Name: Crocodile Smiles: Short Shrift Fictions
Brand: martinafruit.com
SKU: 54191742484
Price: 16.94 USD
Availability: InStock
Rating: 4.5292 (6 reviews)

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Crocodile Smiles: Short Shrift FictionsCrocodile Smiles is Tarnawsky's collection of what he called short shrift fictions: compressed, absurdist, lit as if on a bright stage. The title asks whether a crocodile can smile if it cannot cry, and the stories proceed in that register. The cast runs to a barber attached to a pair of scissors that will not stop and an adulteress who bludgeons her husband to death, each figure shown in a hard flat light with the explanation withheld. The stories

It asks the reader to fill in missing pieces and complete strange "tests

JEF published it in September 2025

The novel is dedicated to bluesman Robert Johnson and runs on dialect

Aldous Huxley

so the issue count runs ahead of the physical book count)

where the same instinct works by ear

especially the fragile ones

Yet this work is inexhaustible

he invents a new one: the novel as culture romp

thirty variations framed front and back by a single aria

Outside the two JEF appearances

she hauls her diaries up a hill to set them all on fire