A collection of short fiction dealing with subjects from jobs (held and hated as well as sought and fantasized about) to the varieties of affection, figuring among them the complexities of the family and those of relationships with men. Rapaport writes about dwelling places-apartments, buildings, and landlords-and about cities and the artifacts of upbringing. The strangeness of living in a disappearing place and time is among Rapaport's preferred themes. Praise for Duchamp et Moi and Other Stories
"Jill Rapaport's Duchamp et Moi and Other Stories is simply the finest and most original collection I have read in years. Surreal, suave, and refined, they intersect the urbane calm of Barthelme with the frantic wit of Aimee Bender. So tightly coiled and insightful, these stories are like exotic little sea creatures that swallow their own tails. They seem to simply read themselves. You'll wish they were much, much longer." - Arthur Nersesian, author of The Fuck-Up (Akashic Books, 1997)
"Rapaport's stories purport to be coming from her 'pathologically disconnected interior self . . . the frenzied mess that characterizes her vision.' But for those of us who pay attention and identify with cultural orphans, she has the x-ray glare that transforms the alienated streets and strange artifacts of this dehumanized, uncivilized historical epoch into a brilliant and savory read. Her minute descriptions of New York exteriors and interiors are wonderful, as are her insights into her own and other people's characters. Her first book is a searingly honest navigation through the tainted nooks and characters of New York City, Capitalism, and other locales inhabited by our odd species. Read it." - Barbara Barg, poet; author of The Origin of the Species (Semiotext(e), 1994); faculty member, Chicago School of Poetics
"Like a roller coaster, these sentences careen, swerve, send you flying out of your seat, laughing and screaming, then plop you back down, stunned, feeling like you've been hit upside the head, but wanting to do it all again. 'Pouf Central' and 'Tacería' are two of my favorite stories, ever." - Katherine Arnoldi, author, The Amazing True Story of a Teenage Single Mom (Hyperion, 1998) and All Things Are Labor: Stories (University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).
"Funny, wonderfully imaginative, ... and so very New York, Jill Rapaport's Duchamp et Moi and Other Stories is a book for those who know that it's the nihilism that makes life worth living." - Paul Beatty, author of Slumberland (Bloomsbury USA, 2008)
"Individual sentences shimmering in their evocation of the black side of so-called life." - Kevin Rafferty, documentary filmmaker (The Atomic Café; Blood in the Face; and other films)
In a review for the literary magazine Sensitive Skin, Rob Hardin writes: "Her progression through arbitrary jobs and encounters (the most revealing of which are often with bureaucrats, not lovers) are fueled by the same skeptical intelligence that dismembers every near-transcendent moment in the book. Mercilessly observed, the fictive self is emotionally off-kilter without ever being oblivious to its subjectivity. Its progress is the wraith's, not the rake's. It [becomes] a spectral miniaturist in the rest of the collection, which is itself a retrospective of victories and gaffes. . . . Rapaport also manages to create bijoux out of temp work as she does out of everything else: Through intricacies of style and observation that are missing from too much contemporary fiction. Richly arch and patiently confected, these stories reveal fascinating complexities...." In the same magazine, Jim Feast writes: "[C]oruscating wit, ... gemlike introspection, and an unnerving tour of Manhattan's recent history, all of this rendered with a very trenchant fire."
