The LitMag Game

If each submission to a literary magazine is like a football game (with the new season getting underway, football is on my mind), then looking at an issue or two of the target magazine is like watching game film. Your story is your offense and you need to understand how their defense (reasons to say “no”) works before taking the first snap.

Or something like that. The point is that research can be helpful, which we all know, and I’ve been trying to get more systematic with my reading and more targeted with my submissions. Why send a funny story to a magazine that never publishes them? Magazines tell us all the time that the best way to know what they like is to read them. It just isn’t always possible. Most of the time it is an impenetrable maze. So why isn’t there some kind of map, or better yet a GPS, to help us find our way?

A few years ago at Bread Loaf I heard Amy Holman talk about her system for analyzing magazines, and it was one that had enormous appeal to me. She analyzes magazines along several different dimensions and looks for a dominant aesthetic, and then matches submissions with magazines that might fit.(Amy offers publishing consultation services, in which she will “read your writing, match up your style to the interests at literary journals, independent and university presses, or of literary agents, and provide a list of twelve to fifteen publishers and/or agents.” Be sure and contact her via her website if those services might of use to you.)

I haven’t been very consistent in doing this, but I try to do something similar, using my SELFE Analysis. SELFE stands for Style-Environment-Lens-Focus-Ending, the five factors that I currently look at.

Style. Most stories are told in plain language (P) but some use a more literary style (L).

Environment. Similarly, most stories are set in a domestic environment (D), not in the geographical sense, but more on the plane of realism. Some domestic stories are actually international (Di), an environment that has been getting a lot of attention lately. But the opposite end of the spectrum is an exotic environment (E) which, for me, encompasses stories set in alternate realities.

Lens. Subjectivity (S), including both first person and close third, is far more common than objectivity (O) these days.

Focus. This is something of a wildcard, but ask yourself whether a story has its focus on character (C), plot (P), language (L), setting (S), humor (H), or innovation (I), or some combination. A humorous story with its prime focus on character might be Ch; a language-focus story told as a list, which is an innovative technique, might be Li.

Ending. My sense is that stories have either closed endings (R, for resolved), or open endings (U, for unresolved). Most of my stories tend to be unresolved, open endings that seek to resonate beyond the point where the story stops. Not every editor cares for that approach, and I think it’s important to know that.

Person/Tense. I haven’t yet decided if these additional dimensions are worth charting, but if in reading a magazine I can spot a preference (for example, a magazine might always stay away from first person present tense stories) that would be something good to be aware of.

So, putting that all into practice, I recently read the most recent issue of Post Road, which has five short stories. There is some variation among them in focus and in their endings, and there is no clear preference for person or tense, so in my analysis the magazine is

PDSHiR 0/0

Which means: Plain language, Domestic environment, Subjective, focus on Humor with a secondary focus on innovation, and Resolved endings, with 0 preference for person and 0 preference for tense (person and tense were all over the map).

In contrast, a traditional story would probably be

PDSCR 3/-

where the focus is on character and the story is told in third person past tense.

Football would be easier, I think. But I believe a system of this kind, if I can stick with it, may be useful.

American Shakespeare Center

I just noticed that the American Shakespeare Center has redesigned its website. It looks great. And I also see that they are offering previews of the new shows being done by the touring company--Hamlet, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, and The Commedy of Errors. Will definitely need to check those out . . .

The New Yorker: "Gorse is Not People" by Janet Frame

When the magazine publishes a found story by a dead author, I suppose all the rules go out the window. One can’t expect that a story written in 1954, as this one was, will resemble a modern story or follow modern conventions. And so there isn’t much choice but to give in to the story’s oddities and enjoy it. So, the first thing to note is that is the second Janet Frame story published this year; the first one came out in May and I commented on it here. The second thing to note is that a commenter at that time pointed out that Frame herself had been institutionalized as a young woman and came close to being lobotomized. I had not known that, but it puts this new story in different light.

Here we have Naida, a dwarf who has long lived in an institution. She looks forward to the day when she turns 21 so that she will be free, she can marry “the pig boy” whom she says she loves, and she can spend her honeymoon in Hollywood or Mexico City, which has not yet been decided. But Naida must first undergo an evaluation, although she doesn’t understand that it is an evaluation. And because she has not been educated, because her view of the world is distorted, it is clear that they will not let her free and that her dreams will remain only dreams.

