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Creative Types

and Other Stories

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From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist and “one of America's best and most interesting writers" (Stephen King), a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark—unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life

A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making.
 
In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises—writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

CREATIVE TYPES

The night before their appointment, they sent Haley one final email in which they reaffirmed the when and where and tastefully restated their excitement. But Reuben managed to smuggle in a request: Would Haley mind wearing “normal clothes”? He was about to hit Send when Brenna, proofreading over his shoulder, announced that his use of normal was, in this context, “problematic.”
 
“Problematic,” he said. Their son had been asleep for an hour.
 
Bren, looking at the laptop’s screen, only nodded.
 
Reuben poised his email-sending finger above the Enter key like a scientist about to launch something toward Pluto. “Bren, come on. I’m sending it.”
 
Bren paid this no attention at all, probably because she knew he wouldn’t send it, not without her go-ahead. Normal. It just seems like a very classist thing to write. Normal to whom?”
 
For as long as he’d known her, Bren had worried about classism. These days, of course, he and Bren were doing well, perhaps even embarrassingly well. However, their many years of doing less well had made Bren afraid of succumbing to the thoughtless consumption patterns of their friends, such as Annabelle and Isaac, who recently built a thirteen-thousand- dollar outdoor pizza oven with imported Umbrian stone. To Bren’s way of thinking, success, particularly Hollywood success, was mostly an accident; she never wanted to condescend to those who hadn’t been as lucky as she. But this meant that virtually everything Reuben said to servers and valets was later subjected to Bren’s undergrad-Marxism rhetorical analysis. He didn’t mind. If anything, he admired her for it. When Annabelle and Isaac whipped up their first batch of pizzas, everyone politely chewed and smiled on their sunlit patio. Bren was the first person to actually say, “Is it me or is this not very good?”
 
Reuben kicked back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “you know what you’re assuming, right?”
 
Bren looked at him. “What am I assuming?”
 
“You’re assuming a woman in her line of work is automatically of a lower class.”
 
“I am not.” But as Bren thought about it, as he knew she would, her face fell. “Oh God. I am.”
 
“And given her rates, I’d say that’s a pretty dubious assumption, frankly.”
 
Bren nevertheless convinced Reuben to put normal clothes in scare quotes, so “We’d appreciate it if you wore normal clothes (neighbors!)” became “We’d appreciate it if you wore ‘normal clothes’ (neighbors!)” Minutes after his no longer—or at least somewhat less—problematic email finally went out, Bren was rereading it on her phone. (She’d been cc’d.) “A lot going on in that sentence,” she said unhappily. Haley’s response came ten minutes later: emoji thumbs-up, emoji rose, emoji kiss.
 
Haley arrived the next night in a plain black circle skirt and kimonoish green blouse. She looked like the hostess of the type of sushi bar that had Mexican sushi chefs, so the outfit was normal enough, and already Reuben had a good feeling about how the night was going to go. This good feeling grew apace when Haley wrapped him up in a big tight hug. “It’s so nice to see you again!” Haley said, her neck warm with spice and citrus, her hair a cascade of coconut, her clothes all powdered lavender. Reuben’s hands were on Haley’s back. They felt good there. They fit. Her blouse was satin, gem green, smooth and slick and glossy. Hugging Haley was like lying in a strange bed you didn’t want to get out of. Then, beneath his hands, Haley’s shoulder blades flexed; their hug was ending. Reuben stepped away, closed the door, and turned to see Bren standing in the long entryway hall, clasping her enormous wineglass by its stem. Haley moved toward her.
 
“Oh!” Bren said, as though Haley were a dirty-pawed puppy about to jump into her lap. “Okay! Hello!” While they embraced, Bren held her wineglass—a festive red orb of Malbec—up above her and Haley’s heads, which somehow made Reuben think of mistletoe. His hands had been respectfully stationary on Haley’s body, but Bren’s free hand moved familiarly up and down Haley’s back. That was one great sociocultural advantage of women’s hands, wasn’t it? They could go where they wanted to go. They had free rein.
 
