Hey wow, My Father's House is on sale for eight dollars, what, yes, a quite low, and dare we say quite reasonable, eight dollars, at Main Street Rag, so please do hit it now, thank you, much.

No really, seriously, we welcome it. Totally.

"It's like sitting calmly on a high voltage power line." My Father's House. The Goodreads. Word.

Most kind this is. And big thanks to the David S. Atkinson for that. Excerpt? Word. 

"Tanzer knocked the wind out of me on this one. He just quietly puts it out there, but the impact still left me breathless. Intimate, insightful, and honest."

Shameless, albeit much appreciated Ethel Rohan, yes, that Ethel Rohan, My Father's House Tweet hype. And big thanks to the Ethel Rohan for that.

@BenTanzer Loved MY FATHER'S HOUSE, thank you. Rich with nuance, pain, tenderness, grit, and plain and wonderful prose.
— ethelrohan (@ethelrohan) August 18, 2013

"One knock-out punch of a line after another." My Father's House gets NAILED. And likes it. A lot.

Big thanks to the John Barrios and the whole NAILED crew. And drinks on us, many, soon, somewhere, some how. Excerpt? Cool.

"To this reader, it feels as though a lesson is learned in every chapter. The narrator may not always understand what he is processing, but the reader has a deep sense of the working of the narrator’s mind. It is a good place to spend an afternoon. Ben Tanzer displays his ability to balance the darker moments of grief with a humble sense of humor. It is not only Tanzer’s sensitive wit, but the timing and delivery of his humor within the structure of the narrative, which helps ensure the impact of the more dramatic moments."

"It felt like a cleaning of the slate and of properly saying goodbye." My Father's House gets a much appreciated Father's Day Fiction shout-out from TNBBC's The Next Best Book Blog.

Digging it we are and quite thrilled to be included with such fine company as well. So please do take a look and drinks on us Hettler whenever, and wherever, we next meet. Excerpt? Cool.

"And I felt it was a true reflection of the chaotic feelings that rush through you from moment to moment, day to day, when preparing yourself for the ultimate and unavoidable loss of someone you can't imagine living without."

We are Mellow Pages Library. More. And we feel fine.

Endlessly fine. More here. Much more.

"Fresh, unexpected, and intentionally unsentimental." My Father's House gets Chicago Ex-Patriated. And likes it. A lot.

Quite a lot. Big thanks to Jamie Yates for the kind and insightful words and drinks on us for sure when next we meet. Cool? Good. Excerpt? Word.

"As I mentioned before, the narrator is emotional without veering into needlessly sentimental ruminations. As the novella unfolds, the actions and happenings themselves are strong enough to stand on their own without any added emotions. This is evident from the very beginning. The work is established with clinical details, and Tanzer is smart enough to let the reader determine his or her own emotional involvement in the proceedings."

New joint. Something Special. Excerpt. My Father's House. And big love for the Solarcide.

There is new joint. There is My Father's House excerpt. And there is quite cool Solarcide Double Feature. Truthfully.  

"Tanzer’s prose is clean and clear. He gets to the heart of each scene, each conflict, without wasting a moment." My Father's House gets Murder Your Darlings'd. And likes it. A lot.

It really does. Big thanks to the Cort Bledsoe and Murder Your Darlings for these quite kind, and ultimately, most humbling words. Drinks sir on us for sure when next we meet. Now, how about some excerpt? Excellent.

"Tanzer’s prose is clean and clear. He gets to the heart of each scene, each conflict, without wasting a moment. He also avoids melodrama in what could easily be an over-the-top book in less capable hands. Tanzer also places the novella in time with cultural references to movies, especially. It’s as though he’s saying that in the looming absence of a father, this narrator looks to the culture at large. Similarly, he doesn’t look to religion or some ethnic denotation for solace; he looks to film, which is an interesting insight into the mores of this generation." 

"Tanzer’s aim is to strip down grief to its essentials." My Father's House gets some Tom Williams Novella Month love. And likes it. A lot.

Big thanks to good friend and most craftsman-like writer rock star dude Tom Williams for his most kind words about My Father's House. Happy to be coupled as well with the Barry Graham and his painfully splendid Nothing or Next to Nothing. And  despite your inability to fully grasp Patrick Ewing's astounding levels of awesomeness, drinks on us for sure when next we meet. Now how about some excerpt? Word. 

