Austin, laid back and somewhat indulgent as it is, might be a terrible place for a New Yorker or anyone who wants to move and shake culture or corporations but it’s an undeniably great place to start a band, as I recently learned. No paranoia, no career hang-ups, no star trips (well, not usually), no heroin, no your drummer informing you at Thursday’s rehearsal that he’s just gotta play with this “Smoke On The Water” copy band Friday night instead of with you at CBGB’s because he says he desperately needs the money even though he lives with his parents in Westchester.

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In 2002, a curious little book titled Through Our Enemies’ Eyes came out which presented a wealth of information on Al Qaeda and became a New York Times bestseller, perhaps unsurprisingly given its uncanny insider knowledge and topical interest. Its author was credited as “Anonymous,” which you would expect to register some intrigue among literary circles as to the identity of this new and remarkably successful writer, but for some reason, little mainstream mention has been made of it, or its follow-up tome, Imperial Hubris, which seems odd when a book like, say, 1996’s Primary Colors sent journalists scrambling to expose the man behind the pseudonym.

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In the final story of Austin writer Irwin Tang’s new collection, the narrator wonders, “I write stories that are so solipsistic, the only true audience is myself, and I am disgusted and fascinated at what? At myself.” While all eight of the stories contained in the volume essentially are about Tang, and his transforming journey toward understanding what it means to be both Asian and American, simply summarizing it so dryly fails to capture the sheer wit and humor with which he relates the trails and epiphanies of his characters. What might otherwise be a self-indulgent read is more than redeemed by Tang’s considerable proficiency at storytelling and weaving of motifs that draw from such unlikely and diverse sources as Marvel comics to Run DMC, 16 Candles to Roots.

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Author Kalle Lasn helped literally coin the book’s titular term during an epiphany he had when he realized that he hated the “sterile chain store that rarely carried any locally grown produce” he was shopping in, so he expressed his feelings of purchasing powerlessness by jamming a bent coin into the grocery cart slot of one of those bins which requires a quarter deposit in order to check out a basket, and then refunds you once you’re good enough to return it. From then on he opted to shop at the “little fruit and vegetable store down the road.”

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