Ninety-Nine Stories of God

　　73歲的老牌作家Joy Williams，作品曾入圍普立茲文學獎、美國國家書評獎及美國國家圖書館獎決選，並曾榮獲the Rea Award for the Short Story、美國藝文學會頒發的Harold and Mildred Strauss Living Award等獎項。

　　Joy Williams總能精準捕捉到日常生活中的荒謬和黑暗面，她筆下的人物幾乎就是我們──汲汲營營的無名小卒，在最沒有意料的狀況下見到了至高的存在。集結幾乎每則長度不超過一頁的短篇，每則故事都敘說了人與難以捉摸的神性的交流。在本書中，一連串的歷史人物與神的化身輪番登場，從卡夫卡、托爾斯泰到菲利普•狄克，作者寫下他們的軼事，以及真正關於神的故事──祂以各種不同的樣貌在小說中現身，有時出現在熱狗大胃王比賽、撞車比賽，有時是正式晚宴，甚至是藥局(在櫃檯前排隊領取帶狀皰疹疫苗)。

　　時而滑稽時而充滿詩意，有趣、神秘、難以捉摸，本書是徹底的Joy Williams，任何喜歡好故事的人都不該錯過。(文/博客來編譯)

　　At a hot-dog-eating contest or at a demolition derby, in line at the pharmacy counter waiting for a shingles vaccination, living in a cave with a colony of bats: the Almighty appears in ever-more mysterious ways in Ninety-Nine Stories of God, Joy Williams' surreal, sublime new collection of very short short stories. Each less than a page long, each packing a punch belied by its size, every one of these ninety-nine stories tells of everyday human interaction with an increasingly elusive and arbitrary deity.

　　Haunted by an array of extraordinary historical figures, from Kafka and Tolstoy to O. J. Simpson and Philip K. Dick, but populated by anonymous ordinary people just like you and me, the stories pool seemingly random moments into something deep, dazzling and disconcerting. Bleak and funny, ironic and lyrical, enigmatic and aphoristic, Ninety-Nine Stories of God breaks down the barriers between the everyday and the divine and takes Williams' writing into territories strange and new.

　　Review

　　Funny, fantastical ... Williams' says more in a page-long scene than most can say in a chapter; it's fitting, then, that her very short collection manages to encompass such an eternal theme with wit and grace. (Huffington Post)

　　To read Joy Williams is to be arrested in a state of relentless awe and wonderment ... why we aren't worshipping Joy Williams in public squares is beyond me (Vanity Fair)

　　She belongs in the company of Céline and Flannery O'Connor (James Salter)

　　One of our most remarkable storytellers (Ann Beattie)

　　One of the great American short story writers (Jay McInerney)

　　A treasure trove of bafflements and tiny masterpieces ... chains of association appeared and disappeared like currents in a swift-flowing stream (The New York Times)

　　Radically compressed ... new territory for Williams, with a brevity and a strict whimsy you might encounter in Lydia Davis's work ... easy to follow and hard to fathom; easy to enjoy and harder to absorb (New Yorker)

　　A collection of tiny, wry masterpieces. [100 Notable Books of the Year] (New York Times 2016-11-23)

作者簡介

　　Joy Williams is the author of four novels - the most recent, The Quick and the Dead, was a runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 - and three collections of stories, as well as Ill Nature, a book of essays that was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Among her many honours are the Rea Award for the Short Story and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Laramie, Wyoming.