"For it seems as though that what the book chronicles is all the mess that occurs and accumulates and one tries to run from but that in the end must be dealt with in order to move on. And of course, it’s Ben Tanzer: so it’s funny in all the right places, kinda sexy in a wrong, wrong, wrong kind of way, and replete with references to the Knicks of Pat Ewing."

"My Father's House is an affecting meditation on how we can—and sometimes do—become better versions of ourselves." My Father's House gets The Collagist'd. And likes it. A lot.

Quite true this. Quite appreciated. And big thanks to always kick-ass Anna March and the whole Collagist crew for this terribly wonderful review. Drinks on us for sure when next we meet. Now, excerpt, cool? Thanks.

"It offers an important reminder that we are all artists in our own way, if only on the canvas that is our life, and that we create the finest art the more connected to the world and ourselves we are. It is a brave look at how fear binds us, and all that is to be gained when we let ourselves feel even the most painful truths. It is an ambitious work and it succeeds. In My Father's House are many mansions; every one of them is worth exploring."

This Book Will Change Your Life - Half A Life by Darin Strauss.

Read. Travel. Rinse. Repeat. You know the drill. Our drill anyway. And so it is that we have read Half A Life by Darin Strauss, not so much a rumination on death, as much a rumination on living with death, a death you directly played a role in, if not outright caused. Which is different, much different than musing about the death of someone that you had nothing to do with, the death, not the person, and can't escape. And yes, we are projecting here, thinking about My Father's House and the recent interview we did in Rain Taxi. In that interview we talked about listening to Strauss talk about Half A Life. Strauss commented on how it had to be a memoir, and listening to him made us think about how the foundational material in My Father's House had ultimately felt like it had to be fiction, that we needed more latitude than real life seemed to allow us. Mind you that was before we read the book, and mind you, it's not that we're sure we feel any different now, but we are struck that as intimate and and tortured as one might be regarding the experience of losing someone you love, it seems impossible that it can ever be as intimate or tortured as a death you play a role in. We're also struck that we have absolutely no sense how torturous this must be, and even a book as well-crafted, and moving, as this one feels like it must barely capture what the second half of Strauss' life must have truly been like. Finally, any number of people have commented on how brave Strauss was to write all of this down, and it is brave of course, but it is also what writer's do, especially great writers like Strauss. They write, everything they know, everything they experience, they have to, they have no choice. Given this, we would like to offer a different take on the narrative surrounding Half A Life. And that take is this, what makes Strauss brave, is that even as he has struggled with and against this tragedy, he has somehow been able to live not just a writing life, but any life at all.

Wherein we talk My Father's House with the terrific Paula Bomer at Rain Taxi.

For real. All of it. We are My Father's House interview and we are so very appreciative that Paula, who is indeed most terrific, suggested we talk, and that Rain Taxi saw said discussion as fit to print. Now for some excerpt.

PB: Both the narrator and his father have tough guy personas and yet both are artists, and in the case of the narrator, a caregiver. There’s a lot of ambivalence about masculinity and what it means, how confining it can be but also how necessary. Eventually, your narrator is allowed all sorts of release—crying, really letting go of his father, and figuring out what he needs to do next. Perhaps it was the slow painful aspect of a death by cancer; not to diminish the loss, but I’ve heard people say about certain deaths, “it was his time.”

BT: It’s funny because one reviewer wrote how there were certain ways the character managed his emotions in the book that bothered him as an editor, but then he realized that maybe his own need to be tough was affecting his ability to embrace the emotions being expressed, and that made me smile. He was the first person to touch on this thread, and now you are the second. It was a conscious thing I wanted to play with, but if I’m the only one who sees it in the text, I’m not sure it qualifies as being part of the book at all. The character does need to find a way to be sad though, and experience grief, and to embrace that tough guy persona—or not—regardless of confusing signals about masculinity and what it means to be a father or son. I don’t know that the character gets there in a healthy way, but he does get there because he’s ultimately so overwhelmed by all of it he has no choice. It’s an implosion of grief, though in this character’s case it is also the start of something, because I wanted to connect all of this to being an artist as well. When my father died, my mom and I talked about whether he might have been more successful and better able to bring more layers to his work if he could have better embraced his feelings and been less caught up in being tough and not exploring things. I wanted the character to come to understand this in the latter stages of the book as he realized that he wants to create art as well. In terms of the idea that “it was his time,” we always have to separate out people’s suffering from their actual lives. If someone is suffering, then yes, it can feel like someone’s time because you can’t bear to watch them suffer, but that has nothing to do with what they may have still done with their lives if they were healthy and how you may have yet interacted with them. From that perspective, it’s never anyone’s time.

