“Leave it to the audacious Sean Carswell to crack the code on this secret society of writers, especially after so many other publications (the Believer, Bitch, Vanity Fair) have tried and failed. I’m humbled and grateful to be immortalized in this wily, coltish collection with fellow strummers Flannery, Herman and weird old Uncle Thom.”
The above blurb is from Pam Houston, on Sean Carswell's short story collection, The Metaphysical Ukulele, which celebrates its release today, and was featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn's May Books Preview.
The video below is Pam Houston, author, talking with Sean Carswell about what is was like to be turned into Pam Houston, character in a short story:
Mixing the flair of literary invention with real events in the lives of some of our most well-known writers—Herman Melville living with a tribe of cannibals; Raymond Chandler holding The Blue Dahlia screenplay hostage from Paramount Studios; Flannery O’Connor falling in love; Chester Himes threatening to decapitate his landlord, a ukulele player who may or may not be Thomas Pynchon, among others—The Metaphysical Ukulele takes the nonfiction of the literary life and turns it into exquisite fiction, with a ukulele thrown in to each story for good measure. At times heartbreaking, at times absurd, the stories in this truly one-of-a-kind collection delightfully blur the line between what is life, and what is literature.
