Between Camelots

by David Harris Ebenbach

Overview

Winner of the 2005 Drue Heinz Literature Prize

Between Camelots is about the struggle to forge relationships and the spaces that are left when that effort falls short.  In the title story, a man at a backyard barbecue waits for a blind date who never shows up.  He meets a stranger who advises him to give up the fight; to walk away from intimacy altogether and stop getting hurt. The wisdom—or foolhardiness—of that approach is at the heart of each of these stories.  In “I’ll Be Home,” a young man who has converted to Judaism goes home for Christmas in Miami, and finds that his desire to connect to his parents conflicts with his need to move on. “The Movements of the Body” introduces us to a woman who believes that she can control the disintegration of her life through a carefully measured balance of whiskey and mouthwash. These are stories about loss and fear, but also about the courage that drives us all to continue to reach out to the people around us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822977605
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	10/30/2005
Series:	Drue Heinz Literature Prize Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	168
File size:	595 KB

About the Author

David Harris Ebenbach’s short fiction has been published in numerous literary magazines including Denver Quarterly, Beloit Fiction Journal, and Crazyhorse. His poetry has appeared in Phoebe, Stickman Review, and Arbutus, among other publications..

Table of Contents

<p. vii, no folio, p. viii, cont'd or blank> Contents Misdirections 000 Rue Rachel 000 Between Camelots 000 The Movements of the Body 000 Bridesmaid 000 Nothing Ever Happens in White America 000 Fighting 000 Social Games 000 Pointing Up 000 Getting Back onto Solid Foods 000 Rebbetzin 000 Searching the Reef in the Off-Season 000 Orange 000 Out in the Open 000 I'll Be Home 000 Acknowledgments 000

What People are Saying About This

Suzanne Greenberg

In these stories, David Harris Ebenbach creates a world so carefully observed and nuanced that each moment seems capable of changing everything.

Stewart O'Nan

These stories of searching young Americans are intimate and sharply detailed, sometimes hopeful, often sad, with just a taste of the strange. Between Camelots is about the scars of first losses, and the need to carry on. David Harris Ebenbach is always in full command, leading the reader moment by moment through his/her people's dis- and missed connections, ultimately leaving us alone with them at the quiet end of the night.

Frederick Barthelme

David Ebenbach writes with the easy grace of a longtime practitioner. His prose is delicately balanced, neither too full and labored, nor too thin and unsatisfying. The stories, right from the lovely short gem 'Misdirections' that opens the collection, are immensely skillful, touching, stocked with curious and engaging characters who go about their lives as if we were not watching. This is a great achievement and only one of the remarkable pleasures of Between Camelots, a stunning first collection.

Joan Leegant

In Between Camelots, David Ebenbach fearlessly treads onto the terrain of American loneliness with clear-eyed precision and perfect pitch. Whether they're about one-night stands or newly shattered hearts, struggling young marriages or two gay men simply trying to connect, these are stories that, above all, tell the truth. They are rendered with an honesty and a compassion that can make you sit up and gasp.

Editorial Reviews

Ebenbach captures the anxious musings of characters in transition in this debut collection of 15 stories, many focusing on younger male protagonists who find themselves adrift in the wake of romantic failures. In the title story, a lonely young man whose nights are marked by "masturbation, sighing journal entries, and then... bed" goes to a party hoping to meet a particular girl, but instead encounters a pretzel-noshing pseudo-philosopher who posits that in life, one is always moving from one false Camelot to the next, and that only fools keep seeking interpersonal bonds. The recently dumped, morose Oberlin grad of "Getting Back onto Solid Foods" returns to his college town for a vegetarian Thanksgiving with old friends, while the confused narrator of "Rebbetzin" feels awkward at a memorial service for his wife's former art professor. Ebenbach does a fine job of exploring his characters' longing for connection-between brother and troubled sister in "Pointing Up"; between a young teacher and his students (and his brand-new girlfriend) in "Social Games"-but his emphasis on interior monologue dampens the stories' power. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A story collection infused with loss and isolation. Whether writing from the perspective of male, female, black, white, gay, straight, Jew or Gentile, Ebenbach, recipient of the 2005 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, focuses on the lonely soul. His landscape is dominated by individuals struggling to continue in the face of relationships failed, failing or stillborn. The title story presents the notion of Camelots as major circles of friends, something its central character, Paul, who has been stood up by a blind date, is yearning for. In "Fighting," the protagonist has been cursed by the words "I don't love you any more" and is desperate to offload them, making him not so different from the narrator in "Getting Back Onto Solid Foods," whose Thanksgiving, the first since being dumped, is hard to stomach. Those hearts that are not aching from breakups or deaths (like the character in "Bridesmaid," who has sought out frantic sexual reassurance 36 after his wife's funeral) are alienated in other ways. The daughter in "Searching the Reef in the Off-Season" is on holiday with her mother during her parents' divorce, and cut off as if behind glass or water. Cathy, in "The Movements of the Body," finds her solace in alcohol, as she bears her unspoken burden of grief over her slutty daughter, impossible mother and increasingly imperiled grandson. Unsurprisingly, the weather in Ebenbach's world is often extremely cold. Even when his characters have successfully forged links with others, like Marcus, the black, gay protagonist in "Nothing Ever Happens in White America," there's a sense of chilly fragility. Uniquely, in "Social Games," a relationship might just be starting, not falling apart. In this book,it is the exception that proves the rule. Ebenbach is a smoothly effective writer, his style low-key, realistic, unexperimental. But the emphasis on absence, depression and failure imbues his tales with dejection.

Kirkus Reviews

These stories of searching young Americans are intimate and sharply detailed, sometimes hopeful, often sad, with just a taste of the strange. Between Camelots is about the scars of first losses, and the need to carry on. David Harris Ebenbach is always in full command, leading the reader moment-by-moment through his people's dis- and missed connections, ultimately leaving us alone with them at the quiet end of the night.”
—Stewart O'Nan


“In Between Camelots, David Ebenbach fearlessly treads onto the terrain of American loneliness with clear-eyed precision and perfect pitch. Whether they're about one-night stands or newly shattered hearts, struggling young marriages or two gay men simply trying to connect, these are stories that, above all, tell the truth. They are rendered with an honesty and compassion that can make you sit up and gasp.”
—Joan Leegant, author of An Hour in Paradise


“In these stories, David Harris Ebenbach creates a world so carefully observed and nuanced that each moment seems capable of changing everything.”
—Suzanne Greenberg, author of Speed-Walk and Other Stories

From the Publisher