This is a chilling result that the reader anticipates, but it’s the only way the story could end. If I have a quarrel with this piece it is in the opening, which is addressed directly to the reader by some unidentified narrator who then proceeds to tell the story of Naida. And I think it is reasonable to want to know who the narrator is and why he or she is telling the story. And we don’t get those answers. It’s a minor complaint, I think, in a moving story.

September 1, 2008: “Gorse is Not People” by Janet Frame

LitMag Wave: Post Road #15

I picked up the most recent issue of Post Road at Sewanee, directly Mike Rosovsky, one of the fiction editors. Reading it has reminded me of the wisdom of looking at magazines before submitting work that we hope the magazine will accept for publication. I have written a number of pretty good stories that I think deserve to be published somewhere. But now, having read this issue of Post Road, I think only a couple of them--maybe only one--would be suited for this magazine. (And so, I'm going to polish that story and send it off soon . . .)

Most magazines are pretty mainstream in their tastes. They like stories with plain, rather than poetic language; they prefer domestic, rather than exotic settings; they tend toward subjective points of view; and they like stories that focus on character or, sometimes, plot. But Post Road seems to have a different focus. The work here isn't exactly experimental, but it is innovative with a humorous slant. And that's an important aspect to note.

For example, there is the story “Victor” by Michael Czyzniejewski (who is editor of Mid-American Review), about a ventriloquist’s dummy who comes home with the narrator’s wife. There are serious issues that the dummy raises, but the concept is not, um, realistic. “Bennett’s Cheap Catharsis” by Evan Lavender-Smith (editor of Noemi Press) is structured as a fictional essay by a deceased author, in response to an essay by another deceased author. In “O Saddam!” by Rusty Barnes (editor of Night Train—do you detect a pattern here?), it turns out that the whole time U.S. forces were hunting Saddam Hussein he was selling hot nuts in Boston. “Possum” by Mary Morris—not an editor, as far as I can tell—isn’t as far-fetched, but it is funny (with a serious twist).

There are also several essays in this issue and a few flash fiction pieces that are somewhat confusingly called poetry—I suppose the editors consider them prose poems—plus an interview with Phillip Lopate. One other innovative feature of the magazine is the “Recommendations” section, in which authors such as Jill McCorkle, John D’Agata, Quinn Dalton, and Debra Spark discuss favorite books. These aren’t reviews—in a way, they’re better.

New Issue: The Pedestal Magazine #47

Check out the new issue and new look of The Pedestal Magazine.

Writers in Waiting, Waiting on Writers

There's a fun story from the August 24 edition of The Washington Post about the waiters at Bread Loaf.

Bread Loaf Writers' Conference

Poetry of Recovery

You may be interested in this new poetry anthology, AFTER SHOCKS: The Poetry of Recovery, edited by Tom Lombardo. The list of contributors is truly impressive. Read the Editor's Note.

Football

I thought it would never come, but the 2008 football season is upon us. Northwestern opens agains Syracuse on Saturday, and I'll be in attendance when the Wildcats visit Duke the following weekend and also when they host Southern Illinois in Evanston the weekend after that. Here's the full schedule.

New Issue: Storyglossia #29

I'm looking forward to reading the August issue of Storyglossia. It looks like a good one!

Somebody Else's Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage

It's fun to read a book by friend. It can be a slight problem if you don't like the book, but if the book really grabs your attention, then it's a wonderful feeling. That's the case with Somebody Else's Daughter by Elizabeth Brundage, a friend from my first experience at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. This is her second novel, and it opens with a letter, by way of a prologue, written in 1989 by a drug-addicted father who is giving up his newborn daughter for adoption. The story jumps forward sixteen years, and we anticipate seeing the daughter again in her adoptive family. Here is the synopsis/teaser from Elizabeth's website:

In the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts a group of families is connected through the prestigious Pioneer prep school. Into this community enters Nate Gallagher, a teacher and struggling writer haunted by the daughter he gave up for adoption years ago. The girl, Willa—now a teenager and one of Nate's students—lives with her adoptive parents, Joe and Candace, who have nurtured her with their affection and prosperity. When Willa wins a community service internship and begins working at a local women's shelter, her friendship with a troubled prostitute raises questions about her own biological past. Despite her parent's love and care, Willa can't shake her feelings of confusion and abandonment, and Joe and Candace are too preoccupied with their crumbling marriage to realize her unhappiness.

