Daniel Orozco is the author of Orientation and Other Stories (FSG). His work has appeared in the Best American Essays, Best American Short Stories, Best American Mystery Stories and Pushcart Prize anthologies, and in Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope All-Story, and others. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship.
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OrientationAnd Other StoriesFrom"Orientation"
There are no personal phone calls allowed. We do, however, allow for emergencies. If you must make an emergency phone call, ask your supervisor first. If you can’t find your supervisor, ask Phillip Spiers, who sits over there. He’ll check with Clarissa Nicks, who sits over there. If you make an emergency phone call without asking, you may be let go.
Orientation:And Other Stories -
OrientationAnd Other StoriesFrom"The Bridge"
The witnesses said she dived off the bridge headfirst. They said she was walking along when she suddenly dropped her book bag and scrambled onto the guardrail, balancing on the top rail for a moment, arms over her head, then bouncing once from bended knees and disappearing over the side. It happened so fast, according to one witness. It was a perfect dive, according to another
Orientation:And Other Stories -
OrientationAnd Other StoriesFrom"Officers Weep"
300 Block, Galleon Court. Tall Ships Estates. Criminal trespass and public disturbance. One-armed magazine salesman kicking doors and threatening residents. Scuffle ensues. Officers sit on suspect, call for backup, ponder a cop koan: How do you cuff a one-armed man?
Orientation:And Other Stories
“Inspired . . . acidly comic . . . virtuosic.” —Ted Weesner, The Boston Globe [on Orientation and Other Stories]
“[Orozco’s] cracked characters grip like Krazy Glue.” —Lisa Shea, Elle [on Orientation and Other Stories]
“Orozco’s long-anticipated collection, Orientation and Other Stories, holds a cracked Barthelme-meets-Kafka-esque mirror to this twenty-first-century American life.” —Megan O’Grady, Vogue
“These nine darkly funny, profoundly compassionate stories take as their subject the loneliness particular to contemporary culture . . . ‘You can’t know anybody, not really, not in the brief overlaps of flimsy acquaintance, nor in the tenuous and fleeting opportunities for connection that we are afforded,’ thinks a man about to be shot for the $60 in his wallet. But the real genius here is the subtle accumulation of evidence to the contrary—the insistence that even in the office cubicle, or between the lines of the police blotter, human contact is sought after and made.” —More Magazine [on Orientation and Other Stories]
Our selectors appreciated Mr. Orozco’s “gift for formal innovation, how he works the whole keyboard, not just a few notes, and is often funny but never at the expense of feeling.”