Matthew Klam is the author of the novel, Who Is Rich?, a New York Times and Washington Post Notable Book, nominated for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize, and Sam the Cat, winner of the PEN/Robert Bingham Prize for a Debut Short Story Collection, and a finalist for The Los Angeles Times Book of the Year, First Fiction. He's a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment of the Arts. His writing has been featured in such places as The New Yorker, Harper's, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, The O' Henry Prize Stories, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and The Ecco Anthology of Contemporary American Short Fiction.
-
Sam the CatAnd Other StoriesFrom"Sam the Cat"
I am a fantastic lover. I’ve got to give me that. There are only two things about me that females don’t like: the fact that I sing when I drive—admittedly, I’m not a musician—and my skiing. All the girls I know ski moguls well—really solid bump skiers—and I try to turn in the swells and lose my downhill line. I have thick hair. I’ve got a car that stinks from new leather. My skin, my body—that’s all decent. But I get ridiculed on bumps, and the way I sing gets mistaken for a joke or an imitation of someone dippy, when in fact your car is one of the few places besides the bathroom where you can sing the best songs the way they were meant to be sung. They all think my singing is terrible. Screw them. (I did.)
Sam the Cat:And Other Stories -
Sam the CatAnd Other StoriesFrom"There Should Be a Name for It"
They say a pregnant woman looks radiant. Lynn went around for two weeks, agitated and angry and with an upset stomach, but she really did look radiant—it was like a cosmetics expert had done something to her face. Her cheeks were flushed all day, and her eyes were as bright as green candy. I can’t explain the difference. I kept catching myself staring. For those two weeks she was nauseous and pissed off. Added to that, I was still in training for my job, we were not married or engaged or anything, and Lynn really didn’t know, ha-ha, was she ready to be a mother? Maybe she wasn’t and maybe she was. Is twenty-two too young? She toyed with the idea while lolling around in the bath, conditioning her hair. Well, I knew. I’m sure. Please ask me.
Sam the Cat:And Other Stories -
Sam the CatAnd Other StoriesFrom"Issues I Dealt With in Therapy"
I licked her ribs. She took her dress off. She had a face that held all the mysteries of Ireland. She had a single blond hair coming out of her chin I never saw before. She wore old blue cotton panties with just a slight fume of musk and salt. She let me pull them all the way down.
Sam the Cat:And Other Stories
“A riveting, honest and unvarnished voice that sounds like no one else’s.” —Los Angeles Times [on Sam the Cat]
“Repeatedly nails the fragile braggadocio of the modern American male . . . Each story takes on a memorable life of its own, thanks to Klam’s . . . ability to find the perfect word or phrase.” —The San Francisco Chronicle [on Sam the Cat]
“A knockout. [Klam] seems to have tapped right into the heads of certain men, none of whom you want courting your daughter.” —The Oregonian [on Sam the Cat]
“There are a lot of writers who think that to be honest about sex one has to be dark and brutal and mean. Klam proves that the truth, even if unvarnished, is more nuanced than four-letter words (or the seven letter gerundial derivatives thereof). His stories, about my friends (I am almost sure they are about my friends) pierce and leap—should I say roar? —and are always bitingly funny, and are so, so alive. Alive. Good lord. I hope everyone reads this goddamn book, because Klam is telling the truth while almost no one else is.” —Dave Eggers [on Sam the Cat]
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Powell's
- Barnes & Noble
- E-Books
- Kobo
- Google Books
- Barnes & Noble