Home Run
(2013)(A book in the Electric Literature's Recommended Reading series)
A Story by Steven Millhauser
In her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading, Halimah Marcus, co-editor of Electric Literature, explains that "sports, like literature, give us access to a heightened, even exalted, life....In 'Home Run' Steven Millhauser takes it to an intergalactic level, as a ball clocked by McCluskey soars out of the park, into the sky, and out of this world."
"Rarely does literature get away with being joyous and hopeful, but here it is. A perfect specimen," Marcus writes. "I'm hard-pressed to think of another story without a downside. In literature, if there's a happy memory it's framed by death or heartbreak. If there's a description of natural beauty it's cut with the viewer's inability to posses that beauty, to make it last. A home run, on the other hand, is a triumph that can be shared, an unadulterated success that makes us forget ourselves for as long as the ball is in flight."
Steven Millhauser is the author of twelve works of fiction, including the story collections Dangerous Laughter and The Knife Thrower. His most recent book is We Others: New and Selected Stories.
About the Publisher:
Electric Literature is an independent publisher working to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture. Electric Literature's weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction, accompanied by a Single Sentence Animation. Single Sentence Animations are creative collaborations: the author chooses a favorite sentence and we commission an artist to interpret it. Stay connected with us through email, Facebook, and Twitter, and find previous Electric Literature picks in the Recommended Reading archives.
Genre: Literary Fiction
"Rarely does literature get away with being joyous and hopeful, but here it is. A perfect specimen," Marcus writes. "I'm hard-pressed to think of another story without a downside. In literature, if there's a happy memory it's framed by death or heartbreak. If there's a description of natural beauty it's cut with the viewer's inability to posses that beauty, to make it last. A home run, on the other hand, is a triumph that can be shared, an unadulterated success that makes us forget ourselves for as long as the ball is in flight."
Steven Millhauser is the author of twelve works of fiction, including the story collections Dangerous Laughter and The Knife Thrower. His most recent book is We Others: New and Selected Stories.
About the Publisher:
Electric Literature is an independent publisher working to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture. Electric Literature's weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction, accompanied by a Single Sentence Animation. Single Sentence Animations are creative collaborations: the author chooses a favorite sentence and we commission an artist to interpret it. Stay connected with us through email, Facebook, and Twitter, and find previous Electric Literature picks in the Recommended Reading archives.
Genre: Literary Fiction
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