Shorts : Stories

Fuguet's own bicultural upbringing has provided him with the sensitivity to delve into the impact of America's pop culture in Latin America as well as the influence of all things'Latin'in the USA. He explores the cultural contradictions, the similarities, and how this cultural friction has influenced one another.Shorts opens our eyes to the wider spectrum of Latinos living in America; those who migrate into the U.S. in order to be a part of what the characters in this collection perceive as a free paradise they call'Yankee Bohemia', only to have their fantasy deflated by the suburban reality they are confronted by.With characters eager to be part of this'Yankee Bohemia', Fuguet grants readers access into an international creative community based in the United States that leave all they know in order to'make it'in America. What Fuguet accomplishes is a chronicle of the often hysterical, sad, and bizarre existence of those who feel that what they'create'in America will make them heroes in their countries, to their families, and finally give themselves the satisfaction of feeling like they have truly made it, only to realize they are very far from doing so.As always, Fuguet masterfully explores perception vs. reality, dreams found and those lost, and how pop culture influences our lives. This book is a journey through which two cultures connect as well as collide. A genre-bending collection of tales from one of Latin America's most radically original mindsIn Shorts, Alberto Fuguet brilliantly chronicles the occasionally bizarre, unceasingly turbulent existence of the geographically and emotionally displaced.From the tale of a childless Chilean couple with an antiseptic life philosophy to an account of a desperate man who "disappears" himself in Texas, dreaming that someone actually wants to find him, Shorts opens our eyes to the reality of rich kids from poor countries swilling their cosmopolitans in New York, scared to death of their own homelands, and shows the influence of American pop culture on the hearts and minds of those who have never set foot in "Yankee Bohemia."Unsettling and enlightening, Shorts conveys the American phenomenon of self-invention at its most extreme, as the culturally confounded rage against deflated fantasies in the face of obstinate realities. In Shorts, Alberto Fuguet brilliantly chronicles the occasionally bizarre, unceasingly turbulent existence of the geographically and emotionally displaced. From the tale of a childless Chilean couple with an antiseptic life philosophy to an account of a desperate man who "disappears" himself in Texas, dreaming that someone actually wants to find him, Shorts opens our eyes to the reality of rich kids from poor countries swilling their cosmopolitans in New York, scared to death of their own homelands, and shows the influence of American pop culture on the hearts and minds of those who have never set foot in "Yankee Bohemia." Unsettling and enlightening, Shorts conveys the American phenomenon of self-invention at its most extreme, as the culturally confounded rage against deflated fantasies in the face of obstinate realities