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smalltimereadsBring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino: Stories by Julián Herbert and translated by Christina McSweeney is published by Graywolf Press.
I'm in kind of a slump right now but I want to try and write a review for this collection, and also to get around to writing a review of the other small-press short story collection I read a few weeks ago.
Yes, I picked this one up because of the title.
This is a really interesting collection of stories- the back of the book says "Herbert asks: Where are the lines between fiction, memory, and reality? What is the relationship between power, corruption, and survival? How much violence can a person (and a country) take?" and I think those are really good questions for getting at what the stories are like. There stories all have at least one absurd element to them, but in a way that made me think "Oh, yeah, of course."
I was going to say that "White Paper" was the weirdest story, but I think it's actually "Caries," which contains pictures of the inside of someone's mouth and a lot of sheet music. And it was really interesting! The discussion of art and chance was really cool. "There where we stood" was very short and had a wonderful final line. "M.L. Estefanía" really nailed that "absurd but also realistic" feeling, and "Z" was an interestingly banal zombie story. I do not remember "The dog's head" even though I read it yesterday.
And, of course, there is the final and titular story "Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino," which I suspect people who are more familiar with his work than I am would get more out of. I still really liked it! It struck me as a meta-commentary, and it was really well executed. I don't know how connected all the stories are (or can even be), but the final line of the book brought everything full circle and I found it delightful.
Without having read the original work, I think McSweeney did a good job of translating and getting across the heart of the stories. The prose and the ideas of the stories reinforce each other.
I'm in kind of a slump right now but I want to try and write a review for this collection, and also to get around to writing a review of the other small-press short story collection I read a few weeks ago.
Yes, I picked this one up because of the title.
This is a really interesting collection of stories- the back of the book says "Herbert asks: Where are the lines between fiction, memory, and reality? What is the relationship between power, corruption, and survival? How much violence can a person (and a country) take?" and I think those are really good questions for getting at what the stories are like. There stories all have at least one absurd element to them, but in a way that made me think "Oh, yeah, of course."
I was going to say that "White Paper" was the weirdest story, but I think it's actually "Caries," which contains pictures of the inside of someone's mouth and a lot of sheet music. And it was really interesting! The discussion of art and chance was really cool. "There where we stood" was very short and had a wonderful final line. "M.L. Estefanía" really nailed that "absurd but also realistic" feeling, and "Z" was an interestingly banal zombie story. I do not remember "The dog's head" even though I read it yesterday.
And, of course, there is the final and titular story "Bring Me the Head of Quentin Tarantino," which I suspect people who are more familiar with his work than I am would get more out of. I still really liked it! It struck me as a meta-commentary, and it was really well executed. I don't know how connected all the stories are (or can even be), but the final line of the book brought everything full circle and I found it delightful.
Without having read the original work, I think McSweeney did a good job of translating and getting across the heart of the stories. The prose and the ideas of the stories reinforce each other.
