The Meaning of Lunch

...even read this book but if it's anything like Eat This, San Francisco or his usual contributions to the SFBG, it is wonderful. This guy gets it, as long as you have a sense of humor and no stick up your *ss.

If, like me, you have a problem stomaching most contemporary fiction because it's too sentimental, too generic, too workshopped, too pretentious, too serious, too commercial, too safe, too lacking in irony, too navel-gazingly autobiographical, and worst of all, just too darned wordy -- then you'll love "The Meaning of Lunch." It is a totally and refreshingly original collection of short stories, written by a modern master of the short short. Or are they stories? Maybe they're prose poems? Maybe they're fables? Maybe they're scripture excerpts from a post-modern-toasties McBible? Deadpan, walking a tightrope between the valleys of Comedy and Nightmare, Absurdity and Realism, this book is essentially a mystery, a collection of exquisite miniatures that leaves the mystery of the universe intact.

The Meaning Of Lunch is an imposing anthology of short stories by Dan Leone documenting his undeniable literary talents. The stories include No-Count Man; Chemicals; Swimmer; Team; You Have Chosen Cake; The Story of Breakfast; Life of the Party; Floyd was Something; Horsey's Story; The Moth; Waiting for the Landlord; Teacher; The Firemen; Soberman; Weatherman; Responsibleman; Communications, Wounds and Diseases; Job; Fish Stories; The Magic Bike; Wedding Night; Laundromatman; The Weather; Middleman; Clarence and Cindy; She Said, "What Thing?'; Do You Get Enough Meat?; The Bone; Tennis and Trains; Wife; Mother; Chicken; Outside; A Big Enough Breakfast; Drowner; and the title piece, The Meaning of Lunch.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys well-written, innovative fiction. If I had to chose one word to describe the stories in this collection, it would be 'quirky'. Leone's style is straightforward and engaging, and the stories are funny, yet profound. I believe that no fan of short fiction will be disappointed by this book. I cannot recommend it highly enough.PS The author also writes a restaurant review column called 'Cheap Eats' for the SF Bay Guardian.

Of course "The Meaning of Lunch" is funny, hilarious in fact. And while that in itself would make the book notable, Leone pushes humor into new regions, some of them unexpected. His work is entertaining, provocative, thoughtful, emotional--in a word, stunning. That is, the reader comes away from the stories in "The Meaning of Lunch" reeling and dazed, a bit giddy, and willing to see the world in slightly different ways than before. The stories themselves tend to be short, minimal at times, though not in the classic, well-mined vein of minimalism practiced by Raymond Carver, Bobbie Ann Mason, or Tobias Wolff. Rather, Leone's fiction seems more akin, though not really indebted to, the experimental work of Donald Barthelme and the surreal prose poems of Russell Edson. Always concerned with people and language, Leone's stories examine the cracks in the world, the abyss that fractures experience, the gaps we simply can't leap over (Leone's characters nevertheless feel compelled to leap-and this compulsion in turn drives the stories forward). If this all sounds a bit too sedate or technical, then read Leone's stories for a heads up, a slap in the face that'll make you say, "Thanks, I needed that." Listen, you can hear the jarheads shouting, "Ooh-rah for The Meaning of Lunch."