New Bad News
Description
"Ryan Ridge's verbal prestidigitation suggest a more rueful Mark Leyner, and he can make you both laugh and wince, but he can also kick up your pulse with a storytelling urgency that thrums under the attractively fragmented surfaces. His hard-boiled punchlines are rooted in geography and yearning and real American sadness." --Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Feral Detective
In New Bad News, the frenetic and far-out worlds of fading celebrities, failed festival promoters, underemployed adjuncts, and overly aware chatbots collide. A Terminator statue comes to life at the Hollywood Wax Museum; a coyote laps up Colt 45, as a passerby looks on in existential quietude; a detective disappears while investigating a missing midwestern cam girl. Set in Kentucky, Hollywood, and the afterlife, these bright, bold short-shorts and stories construct an uncannily familiar, alternate-reality America.
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About the Author
Reviews
"Ridge offers a new collection of stories, reminiscences, fragments, and fables that are firmly in his wheelhouse of finding whimsical humor in the everyday world. . . . [U]npredictable postmodern jests with more than a little pathos underneath the levity."
--Kirkus Reviews "[Ridge] expresses a distinctly American voice reaching out of myriad pop-culture remnants. . . . [and] creates a gallery of enigmatic oddities that will enchant readers of poetry and experimental literature."
--Booklist "Ryan Ridge's verbal prestidigitation suggest a more rueful Mark Leyner, and he can make you both laugh and wince, but he can also kick up your pulse with a storytelling urgency that thrums under the attractively fragmented surfaces. His hard-boiled punchlines are rooted in geography and yearning and real American sadness."
--Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Feral Detective "New Bad News is a box of absolute treasures--funny, wise, full of surprises but instantly familiar. This fantastic book is one I'll come back to."
--Ramona Ausubel, author of Awayland and A Guide to Being Born "New Bad News reminds me of Barry Hannah had he written a collection of short-short fiction. One of the most remarkable things about this collection is Ryan Ridge's ability to carve a lot into a very small space, which is what makes his work so unusual, so funny, and so smart. His prose is both beautiful and raw. I loved this book."
--Brandon Hobson, National Book Award Finalist and author of Where the Dead Sit Talking "New Bad News is tenderness and mordancy awash with California moonlight and Kentucky ghosts, too. Ryan Ridge's strange transmissions glow like buzzing neon in the dim and make us feel less weird and alone. This! This is a book of brilliant, zappy echoes we can touch."
--Leesa Cross-Smith, author of Every Kiss A War, Whiskey & Ribbons, and So We Can Glow "Ryan Ridge's short short stories carry a sort of essence of the 21st century. His brief prose style parallels with our abrupt, social-media-driven way of communicating in the modern world. His tales capture the dark tensions behind everything from climate change to Charlie Chaplin tramp stamps."
--Autre Magazine