"The comparison might appear easy, borderline obvious to you, but I could definitively feel an influence of John Irving in Tanzer's prose." My Father's House gets Dead End Follies'd. And likes it. A lot.

Big thanks to the Dead End Follies and the Benoit Lelievre for some most kind, and moving, words about My Father's House. Drinks on us sir for sure wherever, and whenever, we next meet. And now for some excerpt. 

"It's deliberately structured to reward patience and I thought it was pretty clever. The evolution of the narrator's trail of thoughts doesn't appear evident if you read ten pages, but if you read forty or fifty, the transformation becomes noticeable. I appreciated this particularly because it's hard to render the concept of time passing in a book, while being fair to the reader. I thought Tanzer found a very creative way to do so. His chapters are short, but resonate with each other. It's textbook dialogism, I suppose but it's applied to such a minimalistic execution, it makes it beautiful and rewarding to read."

"If his other books have half the power of this book, he has a new fan for life. Thank you, Ben." My Father's House gets Mourning Goats'd. And likes it. A lot.

It is quite cool to be thanked, that said, we need to be thanking the Mourning Goats for their most kind words about My Father's House. We also need to be buying drinks, somewhere, some how, soon. And will. Now, some excerpt.

"If I can offer any recommendation, it's read this book while you're on the treadmill at the gym. Not only will it keep your mind off the burn, but it'll inspire you to go further, the only thing I can apologize for is the looks you'll get when it's not sweat falling down your cheeks, it's tears."

We are Powell's Books on Hawthorne. The shelf edition.

We were page, we are now shelf, and we are quite appreciative of the John Longstocking for that.

"Tanzer movingly explores the bewildered, anxious and impulsive thoughts and actions of a young man still trying to figure out his place in the world." My Father's House gets Pete Lit'd. And likes it. A lot.

So totally likes it. And so very much appreciates it as well. Big thanks Pete Lit and drinks on us for sure when next we meet. Now, how about some excerpt? Cool.

"The father's fate is a foregone conclusion, but even amidst that great loss the narrator finally begins to make sense of it all, and finds a way to move forward. Which is something that any of us in that situation would wish for ourselves."

We are Davis Schneiderman Big Other interview. We are not Ryan Gosling.

Here. Not here. And excerpt.

Davis: Discourse the third, please…

Ben: And then most recently, my latest short story collection So Different Now was released by CCLaP who is based here in Chicago, both as a stand-alone e-collection, but also combined with an earlier collection I did with CCLaP called Repetition Patterns, a limited edition, hand bound, “hyper-fiction” collection titled The New York Stories. Repetition Patterns was a series of loosely related small town stories based on growing-up in upstate New York in a town named Binghamton, a place I know you know as well (Note: Davis went to grad school there).

Repetition Patterns was very much about teenagers and their interactions with the town, their parents, and becoming parents themselves. I did a blog tour for Repetition Patterns and, in answering questions about those stories, I started getting ideas for new stories, complimentary stories, and responses to the earlier ones. These stories became So Different Now and are more focused on those “teenagers” as adults and how the sins of the father impact them, us, in our adult lives.

Recently I was talking about this collection and started seeing how there might be a third set of stories in the offing, the death, or maybe re-birth of a dying town, and how people might be intertwined in that process. This was partially influenced by reading about Ethan Hawke and how there is talk of doing a third movie in the Before Sunrise, Before Sunset series. And no, I am not comparing myself to Ethan Hawke, though, for the record, unlike Ryan Gosling, he is not Canadian, and so the differences between us are just a little harder to discern.

My Father's House. Lit Reactor. March Book Club Selection. It's so on.

And we are so geeked. So please do hit that. Like now. Thanks.

My Father's House is Lit Reactor's March Book Club Selection. We are way excited. And most appreciative. Join us, yes?

Word. Big word.