The Kind I'm Likely to Get: A Collection

by Ken Foster and Ben Foster

Book Overview

In her New Yorker review of The KGB Bar Reader, Daphne Merkin called attention to Ken Foster's introduction: "His last sentence ... caught me up short, because it seemed both so obvious and so original: 'And that the best writers reveal something about themselves that a smarter person would choose to hide.'" In this collection, Foster does exactly that, as he explores the limits of what we can expect from others, and from ourselves. From New Orleans...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0688169805
• ISBN13: 9780688169800
• Release Date: July 1999
• Publisher: PerfectBound
• Length: 204 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.1" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

the kind I'm likely to get

Ken Foster has exposed the hidden pain of being a lost thirty something. In a generation of misfits struggling between the slick era of mobile phones and on line dating, Ken Foster has created chracters that portray the enduring irony of a global existence. In between skinny lattes and short stories Mr. Foster has the ability to deliver humor and devestation in the same sentence. The prose are well crafted and each word is carefully selected to give the reader a sense of belonging. The characters intermingle between stories with such ease it is hard to believe that "the kind i'm likely to get" is not a full breathing novel. The major flaw with the collection is that Mr. Foster has pointed out so many of our own adult faults it can be difficult to digest in one sitting.

Creative, new, short stories. Funny & unique. A great read

I enjoyed the book. Found the writting to be humorous and a different sort of fiction that you don't encounter everyday. Definitely nice to come across something so different, and so humorous in such a dry way. Even though the characters were not always the kinds of individuals one may like, they almost always were the type that you think you may have met before and had spent a minute wondering about what made them tick, but never got a chance to talk to, or never had the courage to. I loved the fact that everyday events can still comprise a story, but when approached from a different angle its enough to make them fresh and unique. However not all stories were about the everyday dull routine, you understand that bizare things occur everyday, to ordinary people. If I could,I would love to recall some of the specific stories that I really liked, but I've alredy leant out my copy, and I don't remember the names. I definately recommend this book to anyone who likes short stories that vary from the ordinary, and can make the ordinary seem much less than mundane.

Elegant prose with haunting insight

This book is an antidote for most modern short-story fiction. This is not smarmy and self-aware, it is astutely observed, with shocking candor. It is quietly powerful, with overtones of Josephine Hart's better work. The prose is terse, swift, and elegant. Foster's characters are thankfully void of shallow, pop-culture self-absorption and live with a quiet, intense yearning. I highly recommend this book for anyone whose stomach is upset from Douglas Coupland-esque Nutrasweet-fiction. This is the real deal.

Not so edgy or urban after all

The characters in this book put up a false front of bravura, cooly wandering through the darkest periods of their lives, but in most of the stories here, it is made very clear that there is something more humane and vulnerable hiding just beneath the surface. In the end, I felt the book actually had something less of an edge than some reviews had led me to believe. The characters, regardless of their appearance or location, are all seekers rather than posers, and in this day, that's something to admire.

Perversely satisfying

These are expert stories that actually parody what has become an epidemic in contemporary American fiction: "smartness," self-referentiality, wildly self-important self evaluations. My God, these are not hip, rich, urban youths. They're folks at the bottom of the food chain, incapable of laughter or action, and Foster captures them with an eye that, mercifully, isn't "pitiless" at all. He doesn't mock them, but just lets them behave as they will.