Readers can see from this brief summary that conflict abounds. Not only is there the tension of wondering when and how Will will learn that Nate is her father, but there is plenty going on in the lives of Joe and Candace that creates tension as well, not to mention Jack and Maggie, who are teachers at the same school. It's a gripping story that straddles the literary and psychological thriller genres, and is told compellingly in multiple points of view. Not only do we get Joe and Candace's take on things, but Willa's, JacK and Maggie's, Nates, and also that of Claire and Teddy, newcomers to the area who also become part of the story.

I don't know if Elizabeth has sold the movie rights yet, but I can definitely see this on film. It's a very enjoyable read.

New Stories from the South 2008

Here's a terrific review in the Miami Herald of the 2008 volume of New Stories from the South. And this is going to sound like name-dropping (it isn't--it's more like envy), but the review mentions several friends of mine, including Jim Tomlinson and Jamie Poissant (whom I know from Sewanee and elsewhere), Ron Rash and Pinckney Benedict (whom I know from the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program), and R.T. Smith (the editor of Shenandoah). And the reviewer could have mentioned other people I know who are also in the volume, including Holly Goddard Jones (also first met at Sewanee).

The book is sitting on my desk and I plan to dive into it soon. I've read many of the stories when the originally appeared in magazines, but they're worth reading again.

Narrative

The Narrative Magazine site re-design is a big improvement, in my opinion. It never felt like a magazine to me before, and so I never spent much time browsing. Now it does, and I will.

The New Yorker: "Awake" by Tobias Wolff

I like Tobias Wolff’s work very much and I’m reading my way through his new book, Our Story Begins. But I doubt seriously that this story, “Awake” will be anyone’s favorite Wolff story. I do like the point of view character, the over-sexed college boy who makes excuses for his relationship with Ana. He’s just immature, pretending to be someone he’s not, so he can sleep with the Russian girl who’s in the country illegally. And I like the way the story begins, with Richard wide awake in bed reading from The Odyssey while Ana sleeps, and then resolving to finish that book and the Iliad too and all the books he’d pretended to be fond of when he met the girl. But that’s about all I like about this one. For one thing, there’s a reason why student writers are told not to begin stories with their character lying in bed thinking. It’s boring! The Odysseus twist is novel, but basically that’s all that happens in this story. Richard lies in bed and thinks. It’s as if Wolff asked himself what he could do in this story to piss off writing teachers everywhere. “I know! I’ll start a story with a guy lying in bed thinking. And I’ll leave him there for the whole time! And I won’t show any action! Not even sex! And no dialogue, not even in flashback!” Or something like that. Okay, bottom line: very nice character study of Richard; not much of a story.

And furthermore, do you remember “East Wind” by Julian Barnes, the story from a few months ago? In that one, the slimy divorced father sleeps with a Polish waitress and worries about many of the same things that Richard does here with his Russian waitress. What’s up at the New Yorker, and this sub-theme of Eastern European waitresses? I’m going to dash off a story with a Ukrainian waitress who sleeps with the narrator and rush to the magazine. It’s bound to be a winner.

August 25, 2008: “Awake” by Tobias Wolff

Miami Book Fair International

My attention has just been drawn to the Miami Book Fair International , the 25th edition of which runs this year from November 9-16.

It sounds like a terrific event. Over 300 authors have been invited to read, including Salman Rushdie, Russell Banks, Nikki Giovanni, Charles Johnson, Frank McCourt, Campbell McGrath, Mayra Montero, Scott Simon, Art Spiegelman, Amy Tan, Derek Walcott, Edmund White, Rick Bragg, Zoe Valdes, Stewart O'Nan, Joyce Carol Oates, Nancy Horan, David Wroblewski, and Mark Kurlansky. Check the website for details and schedules.

Out there

One picture is sometimes worth an infinite number of words: Astronomy Pics of the Day

Bread Loaf

Bread Loaf 2008 is going on right now, through the end of this week. I'm not there, of course, but I bet I'd be having fun if I were. And I'd be learning. For example, if I'd been there this morning, I would have attended Robert Boswell's craft lecture "On Omniscience" and tonight I would have attended a reading by Randall Kenan (did he read the same thing he did at Sewanee, I wonder?) and Patricia Hampl. For more information about what's going on up there in Vermont, check out the daily Crumb.

