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Remote Feed
The stories in Remote Feed , David Gilbert's debut collection, are not for the faint of heart. A Hollywood producer finds himself with a broken finger after a stunningly acrobatic sex accident; a man volunteers to read to a blind woman, then amuses himself by moving around her furniture; a philandering husband on a drinking binge vomits through his snorkel and is pleased to discover that he has attracted a school of brightly colored fish. The title story follows a CNN news team, interspersing some heavy drinking in a Galapagos bar with the crew's final days in Sarajevo, where the reporter has the bad taste to die of an aneurysm rather than being photogenically shot. These are not nice people, to say the least--the producer compares failed movies to Nazi death camps--but they do have the redeeming virtue of being very funny indeed. Gilbert's scathing comic vision has been compared to Bellow and Roth, but it's equally reminiscent of that master of the modern grotesque, Flannery O'Connor. As in O'Connor's fiction, the wit burns away like a caustic at everything inessential in these characters' lives, exposing what's left over--fear, paranoia, emptiness, disgust--to the pitiless light of day. Here, though, there's no equivalent for O'Connor's brand of Christian redemption, but rather a harsh Darwinian struggle for survival alone. In the collection's only stab at the solace of faith, a bored suburbanite at an alcohol-free party persuades himself to walk across hot coals by picturing a good stiff drink at the other "Maybe I was a holy man.... Maybe I could transform the elements and turn a hot-coal party into a pool party. So I imagined that I was in the deep end treading toward the shallow end, where a lounge chair floated, a gin and tonic nestled in the drink holder.... Before I began, I was finished."
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
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106 people want to read
About the author
David Gilbert
111 books96 followersDavid Gilbert is the author of the story collection Remote Feed and the novel The Normals. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, GQ, and Bomb. He lives in New York with his wife and three children.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
August 18, 2015
Will be reading this along with "The Bloody Chamber". The first story is good. Seems a bit like Raymond Carver. The book itself is now 17 years from its initial publication. Let's see if it seems dated...
I'm enjoying the wide-ranging stories so far. Curious to see that the book has such a small presence on Goodreads.
Last night's story - "Girl with Large Foot Jumping Rope" - an uncomfortable and sneaky portrayal of desperate life-confusion(or confused life-desperation). Makes one uncomfortable reading it. Well done but frustratingly open-ended. Some stories are like that!
"Anaconda Wrap" sounded a bit like "Providence Island". I's supposed to be funny(I think) but succeeded only fitfully. The illegal act is NOT credible - though I can't at two days remove remember what it was!
- Just thought of another connection - to the "heroes" of Denis Johnson's writings. A bunch of fizzle-dizzle heads!
"Opening Day" - The theme of the shaky screw-up male a la Carver and Johnson continues - well crafted and effective.
"Don't Go in the Basement" - is the author's attempt to get inside the psychic unease inside a young woman's mind. Does it well enough it seems to me but then, I'm not a young girl. Male authors are often criticized for doing this!
"At the Deja Vu" - Yet another story that connects with Denis Johnson's(and Raymond Carver's, though his tend to be of a lower socio-economic class) portrayals of lost and wandering(psychically anyway) boozers. They are not likeable much as they'd like to be. One must wonder if Mr. Gilbert is describiong some of his own issues here. Still, as nasty as it is, it's well told. One more to go...
"Still in Motion" - Read this last one sitting in the shade by the riverfront in Bath. It was a HOT day! The final story fits in with the whole picture of a nervous and discouraged humanity trying to make sense out of life in the post-modern world. I enjoyed this book and may well get some more of DG's later work. He's a typically smart, intellectually ambitious young male American writer. Since I'm NOT an intellectual it can be a challenge for me to "like" this kind of stuff, but I did. Lots of ambiguity of meaning here. Think Michael Chabon...
I'm enjoying the wide-ranging stories so far. Curious to see that the book has such a small presence on Goodreads.
Last night's story - "Girl with Large Foot Jumping Rope" - an uncomfortable and sneaky portrayal of desperate life-confusion(or confused life-desperation). Makes one uncomfortable reading it. Well done but frustratingly open-ended. Some stories are like that!
"Anaconda Wrap" sounded a bit like "Providence Island". I's supposed to be funny(I think) but succeeded only fitfully. The illegal act is NOT credible - though I can't at two days remove remember what it was!
- Just thought of another connection - to the "heroes" of Denis Johnson's writings. A bunch of fizzle-dizzle heads!
"Opening Day" - The theme of the shaky screw-up male a la Carver and Johnson continues - well crafted and effective.
"Don't Go in the Basement" - is the author's attempt to get inside the psychic unease inside a young woman's mind. Does it well enough it seems to me but then, I'm not a young girl. Male authors are often criticized for doing this!
"At the Deja Vu" - Yet another story that connects with Denis Johnson's(and Raymond Carver's, though his tend to be of a lower socio-economic class) portrayals of lost and wandering(psychically anyway) boozers. They are not likeable much as they'd like to be. One must wonder if Mr. Gilbert is describiong some of his own issues here. Still, as nasty as it is, it's well told. One more to go...
"Still in Motion" - Read this last one sitting in the shade by the riverfront in Bath. It was a HOT day! The final story fits in with the whole picture of a nervous and discouraged humanity trying to make sense out of life in the post-modern world. I enjoyed this book and may well get some more of DG's later work. He's a typically smart, intellectually ambitious young male American writer. Since I'm NOT an intellectual it can be a challenge for me to "like" this kind of stuff, but I did. Lots of ambiguity of meaning here. Think Michael Chabon...
July 5, 2013
Loved "Graffiti" about a guy who goofs on George Eliot to see whether a blind woman can tell what he's up to. One of the few really good stories to appear in The New Yorker. The rest of the collection Remote Feed is disjointed, but that one story is worth the price of the book.
June 23, 2019
Some great stories - though I had to skip through bits of some of them because they got quite dark and disturbing in places. His style and subject matter fit nicely with the Southern gothic-like writers including Ron Rash, Flannery O'Connor and Denis Johnson. Good read.
August 28, 2009
loved this author's style for short stories
July 7, 2012
Remote Feed is neither bad nor good. The stories were all entertaining, but nothing too impressive or even thought provoking.
August 7, 2014
Wonderful. A thoroughly entertaining collection of stories. Not a dud in the bunch!
April 25, 2018
I loved & Sons, so I was excited when I saw Gilbert had a book of short stories. Not as good as & Sons but good nonetheless. His prose is laconic, witty, and immensely focused. Simultaneously hilarious and terrifying and dead on accurate. Never dull.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews