Pay to Play?

How do you feel about magazines that charge a fee to read your submissions?

On the one hand, there are contests, some of which are better than others. And there are lots of variables in contests. Is the contest judged blind? Is the judge announced ahead of time or only after the winner is chose? How big is the prize? Are finalists published? What is the entry fee and does it include a subscription, or at least one copy of the magazine? (My personal guideline is that I'll enter a contest if the fee includes at least one issue of the magazine, and if the prize is worth the trouble, which means it needs to be in the neighborhood of $1000 for first place.) The merit of contests has been well debated. Check out the article by Jacob Appel (who has won or placed in lots of contests) in Poets & Writers about his experience.

On the other hand, there are some magazines that charge a fee just to look at regular submissions, and that's what I'm talking about here. The first magazine I was aware of charging for online submissions was Missouri Review, which, come to think of it, was the first magazine I was aware of that even accepted online submissions. They charge $3, payable by credit card, but for writers who don't want to pay the fee they also will accept submissions sent by post. If you are submitting a 20-page short story, you've paid $1 for photocopying and $2 for postage including the SASE, so that's about a wash. Might was well pay the fee and save a tree. Some other magazines have adopted a similar approach, with small fees charged for online submissions, presumably to offset the cost of operating the system, but with optional no-fee submissions allowed by post. Sonora and Meridian come to mind, both of which use the ManuscriptHub.com submission system.

An increasing number of literary journals use the CLMP Online Submission Manager, and until recently I thought that was a mostly free service. That has changed, though, with the introduction of American Short Fiction's fee of $2. They don't seem to offer a no-fee option, though, and some writers are upset about that. Probably the objection is not just about the money, however. As noted, a typical submission sent by post actually costs about $3, a little less if you're sending to Subtropics, which doesn't want the SASE since they're going to contact submitters by email anyway. But there are privacy concerns with the use of credit cards for online purchases, and that, it seems to me, is a legitimate worry. ASF won't be getting submissions from those people.

And then there are the magazines that charge real money for reading submissions. Narrative and Glimmer Train are the primary examples here. Both have short open submission, no-fee periods, but some writers suspect that submissions during those open periods are given little or no attention. It's hard to know what the facts are, but I can't blame writers for being suspicious.

So, what's your view? Do you pay to play?

New Issue: Frigg #23

The Winter 2009 issue of FRiGG is up, with work by Mary Miller, Tiff Holland, Jennifer Pieroni, Ravi Mangla and many others!

The New Yorker: "Al Roosten" by George Saunders

Hahahahaha!

And that’s about all I’ve got to say about this story by George Saunders.

Although we’re in third person here, the style is free indirect, and so it feels very much first person, and it doesn’t take long to discover that Al Roosten is not only unreliable, he’s also inconsistent, self-absorbed, twisted, and not very nice. In other words, he’s a great character. Not very sympathetic—by the end, because you know there’s no chance he’s going to change, you’re probably rooting for him to get hit by a truck—but who cares? He’s funny. He re-evaluates everyone he knows in light of how they’ve treated him in the last five minutes, and he fantasizes about being welcomed into their loving arms, until he realizes how preposterously unlikely that is and so he goes back to hating them. Everyone. Except his nasty little nephews.

In the end, is he redeemed? He imagines knocking a homeless man to the ground and kicking him, but he does not do that. Is that redemption? For him, it actually comes close.

Not a great story, but a fun read.

February 2, 2009: “Al Roosten” by George Saunders

Favorite Online Magazines?

Esquire Magazine's Book Blog recently included a post about Great Online Literary Magazines. It's a short list, given the one point three million magazines there are out there (give or take): Narrative, Flatmancrooked, Guernica, Anderbo, and Adirondack Review.

No doubt these magazines are all worthy, but I can think of many that are their equals, and I've been thinking it's time to start compiling a Perpetual Folly list of the best online magazines.

What magazines would you include on your list of favorites?

20 Questions (continued)

Answers to Question #1 are still coming in:

Scott Doyle:
I am finally getting around to reading Revolutionary Road, and am two-thirds of the way through. I found Part One quite good, at times brilliant: real harrowing stuff emotionally. Part Two had some point-of-view changes that were intriguing, but also threw me a little. And it's one of those things where I'm thinking, 'Does this bother me just
because I'm a writer?' But there are some interesting complications, and I'm
looking forward to Part Three. I may or may not see the movie. [Scott Doyle has a story in the Winter Issue of New Madrid, and blogs at LitScribbler]

Mithran Somasundrum:
At the moment for want of anything else I'm re-reading The Hound of the
Baskervilles (Conan Doyle). I'm enjoying the atmosphere all over again -- the brooding fog-bound moor, the sense of nameless dread, mysterious goings on in Baskerville Hall (who is Barrymore signal to?). Plus, there's a certain kind of period dialogue I can't get enough of ("At last Watson we have a foeman worthy of our steel".) I envy anyone reading it for the first time. [Mithran Somasundrum is a short story writer published in literary and genre mags.]

