Statesman Selects: S. by Doug Dorst

We’re long time fans of the fiction of Austinite Doug Dorst, whose most recent short story collection The Surf Guru, received attention in the New York Times when it was first published: “…the stories speak to an important literary pursuit: that of pushing limits, of embracing challenge…” How prescient the Times turned out to be. Dorst’s latest novel, S., a collaboration with filmmaker J. J. Abrams, pushes the limits of what a book can be and how we interact with it not just as printed text, but as an object to decode and decipher, an object that by its very construction influences the way we interpret the story told. No two people will read S. the same way.

We immediately agreed with the Statesman when they suggested S. as the Statesman Selects pick for December. You can read the Statesman’s review of the incredible reading experience that is S. this Sunday, December 8. Join us here at BookPeople when Dorst discusses the work, his collaboration with Abrams and how this innovative new novel is his “love letter to the written word” on Monday, December 9 at 7pm.

What makes S. so special? It starts with a book-within-a-book formula, but in fact it’s more than that – the physical book in the slipcase is another book (totally fictional and created for the purposes of S.): “The Ship of Theseus”. Open it up and inside you’ll find handwriting scrawled in the margins, two readers who communicate with one another through the years solely through these notes. Flip the pages and you’ll find postcards, napkins, receipts and ephemera all pointing towards a mystery about the author of “The Ship of Theseus” our two voices in the marginalia are attempting to figure out.

Immersive, imaginative and exhilarating in the way it redefines how one absorbs a story, S. is a brilliant reminder of the power and possibility of print.