Guess Again: Short Stories

Bernard Cooper

Simon and Schuster, Feb 28, 2006 - Fiction - 208 pages

Guess Again is a rich and eclectic collection of exquisitely crafted short stories. Written with unsparing honesty, these stories vividly illustrate love's complexities, the intricacies of family relationships, struggles with sexual identity, and the specter of AIDS.

Whether chronicling a dying man's acts of vandalism, a divorcée under house arrest, a Mormon couple's potluck dinner for their few homosexual acquaintances, or a young Los Angeles boy's sexual awakening, the stories in Guess Again are full of wit, subtlety, and emotional generosity.

Contents

• Night Sky: 13
• What to Name the Baby: 45
• X: 78
• Hunters and Gatherers: 93
• A Man in the Making: 125
• Exterior Decoration: 140
• Graphology: 153
• Between the Sheets: 174

Popular passages

Page 7 - Some say that love's a little boy, And some say it's a bird, Some say it makes the world go round, And some say that's absurd, And when I asked the man next-door, Who looked as if he knew, His wife got very cross indeed, And said it wouldn't do. Does it look like a pair of pyjamas, Or the ham in a temperance hotel? Does its odour remind one of llamas, Or has it a comforting smell? Is it prickly to touch as a hedge is, Or soft as eiderdown fluff? Is it sharp or quite smooth at the edges? O tell me...‎

About the author

Bernard Cooper has won numerous awards and prizes, among them the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award, an O. Henry Prize, and literature fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and The National Endowment of the Arts. He has published two memoirs, Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum, as well as a novel, A Year of Rhymes, and a collection of short stories, Guess Again. His work has appeared in Harper's Magazine, Gentleman's Quarterly, and The Paris Review and in several volumes of The Best American Essays. He lives in Los Angeles and is the art critic for Los Angeles Magazine.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Guess Again: Short Stories
• Author: Bernard Cooper
• Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 2006
• ISBN: 0743249402, 9780743249409
• Length: 208 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / Fantasy / Epic; Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Short Stories (single author)