So why haven't most of you heard of him? I'm unsure, to be honest. Most of his fiction is more accessible than those other two guys, but just as smart and rewarding. Unlike those other two guys, McElroy is by all accounts an outgoing, engaging personality. Maybe it's because his book covers are all so fucking ugly? Who can say? McElroy's newest collection of short stories is titled Night Soul and Other Stories. It contains a story called "Annals of Plagiary." It begins like this:
It came to my attention that a person in the news had voiced a thought at her press conference as if it were hers, when the words that came to her were not her own but mine. Little enough to get exercised over. I reread the sentence (or was it two sentences?) quoted in the not nominally sensational Post and it was she being quoted answering a question about the effect of some damn thing in, as she called her work, "my piece," but her answering words were not hers but mine—my own written and printed words speaking at me.
It is like a lovely Chekhov story about plagiarism. You should go to this reading. Or, you should go to the Silent Reading Party at the Sorrento. Or you should go see Brian Greene read at Town Hall. You should do something book-related tonight, is what I'm saying. Find more information about these events and much more in the reading calendar.
