The Bliss of Your Attention

A powerful story collection that celebrates those who strive and fail and strive again. If Joseph Campbell's dictum-"follow your bliss"-has become inspiration and goad, accusation and cliche, then the characters in David Borofka's The Bliss of Your Attention are all the more puzzled by what their futures portend. Their bliss is never clear nor independent of others, for the characters in these stories are ever in search of connection, understanding, and validation. Borofka, whose collection A Longing for Impossible Things was selected by the American Book Fest as the 2021 winner of the American Fiction Award for the Short Story, masterfully charts the spectrum of human emotion and the difficulty of connection in these pages.