A young bridge painter is awakened from the hum of daily routine by a face-to-face encounter with a woman in free fall. "The Bridge" is a story from Daniel Orozco's critically acclaimed collection Orientation, which leads the reader through the hidden lives and moral philosophies of bridge painters, men housebound by obesity, office temps, and warehouse workers. He reveals the secret pleasures of late-night supermarket trips for cookie binges, exceptional data entry, and an exiled dictator's occasional piss on the U.S. embassy. A love affair blooms between two officers in the impartially worded pages of a police blotter; a new employee's first-day office tour includes descriptions of other workers' most private thoughts and actions; during an earthquake, the consciousness of the entire state of California shakes free for examination. Orientation introduces a writer at the height of his powers, whose work surely invites us to reassess the landscape of American fiction.
"'Temporary Stories,' the eighth entry in Daniel Orozco's debut collection, Orientation (Faber and Faber), is a gem and a killer. Not since Henry James's 'In the Cage' has a writer so perfectly captured the anxieties of interacting with the public for pay. Somehow, Orozco manages to convey James's psychological acuity with one-tenth of his clauses, mingling it with Steven Millhauser's sense of lunatic joy."
Eugenia Williamson, The Boston Phoenix
"Orozco's long-anticipated collection, Orientation and Other Stories, holds a cracked Barthelme-meets-Kafka-esque mirror to this twenty-first-century American life."
