With his debut novel, Samedi the Deafness, Jesse Ball emerged as one of our most extraordinary new writers. Now, Ball returns with this haunting tale of love and storytelling, hope and identity. When Selah Morse sees a young woman get hit by a speeding taxicab, he rushes her to the hospital. The girl has lost her memory; she is delirious and has no identification, so Selah poses as her boyfriend. She is released into his care, but the doctor charges him to keep her awake, and to help her remember her past. Through the long night, he tells her stories, inventing and inventing, trying to get closer to what might be true, and hoping she will recognize herself in one of his tales. Offering up moments of pure insight and unexpected, exuberant humor, The Way Through Doors demonstrates Jesse Ball's great artistry and gift for and narrative.
A Vintage Short Loring is a widow and chess master who makes her living giving chess lessons; her newest student, who might be a prodigy, bears a striking resemblance to her dead spouse. Has her chess champion husband found a final move beyond the grave? A chess fable from the wildly inventive, immensely talented author of A Cure for Suicide and Silence Once Begun, “The Lesson” is a surprising, poignant, macabre tale of games, children, and the unknowability of the beyond. Channeling the chess masterpieces of Nabokov and Stefan Zweig, Jesse Ball’s newest is a fabulous and entertaining novella that astonishes from first move to last. An eBook short.
A woman "examiner" and a man, her "claimant, " move into a small house where the examiner teaches the claimant the most simple functions and monitors his progress, until an encounter at a party raises doubts about everything he has learned.
The disappearances of eight people from the same Japanese town baffles authorities until a signed confession appears on the police's doorstep implicating a salesman who refuses to speak, compelling a journalist to interview the subsequently condemned man's friends, family and jailors before his scheduled execution.
This debut book of poetry from the Plimpton Award–winning author of Census “displays an otherworldly virtuosity . . . coolly seductive and skillfully wrought” (DeSales Harrison, Boston Review). Called “A young genius” by the Chicago Tribune, Jesse Ball has won acclaim for his novels and poetry combining skillful attention to form with a deeply resonant humanity. That same mastery of craft and vision are on display in his first published volume of poetry, March Book. With perfect line breaks, tenderly selected words, and inventive pairings, Ball leads us through his fantastic world. In five separate sections we meet beekeepers and parsons, a young woman named Anna in a thin linen dress, and an old scribe transferring the eponymous March Book. We witness a Willy Loman-esque worker who “ran out in the noon street / shirt sleeves rolled, and hurried after / that which might have passed” only to be told that there’s nothing between him and “the suddenness of age.” While these images achingly inform us of our delicate place in the physical world, others remind us why we still yearn to awake in it every day and “make pillows with the down / of stolen geese,” “build / rooms in terms of the hours of the day.”
Writings from the prize-winning author of The Divers’ Game: “Reading Ball feels a little like stumbling into an M.C. Escher print.” —Chicago Tribune This volume by experimental writer Jesse Ball is a philosophical recasting of myth and legend. Employing an eerie narrative simplicity, these always-unpredictable poems are cautionary tales of the oppressiveness of monolithic culture on the development of artistic, philosophical, and political leadership. Alternating from the personal to the public, Ball attains a wide enough vantage to observe the cowardliness of historians in their refusal to ascribe causality. Unearthing parables from the compost heap of oral tradition, folklore, literature, and popular culture, this book projects shadows of figures we think we recognize: Helen Keller, Pompeii, Ellis Island, Houdini, Lazarus, the Pied Piper, Punch and Judy, Hawthorne, Shirley Jackson, and more. Comprised of three separate “volumes,” The Village on Horseback creates an entirely original world of interrelated characters, with a mix of references, allusions, evocations—the result being a sort of Brueghel-esque feel—and yet there’s also a self-conscious acknowledgment of modernity as well as a questioning of the “authority” of the author in determining meaning. At times evoking Gorey, Chaucer, and the tale of Robin Hood, these fables, ghost stories, and riddles of human nature dissect the individual’s interaction with “culture,” particularly commenting on the ascribing of meaning by communal groups resulting in “truth-making,” and the limitations of our leaders (artists, philosophers, politicians) in their ability to break us out of communal indoctrination.