Self-publishers Flourish

The publishing industry is changing, there's no doubt about that. For yet another look at how, there's an interesting piece in today's New York Times: Self-publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab. There are some interesting figures in the article about the numbers of books published (a big jump in 2008 over 2007) and the numbers of titles that some of the larger self-publishing companies handle. That's great, but caveat emptor:

Diamonds in the rough, though, remain the outliers. “For every thousand titles that get self-published, maybe there’s two that should have been published,” said Cathy Langer, lead buyer for the Tattered Cover bookstores in Denver, who said she had been inundated by requests from self-published authors to sell their books. “People think that just because they’ve written something, there’s a market for it. It’s not true.”

I've seen some of those.

Remembering Updike

Read more about John Updike in The New York Times and The New Yorker.

The New Yorker: "Elephant" by Aravind Ardiga

Chenayya is a cart driver who makes deliveries for Ganesh Pai’s furniture shop. The work is crushing, especially when he has to pedal the cart over Lighthouse Hill. He pays Pai for the privilege, but earns tips from the recipients. He also plays the local lottery. On one particular trip up the hill with a heavy burden, he sees an elephant coming down with a light load. He’s struck by the injustice. In the evenings, the other cart pullers drink cheap liquor, but Chenayya doesn’t join them, but instead thinks about injustice and plots to steal from the furniture seller. A journalist visits the cart pullers asking questions and inspires Chenayya to seek work in a factory instead, but that doesn’t work out. He as a moment of clarity (completely implausible, it seems to me) that he should work for a political candidate, and he is indeed able to help the candidate win votes in a Muslim neighborhood. But he receives no reward for his work. The next day, he receives an extraordinarily large tip from a European. With his good fortune, he buys lottery tickets and liquor (and again, this is implausible, since he hasn’t wasted his money on liquor in the past) until all the money is gone. He grows even more bitter. On the way back from a delivery he sees the elephant again, and the mahout is also complaining about life. Chenayya imagines that the poor have built their own jails.

And that’s it. We’re left with a very poor, angry man who at the end of the story is maybe a little less angry, for no reason that makes any sense. I hope for Adiga’s sake that this is an excerpt from a new novel, because it makes a lousy short story.

January 26, 2009: “Elephant” by Aravind Adiga

John Updike Dies

John Updike Dies of Lung Cancer

Happy Year of the Ox!

NBCC Award Finalists Announced

The National Book Critics Circle (of which I'm a member) has announced the finalists for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Awards. (Hooray for Elizabeth Strout and Laila Lalami!)

Fiction Finalists
Roberto Bolaño, 2666. Farrar, Straus
Marilynne Robinson, Home, Farrar, Straus
Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project, Riverhead
M. Glenn Taylor, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, West Virginia University Press
Elizabeth Strout, Olive Kittredge, Random

Poetry Finalists
August Kleinzahler, Sleeping It Off in Rapid City, Farrar, Strauss
Juan Felipe Herrera, Half the World in Light (University of Arizona Press)
Devin Johnston, Sources (Turtle Point Press)
Pierre Martory (trans. John Ashbery), The Landscapist (Sheep Meadow Press)
Brenda Shaughnessy, Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press)

Criticism Finalists
Richard Brody, Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life Of Jean-Luc Godard. Metropolitan Books
Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life. Boston Review/MIT
Joel L. Kraemer, Maimonides: The Life and World of One of Civilization’s Greatest Minds. Doubleday
Reginald Shepherd, Orpheus in the Bronx: Essays on Identity, Politics, and the Freedom of Poetry, University of Michigan Press
Seth Lerer, Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History: Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, University of Chicago Press

Biography Finalists
Paula J. Giddings, Ida, A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching. Amistad.
Steve Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family In An American Century. Penguin Press.
Patrick. French, The World Is What It Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul. Knopf.
Annette Gordon-Reed, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. Norton
Brenda Wineapple, White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson & Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Knopf

Autobiography Finalists
Rick Bass, Why I Came West. Houghton Mifflin.
Helene Cooper, The House On Sugar Beach, Simon and Schuster
Honor Moore, The Bishop’s Daughter. WW Norton
Andrew X. Pham, The Eaves Of Heaven. Harmony Books.
Ariel Sabar, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq. Algonquin

Nonfiction Finalists
Dexter Filkins, The Forever War, Knopf
Drew Gilpin Faust, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the Civil War, Knopf
Jane Mayer, The Dark Side, Doubleday
Allan Lichtman, White Protestant Nation, Atlantic
George C. Herring, From Colony to Superpower: US Foreign Relations Since 1776. Oxford University Press

Balakian Finalists
Michael Antman
Kathryn Harrison
Laila Lalami
Todd Shy

20 Questions

This is a new feature here at Perpetual Folly. Over the coming months, I'll pose a series of questions (I'm guessing 20, but we'll see how it goes) to a bunch of writers, and I'll post the answers here. Pretty simple. I think it will be interesting.

I started with an easy one: What are you reading now?


Jessica Lipnack:
Sea of Poppies, about 50 pages into it, and completely confused. Characters, language all a jumble. I assume the problem is me in which case it's/I'm a BIG problem. [Jessica Lipnack is the co-founder of NetAge, and the author, with Jeff Stamps, of several influential books on networking.]

Sandra Novack:
I've been very fortunate to get my hands on an Advanced Review Copy of Deirdre Shaw's forthcoming novel, Love or Something Like It (due in stores April, 2009). I've only just started reading, but I find the characters wonderfully engaging, the musings sharp and clear-sighted, and the writing wonderfully accomplished. [Note: Sandra Novack's debut novel, Precious, will be released from Random House on February 17, 2009.]

