{"id":11943,"date":"2010-04-05T10:08:50","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T14:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=11943"},"modified":"2016-06-09T14:49:19","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T18:49:19","slug":"ben-loory-the-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2010\/04\/05\/ben-loory-the-tv\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Loory: “The TV”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The TV\"<\/strong><\/span>\r\nby Ben Loory<\/span>\r\noriginally published in the April 12, 2010 issue of The New Yorker<\/em>.<\/span>\r\nClick <\/span>here <\/a>to read the story in its entirety on The New Yorker <\/em>webpage.<\/span><\/pre>\n
\"Click<\/a><\/p>\n
When I went to see which story was up for the week, I glanced at the first paragraph, then I read it, then I read the next.\u00a0I had to stop because I needed to get ready for work, but otherwise I would have read the whole thing right there.\u00a0I have now had time to go back and finish the online version (sorry print, I’ll save the articles for you).<\/p>\n
What a strange story, which follows last week’s strange story.\u00a0Often I find that I get more excited to read these strange stories than the more conventional stories in The New Yorker<\/em>.\u00a0Last year, my favorites included many of the year’s most bizarre stories.\u00a0I think it’s because I can often find something intriguing in the unique story, though this is not the type of fiction I like to read when I pick up a novel.<\/p>\n
Anyway, “The TV” begins when a man doesn’t feel like going to work.\u00a0He calls in with an excuse and then flips on the television. Amazingly, he finds that what he is watching is himself, at work, going through the day. The man decides to stay home the next day, too, just to see what happens.\u00a0Again, there he is, working away.<\/p>\n
The man does the same thing at work everyday; it is not very exciting. But somehow watching himself do it from inside his apartment, through the TV, is absolutely fascinating.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The man does go to work the next day, but he is again surprised: he finishes his work early, for the first time ever.\u00a0With gratitude to the man on TV for doing so much work, he goes home early.<\/p>\n
I was completely engaged at this point.\u00a0Unfortunately, the story also begins to spin out of control here.\u00a0Not that that’s a bad thing, but it began to become more bizarre and less interesting to me — until the end, that is.\u00a0In the end, I was again very interested in how the author kept things going, particularly in his verb tenses.<\/p>\n
So I thought this was a worthwhile read.\u00a0I’m not sure there is much more to it than what it says, though that’s what I was hoping for when the story began.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This week’s New Yorker fiction is Ben Loory’s “The TV.” Read the full post<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":18548,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Ben Loory: \"The TV\"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[513,94],"tags":[998],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-11943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ben-loory","category-new-yorker-fiction","tag-2010-new-yorker-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/The-TV.jpg?fit=804%2C1200&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-36D","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11943"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18550,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11943\/revisions\/18550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11943"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=11943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}