Dear Dead Person

Like some bastard progeny of Nathaniel West, Benjamin Weissman's stories are savage, graceful, hilarious, and spooky with insights into the myriad quirks that dog nonconformists of every tripe. In Dear Dead Person, a cross-section of archetypes—teen sex-addicts, would-be rock stars, religious fanatics, serial murderers, and families who make the Menendezes look like Ozzie and Harriet—go about their twisted business in a prose that's both minimal and anarchic, as American as Raymond Carver, but riven by poetic ruptures that feel like transmissions from the screwed-up part of our collective psyche.