Mary Akers:
I'm reading Small Wonder right now. Essays, by Barbara Kingsolver. I'm loving it, and already marking the essays I want to return to and read again. I love the eclectic mix of science, writerly concerns, parenting, and global accountability in them. It's so refreshing to read a book that isn't afraid of the diversity within its pages. Lately I've begun to feel as if the publishing industry is obsessed with requiring linked collections of this and that...as if all being written by the same author were not "linking" enough. [Note: Mary Akers is the author of Women Up On Blocks, which will be released from Press 53 in February 2009, and is also the co-author of Radical Gratitude, which will be issued by Simon & Schuster in the UK and Canada in March 2009 as The Greatest Gift.]

Anonymous:
I very rarely read works that require more than one or two hours. 95% of my
reading comes from literary magazines. I keep track of the stories/essays I like
and re-read them after awhile, particularly on weekends, when my library is at
my disposal. This morning I re-read a story called "Circus of the Sun" by Nancy Matson, in a 1999 issue of Hayden's Ferry Review. I originally read it in 2002 and really liked it then, and I really liked it again this morning. As far as new material I most recently read, it was two archive issues of Tin House, from 2003. My reaction was not a good one. Very pretentious and overblown, with a concentration on writers and figures already very well-known. The only piece I enjoyed was one classified under New Voices. If you decide to publish this comment, grateful if you could leave my name off it. :) [Anonymous needs no introduction to the readers of this blog.]

Martin Heavisides:
What am I reading and what do I think of it? I'm reading in a fairly desultory way at the moment, book to book--tend to do that when I'm at work on a major project if I read at all, because what I'm writing reminds me of things I'd like to reread or leads me in this direction or the other. I'm reading strictly for pleasure--even Ben Jonson though an assignment is tied to that; I'm editing a selection of his poems for the 'classics' section of The Linnet's Wings Spring issue. I wouldn't undertake a thing like that for anything but love, and Jonson's one of the greatest lyric poets in the English or any other language.
I dip into Alasdair Gray's Book of Prefaces regularly. Not a book to be read through, but a great reference resource and entirely without the stodginess usually associated with such. Not only Gray but a number of contemporary writers contribute the background comments to the prefaces, the idea of the project being to introduce the reader to the tradition of English literature by compiling prefaces and introductory statements of intent from a host of writers in every era. A book you can open anywhere with an expectation of delight.
I'm about halfway through Baudolino, probably Umberto Eco's best book since The Name of the Rose (and I'd give it points over even that).
Turning over the odd page of R.A. Lafferty, Peter Barnes (used a passage from his play No End of Dreaming as an epigraph in the novel I'm working on now)--touchstone writers for me always.
Planning to dip into Blake this afternoon, specifically to hunt up a passage from The American Revolution that begins: 'The Terror answer'd, I am Orc, wreathed round the sacred tree.' Thinking of using that and a number of others (the opening paragraph or two of Bleak House, something from Gulliver's Travels, maybe a passage from Villon in the original French, etc.) in a collage sequence in my novel I plan to call 'Completely Plagiarized Chapter'. Or not. I'll be sticking with works in the public domain if I do. Mainly a way of pointing readers to the traditions the rest of the novel is working from. [Martin Heavisides is a multi-genre writer who lives in Toronto.]

Donald Capone:
I'm half way through re-reading Hemingway's 1926 novel, The Sun Also Rises. I pulled it off my shelf to lend to someone, read the beginning, and got sucked in. It amazes me how modern the writing still seems, not just by the lack of adverbs and the fine use of dialogue, but by the attitude of the characters, especially with regards to sex. [Donald Capone's comic novel Into the Sunset is available on Amazon.]




Anyone who wants to answer the question is welcome to leave a comment here OR send me your answer in an email along with any biographical information or links you'd like me to share.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

From the Typewriter to the Bookstore: A Publishing Story

New Issue: Brevity #29

Lots of good stuff in Brevity 29.

Virginia Festival of the Book

The Virginia Festival of the Book is just 2 months away now and it looks quite good--I've studied the schedule and there are lots of programs I'm hoping to catch.

And then there's one I have to go to--because I'm going to be the moderator! Actually, it looks really interesting: A Group of One's Own: Writers in Community. I'm looking forward to it!

The Rumpus

With the newspaper industry in a shambles and cost-cutting axes aimed at book review space in those paper and ink dinosaurs that have managed to survive, we are grateful for the growth of reviewing on the internet. A new online venue for reviews has just come to my attention: The Rumpus. I could describe it and tell you what they're up to, or you could just check it out yourself. I vote for the latter.

2009 Tournament of Books

Time for the Tournament of Books, the "Battle Royale of Literary Excellence" in which sixteen books are pitted against each other to determine the eventual winner. As the organizers say:

"No author asks to have his work pitted against the work of another, but that is what all awards do, in effect. The Nobel Prize is an Olympiad of words. The Man Booker is the Premier League Championship of Letters. Everyone knows that, behind the scenes, the National Book Award is both arbitrary and brutal, sort of like Keeping Up With the Kardashians meets Ultimate Fighting. The Tournament of Books is every bit as arbitrary, but we have simply lifted the curtain so the reader can actually see the caged octagon in which the books meet, barefoot and snarling."