New Issue: Barrelhouse

Check out the new issue of Barrelhouse!

Computer Problems Persist

I hesitate to say that the problems are fixed, but I've spent a fair number of hours over the last few days reinstalling various programs and . . . so far so good. But in any event, that's why there have been no updates for a few days.

Howard Junker to retire

Poets & Writers reports that Howard Junker intends to retire but is looking for someone to take over the helm of ZYZZYVA. Is this an opportunity for someone to end the West Coast monopoly at that magazine?

LitMag Wave: Whitefish Review Vol. 2, No. 1

The third issue of Whitefish Review (Volume 2, Number 1) isn’t memorable for my short story, “The Nymph and the Woodsman,” although it has that, too, which I’m happy about. I enjoyed reading pretty much everything in the magazine:

There’s a wonderful excerpt from Annick Smith’s forthcoming memoir, Crossing the Plains with Bruno.

“I have always wanted a totem pole to guard my house. I would like a tall cedar log carved by a fine craftsman in the manner of the All Frogs pole. It would stand in the meadow near our driveway looking down on Bear Creek canyon and across the Blackfoot to the Rattlesnake Wilderness. The brightly painted, carved figures would not represent Frog. They would be Dog—a domesticated creature with wildness not quite bred out. An animal that binds us to our origins as well as to our day-to-day chores and pleasures.”

Shortly after this passage we get to meet Bruno, a chocolate lab puppy who is a gift from the author’s granddaughter. I suppose that’s why I liked this excerpt and will have to read the book.

Then there is my story, “The Nymph and the Woodsman,” which I think found a perfect home, since the magazine has a mountain theme and it is a mountain story about one Bobby Cabe.

“On his way up the mountain one cold morning, head pounding from closing Rocky’s the night before, there was barely enough light to see. But Bobby knew those woods like the rusty ceiling above his cot. He knew where the game trails wandered and where the stream trickled through the limestone from the spring in the high pasture. Downed leaves covered the path, soaked after a rainy fall but frosted on top, soft and brittle underfoot at the same time. Christmas was still a ways off, but the weather had turned. Solitary snow flakes nested in his beard. Ice rimmed the creek, and there were jaws of the stuff, icicle teeth and all, where the rocks churned the creek into foamy spray.”

This story, based on a Korean folktale I translated years ago, is part of an unpublished collection that may, with some luck, one day be a published collection.

I don’t usually mention the poetry in the magazines I discuss, but I really liked “Find a Crack in the Earth” by Catherine A. Still, which begins

Find a crack in the Earth
a fractured cliff born of upheaval
of furious forces of extrusion
fold and ferment.

It’s perfect for this journal—and memorable.

I also don’t usually talk about the artwork in a journal, but what’s interesting here is that the 12 different pieces—photographs and paintings—fit the theme, and the editors have also included one page of prose by each of the artists explaining the images. It was great to read about what they were thinking, and who the artists are.

I haven’t read Rick Bass in a long time, but I’m going to now. The magazine includes an interview with him along with an excerpt from his new book, Why I Came West. I’ve long thought highly of Bass, and this just reinforces that view.

Besides all this, there are a few more essays, stories, poems and novel excerpts, including a couple of pieces by winners of a high school writing contest. It is great to give these young writers this exposure, and I congratulate the editors for doing so.

This is a fine young magazine. Subscribe!

Florida by Christine Schutt

Christine Schutt’s Florida is an impressive work. It is a deep, but impressionistic, portrait of a complex family, with extraordinary glimpses into the mind of one woman as she first struggles through her childhood and stumbles into life. Alice, daughter of disturbed Alice, is fragmented as she shuttles from Uncle to Aunt to Grandmother, and the narrative is also fragmented. It consists of many small scenes from different parts of Alice’s life, and like a pointillist painting it is best viewed from a distance. It isn’t clear to the reader at first what is being shown on the page but eventually the picture takes shape.

Which is brilliant, but not always pleasant for the reader. The language, though, is incredible.

