Another Manhattan: A Truly Great Short Story

By On December 13, 2009 · 2 Comments · In Uncategorized

I write short stories (even had a few published). I read short stories. I critique short story collections (for the The Short Review, www.theshortreview.com). I imagine several dozen if not close to a hundred pass my eyes each year.

“Another Manhattan” by Donald Antrim is one of the best short stories published in the last five years. I would say “ever” but I don’t want to be one of those “instant classic” types. Saying almost anything about this story would be saying too much unless you’ve read it. So I will only repeat here what I wrote to the author on his Facebook page:

“Every time I read it, I feel those characters vibrating on a Richter scale of their own undoing. ” I should have added, from the opening sentence.

Of course, take my bias into consideration. Look at the photo on the home page of this blog. Unequivocally, I am a miserable failure at trying to think of myself as an ex-New Yorker. Still, this story could only be set in Manhattan. And if you’ve ever spent time there, lived there, or dreamed of there, I think you’ll know what I’m talking about.

I’d like to avoid a one-way opinion piece on the story. I would like to “talk” about the story with others. It was published in The New Yorker (December 22 & 29, 2008). Read it (http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2008/12/22/081222fi_fiction_antrim) and, if you don’t mind, come back and let me know. If you’ve read it, blog away!

This guy is worth your time.

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2 Responses to Another Manhattan: A Truly Great Short Story

  1. Shannon says:
    December 21, 2009 at 11:03 pm

    I am glad for the suggestion of ‘Another Manhattan.’ It’s very often helpful to be thrust into these types of uncomfortable scenarios, whether to face one’s own fears, purge past experiences, or simply be grateful of their absence. I’m not a psychologist, but I’d bet whatever mental condition Donald Antrim has captured for his characters is textbook – and a little contagious. He conveys that with what I can only describe as the Twilight Zone effect, bouncing through the context of each scene, conversation, temperature change, sometimes subtly, very often drastically. The reader has no choice but to experience their story, and, yes, it’s not going to be pretty.
    There’s something comforting (?) about your comment that this story could only be set in Manhattan. For some strange reason, it makes me want to go see for myself!

  2. Jason Makansi says:
    December 24, 2009 at 12:50 pm

    Yes, you get the feeling the author has a unique ability to capture what pharmaceuticals, and the lack thereof, can do to a person’s mental condition. And despite the amorous antics of these two couples, the main character is trying to put the make on the girl in the flower shop! And he’s buying way more “flower” than he can afford, but he has his reasons. There are other suggestions that they are all living beyond their means. Everything is beyond the boundaries of normalcy but within the bounds of believability, especially for people in Manhattan.

    I suppose what I like most about Antrim’s story is that the main character, Jim’s, behavior, is something between erratic and despicable, depending on your tolerance for this sort of thing, but the revelation that he’s been diagnosed as mentally unstable and is taking a pharma cocktail to walk his tightrope of every day life makes him completely empathetic to the reader. Or this reader, at least.

    Thanks for posting your reaction to the story, Shannon!

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