The Bridge: A Short Story

Daniel Orozco

Sep 2011 · Sold by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

About this ebook

A young bridge painter is awakened from the hum of daily routine by a face-to-face encounter with a woman in free fall.

"The Bridge" is a story from Daniel Orozco's critically acclaimed collection Orientation, which leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers. He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an exiled dictator's occasional piss on the U.S. embassy. A love affair blooms between two officers in the impartially worded pages of a police blotter; a new employee's first-day office tour includes descriptions of other workers' most private thoughts and actions; during an earthquake, the consciousness of the entire state of California shakes free for examination.

Orientation introduces a writer at the height of his powers, whose work surely invites us to reassess the landscape of American fiction.

Ratings and reviews

Reminds me of a tighter, flash version of the police station portions of Stephen King's From a Buick 8. It's the most somber of the three stories I've read from Orozco ("Temporary Stories", "Officers Weep"). Both add comedy to their melancholy. "The Bridge" not so much.

definitely not what I expected but it seemed very well written. I'm glad I read it

About the author

Daniel Orozco's stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, as well as in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, McSweeney's, Ecotone, and StoryQuarterly. He was awarded a 2006 NEA Fellowship in fiction, and was a finalist for a 2006 National Magazine Award in fiction. A former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford, he teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho.