#eskor david johnson

[whisperthatruns]

I might have been going this way, or I might have been going the other, I really couldn't be sure. Anyway, don't try telling stuff like that to certain people, you'd just be wasting your time. I don't even want to talk about it, to tell you the truth. Sometimes he'd sell off the first couple things he could get his hands on for some change to spend at his man on the corner, but it'd take you a while to recognize what the things had been. Like, I used to have this xylophone. It wasn't the best xylophone in the world or anything, but I knew a few jingles to play on it. Except once when I was older I went looking for it and all the keys were missing. I mean, every, single, one---it was just a wooden block left behind with a pair of rubber-tipped sticks. That's good copper you had lying around, boy! he said. Who are you, the queen of the world? "That's not the point!" Damn: all of a sudden I was yelling out loud in those woods. Something off to my side scurried away at the sound of my voice. "It's not just the queen of the world who gets to keep her stuff. It can be the rest of us too." Pah. More drivel. Same as ever, I see. "Shut up!" Where are you now? Lost, I bet. I was plunging farther still into the smells of wet bough and rotten moss. Dark things with pinpoints for eyes were moving in the trees. I heard his mean footsteps coming down the stairs after one of his sleepless nights spent arguing on the phone. The dungeon of my imagination had been flung open without the sun to keep watch. "You don't get to do that," I said, and I meant it. You don't get to go around selling all the copper you find because you think no one can do anything about it. Not the copper, not the bicycle pedals, the motors for my toy cars, the night-lights. Not the screws from the bed frame so that the mattress had to be put on the floor, or the graduation rings, the razor blades, the alarm clocks, the cuff links for my one good shirt, the remote for the TV. I stopped where I was and dropped to my haunches. The swamp water was chilling my clothes and that was the reason I was shaking. "I'm not some coward." Geez, I was having some serious tremors. My clothes were really damp. Something must have flown into my eyes, too, since I was having to wipe them a lot all of a sudden. All that ever happened to me was bad luck and cold clothes, and I was tired of it. And as a matter of fact, I was lying just now, it was the best damn xylophone in the world. And he had been the one to teach me the jingles on it. So if some of us who you see out here are not musicians, it's only because those we loved the most once took back the keys.

Eskor David Johnson, Pay as You Go (McSweeney’s, 2023)

[citylifeorg]

The New York Public Library Announces the Finalists for the 2024 Young Lions Fiction Award

The New York Public Library is excited to announce the finalists for the 24th annual Young Lions Fiction Award, honoring the work of several brilliant young authors. The finalists are: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah for Chain-Gang All-Stars; Monica Brashears for House of Cotton;  Eskor David Johnson for Pay As You Go; E. J. Koh for The Liberators; C Pam Zhang for Land of Milk and Honey.  Making…

[ispeakbooknerd]

Pay As You Go by Eskor David Johnson

Trippin'. #Books #BookReviews #Reading #PayAsYouGo #NetGalley #Bookish #Bibliophile #WhatToRead #Fiction

Fancy a trip? Read Pay As You Go by Eskor David Johnson then, for it will take you on an urban odyssey like no other. Really, it’s like nothing else I have ever read! In a nutshell, we are reading a story that follows Slide on his journey to find his ideal apartment in the large fictional city of Polis. That may not sound very exciting, but the author completely brings Slide and the city to…

[whisperthatruns]

Onward I went through that grove of shadows, the image of the hill in my mind's eye my only guide. I hardly knew my progress in so uniform a blindness. Heavens was it hard to see in there. I was starting to feel too-alert, electric, tuned in all-the-way with the senses I had left. Come over here, boy, let me learn you something. I spun around. Walking through those woods like that, I was getting to thinking about everyone who'd ever doubted me, all the lies I'd ever been told. The dark was becoming a featureless canvas on which memory could do its bidding. Right this way, I'm in my room. For instance, there was this guy I used to know, he was my grandfather, he always used to say my problem was I'd been sabotaged. Your problem, boy, is you've been sabotaged! No one raised you right! I mean, how is that a kind of thing to say? Especially when he was the one left doing the raising. Some things are true only because you've said them, but they were lies just before.

Eskor David Johnson, Pay as You Go (McSweeney's, 2023)

[whisperthatruns]

That's Polis for you---an island of life's hostages. Of too many arrivals with nowhere to depart. Of violence as a first resort and fire as a last, of billboards with better options. Tiny tragedies, mute joys, and lonely women seen on the other end of packed subway cars. Of wanting. Of babies born crying who never learn to stop, of cures sold to you first then the illnesses second. Of loose leopards in dark trees, suspicious giants, snipers on their last stand, truants in the back alleyways no map can find, ignoring the bell. Of it not being the one thing then it certainly being something else. It's no use trying to burn this place down, I was wrong about that. We would just build another. That kind of stuff will make you cry if you're not careful, this stubborn dream we keep agreeing to. Whose only promise has ever been some weary terrain where the city we are looking for may one day be found.

Eskor David Johnson, Pay as You Go (McSweeney’s, 2023)

[whisperthatruns]

I know, I know, it's a little crazy. It'll probably feel like one hell of a circle to him, going back there. But I think it will be good. It's no use, running from demons your whole life. They don't get tired is the thing, whereas you definitely will. Your best bet is to go find them where they live and fling open the windows so they fizzle away in the sun, like dew, or certain kinds of odors.

Eskor David Johnson, Pay as You Go (McSweeney’s, 2023)