#ryan werner

[therumpus]

For Caldwell, like many people who become a collage of the things they like, these are just a roundabout way of explaining who she is, who she’s been. We are the things we say and do, sure, but we’re also everything we’ve ever seen and heard and felt. This book is a document of the development and stasis we all go through as we figure out what in the fuck it is we’re going through—one song, one cookie, one addiction at a time. And Caldwell is an excellent observer.

Ryan Werner reviews I’ll Tell You In Person by Chloe Caldwell.

[therumpus]

The Boys of the Midwest court me. We leave the restaurant, where they sat uncomfortable and did not know where to put their elbows. Shyly they take my hand to help me into the car. Shyly they part the sea of empty Mountain Dew cans in the backseat and reach for me, leave their bites all over me. The Boys of the Midwest are unwashed and smell like food—as if they have been lightly battered and fried in their own grease. The Boys of the Midwest hold my hands in theirs until they begin to ache. The parking lot empties, leaving a vast ocean of tar under yellow light. It is five in the morning. A wild red fox streaks past the car, something—anything—wriggling in his mouth. Even in the dark, it is easy to tell who consumes who.

excerpted from forget me / hit me / let me drink great quantities of clear, evil liquor by Katie Schmid, reviewed by Ryan Werner for The Rumpus.

[troyjamesweaver]

Future Tense Books 200 pages, $12 Review by Ryan Werner Previous general portrayal of the Midwest has been decidedly not-my-Midwest: Garrison Keillor’s rosy-cheeked shitheads and the good-guys-win-bad-guys-lose world of John Hughes.

New review of Witchita Stories at PANK MAGAZINE

[whiskeypaper]

A few minutes after Marty leaves for his daily run, five miles as fast as he can go, no stopping, I take off in the same direction. I get a half-mile before I collapse with a pain between every single rib. I look up from the ground and see Marty in the distance like an apparition burning toward me.

NEW STORY POSTED: “Model Home” by Ryan Werner. WhiskeyPaper, May 2015. 

[pankmagazine]

[REVIEW] If There’s Any Truth in a Northbound Train, by Ryan Werner

Leyner’s novel and Wallace’s essay popped into my mind as I read Ryan Werner’s If There’s Any Truth in a Northbound Train, which seems to me both a throwback to that style and a cautious update of it. Like Leyner, Werner’s stories are filled with oddballs, off-kilter occurrences and pop references. And Werner also shares with Leyner an ability to distill a situation in very few words. One of Werner’s stories opens like this: “I didn’t marry a girl named Florence and then she won the lottery. That’s not the way I tell it but it sure is the way she tells it, like they’re related, like there couldn’t be one without the other.”  Not only is this a very funny line, it’s also remarkably economical––an entire relationship dynamic is established in a handful of words.

Read more of the review HERE.

[therumpus]

deal with the man get snubbed define the short version of a long hoax he is a heavy load, I am a faulty wheel the burden of my body on his ego the burden of his ego on my body repair my bike, make it purr I’m a pioneer, motherfucker

From Life Cycle by Dena Rash Guzman, in which every poem is titled "Life Cycle." Ryan Werner reviews the collection at The Rumpus.

[fairest]

-- Ryan Werner

[fairest]

- Ryan Werner