Scott Garson

Scott Garson has stories in or coming from American Short Fiction, New York Tyrant, Unsaid, FRiGG, Keyhole and others. He's got a bound thing coming from Willows Wept Press, too. He appreciates flux.


what are you reading now

It's the end of the semester. I'm reading student work.


classic you’ve been meaning to read

Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities.


book you borrowed and never returned

Brautigan's Sombrero Fallout (sorry, bro-in-law….)


guilty pleasure reading

I like the crime fiction of George Pelecanos. I don't really feel guilty about that, though.


worst book-to-film adaptation

J. Mankiewicz's 1958 Quiet American, hands down. I blogged about this a while ago. The badness of that film is really something you have to respect.


book you’ve planted on a coffee table to impress someone

Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (I was 18 years old. I'd checked it out from the public library.)


best thing you’ve read online recently

Boy…. I loved that FRiGG microfiction issue. Jennifer Pieroni has been blowing me away…. But there's so much great stuff. I can't answer that question….


most anticipated upcoming release

Does Blake Butler's Scorch Atlas have his NY Tyrant and Ninth Letter stories in it?


recommended reading list:


Desert Island Collections


The rules: each of the last eight decades—including the one in progress—must be represented. No one decade can be represented more than twice. Collections may contain very short fiction but not novellas. Collections may not be retrospective (i.e. no 'Selected' or 'Collected' stories). You have twelve picks.

(I list mine in chronological order.)


1. Death in the Woods (1933), Sherwood Anderson

2. The Garden of Forking Paths (1941), Jorge Luis Borges

3. A Curtain of Green (1941), Eudora Welty

4. I Racconti (1958), Italo Calvino

5. Plain Pleasures (1966), Jane Bowles

6. City Life (1970), Donald Barthelme

7. Black Tickets (1979), Jayne Anne Phillips

8. Cathedral (1984), Raymond Carver

9. The Progress of Love (1986), Alice Munro

10. Escapes (1990), Joy Williams

11. Jesus' Son (1992), Denis Johnson

12. Assorted Fire Events (2000), David Means