“Imagine life as a giant plate-glass window. Imagine that pane of glass dropped from a great height into a weedy, abandoned lot and shattering into thousands of pieces. In his astonishing zine, Stupor, Steve Hughes roams that empty lot, collecting life’s glass shards—glittering, lacerating, and full of sad, haunted beauty. Hughes is a masterful curator of human experience. Compassionate, darkly poetic, and bristling with punk-rock restlessness, the stories in this book illuminate our world in surprising and profound ways. I’m a huge fan.”
—Davy Rothbart, FOUND Magazine and This American Life
“Stupor is terrific.”
—Dennis Cooper, author of Frisk and Try.
“I like the way Steve Hughes writes, and the way he hears stories and writes them down. I like Stupor’s attitude toward being alive, which I’d call cool and compassionate. If I were making an ad for Stupor, it might have a slightly hallucinogenic, color photograph of a big old house with a wraparound porch. Underneath the picture: “Stupormakes me want to hang out, drink a cold beer and grab a few laughs.”
—Lynne Tillman, author of American Genius, A Comedy
“Hughes’ writing is extremely sympathetic to these characters, many of whom seem to lack self-awareness to a destructive degree. Whether they are blowing up their relationships, causing property damage, or puzzling over losing jobs, Stupor rarely captures humanity at its most triumphant. And yet, Hughes, who received his MFA in creative writing from University of New Orleans, achieves moments of transcendence and linguistic beauty, even in the mire of inebriation and failure.”
