The Hemingway Challenge, Cont'd

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The Hemingway Challenge

Six-word novels from 25 influential writers

Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words. The result: “For sale: baby shoes, never used.” Rumor has it that Hemingway regarded it as his greatest work. Stirred by this masterwork, the editors of BlackBook asked 25 of today’s most renowned writers to offer their own original six-word stories. Some offered more than 10 narratives in less than an hour’s time, while others took weeks to labor over each of their six words. In spite of its economy, the collection delivers the same humor, drama, irony, and suspense found in literature’s lengthier tomes.

Give it a try in a Comment to this Post!

“Forgive me!” “What for?” “Never mind.” –John Updike

Eyeballed me, killed him. Slight exaggeration. –Irvine Welsh

Satan—Jehovah—fifteen rounds. A draw. –Norman Mailer

“Welcome to Moeshe Christiansen’s Bar Mitzvah.” –Andrea Seigel

grass, cow, calf, milk, cheese, France –Rick Moody

He remembered something that never happened. –A.M. Homes

Saigon Hotel. Decades later. He weeps. –Robert Olen Butler

—I love you . . . –Love ya back. –Courtney Eldridge

She gave. He took. He forgot. –Tobias Wolff

You are not shit. You are! –Memoir, Jerry Stahl

All her life: half a house. –Jamie O’Neill

Poison; meditation; skiing; ants—nothing worked. –Edward Albee

My nemesis is dead. Now what? –Michael Cunningham

I saw. I conquered. Couldn’t come. –David Lodge

“Cyanide? Bitter almonds.” He knew. How? –Brian Bouldrey

Father died. Mother triumphed. I left. –Mary Gaitskill

“You? Her? No dice, fat boy.” –Pinckney Benedict

Oh, that? It’s nothing. Not contagious. –Augusten Burroughs

Mother’s Day came, doubling Oedipus’ pleasure. –Bruce Benderson

Tossed remorselessly, whiffle balls sure hurt. –J.T. LeRoy

As she fell, her mind wandered. –Rebecca Miller

It’s negative. Say hi to Mom. –Ben Greenman

Horny professor. Failing coed. No tenure. –“A Short History of Academia,” by Sue Grafton

Shiva destroys Earth: “Well, that’s that.” –A.G. Pasquella

Havana’s no place for hockey, coach. –Nicholas Weinstock.

The above appeared in the Utne Reader, July-August 2005, reprinted from the Fall 2004 Arts Issue of BlackBook. Thanks to Kathy Schienle for passing the challenge along to us.

Another Perfect Catastrophe, by Brad Barkley

I’ve been something of a fan of Brad Barkley’s work since I heard him read at the Virginia Festival of the Book a couple of years ago. His novel, Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual, which he read from on that occasion, was terrific--funny as hell, but about real issues. So I was looking forward to hearing him at the Festival again this year when I saw him on the schedule but, unfortunately, he wasn’t able to come. His latest book was there, though, so I picked up Another Perfect Catastrophe, a 2004 collection of stories. The title story is fantastic, about a 35 year old who is still hanging out with his best high school buddy, despite being in love with a gorgeous young woman. The buddy is something of a sculptor and each piece is entitled “Perfect Catastrophe,” so that the piece he is working on at any given moment is always “Another Perfect Catastrophe.”

The final story in the collection is also terrific. Beneath the Deep, Slow Motion previously appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review.

TdF Withdrawal

Lance Armstrong 

I miss Lance already. For the past three weeks, I have been checking his progress daily (more than daily, to be honest) at The Pace Line, which I highly recommend for information about the Tour, about Lance, links to the Lance Armstrong Foundation, and fantastic photographs like the one above.