William and Molly lead a life of small pleasures, riddles at the kitchen table, and games of string and orange peels. All around them a city rages with war. When the uprising began, William’s wife was taken, leaving him alone with their young daughter. They keep their heads down and try to remain unnoticed as police patrol the streets, enforcing a curfew and arresting citizens. But when an old friend seeks William out, claiming to know what happened to his wife, William must risk everything. He ventures out after dark, and young Molly is left to play, reconstructing his dangerous voyage, his past, and their future. An astounding portrait of fierce love within a world of random violence, The Curfew is a mesmerizing feat of literary imagination.
NAMED A RECOMMENDED BOOK OF 2018 BY TheNew York Times•TheChicago Reader • Nylon • The Boston Globe • TheHuffington Post • The Rumpus •The AV Club •Southern Living •The Millions • Buzzfeed • Esquire • Publishers Weekly A powerful and moving new novel from an award-winning, acclaimed author: in the wake of a devastating revelation, a father and son journey north across a tapestry of towns When a widower receives notice from a doctor that he doesn’t have long left to live, he is struck by the question of who will care for his adult son—a son whom he fiercely loves, a boy with Down syndrome. With no recourse in mind, and with a desire to see the country on one last trip, the man signs up as a census taker for a mysterious governmental bureau and leaves town with his son. Traveling into the country, through towns named only by ascending letters of the alphabet, the man and his son encounter a wide range of human experience. While some townspeople welcome them into their homes, others who bear the physical brand of past censuses on their ribs are wary of their presence. When they press toward the edges of civilization, the landscape grows wilder, and the towns grow farther apart and more blighted by industrial decay. As they approach “Z,” the man must confront a series of questions: What is the purpose of the census? Is he complicit in its mission? And just how will he learn to say good-bye to his son? Mysterious and evocative, Census is a novel about free will, grief, the power of memory, and the ferocity of parental love, from one of our most captivating young writers.
“Ball has created a voice that echoes the beloved narrators of J. D. Salinger and John Green. . . . With her tragic past, brilliant mind and subversive potential, Lucia could be thought of as a young Lisbeth Salander, or a high-IQ, antiheroic Katniss Everdeen, but with a better sense of humor.” —Newsday Lucia Stanton’s father is dead, her mother is in a mental hospital, and she’s recently been kicked out of school—again. Living with her aunt in a garage-turned-bedroom, and armed with only a book, a Zippo lighter, and a pocketful of stolen licorice, she spends her days riding the bus to visit her mom and following the only rule that makes any sense: Don’t do things you aren’t proud of. When Lucia discovers that her school has a secret Arson Club, her life is suddenly lit up; she’ll do anything to join. Edgy, raw, and hilarious, How to Set a Fire and Why is a thrilling story about growing up the hard way.
From the inimitable mind of award-winning author Jesse Ball, a novel about an unsettlingly familiar society that has renounced the concept of equality—and the devastating consequences of unmitigated power The old-fashioned struggle for fairness has finally been abandoned. It was a misguided endeavor. The world is divided into two groups, pats and quads. The pats may kill the quads as they like, and do. The quads have no recourse but to continue with their lives. The Divers’ Game is a thinly veiled description of our society, an extreme case that demonstrates a truth: we must change or our world will collapse. What is the effect of constant fear on a life, or on a culture? The Divers’ Game explores the consequences of violence through two festivals, and through the dramatic and excruciating examination of a woman’s final moments. Brilliantly constructed and achingly tender, The Divers’ Game shatters the notion of common decency as the binding agent between individuals, forcing us to consider whether compassion is intrinsic to the human experience. With his signature empathy and ingenuity, Jesse Ball’s latest work solidifies his reputation as one of contemporary fiction’s most mesmerizing talents.
Franz Kafka meets Yorgos Lanthimos in this provocative new novel from one of America’s most brilliant and distinctive writers In a speculative future, Abel, a menial worker, is called to serve in a secretive and fabled jury system. At the heart of this system is the repeat room, where a single juror, selected from hundreds of candidates, is able to inhabit the defendant’s lived experience, to see as if through their eyes. The case to which Abel is assigned is revealed in the novel’s shocking second act. We receive a record of a boy's broken and constrained life, a tale that reveals an illicit and passionate psycho-sexual relationship, its end as tragic as the circumstances of its conception. Artful in its suspense, and sharp in its evocation of a byzantine and cruel bureaucracy, The Repeat Room is an exciting and pointed critique of the nature of knowledge and judgment, and a vivid framing of Ball's absurd and nihilistic philosophy of love.
One morning in the park James Sim discovers a man, crumpled on the ground, stabbed in the chest. In the man's last breath, he whispers his confession: Samedi. What follows is a spellbinding game of cat and mouse as James is abducted, brought to an asylum, and seduced by a woman in yellow. Who is lying? What is Samedi? And what will happen on the seventh day?
Sleep, Death's Brother is an instruction manual on dreaming for children or incarcerated persons, teaching such individuals to lucid dream and thus use their dreams to somewhat escape their situations. While it is often the case that dream life is passively experienced, acclaimed novelist Jesse Ball (born 1978) reminds us that dreaming life is also a place where a sense of agency can grow. Even in the midst of physical or emotional environments that do not support such development in waking life, dreams are a place where one can take control. Ball calls for bravery in the exploration of this practice, and provides the dreamer with useful habits and techniques. Full of affirmation and wisdom, Sleep, Death's Brother is a guidebook "for all oneironauts young and old.
The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again. This is their story. For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that he could have only imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia’s professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball. Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to "Thriller" or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it’s an out; and players might go to bat on stilts or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it. But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America’s oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again. This is a story that’s bigger than baseball and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the “ringmaster” of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse’s telling, it takes heart, innovation, and joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America’s great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories—love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans. This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.
Folks, many years ago when I was talking to my Grandfather I ask him how he and my Grandmother met, married and lived. (This was in the mid-thirties). Even at this period in my life I was interested in stories of the Family. Being in his late eighties he was full of them and loved to tell them. So up until the mid-twenties the stories here are the ones he told me. After the mid-twenties the stories mostly are the ones I have learned and lived through on my own. My Father was in the Grocery Business for 42 years so up until 1945 I worked in the Store and I heard Stories from nearly everyone. Customers tell you all their hard luck tales when they can''t pay their bills. Even in my early years I liked to write so on occasion I would "Jot" something down that was interesting and I would lay it back. My father was also a Dairy Farmer with a Milk Route so after 1944 I took over the Farm and let him retire. (At least to a point). Folks, you won''t believe the stories you can get living on a Farm.
The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again. This is their story. For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that he could have only imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia’s professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball. Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to "Thriller" or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it’s an out; and players might go to bat on stilts or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it. But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America’s oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again. This is a story that’s bigger than baseball and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the “ringmaster” of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse’s telling, it takes heart, innovation, and joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America’s great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories—love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans. This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.
Here is one of the most remarkable, ambitious, and utterly original memoirs of this generation, a story of the losing and finding of self, of sex and love and fatherhood and the joy of language, of death and failure and heartbreak, of Los Angeles and Portland and Nicaragua and Mexico, and the shifting sands of place and meaning that can make up a culture, or a community, or a home. Faced with the collapse of his son’s Little League program–consisting mostly of Latino kids in the largely Asian suburb of Monterey Park, California–Jesse Katz finds himself thrust into the role of baseball commissioner for La Loma Park. Under its lights the yearnings and conflicts of a complex immigrant community are played out amid surprising moments of grace. Each day–and night–becomes a test of Jesse’s judgment and adaptability, and of his capacity to make this peculiar pocket of L.A.’s Eastside his home. While Jesse soothes egos, brokers disputes, chases down delinquent coaches and missing equipment, and applies popsicles to bruises, he forms unlikely alliances, commits unanticipated errors, and receives the gift of unexpected wisdom. But there’s no less drama in Jesse’s complicated personal life as he grapples with a stepson who seems destined for trouble, comforts his mother (a legendary Oregon politician) when she’s stricken with cancer, and receives hard lessons in finding–and holding on to–the love of a good woman. Through it all, Jesse’s emotional mainstay is his beloved son, Max, who quietly bests his father’s brightest hopes. Over nine springs and summers with Max at La Loma, Jesse learns nothing less than what it takes to be a father, a son, a husband, a coach, and, ultimately, a man. This is an epic book, a funny book, a sexy book, a rapturously evocative and achingly poignant book. Above all it is true, in that it happened, but also in a way that transcends mere facts and cuts to the quick of what it means to be alive.
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