Haley released Bren, after which she took up a position in the front hall that allowed her to look at both Bren and him simultaneously. She obviously wasn’t in the habit of putting her back to people she didn’t know well, and for that he blamed her not a bit. No one said anything for a moment. They were all smiling like naughty children.
 
“It’s nice to see you again,” Reuben said finally.
 
Haley laughed. “Ah. That. So when I arrive, I always say, ‘Nice to see you again,’ even if it’s my first time somewhere.”
 
At this point Reuben realized that Haley was subtly chewing gum. She had nice lips, and nice everything else, at least as far as he could tell. He wondered if he’d get to kiss her tonight. He and Bren had worked out some ground rules for what he could and couldn’t do to Haley, but when it came to kissing, Bren was conflicted. It depended, she said, on how everything felt in the moment. What doesn’t?
 
#
A New York Times December Book to Read • A Los Angeles Times December Book to Read • An Inside Hook Best Book of December

“On every page of this book Bissell sees life with mordant clarity and finds words not only to describe it but to reanimate it...To tell you the 'subjects' of these stories is to tell you almost nothing about the experience of reading them, their stylistic flair, the unpredictability of their movement. They reminded me of how fiction can be not just a form of escape but a way to get lost in the actual strangeness of this world, those crooked roads that lead us through flashes of horror, delight and sudden recognition.”
—Zachary Lazar, New York Times

"Seven delightfully observed stories about artistic people in the midst of personal crisis... These stories would make an ideal gift for the beloved creative type in your life — maybe with no note."
—Sloane Crosley, Departures

“Tom Bissell is one of America's best and most interesting writers."
—Stephen King, from the introduction to
Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales

"Bissell’s skill as a journalist and memoirist transfers to complex situational fiction."
Los Angeles Times

"All of the stories in Creative Types are engaging and thought-provoking, delivered with deft prose and wicked humor... Slyly subversive... Beautifully crafted and narratively compelling... Creative Types is precisely what you hope to get when you dive into a collection of short fiction – a vast and varied spectrum of stories, all connected by intelligence, wit and a distinctive voice. Tom Bissell is one of the best in the business; this book is a reflection of that excellence."
The Maine Edge

"A compelling, tightly written anthology to showcase the contemporary tormented artistic soul... Bissell is a marvelous storyteller with a command of language and a mastery of dialogue... These beautifully written, painful stories remind us of the creative and practical challenges of pouring artistic passion into a durable vessel."
—Leonora Cravotta, The American Spectator

"Award-winning stories that are clear-eyed, unrelenting, slightly acidulous, and sometimes bleakly funny in their exploration of contemporary life... Well-crafted and expansive stories."
Library Journal

"This buzzing collection brings together seven stories that showcase [Bissell's] gift for energetic storytelling, each tale imbued with humor and relevant cultural references... Bissell's affinity for fast pacing and quick wit will reward readers looking for an antidote to the doldrums of life under quarantine."
Booklist

“The seven stories in Bissell’s droll, thoughtful collection… portray artistic people in the midst of unfortunate circumstances, often due to their own actions… Each story demonstrates Bissell’s talent for smooth, sparkling prose, arresting descriptions… and vivid characterization. Desperate, downtrodden, and self-absorbed, the protagonists are thoroughly human, and Bissell consistently transforms the reader’s voyeuristic pleasure into unexpected sympathy.”
Publishers Weekly

"Bissell is a deeply precise writer, and his sense of the emotional disorientation his characters face is literally gut-level... A witty, wide-ranging exploration of complex emotions."
Kirkus

"It’s like Deborah Eisenberg and Bruce Chatwin had a secret love child and instead of raising him, they gave him away to Ubisoft in an experiment to see if gamers can be turned back into readers. Bissell pulls off the what should be impossible — illuminating all the modern silences and somehow rendering them laugh-out-loud funny. You won’t find more memorable 'lovers' or better dialogue anywhere. Buy this book and learn how to write."
—Stephen Gaghan, writer and director of Syriana