“Mother, I remember, in the Rapunzel shirt. Late May and the breeze made the garden blowzy—this way, that way—enthusiastic, and I could see straight-ahead to the pleasure of July, the cut-grass green days of dewy midsummer. My mother could see it, too, days of it, from where we were sitting on the stoop together, she ruffled up in the Rapunzel shirt and the breeze that was blowing along Main, Lawn, School, White—our streets in the leafy splatter of late May noon light. I was happy, and it seemed to me that Mother was happy, too, in a purely quiet way—no talking.”

I heard Schutt read from her new book last month and it seems to me the style—the fragmentation, the choppy narrative—is the same.

A Completely Serious Depiction of the Writing-Publishing Process

H/T Ellen Meister

Low Rent Magazine

Low Rent is a new-to-me magazine that looks like it's worth watching.

New Issue: Six Little Things #11

Banned for Life.

The Family by Jeff Sharlet

Until I learned of this book, The Family, by Jeff Sharlet, I was not aware of the organization Sharlet writes about. I knew there were conservative Christians who wanted to exert more influence in American government, but I didn't know the extent to which they had already seized that power, or that their power extended well beyond government into corporate America and even into governments around the world.

But this is frightening. This book is important if only because it will help those who believe in the separation of church and state understand that the "wall of separation" is being attacked, and the fundamentalists are getting stronger all the time. The book isn't strictly about the dangers that these people pose to public education and other secular activities in this country, but that's what it boils down to for me. And the really scary thing is that it isn't only Republicans who are part of this movement. I'm a big fan of Barack Obama, but his religion troubles me, as does his willingness to continue the faith-based initiatives of the Bush administration. These programs are dangerous, and I'm hopeful that rational Democrats will persuade Obama to move in a different direction once he's in the White house.

In any case, this book is an eye-opener, and a must read.

Ploughshares

According to Dan Wickett at Emerging Writers Network, Ploughshares has selected Ladette Randolph as the new Editor-in-Chief, a position that has been vacant since Don Lee's departure. Ploughshares is the top U.S. literary magazine by a mile, which must be both a blessing and a curse for Randolph. It will be interesting to see what, if anything, she changes.

LitMag Wave: Fourteen Hills #14.2

Writers hear all the time that they should read a magazine before submitting work to it, and most of us recognize that this is a good idea in theory, but often hard in practice. Where I live, very few literary journals are available in the bookstore and next to none in the library, so I subscribe to very many magazines so I can get a sense of what they like. (Of course you can often read samples online, or you might see prize-winners anthologized somewhere, or the magazine’s editors may even make a pronouncement of their aesthetic that offers clues about what they like; there’s no substitute for reading an issue or two or three, though.)

And if you read an issue of Fourteen Hills, you’ll discover that the editors like quirky stories. I mean that in a good way. Most of the stories in the current issue are oddballs in form, tone or subject matter.

“An Inquiry into the Future” by Mira Pasikov is a good example. The subject matter is old hat—a couple is breaking up—so the telling better be fresh, and it is. The story is fragmented and is also jumbled in time. We get a piece of the narrator’s arrival at the airport, then the cab ride home, then a few more pieces before we jump back to the flight, then a moment before the flight, and also a visit to a tarot card reader. The author is asking a lot of the reader, here, and it’s a stimulating challenge.

In Laura Schadler’s “What’s On Fire,” the narrator undergoes eye-replacement surgery. Oh. Okay, that’s not possible, but never mind. It makes sense in the story. What follows is a more-or-less realistic telling of the aftermath.

“All the Small Objects” by Melinda M. Moustakis is mostly realistic (but maybe its realism is trumped by its San Francisco setting, given that the magazine is the San Francisco State University Review), and the subject matter is partly familiar—adultery. And yet the job of the central character, a bridge painter, is so unusual, and the imagery of falling objects, including bodies, is so compelling, that the result is fresh. Even this, though, is told in many fragments, with only one section that runs longer than a page.

I enjoyed “Love in Eviction City” by Stephanie Dickinson, and recognized the characters and setting from Dickinson’s story “Love City” in a recent issue of Short Story magazine. Here, Sunrise Williams and her boyfriend Jamer are looking at a house to rent with Desiree, their infant, except the baby is one they found in the aftermath of Katrina. But the house is not for them—they are too young and too poor—and they wind up back in the motel that is the setting for the other story. I gather that this is a collection of post-Katrina stories and I would predict that we’ll hear a lot more from Dickinson.

“Earth Diary” by Will Comerford is the record of an alien’s mission on the planet. It’s more than that, of course. It’s also a love story. I think.

