Officers Weep: A Short Story
Sep 2011 · Farrar, Straus and Giroux
3.5star
32 reviewsreport
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32
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About this ebook
A love affair blooms between two officers in the impartially worded pages of a police blotter.
"Officers Weep" is a story from Daniel Orozco's critically acclaimed collection Orientation, which leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers. He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an exiled dictator's occasional piss on the U.S. embassy. A new employee's first-day office tour includes descriptions of other workers' most private thoughts and actions; during an earthquake, the consciousness of the entire state of California shakes free for examination.
Orientation introduces a writer at the height of his powers, whose work surely invites us to reassess the landscape of American fiction.
"Officers Weep" is a story from Daniel Orozco's critically acclaimed collection Orientation, which leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers. He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an exiled dictator's occasional piss on the U.S. embassy. A new employee's first-day office tour includes descriptions of other workers' most private thoughts and actions; during an earthquake, the consciousness of the entire state of California shakes free for examination.
Orientation introduces a writer at the height of his powers, whose work surely invites us to reassess the landscape of American fiction.
Ratings and reviews
3.5
32 reviews
A Google user
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August 28, 2012
This story is to in the form of a series of official like police reports. It puts me in the mind of the 2008 novel Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow--a werewolf story told in verse form, "Black Box" by Jennifer Egan--a futuristic spy story told in 140 character or less lines of verse, and the slide show portion of the sames novel A Visit From The Goon Squad. What all these have in common is the juxtaposition of a form that strips the story of some of the elements/tricks that regular prose form lends to storytelling. contrarily, this adds something too the story, at least to me... Maybe it's reader participation that's added? I like stories like these. Daniel Orozco is funny and writes really well. And "Officers Weep" is interesting.
Karen O'Donoghue
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December 13, 2013
Takes the tired old advice "don't tell: show" and drops it on its head - successfully. I haven't read the others yet, but if they significantly outpace or fail tis title story, I'll try to make it back here with comments in a week or so. - 13, Fri, Dec, '13 -
A Google user
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September 22, 2012
Very interesting, different kind of writing
About the author
Daniel Orozco's stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The Best American Mystery Stories, The Best American Essays, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, as well as in publications such as Harper's Magazine, Zoetrope: All-Story, McSweeney's, Ecotone, and StoryQuarterly. He was awarded a 2006 NEA Fellowship in fiction, and was a finalist for a 2006 National Magazine Award in fiction. A former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford, he teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho.
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