“The creative types in Tom Bissell’s brilliant stories travel, try not to be tourists, take cocaine, have threesomes, have babies, find themselves doing hack work for SNL, interview super heroes—all trapped inside acute, bone-cutting sentences. The stories in Creative Types are witty, sharp, and fun as hell to read but also highly serious, fearlessly exposing the foibles of creative people as they try to build lives that feed the muse—or sell themselves out. Bissell is one of our best writers and this is one of his best books.
—David Means, author of Instructions for a Funeral

“Tom Bissell writes like some kind of wicked angel. Here are transgressively funny stories about writers and actors, cocaine and art, escorts and threesomes, religion and apostasy, all rendered in sentences so exquisite they make me blush with holy envy. I’ve read and admired Bissell's work for years, but Creative Types might be his best book yet.”
— Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon
© Eugene Byrd
TOM BISSELL was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. His short fiction has won two Pushcart Prizes and has been published in multiple editions of The Best American Series. He has also written eight works of nonfiction, including Apostle and (with Greg Sestero) The Disaster Artist, as well as many screenplays for video games and television. Bissell lives in Los Angeles with his family. View titles by Tom Bissell
A BRIDGE UNDER WATER
1

MY INTERVIEW WITH THE AVENGER
33

PUNISHMENT
51

LOVE STORY, WITH COCAINE
87

THE FIFTH CATEGORY
119

CREATIVE TYPES
153

THE HACK
179

Acknowledgments
207

About

From the best-selling coauthor of The Disaster Artist and “one of America's best and most interesting writers" (Stephen King), a new collection of stories that range from laugh-out-loud funny to disturbingly dark—unflinching portraits of women and men struggling to bridge the gap between art and life

A young and ingratiating assistant to a movie star makes a blunder that puts his boss and a major studio at grave risk. A long-married couple hires an escort for a threesome in order to rejuvenate their relationship. An assistant at a prestigious literary journal reconnects with a middle school frenemy and finds that his carefully constructed world of refinement cannot protect him from his past. A Bush administration lawyer wakes up on an abandoned airplane, trapped in a nightmare of his own making.
 
In these and other stories, Tom Bissell vividly renders the complex worlds of characters on the brink of artistic and personal crises—writers, video-game developers, actors, and other creative types who see things slightly differently from the rest of us. With its surreal, poignant, and sometimes squirm-inducing stories, Creative Types is a brilliant new offering from one the most versatile and talented writers working in America today.

Excerpt

CREATIVE TYPES

The night before their appointment, they sent Haley one final email in which they reaffirmed the when and where and tastefully restated their excitement. But Reuben managed to smuggle in a request: Would Haley mind wearing “normal clothes”? He was about to hit Send when Brenna, proofreading over his shoulder, announced that his use of normal was, in this context, “problematic.”
 
“Problematic,” he said. Their son had been asleep for an hour.
 
Bren, looking at the laptop’s screen, only nodded.
 
Reuben poised his email-sending finger above the Enter key like a scientist about to launch something toward Pluto. “Bren, come on. I’m sending it.”
 
Bren paid this no attention at all, probably because she knew he wouldn’t send it, not without her go-ahead. Normal. It just seems like a very classist thing to write. Normal to whom?”
 
For as long as he’d known her, Bren had worried about classism. These days, of course, he and Bren were doing well, perhaps even embarrassingly well. However, their many years of doing less well had made Bren afraid of succumbing to the thoughtless consumption patterns of their friends, such as Annabelle and Isaac, who recently built a thirteen-thousand- dollar outdoor pizza oven with imported Umbrian stone. To Bren’s way of thinking, success, particularly Hollywood success, was mostly an accident; she never wanted to condescend to those who hadn’t been as lucky as she. But this meant that virtually everything Reuben said to servers and valets was later subjected to Bren’s undergrad-Marxism rhetorical analysis. He didn’t mind. If anything, he admired her for it. When Annabelle and Isaac whipped up their first batch of pizzas, everyone politely chewed and smiled on their sunlit patio. Bren was the first person to actually say, “Is it me or is this not very good?”
 