“Mad Meg” by Sam J. Miller begins promisingly: a mother discovers her son’s gay porn video and watches it. The son—in a move that the mother recognizes as over-compensation—enlists in the Marines. Disagreement over this action is just one more crack in the marriage of the boy’s parents, and the mother plots to stop the enlistment by outing her son. All of which is happening against a backdrop of the woman’s interest in art, including Bruegel’s painting, “Mad Meg,” which gives the story an added dimension. I liked this one quite a bit, as far as it went; it seemed to just stop, rather than really end. In this story the telling is straightforward; it’s the subject matter that’s fresh.

And speaking of the military, there is also “Clean” by O. Aaron Lindsey, about a soldier newly home from Iraq who is taking a long, hot shower to wash the desert away. The story is a monologue, all internal, with great fragmented thoughts jumping into each other.

And there are a few more stories that also show that the magazine seems to prefer the non-traditional. Or “innovative,” to use their word. It’s hard to get more specific than that, because this is a wide variety, which is why I started with the “quirky.”

ASC: Measure for Measure

Measure for Measure may not end in quite the way you remember. In some productions, Isabella rejects the Duke; in some, she accepts his advances. In some, such as the current American Shakespeare Center production at the Blackfriars Playhouse, which takes its cues from the First Folio’s stage directions, the ending is more ambiguous: does she choose the church, or does she go with the Duke? It seems that the audience is left to decide for themselves what the outcome should be. This ambiguity is not what we’re used to in our Shakespeare, but it does provoke thought. See the Director's Notes for more.

The story begins when Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna, takes a trip, leaving Angelo in charge. Angelo, a self-righteous zealot, sentences young Claudio to death for fornication with Juliet. Word of the sentence gets to Claudio’s sister, Isabella, who comes to Angelo to persuade him to be lenient. Meanwhile, the Duke hasn’t really left town and takes on the disguise of a friar so that he can observe Angelo’s behavior and the reaction of the people. None of which would be terribly interesting except that Angelo falls in love with Isabella and, revealing a flaw in his character, tries to seduce her. Angelo and Isabella both believe that Claudio has been executed, but the audience is in on the Duke’s prior arrangement with the Provost to execute some miscreant in his place, so that the truth can come out in the end and produce a happy, ambiguous ending.

There are plenty of wonderful performances in this production. John Pasha is mostly excellent as the Duke and René Thornton, Jr. makes a solid Angelo. Sarah Fallon’s Isabella is outstanding, and the scene in which Angelo makes his intentions known to Isabella is a very powerful, intense moment, with Thornton and Fallon engaged in a very believable battle that leaves the audience gasping. The role of Claudio is not large, although the play revolves around his deed and fate, but Gregory Jon Phelps does a great job with the part. In this production, after the intermission, he comes on stage with a guitar and sings Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young,” which fits nicely with the play’s storyline—and he’s got a fine voice, besides. (When Phelps appeared with the guitar last night, one audience member shouted out “Captain Tempest”—an allusion to Phelps’s role in ASC’s production a couple of years ago of Return to the Forbidden Planet; that got a chuckle out of Phelps.) There’s also plenty of comedy in this play, provided in this production by James Keegan’s prancing clown Pompey (and the scene where the Provost assigns him to assist the burly executioner, played by Thomas Keegan, is hilarious), by Allison Glenzer’s brash Mistress Overdone, and especially by Lucio, played wonderfully and foppishly by the always-funny John Harrell.

The three current productions at the Blackfriars (Measure for Measure, King Lear, Twelfth Night), plus Richard II, which opens in September, run through mid-December. They’re all worth seeing, more than once if you can.

The New Yorker: "The Dinner Party" by Joshua Ferris

How about that? I actually like the story this week. I don’t know that it’s great, mind you, and I think the end could have been sharper, but for most of the story I was very happy. A young couple—who can’t have children, apparently—are preparing for a dinner party which the husband says is entirely predictable. And she goes along with it, even though she’s increasingly annoyed by his banter, because the couple they are expecting are really her friends, and he’s being pretty cruel about them. It’s clear that he doesn’t like them and that he’s being unreasonable. The dialogue throughout this scene is fantastic and it seemed like it would make a great play. Time goes on and the predictable becomes . . . unpredictable. The expected couple is a no-show and now the hosts have to figure out whether to be pissed or worried. She goes for worried, he goes for pissed. Eventually she goes to bed and he goes over to the guests’ apartment to see if he can find out what happened. And he does, but I won’t spoil that for readers who haven’t seen the story. The scene that results, though, is a classic climax where the real conflict of the story is dealt with head on in a scene that, if anything, could have been messier.

