Rec | FANSHAWE - 2009 NEW YORKER PIECE BY IAN FRAZIER

Rec

📖

Rec'd on 🔗 SHARE A TAB THAT YOU HAVE OPEN RIGHT NOW

FANSHAWE - 2009 NEW YORKER PIECE BY IAN FRAZIER

every character in the story is named Fanshawe and one of them dies of plaid. it's absolutely ridiculous, and my dad would just cackle reading it out loud to us. having someone read out loud to you is so lush. I keep the tab open to remind me how much my dad shared with me and the things that made us laugh--no one else in the family got it like we did and it just shows me how alike we were. now he's gone but I still read Fanshawe. we've got the magazine in his office somewhere with his little post-it bookmarking the page...kind of like my open bookmarked tab.

@brooks

Apr 9, 2025

see likes

Comments (2)

Make an account to reply.

@salad_valet

Just added to my “to read” folder. Thank you for sharing 🥰

Apr 9, 2025

@brooks

@SALAD_VALET enjoy!!!! it's so weird lol 🙏🤭

Apr 10, 2025

Related Recs

Rec

🗾

The beach house by joy williams (short story)

Moving in a cold way, funny in a dry way. Re-read it today with the transition from young adult to just Adult weighing on me, whatever that means, if anything. Fans of Larry David might enjoy
‘He’s a nice little fellow. When I first met him, he barely spoke. I determined that he liked words but in isolation, as individuals. He didn’t like them gathered together. He seemed to feel they got dumber gathered together.” “I was with you when we moved in, Dad. His mother brought over that awful fudge.” “Can’t recall the fudge.” “To welcome us to the neighborhood. It was just awful.” “We’re talking about fudge?”’

@hhtthhtthhttht

Mar 20, 2025

Rec

⭐

as i lay dying by william faulkner

this is my favorite book. it's challenging to parse (people describe it as stream of consciousness, which is only kind of true, but between the characters' accents and faulkner being a wordy fella sometimes it's really hard to tell what's going on) but there are passages from it that i think about multiple times a day. the way some of the characters experience alienation from their bodies and/or reality is so tangible. it is kind of a black comedy about a family carrying their mother's dead body to her chosen resting place, hijinks ensue.

@37

Apr 8, 2025

Rec

📖

A perfect day for bananafish by J.D. Salinger

Part of Salinger's Glass Family series (and one of the pieces originally published in the New Yorker that eventually appeared in Nine Stories -- yes, Lisa Loeb's ["Stay (I Missed You)"] backing band was named after the 1953 book). IMO this is where Salinger's debt to Papa Hemingway is laid bare -- the spare, simple prose; the occasional sweary moments (where the protagonist, Seymour, calls a woman he meets a "goddamned sneak"); the somewhat sudden, surprising and macabre ending. I find people typicially have no middle ground for Salinger that isn't "Catcher in the Rye" -- they either love it or loathe it. I'm in the former camp.