Reuben kicked back in his chair. “Well,” he said, “you know what you’re assuming, right?”
 
Bren looked at him. “What am I assuming?”
 
“You’re assuming a woman in her line of work is automatically of a lower class.”
 
“I am not.” But as Bren thought about it, as he knew she would, her face fell. “Oh God. I am.”
 
“And given her rates, I’d say that’s a pretty dubious assumption, frankly.”
 
Bren nevertheless convinced Reuben to put normal clothes in scare quotes, so “We’d appreciate it if you wore normal clothes (neighbors!)” became “We’d appreciate it if you wore ‘normal clothes’ (neighbors!)” Minutes after his no longer—or at least somewhat less—problematic email finally went out, Bren was rereading it on her phone. (She’d been cc’d.) “A lot going on in that sentence,” she said unhappily. Haley’s response came ten minutes later: emoji thumbs-up, emoji rose, emoji kiss.
 
Haley arrived the next night in a plain black circle skirt and kimonoish green blouse. She looked like the hostess of the type of sushi bar that had Mexican sushi chefs, so the outfit was normal enough, and already Reuben had a good feeling about how the night was going to go. This good feeling grew apace when Haley wrapped him up in a big tight hug. “It’s so nice to see you again!” Haley said, her neck warm with spice and citrus, her hair a cascade of coconut, her clothes all powdered lavender. Reuben’s hands were on Haley’s back. They felt good there. They fit. Her blouse was satin, gem green, smooth and slick and glossy. Hugging Haley was like lying in a strange bed you didn’t want to get out of. Then, beneath his hands, Haley’s shoulder blades flexed; their hug was ending. Reuben stepped away, closed the door, and turned to see Bren standing in the long entryway hall, clasping her enormous wineglass by its stem. Haley moved toward her.
 
“Oh!” Bren said, as though Haley were a dirty-pawed puppy about to jump into her lap. “Okay! Hello!” While they embraced, Bren held her wineglass—a festive red orb of Malbec—up above her and Haley’s heads, which somehow made Reuben think of mistletoe. His hands had been respectfully stationary on Haley’s body, but Bren’s free hand moved familiarly up and down Haley’s back. That was one great sociocultural advantage of women’s hands, wasn’t it? They could go where they wanted to go. They had free rein.
 
Haley released Bren, after which she took up a position in the front hall that allowed her to look at both Bren and him simultaneously. She obviously wasn’t in the habit of putting her back to people she didn’t know well, and for that he blamed her not a bit. No one said anything for a moment. They were all smiling like naughty children.
 
“It’s nice to see you again,” Reuben said finally.
 
Haley laughed. “Ah. That. So when I arrive, I always say, ‘Nice to see you again,’ even if it’s my first time somewhere.”
 
At this point Reuben realized that Haley was subtly chewing gum. She had nice lips, and nice everything else, at least as far as he could tell. He wondered if he’d get to kiss her tonight. He and Bren had worked out some ground rules for what he could and couldn’t do to Haley, but when it came to kissing, Bren was conflicted. It depended, she said, on how everything felt in the moment. What doesn’t?
 
#

Reviews

A New York Times December Book to Read • A Los Angeles Times December Book to Read • An Inside Hook Best Book of December

“On every page of this book Bissell sees life with mordant clarity and finds words not only to describe it but to reanimate it...To tell you the 'subjects' of these stories is to tell you almost nothing about the experience of reading them, their stylistic flair, the unpredictability of their movement. They reminded me of how fiction can be not just a form of escape but a way to get lost in the actual strangeness of this world, those crooked roads that lead us through flashes of horror, delight and sudden recognition.”
—Zachary Lazar, New York Times

"Seven delightfully observed stories about artistic people in the midst of personal crisis... These stories would make an ideal gift for the beloved creative type in your life — maybe with no note."
—Sloane Crosley, Departures

