Guess Again : Short Stories

by Bernard Cooper

• ISBN13: 9780684865867
• ISBN10: 0684865866
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-09
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Summary

From the O. Henry Prize and PEN/ Hemingway Award-winning author of Truth Serum and Maps to Anywhere comes a masterful, exquisitely crafted collection of short stories. Bernard Cooper's fiction probes some of the most perplexing experiences of modern American life: the unpredictable nature of love, the riddle of sexuality, the intricacies of family relationships, and coping with loss in the age of AIDS. With his razor-sharp wit and unsparing honesty, Cooper peels back layers of the familiar, exposing the surprising truths that shape our lives. In "Bit-O-Honey," a middle-aged barber visits his estranged father on Halloween, disguised as a trick-or-treater; a young pregnant woman in "What to Name the Baby" negotiates life with her father and his elderly lover while traveling in a cramped Winnebago; and in "Hunters and Gatherers," a Mormon couple orchestrates a misguided party game while hosting a dinner for the few homosexuals they know. Whether Cooper is writing about a dying man's acts of vandalism, a divorce under house arrest, or a young boy's sexual awakening, his stories contain startling insight into the workings of the human heart. Resonant and often hilarious, the stories in Guess Again are unlike any you have read before.

Author Biography

Bernard Cooper teaches in the Creative Writing Program at Antioch University. His fiction and essays have been widely anthologized in The Best American Essays of 1995, 1997, and 1998 and The Best American Gay Fiction of 1996. He has received several awards, including a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship, an O. Henry Prize for the memoir Truth Serum, and a PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award for Maps to Anywhere, a collection of essays. He lives in Hollywood, California.

Table of Contents

Night Sky	13	(24)
Intro to Acting	24	(21)
What to Name the Baby	45	(28)
X	73	(5)
Bit-O-Honey	78	(15)
Hunters and Gatherers	93	(32)
A Man in the Making	125	(15)
Exterior Decoration	140	(13)
Graphology	153	(21)
Between the Sheets	174	(6)
Old Birds	180