Fiction, Essays, and Other Things

  New York City has only one official homicide recorded for September 11, 2001. This apparent logical puzzle actually makes sense on consideration. Authorities do not count the nearly 3,000 deaths resulting from the attacks on the World Trade Center as they argue (not unreasonably) that they misrepresent crime statistics. And yet it is because of the terrorist attacks that the murder of Henryk Siwiak has garnered so much attention. Had it occurred even a day after it would have been lost in the annals of New York City homicides. But as the only official murder victim of in the city of that fateful day, the tragic story of Henryk Siwiak endures and its coinciding with the terrorist attacks has fueled speculation. There is no doubt that on the night of September 11, 2001, Siwiak was at the wrong place at the wrong time but with robbery doubted as a motive and his lack of connections in Bedford–Stuyvesant reducing the probability of personal vendetta, the case has taken on a more ba...

    One of the key takeaways from a fiction writing course I took in college some twenty years ago was a lesson we either knew (given that most of us taking the course had already waded in the waters of creative writing) or learned soon into the semester; writing a short story was far more difficult than writing a novel. Both brought the same challenges, but the former offered much more limited space to develop them. Not surprisingly, great short stories are rarer than great novels as bearing genius for the latter does not necessarily mean talent for the former. And yet, short literary masterpieces abound and have made an invaluable contribution to the global literary canon. Here I salute the greatest works of short fiction I have come across over the years. Rather than going through the arduous and often foolish task of ranking them, I have listed them by author. My criteria included matters of craft and economy of words but the unifying requisite was impact. There are many...