I've included a list of the contenders here, but if you want more information, go here for links to the Powell's site, where a discount is offered on the sweet sixteen.

The Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books Contenders
The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga
2666, Roberto Bolano
A Partisan’s Daughter, Louis de Bernieres
The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher
The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon
My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru
Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart
Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen
The Dart League King, Keith Lee Morris
A Mercy, Toni Morrison
Steer Towards Rock, Fae Myenne Ng
Netherland, Joseph O’Neill
City of Refuge, Tom Piazza
Home, Marilynne Robinson
Harry, Revised, Mark Sarvas

Air and Simple Gifts

Praise Song for the Day

The Inaugural Poem: Praise Song for the Day, by Elizabeth Alexander:

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Happy ObamaDay!

Word Power

I like this article in the New York Times: From Books, New President Found Voice. Can we at least hope that this lesson will not be lost?

Much has been made of Mr. Obama’s eloquence — his ability to use words in his speeches to persuade and uplift and inspire. But his appreciation of the magic of language and his ardent love of reading have not only endowed him with a rare ability to communicate his ideas to millions of Americans while contextualizing complex ideas about race and religion, they have also shaped his sense of who he is and his apprehension of the world.

America has a lot to learn from this President.

"Valuable Artifacts"

It's an odd way of finding out about something, but then Facebook is a very odd place. I noticed the link to this short essay on Richard Bausch's Facebook status: Valuable Artificats, by Richard Bausch. Among other reflections:

To me, books are the physical vessels that keep us linked to all the human times and places, nothing less than the one practical, hands-on thing that cheats death and the silence

After you've finished reading this little gem by Bausch, you might want to explore elsewhere in English Matters to see what else you can find.

The New Yorker: "Soldier's Joy" by Antonya Nelson

It’s pure coincidence, but I also read today a John Cheever story to which this Nelson piece bears a resemblance. Drinking, adultery, lots of parties, flirting with the neighbor girl. Here, Nana is married to a professor who is nearly her parents’ age, and they live in Houston, the same city where Nana’s close friend Helen lives. The husband drinks too much. He flirts with Helen’s daughter and breaks crystal ware. They don’t have children; they have dogs. But Nana has to go out of town for a few days when her father has an accident. She has forgotten—too conveniently for the writer, it seems to me—that her old boyfriend has moved next door to her parents. He has a wife and a couple of kids and it doesn’t surprise the reader much when they’re old flame rekindles. And then Nana gets some shocking news from home. It isn’t entirely clear what she’s going to do now, and the prospect of dealing with her life she finds exhausting. Instead, she settles in, at least for one last simple meal, with her parents, where she doesn’t have to think.

I’m a fan of Nelson’s fiction, but this story leaves me cold. It seems like a pale version . . . of a Cheever story.

January 19, 2009: “Soldier’s Joy” by Antonya Nelson

The Resurrection of StoryQuarterly

I have several copies of StoryQuarterly on my shelves. It was an annual publication run by M.M.M. Hayes and it was a great credit, for thos who could place stories there. A couple of years ago, writers were surprised to learn that Narrative Magazine, the online publication edited by Tom Jencks and Carol Edgarian that writers love to hate but would kill to get into, was going to be taking over StoryQuarterly and would run the two magazines in parallel, with a quarterly online edition supplementing StoryQuarterly's annual print issue. That notion never made sense to me and, in fact, it never came to pass. Instead, StoryQuarterly just disappeared (although it's old website, www.storyquarterly.com, will take you to the Narrative website).

But today I was browsing the exhibitors that are scheduled to appear at AWP 2009 in Chicago next month and I noticed that "MFA at Rutgers" is sharing a table with "StoryQuarterly." I checked on the web and read all about the new MFA program at Rutgers that Jayne Anne Phillips is directing, but that didn't answer my question. Then I Googled "MFA at Rutgers" AND "StoryQuarterly" and made a very interesting discovery.

According to this press release, Rutgers University -- Camden acquired StoryQuarterly in October. They plan to continue the annual publication and also plan an online publication that was supposed to have begun in the fall. Following the links, I got to a new website for StoryQuarterly, although it doesn't give much information about how the revived magazine will operate, other than to say that Marie Hayes will continue as a consultant.

I would love to know the full story of what happened with Narrative, so if anyone knows, please post a comment!

Update #1: I sent an email to Narrative and got a reply confirming that Narrative had taken over the publication of StoryQuarterly in March 2007, and informing me that they had no plans to distribute the magazine at AWP. Huh? When I responded by sending them a link to the Rutgers-Camden Press Release, they came back to me again and said I should contact Rutgers for more information. Okay. I did. Haven't heard back yet.

American Shakespeare Center: The Revenger's Tragedy

If you like mayhem, The Revenger's Tragedy is the play for you.

I was not familiar with it, but that’s one of the great things about the American Shakespeare Center—not only am I constantly learning more about the plays I think I know, but also I’m exposed to new and more obscure plays. That’s especially true during the Actors’ Renaissance Season, and this year, along with this play (and two by Shakespeare), we’re getting another Middleton and a play by George Chapman, all from around the same period in the late 16th or early 17th Century. (See these helpful notes about the play.)

