One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

Being clever only gets you so far and if that's all that there was to this particular volume of 64 short stories it would grate pretty fast. But Novak's smarter than that. I'm not kidding, Novak is a Harvard grad with a degree in English and Spanish literature.

There are throwaway bits, SNL type sketches like the Market Was Down “Why was the market down? No reason. Well, stupid stuff. Actually to be honest, maybe it was Spain at the beginning, but it was really only worried about Spain because it woke up looking for something to worry about.” Or Great Writers Steal where “Neither of them ever got anything published, In fact, those who read their writing went so far as to say they they misunderstood literature on an unusually fundamental level. But after a few years, they got to be pretty good thieves.” But even those prove Novak's got a good ear for language and he manages to flex his writerly muscle with his longer pieces. He deserves the praise he's been getting for this collection.