And then there’s the ending, which, as I said, I think could have been sharper. (Stories that end with one of the characters crying always seem like a cop out to me, even if the tears are earned.) Dissenting opinions?


August 11 & 18, 2008: "The Dinner Party" by Joshua Ferris

8/8/8

Happy prosperity day! (The Chinese word for eight--ba--is similar to the word for wealth or prosper--fa--and so the number 8 is considered lucky . . .)

Bad Idea: The Writers' Lab

No, no, The Writers' Lab isn't a bad idea. It's a new tool being launched by a UK online magazine called Bad Idea. Check out The Writers' Lab, and associated pages such as the Butcher's Shop, in case your stuff isn't bloody enough already.

New Issue: Carve

There's also a new issue of Carve that has just gone live.

New Issue: The Short Review #10

There's a new issue of The Short Review, the zine that reviews short story collections.

Has anyone seen Antietam Review lately?

Is Antietam Review dead? For months, writers have been reporting that submissions sent to the address posted on the website for Antietam Review have been returned by the post office. My own submission nearly a year ago did not come back, but I haven't had a response either. Phone calls to the Washington Arts Council, host of AR, have not been returned. An email to the editor at his day job--he teaches at Shepherd College--was not answered. It's most unfortunate if the magazine is dead. But whether or not it is dead, the editors should realize that the website lives forever and they need to post accurate information there. If it's dead, let us know. If the address has changed, let us know that.

Update: I just had an email from the Washington County Arts Council confirming at the Antietam Review has suspended publication.

Wasted Days

I already knew on Monday night that I had a problem, but I didn't want to think about. Sure enough, on Tuesday morning my computer was misbehaving. Rather than bore anyone with the pain and anquish I went through trying to work around the problems--let me just say that I had backed everything up, so even if my computer had completely died it would not have been a catastrophe--I'll skip to the solution. At some point, I realized that what I thought was a virus protection program that Microsoft was trying to force me to buy was actually a virus that my Norton software was doing battle with, turning my screen into a bloody mess. So I Googled "XP Antivirus 2008" (the virus I had) and got more information, and learned that few standard protection packages could combat it effectively. This pointed me toward a free program, SuperAntiSpyWare, which I downloaded, updated and ran. No more XP Antivirus.

Windows appears to have been a little damaged in the process, but all other functions appear normal, so . . . back to work.

The Micro Award

I don't know anything about this other than what the Micro Award Website says: it's a contest for the best short-short (under 1,000 words) published in 2007; submissions should be mailed to the administrator by September 30, 2008; and the winner, as determined by a panel of judges, will win $50.00. And there's a $2 fee to cover costs.

So if you write flash fiction, or an editor who publishes flash fiction, you might want to go for a little extra exposure (and $) and submit something for consideration. Or not, since I gather this is the first year of the contest, and I have no idea who the guy is who came up with the idea. Still, it's only $2, plus postage. So why not?

The Blurb Hunt

First, write the book. Then comes the hard part: getting someone to blurb it:

the blurb hunt

H/T Susan W.

Solzhenitsyn Dies

The New York Times reports that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn has died. He was one of those writers whose work I admired but often found unbearable. The book that made his reputation, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was great, and I read Cancer Ward and The First Circle, but his Gulag Archipelago seemed something more to be owned (I do) than read (I haven't). Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970.

New Issue: 34th Parallel

Issue 3 of 34th Parallel is available, in print and online. You can read the online version with the handy issuu tool . . .

New Reviews at NewPages.com

I think I failed to mention the latest round of Literary Magazine Reviews at NewPages.com because I was on my way out the door to Sewanee, but they're up, they're new, and they're not going anywhere!

My Half of the Sky by Jana McBurney-Lin

My Half of the Sky

Jana McBurney-Lin

Komenar Publishing

My Half of the Sky by Jana McBurney-Lin was published two years ago (the paperback has just been released) and I should have read it then. I owned it—in fact I had two copies because I bought one and the author sent me one—but I was foolishly intimidated by its 500 pages. But I have now read it, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I hope that this review, coinciding with the publication of the paperback edition, will make up for my tardiness.