This play focuses on Vindice, who seeks revenge against the Duke for the killing of his betrothed. He’s also not happy with the Duke’s son, who is pursuing Vindice’s sister. But there are also the nefarious stepsons of the Duke, engaged in various plots and misdeeds, and the Duke’s bastard son, who is having an affair with the Duke’s new wife. In the end, the stage is littered with bodies.
The remarkable thing about the Actors’ Renaissance Season is that the company puts on outstanding productions in a very short period that allows for just a few rehearsals. It almost doesn’t seem possible, but they’ve done it again with this one.

Vindice, who carries around with him the skull of his dead lover, is played by Benjamin Curns. Curns does a great job with this single-minded, revenge-driven character. Vindice’s brother Hippolito is played by Alyssa Wilmoth, and together they plot the downfall of the Duke (Chris Seiler) while at the same time they undermine the Duke’s son, Lussurioso, played by John Harrell. Harrell makes a terrific villain, but he’s not the only bad guy here. Gregory Jon Phelps is Spurio, the Duke’s bastard son, and it doesn’t take much for the Duchess, played by Sarah Fallon, to seduce him. Then there are the Duchess’s sons, with the great names of Ambitioso (Thomas Keegan), Supervacuo (Chris Johnston), and Junior (Nolan Carey). They’re made up in white face, lipstick and nail polish, and it’s clear they’re up to no good. I loved the scenes between the disguised Vindice and his sister Castiza, played wonderfully by Miriam Donald, and their mother Gratiana, played by Allison Glenzer. The audience can see Gratiana bend to the argument made by Vindice and also Vindice’s horror that he’s been able to convince his mother to sacrifice Castiza to Lussurioso. (You’ve got to love these names—very helpful in keeping the character’s intentions straight.)

In your lifetime you won’t get many chances to see this play, so book your tickets now!

New Issue: failbetter.com

Check out the Winter issue of failbetter.com, which includes an interview with the wonderful Elizabeth Strout.

Dudes Don't Read?

Very interesting article in The Huffington Post: Dudes Don't Read: The Book Biz's Self-fulfilling Prophecy.

Absolutely. I think men will read if you give them what they like. And don't make it pink.

(H/T Mary!)

Shakespeare is Everywhere

If you live in this area, you aren't going to be able to turn around without bumping into some Shakespeare this weekend, all brought to you by the amazing American Shakespeare Center. First, the Actors' Renaissance Season is kicking into gear at the Blackfriars Playhouse, with a second play being added to the rotation. The Revenger's Tragedy by Thomas Middleton joins A Midsummer Night's Dream. You can see the former Thursday, Friday, or Saturday, and you can see the latter Sunday afternoon.

Or, maybe you have a taste for Hamlet, in which case you could see the Touring Company's performance at the new black box theater at Blue Ridge Community College (where I hope you'll run into a lot of my students).

Or, maybe you're interested in tasting some wine along with your Shakespeare and would like to help the ASC out financially at the same time, in which case you might attend the Veritas Vineyard & Winery ASC Fundraiser Saturday evening, where you'll enjoy the Touring Company's performance of The Comedy of Errors, not to mention the great food and drink.

If you haven't seen an ASC production, this is a great opportunity to see one or more. If you have, this is a great chance to show your support to this wonderful organization.

New Issue: Bound Off

Listen to "Algorithms of a Breakup" by Steve Howard and "Succession" by Dawn Alison in the new issue of Bound Off.

The New Yorker: "Pumpkin Head" by Joyce Carol Oates

This story has moments that gripped me, but I never quite got over the stumbling beginning. I don’t want to tell Joyce Carol Oates how to write her stories, but her introductory paragraph shouldn’t begin this story. Yes, it’s lovely, and the reference to “crossing-over time” is crucial, but the story begins in October, and that paragraph about what happened in March can wait. (Okay, so I guess I do want to tell JCO how to writer her stories.)
After that, I was intrigued. Hadley is a young widow (just as Oates recently lost her husband), and she’s attracted—for mysterious reasons that relate to her childhood—to Anton, a young post-doc who works at the local Co-op. He has “dropped by”, and she’s not too upset to see him—it seems she might be ready to finally emerge after a long period of mourning—but she is slightly repulsed by Anton. The man is forceful, though, and she doesn’t have the strength to ask him to leave, although she does lie to him feebly. It turns out that he’s had a bad time of it and he’s a bit cracked, like the pumpkin head he’s wearing when she first sees him (it’s a bizarre effort at a Halloween gift). When he goes further and tries to force himself on her, she resists, and eventually he leaves her. She should call the police, but she doesn’t. She goes outside and calls to him, instead.
I understand that she’s lonely, and I can understand her letting a man into her life at this moment, but I do not buy this woman with this man, this man who smells of garbage who has nearly raped her.
January 12, 2009: “Pumpkin Head” by Joyce Carol Oates

"Sorry to be so very tardy!"

Yeah, sure. Whatever.

Actually, I thought the apology hand-printed on the rejection slip was better than nothing, and I was curious to find out just how tardy this university-based journal was.

