Robert Coover reads his short story ‘Vampire’ and discusses the quintessential English novel and the intersection between myth and the modern world.
‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
‘I am not now who or what I was when I wrote this. I change as you read. I am changing now.’ New fiction from Robert Coover.
‘His wife comes in, baring, with a wink, her incisors, and offers him a Bloody Mary.’
‘Flash Gordon, home from the terrible emptiness of space, has to make up stories for fear of worldwide despair.’
‘Projections run riot, mirrors tip and weave, there’s a blur of images like film jumping out of its sprockets.’
‘This statue, alone among all the myriad three-foot-high snotgreen likenesses of the Virgin cast in plaster by Finbarr Finnegan & Sons, Cork City, was seen one grim March afternoon some years back to move its limbs ever so slightly, as if seized suddenly by the need of a good sinew-cracking stretch.’
