Edinburgh International Book Festival: Adam Marek & Rodge Glass

Adam Marek's second volume of short stories, Stone Thrower, has recently been published by Comma Press. Rodge Glass has recently written LoveSexTravelMusik, also a short story collection, published by Freight. Today, both writers come to show their mastery of the short form, and discuss its wider relevance in the modern publishing industry, alongside children's author and short story writer Adam Durant.

Marek's first collection, Instruction Manual for Swallowing, was longlisted for the coveted Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Durant describes his writing as “a strange mix of the real and surreal.” Floppy-fringed, in a check shirt (with leather elbow patches, no less), Marek is every inch the self-deprecating, intellectual author, and says the short stories in his latest collection “grew out of my experiences of being a parent,” which he describes frankly as “terrifying”. He reads Tamagotchi, a story in Stone Thrower, which begins with the killer first line: “My son's Tamagotchi had AIDS.” A darkly humorous tale with real bite, which uses the plight of the hapless digital pet to examine anxieties about the narrator's son, who it is suggested might be autistic, it's a masterclass in minimalism, satire and economy.

Marek says “terror, anxiety and paranoia are rich sources,” and using his own experiences of parenthood as inspiration seems to be a continuing theme. The punch of a line where the narrator watches his son after a mild fit, “wishing we lived in a world where kisses fixed brains”, is undeniable, and a stark, pathos-filled contrast to the dark humour of the tale of the unfortunate Tamagotchi. When the son's condition is described as a “design fault” the message really hits home – human beings are as frail, if not more frail, than simulated beings.

Rodge Glass takes the stage to read a story from his latest collection. A seasoned novelist and associate editor at Cargo, Glass was longlisted for the Frank O'Connor prize too, for LoveSexTravelMusik. His story, We're All Gonna Have The Blues, is a dark and prophetic tale of a minor bureaucrat waiting to meet the pessimistic eco-theorist he is assigned to babysit in a Krakow jazz bar. It is richly comic and haunted by the spectre of a water-based apocalypse; supremely evocative of the inertia and dissociation felt by seasoned travellers and ex-pat Brits abroad. The eco-theorist is a Sybil of sorts – destined to be proved right, but taken seriously by no-one. The ennui is palpable, as visions of flooded rooms and cities are described.

In conversation afterwards, Glass reveals that after he published his first novel, “the phone didn't ring for the first five years”, but in recent times, he has been asked for short pieces by various publications and publishers, and so began writing LoveSexTravelMusik in order to develop techniques and themes for his next novel. Marek meanwhile is most at home in the short story form, although neither have attempted the 5-10,000 word 'Monroe.'

Asked for his favourite short story, Marek mentions David Foster Wallace's The Depressed Person, because, he says, “I am interested in doubt.” Both Marek's subtle near-future tales and Glass's disaffected, fictionalised travelogues are utterly compelling. Proof, if needed, that the short story is at least as powerful, if not more, than its longer cousin the novel – at least when showcased by writers of their quality.