Adam Johnson - Fortune Smiles - Stories

Mina stopped playing. She locked her bellows and joined DJ at the wall.

Clouds came and went. Before long, the sky no longer resembled the sky Sun-ho had disappeared into.

“That would never happen in the North,” Mina said. She shook her head, a look of wonder in her eyes. “Everything there is planned out. They’ve got it all rigged. This, though, this was…spontaneous and unexpected, this was real. ”

DJ let his eyes drift across a horizon of buildings — thousands of lights, millions of them. The darkened apartments still made more sense than the lit ones. And there was no single light to guide you.

“You never think about going back?” DJ asked.

They were standing side by side, gazing north.

“Back?” She shook her head. “I feel like I just got here.”

“Yeah,” DJ said. “Me, too.”

I wish to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and Stanford University for their generous support. I’m also indebted to the Kalmanovitz Library at the University of California, San Francisco, where portions of this book were written.

I’ve been the beneficiary of many fine editors: Tyler Cabot and David Granger at Esquire for championing “Nirvana”; Christopher Cox at Harper’s Magazine for his judicious edits of “Interesting Facts”; John Wood and Steven Albahari at 21st Editions for lovingly hand-printing “George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine”; and special thanks to Cheston Knapp and Michelle Wildgen at Tin House, where “Hurricanes Anonymous,” “Dark Meadow,” and “Fortune Smiles” first appeared. “Hurricanes Anonymous” was reprinted in The Best American Short Stories. “Nirvana” was reprinted in The Best American Nonrequired Reading.

This book could have no finer editor than David Ebershoff, and Warren Frazier is the prince of literary agents. The support of the Stanford writing faculty has been invaluable to me, particularly Eavan Boland, Elizabeth Tallent and Tobias Wolff. Thanks also to Gavin Jones. I’m grateful to Ed Schwarzschild, Todd Pierce, Neil Connelly, Scott Hutchins, Skip Horack and Russ Franklin, all of whom read versions of these stories and offered sage advice.

Special thanks also to Dr. Patricia Johnson, Dr. James Harrell and the Honorable Gayle Harrell. Phil Knight is my source for wisdom and inspiration. Stephanie is my Pleiades, my Polaris, my Hōkūle‘a and Southern Cross. Thanks especially and eternally to Jupiter, James Geronimo and Justice Everlasting.

ADAM JOHNSON teaches creative writing at Stanford University. He is the author of Fortune Smiles, Emporium, Parasites Like Us and The Orphan Master’s Son, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He has received a Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His work has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, GQ, The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. He lives in San Francisco.

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