True False
“Miles Klee demonstrates a delightfully prehensile grasp of the more oblique peculiarities of sentience. Very highly recommended.”
—William Gibson“Miles Klee is a male Lydia Davis on a cyberpunk acid trip.”
—Entropyabout the bookabout
Klee's last book, his first, was variously hailed as "sharply intelligent" (Publishers Weekly) and "harsh, spastic" (Justin Taylor): we like to think of True False as intelligently spastic, or sharply harsh—disquieting and funny. A collection of stories that range from the very short to the merely short, these forty-four tales evoke extraordinary scenes in an understated manner that’s marked Klee one of today’s most intriguing writers. From the apocalyptic to the utopic, from a haunted office building to a suburban pool that may be alive, a day in the mind of a demi-god Pythagoras to a secret race to develop artificial love, True False captures a fractured reality more real than our own.
“Miles Klee is a fresh genius of the American literary sentence, and his every paragraph is aburst with nervous, agitative exactitudes. So much gets itself zanily and definitively rendered in the crackle of his ultravivid prose that True False is not just a joltingly original collection but the essential record of the inner terrors of our hyperurban era.” —Garielle Lutz
About The Author / Editor
Preview
"Dogfight"
Omen, Not Very Good
Red celebrates return to consciousness by throttling doctor stooped over bed, whose pince-nez slips off to politely explode on white tile. For man shot in head and forced to land in Belgium, Red seems less the worse for wear as Schweinfeder and I struggle to break his grip. "That dog!" comes husk of voice, brutal vessels blooming in face. "Dog was toying with me!" At once he swoons, resumes glass coma. Doctor sucks air, clutches autograph book to chest, one finger placeholding still-blank page. "Same sweet baboon," Schweinfeder snorts.
Nemeses Come and Go
Red is distant unaccountable asshole, yet it's other people I'm expected to kill. Schweinfeder (secret Jew) is his other perpetual wingman; together we listen as Red dictates autobiography to bored propagandist. "Hawker, there was a worthy duel," Red expounds, twisting blue hospital blanket. "But nemeses come and go." Pantomime of kill. "New adversaries on the horizon?" doodling ghostwriter asks. "That cheeky beagle who took me down," Red mutters. Would make the man see psychiatrist, were there one in the world worth five cents.
I Got a Rock
He wants to fly; Luftstreitkräfte stalls. Germany's morale can't sustain loss of ace, not with sixty confirmed kills and twice as many myths to his name. Too late: under gauze-wrapped skull, all's gone awry. Nurses, one brawny, one bespectacled, latter addressing former as Herr, summon me and Schweinfeder when Red disappears. Discover him in hangar: drunk on morphine, drooling over moonlit triplane, filling with siphoned fuel. Mutters as we drag him back that we sound like muted brass played by fumbling amateurs. "Want to shut him up?" Schweinfeder whispers. "I got a rock." Valkyries track us in smoked October nights, eager to whisk Red to Valhalla. Propeller thrums in clotted black above. We tramp across the great pumpkin patch, sparing few.
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True False
“Miles Klee demonstrates a delightfully prehensile grasp of the more oblique peculiarities of sentience. Very highly recommended.”
—William Gibson“Miles Klee is a male Lydia Davis on a cyberpunk acid trip.”
—Entropyabout the bookabout
Klee's last book, his first, was variously hailed as "sharply intelligent" (Publishers Weekly) and "harsh, spastic" (Justin Taylor): we like to think of True False as intelligently spastic, or sharply harsh—disquieting and funny. A collection of stories that range from the very short to the merely short, these forty-four tales evoke extraordinary scenes in an understated manner that’s marked Klee one of today’s most intriguing writers. From the apocalyptic to the utopic, from a haunted office building to a suburban pool that may be alive, a day in the mind of a demi-god Pythagoras to a secret race to develop artificial love, True False captures a fractured reality more real than our own.
“Miles Klee is a fresh genius of the American literary sentence, and his every paragraph is aburst with nervous, agitative exactitudes. So much gets itself zanily and definitively rendered in the crackle of his ultravivid prose that True False is not just a joltingly original collection but the essential record of the inner terrors of our hyperurban era.” —Garielle Lutz
About The Author / Editor
Preview
"Dogfight"
Omen, Not Very Good
Red celebrates return to consciousness by throttling doctor stooped over bed, whose pince-nez slips off to politely explode on white tile. For man shot in head and forced to land in Belgium, Red seems less the worse for wear as Schweinfeder and I struggle to break his grip. "That dog!" comes husk of voice, brutal vessels blooming in face. "Dog was toying with me!" At once he swoons, resumes glass coma. Doctor sucks air, clutches autograph book to chest, one finger placeholding still-blank page. "Same sweet baboon," Schweinfeder snorts.
Nemeses Come and Go
Red is distant unaccountable asshole, yet it's other people I'm expected to kill. Schweinfeder (secret Jew) is his other perpetual wingman; together we listen as Red dictates autobiography to bored propagandist. "Hawker, there was a worthy duel," Red expounds, twisting blue hospital blanket. "But nemeses come and go." Pantomime of kill. "New adversaries on the horizon?" doodling ghostwriter asks. "That cheeky beagle who took me down," Red mutters. Would make the man see psychiatrist, were there one in the world worth five cents.
I Got a Rock
He wants to fly; Luftstreitkräfte stalls. Germany's morale can't sustain loss of ace, not with sixty confirmed kills and twice as many myths to his name. Too late: under gauze-wrapped skull, all's gone awry. Nurses, one brawny, one bespectacled, latter addressing former as Herr, summon me and Schweinfeder when Red disappears. Discover him in hangar: drunk on morphine, drooling over moonlit triplane, filling with siphoned fuel. Mutters as we drag him back that we sound like muted brass played by fumbling amateurs. "Want to shut him up?" Schweinfeder whispers. "I got a rock." Valkyries track us in smoked October nights, eager to whisk Red to Valhalla. Propeller thrums in clotted black above. We tramp across the great pumpkin patch, sparing few.