Bream Gives Me Hiccups: And Other Stories

Jesse Eisenberg

2015년 9월 · Bond Street Books

eBook 정보

From Academy Award-nominated Jesse Eisenberg comes a collection of hilarious stories that tackle the modern world from multiple yet equally absurd and poignant points of view.

     The series of stories that gives the book its unusual title are written from the point of view of a nine-year-old boy whose mother brings him to expensive Los Angeles restaurants so that she can bill her ex-husband for the meals. One story in the "Bream Gives Me Hiccups" series begins: "Last night, Mom and I went to Thanksgiving dinner at a Vegan family's house, which is kind of like going to Temple for Christmas. Mom said that Vegans are 'people that don't eat any meat or cheese or shave.'" Another series of stories are letters written by a university student to her high school counselor as she grows gradually more unhinged. Other stories imagine discussions in ancient Pompeii just before the volcanic eruption, explore the vagaries of post-gender-normative dating in New York City, and conjure up Alexander Graham Bell's first five phone calls: "Have you heard anything from Mabel? I've been calling her all day, she doesn't pick up! Yes, of course I dialed the right number--2!" Plus there is an email exchange between a boy and his girlfriend taken over by his sister who is obsessed with the Bosnian genocide, an ex-husband reviewing his wife's book online, and Marxist-Socialist jokes, including: "What do you get when you cross a Marxist with a Socialist? Two people who generally feel that the value of a commodity is equal to its socially necessary labor time." In different ways, the stories explore what it means to navigate the modern world, and are all illuminated by Eisenberg's ironic wit and fantastically funny and original voice.

저자 정보

JESSE EISENBERG is an Academy Award-nominated actor. He is also a celebrated playwright: his first play Asuncion was nominated for a Drama League Award and his most recent play The Revisionist played off-Broadway, starring Eisenberg and Vanessa Redgrave. He regularly writes for The New Yorker. Eisenberg has appeared in the films Now You See Me, The Social Network (for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role), Adventureland, Zombieland, The Squid and the Whale, and Roger Dodger and is due to appear in The Double, the David Foster Wallace biographical drama The End of the Tour, and the untitled sequel to Man of Steel, where he will play Lex Luthor.