Sadly, I don't know. I do know that my most recent submission to this magazine was in September 2007, but my database shows that I received a rejection from them in mid-December that year. My previous submission had been in March 2007, but I withdrew that story when it was accepted elsewhere. Conceivably, given the sloppiness of this journal, that December '07 rejection was in reference to the withdrawn submission, since it happens fairly often that editors don't see the withdrawals. Which would mean that this new rejection is a mere 18 months after submission. (The postage doesn't help; it looks like someone added postage onto my SASE to bring it up to date.) Or possibly the rejection was in response to the story I withdrew in July of 2006 when another magazine grabbed that one. Or the story I deemed lost in December 2005 because I had not heard anything from the magazine in over a year, despite queries as to the submission's status. (That one's been published, too.) The bottom line is that this magazine is sloppy or slow or both, and I see no point in submitting to them again. Their loss. The real mystery is why I haven't reached that conclusion before now.

American Shakespeare Center: On Tour

If you haven't had a chance to see a production by the American Shakespeare Center, here's your chance for a glimpse of the company.



The ASC is in the midst of a major fund drive and they need your help: Survive and Thrive. Please help if you can.

Cliff wants . . .

To discover what you secretly wish for, Google "[your name] wants" (and don't forget the quotation marks, or it won't work), then list the first 10 items that make sense. Post your results in a comment here, or just chuckle to yourself . . .

Cliff wants less controller buttons, more waggle.
Cliff wants to beat X Factor.
Now Cliff wants a threesome.
Cliff wants to ring a chicken's neck.
Cliff wants private loo in Celebrity Big Brother.
Coach Cliff wants you to have a healthy holiday break.
Cliff wants to hear from you.
Cliff wants musicians to receive royalty payments.
Cliff wants another word for Thesaurus.
If Cliff wants to start, he better get that area between his ears in order.

Press 53 Contest

Press 53 is having it's second annual Open Awards and the deadline in all categories is March 31. They've got some great people judging in Flash Fiction, Short-Short, Short Story, Poetry, Novella, Creative Non-fiction, Genre, and Young Writers. There's no prize money, but you get a cool trophy AND inclusion in an Anthology (along with some of the runners-up).

American Shakespeare Center: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Now, THAT'S entertainment. I haven't checked, but I suppose this is at least the third production of A Midsummer Night's Dream that the American Shakespeare Center has done since the Blackfriars Playhouse opened in 2001. It has to be the funniest. And the audience loved it, laughing more than any audience I can remember for Shakespeare, and demanding an extra curtain call (or whatever the term is if there is no curtain) when it was all over. The cast seemed to be having a great time, too. I plan to see this production again, and I hope everyone who loves theater (or comedy, or music) gets to see it, too.

But I'm way ahead of myself. There were two large student groups in the audience tonight—or maybe that was one huge group, sitting in two blocks—and I'm always afraid that students won't "get" Shakespeare. But I needn't have worried. They were definitely into it, right from the pre-show entertainment. Which was great. As always, the company sang several songs that were relevant to the story they were about to tell, and during the last song—featuring the delightful voices of Miriam Donald and Alyssa Wilmoth—the characters in the opening scene of the play appeared, so that the action could begin as soon as the musicians dispersed. And that opening scene is terrific, even for Shakespeare; it sets up beautifully the conflict between Lysander and Demetrius over Hermia, establishes Lysander and Hermia's plan to run away together, and reveals Helena's plan to let their secret out. And we're off! Gregory Jon Phelps is a terrific Lysander to Miriam Donald's bubbly Hermia, and I also enjoyed Chris Johnston's Demetrius, who was hilarious trying to run away from Sarah Fallon's aggressive Helena. This quartet of young lovers is wonderful, as are Chris Seiler as the Duke and Erin Baird as Hippolyta. Aaron Hochhalter is very funny as Egeus, Hermia's father, in his insistence that she marry Demetrius.

And then there are the "Mechanicals"—the tradesmen who are planning to put on a play to celebrate the wedding of the Duke and Hippolyta. Here, Aaron Hochhalter is Peter Quince who is directing the men in their play (which is a nice bit of meta-theater, since Hochhalter has been doing a good bit of directing and assistant directing with the ASC). He's very good, especially at the end when they actually put on their play. There's also John Harrell as Bottom. This is such an important role for this play and Harrell makes it zing. He's outrageously funny during the rehearsal and again when he is under Puck's spell, and then again during the performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. Harrell is worth the price of admission. But we're not done yet! Also among the Mechanicals is Thomas Keegan as Flute, who gets chosen to play Thisbe to Harrell's Pyramus. Keegan is hilarious. He's a big guy with a deep voice, which makes him a convincing tradesman, and his character's reluctance to play the female part shows clearly on his face and in his posture. When he launches into his falsetto, the contrast is uproarious. And then when he shows up in full drag (what an outfit!) for the play, the audience is rolling on the floor. Harrell and Keegan make a great team, and the staging is wonderful—amazing, given that there are no directors during the Actors' Renaissance Season. (René Thornton, Jr. is also funny as Snug the joiner; I loved his shy little waves and cautious roar as the lion in Pyramus and Thisbe.)