Natives and Exotics, by Jane Alison

Jane Alison 

Jane Alison’s new book is a quick read, and is definitely worth taking a look at. It begins with the story of Alice, Australian born and the daughter of Rosalind who is now married to Hal, a U.S. Foreign Service officer beginning a posting to Ecuador. What is evident of Hal is that he is descended from the imperialists of the past, confident that the ills that accompany foreign investment are far outweighed by the benefits. Rosalind eventually finds this distasteful, but has cast her lot with him and there is no turning back (we catch barely a glimpse of poor Rupert, Alice's father, who is somewhere in Australia.) Alice is twice removed from her native soil and is about to be uprooted from Ecuador, when we shift to an earlier time, to see Alice's grandmother, Violet, digging in that soil to build a homestead in Australia with her husband, Alf. Much is made of the transporting of species from one environment to another, and how sometimes the result is blight, and sometimes the result is deformity or a struggle with other species. In the end, though, when we shift back to Alice, she sees familiar palm trees at the opposite end of the earth, and perhaps we are meant to conclude that it is not impossible for natives and exotics to co-exist.

See these Reviews.

Alison is a wonderful writer and an engaging personality (whom I've had the pleasure of meeting numerous times, as she is teaching in the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte). Her previous books are also definitely worth reading.

The Darling, by Russell Banks

Russell Banks--January 2004, Mexico


Although I am a big fan of Russell Banks, having workshopped with him in January 2004 at Under the Volcano in Tepoztlan, Mexico (where the photo above was taken by Alden Jones), it took me a very long time to get through this bold, unusual book. The novel is told in first person from the point of view of Hannah Musgrave, a fugitive member of the Weathermen, who marries a Liberian government official, Woodrow Sundiata, and experiences the horrors of the constant civil war in that country. She spent most of her life apart from her American family, because of the political realities and the outstanding warrants for her arrest, but even when she is able to see them or write to them, the strain between them is evident. Although most of the action of the book is in flashback, the frame of the story is Hannah's return to Liberia to search for her sons. And the jumbled timeline, in fact is one of the obstacles to engagement with the book. It begins in the present and jumps to the past in Africa, then the past before Africa, then a new trip to Africa, and although it is told in a five-act structure (following Shakespeare’s The Tempest, as Banks mentions in this Book Club Guide, and which he discussed with me in Mexico last year) these movements in time disrupt the narrative flow and gave me ample reason to put the book aside. The action finally picks up as the drums of civil war are beating louder and the risk to Hannah and her African family become clearer. Then the novel is hard to put down.

Banks is fascinating. Here is an interview from a few years ago in Salon. And here is another interview, from after the publication of The Darling, in Identity Theory. And here is a review of The Darling in BookPage

Elizabeth Bishop

There is an article about Elizabeth Bishop in the current issue of Harvard Magazine.

New Identity Theory

New stuff has been posted at Identity Theory.

Ten Most Harmful Books?

I had never heard of "Human Events Online: The National Conservative Weekly Since 1944" (created, perhaps, to mourn the death of Germany's Nazi Party?) until my sister passed along this little tidbit: The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

The concept alone is peculiar and fascist. Can books even be harmful? People can be evil, I'm sure of that; political movements and fundamentalist religious groups can be dangerous; but books? Once you accept that books can be harmful, it isn't hard to buy into book banning and book burning, and that is something that those of us closer to the other end of the political spectrum would probably not advocate. So no alternative lists for me, as horrible and hateful as this one is. Rachel Carson, for crying out loud? Ralph Nader? Why would distinguished academics even participate in this nonsense?

On the plus side, this looks like a pretty good reading list for anyone desiring a decent education.

What a Piece of Work is Man!

I have of late--but
wherefore I know not--lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals!

I had the great pleasure this evening to see a fine production of Hamlet at Staunton’s own American Shakespeare Center, formerly known as Shenandoah Shakespeare. It is a brilliant play, of course, and I’ve seen it many times before. But different stagings and different performances are likely to emphasize different facets of the work. Tonight, because the actor playing Polonius (John Harrell) is a great comic (he’s been in the company for a couple of years now and I’ve seen him in many hilarious parts), the humor in that role shone. I knew Polonius was a buffoon, but didn’t remember it quite that way. And Hamlet (Khris Lewin) was done superbly, with the prince’s madness flawlessly woven into his character. Once again, a terrific experience at the Blackfriars Playhouse.