What's the Word! Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball

A Reading List from Word, Greenpoint’s Independent Bookseller, 126 Franklin

Dear Everybody
Michael Kimball

Michael Kimball’s prose will get under your skin. His phrases have the exact length of deep breaths. Michel Kimball used to ride his bike for miles and miles and his writing has the same patient rhythm of his pant—he climbs up hills and and coasts down mountains, never losing control of his breath. His stories are about eliminating the ordinary and seeing what remains—then getting rid of something more.

The discovery, strangely, is that there is always something left. The language wraps characters and situations in a subtle irony, but never labels them. The words themselves become ironic. Michael Kimball’s last novel is called Dear everybody, and it is impossible to surrender until it’s finished. It’s also a book that doesn’t want to end. It’s forced to finish, like everything, because there is a hole in the pages, a death.

Dear Everybody is a novel made of letters, diary entries, encyclopedia entries, missing persons flyers, conversations, newspaper articles, psychological evaluations, and weather reports. It’s inventive and often extremely funny, but it will also break your heart. Michael Kimball is one of the most talented and original writers in America today. You should read his books.

Dear Everybody will come out in the fall.

Michael Kimball will read at WORD, October 22.