Li Hui is a young college-educated woman, the only child of typical Chinese parents in a “small” Chinese town of just a million residents. Because of the country’s one-child policy, her parents have no sons, leaving Li Hui to take care of them in their old age. Which would be problematic enough, but the father has a gambling problem, which soon places a burden also on Li Hui. Although qualified to teach elementary school, out of filial duty she returns to the village and takes the only job she can get—as a clerk in a tea shop. She is bright, so of course she excels. She’s also attractive, and so she comes to the attention of a handsome laborer, whom, the reader knows, will not be approved by the parents, even if other obstacles are overcome (such as Li Hui’s suspicions). Meanwhile, the parents have, in traditional fashion, arranged a marriage for Li Hui, although in this case it is with a professor who works in Singapore. [This development I found quite interesting because I knew the author when we both lived there.] In the interest of preserving the plot for readers I won’t go further, but there are, of course, wonderful complications, especially in the form of two fantastic characters: the professor’s mother and the American wife of the professor’s colleague.

The story by itself is completely engaging. The reader identifies and easily sympathizes with Li Hui, so every challenge to her is taken personally. On top of that, though, the entire book is a painless lesson in Chinese culture, including customs, food, folklore, living conditions, the role of women, tea, poverty, etc., as well as in the oddity that is modern Singapore. Instead of this information being force-fed in exposition, it all comes out beautifully and naturally as the story itself progresses. Li Hui is living these issues, and so the reader is able to see them. (This is one reason, I think why the book is as long as it is, and also the reason why the pages fly by so easily.)

In the end, the novel suggests some subtle challenges both to Chinese traditions and to American culture, as well as Singaporean rigidity. Lee Sa, the American wife of the professor’s colleague, is portrayed as brash and thoughtless. But even she is tempered through Li Hui’s quiet example. And although Li Hui’s future isn’t completely clear, the reader does understand that she isn’t going to be a doormat for her father any longer. She plans to control her own destiny, whatever that may be.

I regret that I didn’t read the book until now, but I can whole-heartedly recommend it to anyone interested Asia or, for that matter, in a good story about a woman searching for her way in the world.

A Slow Day

What do pets do when their people are away?

Get the Word Out!

I am often asked why I maintain this blog. The answer is complicated. It's part reading journal (The New Yorker Story reviews) and part self-promotion (the list of my publications). But more than that I like to use it to promote the work of other emerging writers, which is why I often review literary magazines and books published by small presses. That's where the emerging writers can be found.

So it was interesting to see a discussion today at Emerging Writers Network on the topic of what we can all do to support our emerging writer peers. It's a great topic, first raised by Blake Butler at No One Does That.

Check out those suggestions and see what you can do. It all boils down to Get the Word Out!

The New Yorker: "Clara" by Robert Bolaño

I find it hard to believe that The New Yorker didn’t have available to it a few thousand stories more interesting than this one. Seriously. I feel like I’ve read this a million times. (A little hyperbole, come to think of it, would have done this story good.) Narrator meets Clara, a girl with big breasts, in Barcelona. He falls in love, she moves back to wherever she lives elsewhere in Spain, they correspond. (There is one good line: “I reached the conclusion that her epistolary concision was motivated by a desire to avoid grammatical errors.”) He goes to visit, she’s moody, he pressures her to move in with him, she breaks it off. They both move on but he doesn’t get over her. She has marriages and affairs and a child. He does, too, but they stay in touch. She gets cancer . . . There is some confusion about what happens. At one point the narrator says “We did, however, talk on the phone before she died.” But she doesn’t die, at least in the story. At the end she has disappeared and her husband and son don’t know where to, and neither does the narrator. Translation error? Or is this an excerpt from something? Or is it just bad?

One thing that is worth noting about this story—an aspect that is neither good nor bad, in my view—is that it is almost entirely told in summary, rather than scene. It’s retrospective, there is very little dialogue (hardly any that’s quoted directly, except for a phone call), and so it has no immediacy. This may have been a choice by the author, but the distance it creates leaves me decidedly unmoved by the story’s events.

August 4, 2008: “Clara” by Robert Bolaño