Which brings us to the Fairies. Thornton is Oberon and does an excellent job there, as does Alyssa Wilmoth as Titania, the Fairy Queen. But the key role here is Puck, and I was skeptical about seeing Benjamin Curns play the part. Physically, Curns is no fairy. But no matter. He does a fine job of carrying out Oberon's instructions and casting spells on the young lovers, Bottom, and Titania, and there's some great comedy in his scenes with Oberon.

This is a spectacular production that shouldn't be missed. Which is absolutely amazing when you remember that this is the Actors' Renaissance Season—there's been very little rehearsal and no direction. It proves that the actors in the ASC are superb and we're lucky to be able to experience their work. I can't wait to see the other four shows this season: The Revenger's Tragedy, Henry VI, Part 1, The Changeling, and The Blind Beggar of Alexandria. What an AMAZING opportunity this is.

What fools these mortals be!

VA Book!

The Virginia Festival of the Book is fast approaching. Dates this year are March 18-22. Stay tuned for more details.

NAACP Image Awards

Nominations have been announced for this year's Image Awards. In the category of Literary Fiction there are five nominees, one of whom is Bonnie Glover, whose Going Down South has been earning a good bit of recognition.

The other finalists in Literary Fiction are:
Tananarive Due for Blood Colony
Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due, and Steven Barnes for In the Heat of the Night
E. Lynn Harris for Just Too Good to Be True
James McBride for Song Yet Sung

GOOD LUCK, BONNIE!

Check out all the nominees (pdf file)

Andrew's Book Club

Andrew's Book Club. It's a club, it's a website, it's a blog! It's all three! Andrew Scott, a fiction writer and teacher in Indiana, is going to be discussing two short story collections each month (one big press, one small press), and we're all supposed to participate. Sounds like fun. I read lots of story collections. I might not be able to keep up--I've got my own reading list, you know--but I'll try to read some of the books on his list.

To start with, he's discussing Allison Amend's book Things That Pass for Love, which is available from OV Books (now an imprint of Dzanc), and Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds from Hyperion.

This is an exciting development in reading and blogging. Thanks, Andrew!

(and thanks, Mary, for the tip)

Women Up On Blocks by Mary Akers

This terrific short story collection is now available for pre-order from the publisher, Press 53. I've read all the stories, and I promise you'll love it.

How Obama Won by Earl Ofari Hutchinson

How Obama Won by Earl Ofari Hutchinson is now available. Here's what the book's website says:

How Obama Won is a provocative, hard hitting critical assessment of the issues, events, forces, politics, pressures and controversy that shaped and ensnared Barack Obama in his historic 2008 presidential campaign.

Political analyst Earl Ofari Hutchinson examines the impact of race and gender, campaign strategy, the key political players, the nature of presidential politics, the changes in the Democratic and Republicans parties, the importance of the black, Hispanic, youth, women and blue collar white worker votes, the role of corporation and special interests in American politics.

Hutchinson tells what the first African-American to win the White House means to America and the world.

If you watched this recent election as closely as I did, you probably saw or read Hutchinson's commentary. This is the first book out on the election (isn't it? it has to be), and I'm really looking forward to seeing it.

The New Yorker: "The Limner" by Julian Barnes

Didn’t you think this was a little too predictable? It was a nicely told tale, skillfully using archaic language and syntax, as if Barnes channeled Jonathan Swift or some other writer of a much earlier time, it wasn’t hard to see what was going to happen or why, and I can’t say that I cared much. The limner, or illustrator, is a deaf man nearing his retirement. He is alone in life because he travels constantly to earn his keep but also because he would not want children who might inherit his hearing defect. Never mind that his hearing loss was the result of a childhood illness. The limner is a loner. Except for his horse. In any case, he arrives in a village and acquires a commission from Tuttle, the argumentative customs collector, who wants a portrait that gives him suitable dignity. He isn’t satisfied, and he’s rude about it. (Communication is through a notebook that Wadsworth the limner carries with him.) Furthermore, the limner does a sketch of a houseboy and Tuttle, proving that he’s the bad guy, destroys it. So both of these characters are on the one-dimensional side, it seems to me, and that might be the stories biggest problem. In the end, Tuttle stiffs Wadsworth, but Wadsworth gets revenge. A little too neat.

This one won’t be around when we get to the playoffs in December.

January 5, 2009: “The Limner” by Julian Barnes

New Issue: Per Contra

The Winter issue of Per Contra went live today. I'm especially pleased about that because my story In the Palace of Cortés is in this issue, along with contributions from some other fine writers.

Sunday Miscellany

1. Give Blood. Yesterday, I gave blood for the first time in a long time. They made it easy by setting up a mobile unit at my gym. I got there early so I could be among the first to get in and get out. I should have been giving regularly and I'm not sure why I haven't. Years ago, after my Peace Corps service and some travels in which I was taking anti-malaria drugs, I wasn't eligible to donate. But that was ages ago. Anyway, it's a good thing to do and I'm glad I went in. I plan to make it a regular thing. In Virginia, contact Virginia Blood Services.

2. Give Money. There has been news this week about the financial condition of the American Shakespeare Center. They need to raise a sizable amount of money in a short period of time, thanks to state budget cuts. Since attending productions at ASC's Blackfriar's Playhouse is my main entertainment outside of reading at home, I'm very concerned about this. I sent them a donation in December and will probably make my 2009 donation sooner rather than later, but I hope the word is getting around that our community needs this organization to remain healthy. Getting more people to come out and see the shows would help, too.

