The Amount to Carry; Stories

In this collection of twelve stories, Carter Scholz, author of the critically acclaimed novel Radiance and co-author (with Jonathan Lethem) of Kafka Americana, reveals his truly remarkable range and prodigious narrative gifts. Traveling from the surface of the moon to the New Jersey suburbs, from Jan Van Eyck's 'invention' of oil painting to the aged Ezra Pound at St. Elizabeth's, from Galileo's telescope to a theory of catastrophes, they explore the places in the human mind where science and fiction merge. In the same manner as the later works of Nabokov or the fictive universes of Calvino, Kafka, and Borges, Scholz's stories disturb the universe, probe the worlds we call home, and measure the degrees of our alienation. Mind-expanding, entertaining, and often richly disquieting, The Amount to Carry brings us bravura performances of the imagination.