law-of-averages-new-and-selected-stories-9781582431574","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}