3. If a tree falls . . . The winds were really howling a few days ago. At one point I heard a loud noise--the dog heard it, too--and I even went to the porch to see if one of the trees in my yard had fallen. Since I couldn't see anything, I chalked the noise up to my neighbor's regular target practice (although in that wind, shooting probably wasn't wise). On our New Year's Day walk, though, Bhikku and I came across what might have been the source of the noise. A huge sycamore at the edge of my lower pasture had fallen. It was mostly dead, so the fall isn't a surprise. It fell across the creek--I'm trying to imagine how I can turn it into a bridge--and the crown of the tree flattened a bramgle that had been about 9 feet tall and virtually impenetrable. Now--except for the branches of the tree--we have a path through that part of the creekside land. The brittle crown shattered, too, so there's a lot of small broken branches lying around. Interesting stuff.

4. Clutter. I spent New Years Day--apart from that walk--cleaning my office. I had piles on my desk and also several document trays stuffed with paper--insurance forms, political documents, etc.--and now all that is straigtened out and the excess is gone. I also got the backup battery set up for my computer's UPS, I got Office 2007 installed on both the laptop and the desktop, and I feel like I'm ready to roll!

5. Little things. I drive a Saab. It's a '96 that I bought new. I like it and it's in reasonably good shape. It has a remote door lock function on the key fob and after 12 years the battery on the fob died. (I had two fobs and the battery on the first died awhile ago, but I've been using my backup since then.) I figured there was a battery inside but I couldn't figure out how to open the thing, until yesterday when I Googled "Saab key fob battery" and found others with a similar problem and a couple of helpful souls offering tips. It still took me awhile, but I finally got the thing open, then I opened the original fob, and now I'm ready to replace the batteries. It's a little thing, but it feels good!

7 Things

Ryan Call tagged me for the 7 Things About Me meme, and since I haven't posted anything for a couple of days, I'll play:

1. In high school, I wanted to be President of the United States. I'd be damn good in the job, but I no longer want it. I'm very happy with Obama, thank you. And besides, this was before I decided I was an atheist. America isn't ready for an atheist President, and never will be.

2. I like rules and order (and rules of order); I like math and logic; I like building things. I've always wanted to be an architect (even when I wanted to be President, and then when I wanted to be lawyer, and now that I want to string words together into stories and novels), and these things are all related.

3. I'm giving serious thought to becoming a vegetarian. A vegetarian probably can't be elected President either. But cruelty bugs me and most--not all!--meat production in this country is cruel. Beans don't feel pain, as far as I can tell.

4. I like to travel overseas. In 2008 I broke my 25-year string of being outside the United States for all or part of the year. Since 1975, the year I graduated from college, there have only been 5 years (mostly my law school and early law practice years) in which I didn't spend some time outside the country. Another reason I probably couldn't be elected President (but might have a shot at Secretary of State).

5. I'm not a great public speaker, but as a senior in high school I won Second Place in the Illinois State High School Association Speech Tournament, Declamation Division. I still have my silver medal. The guy who won was really, really good. I don't remember his name.

6. I have about 4,000 books. They fill up my house. I know people with twice that many books. Their houses aren't twice the size of mine. I don't understand.

7. I used to have a recurring dream in which I could fly. I gather that's not unusual. My dream involved flapping my arms and gliding, rather than superman-style soaring, though. I still think that would be cool.

The rule of this thing is that I'm supposed to tag 7 people to name 7 things about themeselves. We all know how much I like rules (see No. 2), but one of my personal rules is that I don't tag people in memes. Instead, if you read this and want to play along, consider yourself tagged. If you feel like it, you can mention in a comment here that you're tagging yourself!

Happy Bloggiversary to Me!

Perpetual Folly came into being on January 1, 2005, so we are four years old today. Readership has steadily grown, although we're still small as these things go: in 2008 we had about 40,000 visitors.

I enjoy having a place to post my thoughts on literature and comments on stories and books, so I expect to keep Perpetual Folly going, um, perpetually. Thanks for visiting!

2008 New Yorker Story of the Year

Congratulations to Joshua Ferris! Perpetual Folly readers have spoken and Ferris's story, The Dinner Party, has been chosen as the New Yorker Story of the Year for 2008. [To see all the finalists, go here.] William Trevor's The Woman of the House was a close second.

While I think both of these are fine, fine stories, I can't help wondering what would have happened if I had delayed the voting until after the Winter Fiction issue, because I'm sure two of the four stories in that issue would have been in the running. "The Gangsters" by Colson Whitehead probably would have received my vote, and others have said they thought Donald Antrim's "Another Manhattan" was best. I won't be surprised to see those two stories among the Best American Short Stories when the 2009 volume comes out next fall.

Congratulations again to Joshua Ferris!

See You in a Hundred Years by Logan Ward

The paperback edition of Logan Ward's terrific book, See You in a Hundred Years, has just come out. If you didn't read the original edition, which I discussed here, be sure to pick up a copy of the paperback. Logan was kind enough to show me an advance copy and there's a very interesting new afterward in this edition, so even if you've read the hardcover, check out the new edition. And here's a recent review. Great way to start the new year!