“Tom Bissell is one of America's best and most interesting writers."
—Stephen King, from the introduction to
Flight or Fright: 17 Turbulent Tales

"Bissell’s skill as a journalist and memoirist transfers to complex situational fiction."
Los Angeles Times

"All of the stories in Creative Types are engaging and thought-provoking, delivered with deft prose and wicked humor... Slyly subversive... Beautifully crafted and narratively compelling... Creative Types is precisely what you hope to get when you dive into a collection of short fiction – a vast and varied spectrum of stories, all connected by intelligence, wit and a distinctive voice. Tom Bissell is one of the best in the business; this book is a reflection of that excellence."
The Maine Edge

"A compelling, tightly written anthology to showcase the contemporary tormented artistic soul... Bissell is a marvelous storyteller with a command of language and a mastery of dialogue... These beautifully written, painful stories remind us of the creative and practical challenges of pouring artistic passion into a durable vessel."
—Leonora Cravotta, The American Spectator

"Award-winning stories that are clear-eyed, unrelenting, slightly acidulous, and sometimes bleakly funny in their exploration of contemporary life... Well-crafted and expansive stories."
Library Journal

"This buzzing collection brings together seven stories that showcase [Bissell's] gift for energetic storytelling, each tale imbued with humor and relevant cultural references... Bissell's affinity for fast pacing and quick wit will reward readers looking for an antidote to the doldrums of life under quarantine."
Booklist

“The seven stories in Bissell’s droll, thoughtful collection… portray artistic people in the midst of unfortunate circumstances, often due to their own actions… Each story demonstrates Bissell’s talent for smooth, sparkling prose, arresting descriptions… and vivid characterization. Desperate, downtrodden, and self-absorbed, the protagonists are thoroughly human, and Bissell consistently transforms the reader’s voyeuristic pleasure into unexpected sympathy.”
Publishers Weekly

"Bissell is a deeply precise writer, and his sense of the emotional disorientation his characters face is literally gut-level... A witty, wide-ranging exploration of complex emotions."
Kirkus

"It’s like Deborah Eisenberg and Bruce Chatwin had a secret love child and instead of raising him, they gave him away to Ubisoft in an experiment to see if gamers can be turned back into readers. Bissell pulls off the what should be impossible — illuminating all the modern silences and somehow rendering them laugh-out-loud funny. You won’t find more memorable 'lovers' or better dialogue anywhere. Buy this book and learn how to write."
—Stephen Gaghan, writer and director of Syriana

“The creative types in Tom Bissell’s brilliant stories travel, try not to be tourists, take cocaine, have threesomes, have babies, find themselves doing hack work for SNL, interview super heroes—all trapped inside acute, bone-cutting sentences. The stories in Creative Types are witty, sharp, and fun as hell to read but also highly serious, fearlessly exposing the foibles of creative people as they try to build lives that feed the muse—or sell themselves out. Bissell is one of our best writers and this is one of his best books.
—David Means, author of Instructions for a Funeral

“Tom Bissell writes like some kind of wicked angel. Here are transgressively funny stories about writers and actors, cocaine and art, escorts and threesomes, religion and apostasy, all rendered in sentences so exquisite they make me blush with holy envy. I’ve read and admired Bissell's work for years, but Creative Types might be his best book yet.”
— Jamie Quatro, author of Fire Sermon

Author

© Eugene Byrd
TOM BISSELL was born in Escanaba, Michigan, in 1974. His short fiction has won two Pushcart Prizes and has been published in multiple editions of The Best American Series. He has also written eight works of nonfiction, including Apostle and (with Greg Sestero) The Disaster Artist, as well as many screenplays for video games and television. Bissell lives in Los Angeles with his family. View titles by Tom Bissell

Table of Contents

A BRIDGE UNDER WATER
1

MY INTERVIEW WITH THE AVENGER
33

PUNISHMENT
51

LOVE STORY, WITH COCAINE
87

THE FIFTH CATEGORY
119

CREATIVE TYPES
153

THE HACK
179

Acknowledgments
207