Winter of Different Directions, by Steven J. McDermott

Today is the last day of Short Story Month. I didn’t even come close to reading the 20 books I was aiming for. I think I got through about 10 (not counting a few literary magazines), which for me is a pretty good reading month, maybe even a record. Still, there’s this stack of unread story collections on the credenza behind the desk, and I guess I’ll have to work them into my rotation for the rest of the year, although I promise you that the next book I read will be novel. Guaranteed.

Having said that, I’ve got one more collection to talk about this month and that’s Winter of Different Directions by Steven J. McDermott. I confess that I haven’t finished reading the collection, so I’ll no doubt come back to it again at some point, but what I’ve read so far has pleased me. The stories are accessible and engaging, with characters who really feel.

“She slammed the door shut again. That wasn’t an option anyway; they were here friends. The only other friends I had were our friends, which aren’t any kind of friends at all. Not the kind that would help me move, or call me to ask how I was getting on. Not the kind that would give me a place to stay for a few days. That left Skeeter, my old army buddy. I’d have to give him a call, see if he’d let me hang out until it was time to return to Singapore.”

This is from “Swept Aside,” about a vet who has split from his Korean wife. With both my Korean and Singapore experiences, the circumstances McDermott is describing here caught my attention.

Keep an eye out for this collection and I’ll have more to say about it when I’ve finished reading.

LitMag Wave: The Sun, June 2007

As we near the end of Short Story Month, it seems fitting that we return to Alex Mindt, whose story collection The Male of the Species, began the festivities 30 days ago. The June 2007 issue of The Sun arrived yesterday and I was pleased to see that the fiction in the issue is Mindt’s “In the Near Dark.” It’s an emotional story and one that seems to be going over the familiar territory of what stress on a marriage is created, or exacerbated, by a miscarriage. It first takes that theme and makes it disturbingly real—ironic, given that the wife in the story feels that nothing she’s experiencing is real, that all she wants is to be real.

‘Nothing’s real.’ She lies back on the bed, puts her hands on her stomach, and looks up at the ceiling. ‘Like us talking. Talk, talk, talk. It’s not real. You know what’s real? Sex. Sex is real.’

And then the story takes a turn that I won’t reveal. But it’s another fine story from Mindt and let this serve as a reminder that you’ll love his collection, which I talked about here.

Spit Baths, by Greg Downs

More Short Story Month:

The stories in Greg Downs’s Spit Baths are filled with oddball characters and twisted relationships, often with an absent father or mother or both, and a grandmother or grandfather looming large: “Adam’s Curse,” “Black Pork,” “Snack Cakes,” “Spit Baths,” “Indoor Plumbing.”

“Crawford helped Maw-Maw fold the clothes. Really, he only helped with the towels and the sheets. He tried folding the shirts and the slacks, but he was never good enough, and Maw-Maw slapped his hand away, not hard, and refolded them herself.”

There are also a number of stories about people who seem to be spiraling out of reality, including “Black Pork” and “Between States.” (I had the pleasure of hearing Greg read from the latter at both Sewanee last year and AWP this year, where he also read “Adam’s Curse” and an excerpt from “A Comparative History of Nashville Love Affairs.”) This volume, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award last year, is a standout.

LitMag Wave: Short Story, No. 2, Spring 2007

I mentioned here last week that I’d become aware of a new literary journal, Short Story. I now have in my possession No. 2, Spring 2007, and I’m very pleased with the small magazine. It’s a manageable review, with four stories and interview and some terrific photographs.

The lead story is “Perfect Cake” by Michael P. Kardos, in which a chef who is in an unhappy or at least boring marriage visits a college campus as a substitute teacher in a culinary class. He has a run-in with a security guard that first manages to escalate and then feeds into his growing conflict with his wife. It’s a good story with lots of credible detail:

“Pudding-textured cheesecake innards clung to the sides of the can and stuck to bottles, cups and sections of newspaper. A big section of the cake had sunk to the bottom of the garbage, upon which lay a discarded piece of hot dog. Mustard from the hot dog mixed with the pumpkin-cream cheese mixture in incongruous yellows. Although the cake had been fresh, a stench emanated from the garbage like the beginnings of rot.”

Next is David Wright’s tragi-comic “No Hound Dog” in which an aging Elvis impersonator decides he can never again sing Hound Dog. The fans aren’t happy but he persists: “Hell, even Elvis didn’t like singing it.” Hah!

The interview seems at first an odd choice, but not on reflection. Editor Caroline Lord speaks with Howard Zeiderman, a tutor at St. John’s College in Annapolis (where the curriculum is based on classic texts). A friend of mine in graduate school was educated at St. John’s so I found the interview fascinating.

The issue also includes a selection of photographs by Dave Beckerman and an excerpt from an unpublished novel by James Dickey, reminding me that I'd like to read more Dickey.

Last is a nice story by Miriam Fusco called “Schist” that I can relate to. It’s about a pacifist who is ostracized by his town for his political views, but at least his mother understands.

I’ll be looking forward to the next issue.

Next up: Crazyhorse

LitMag Wave: One Story No. 89

With this story, One Story takes a dark turn. “The Wolf Story” by Irina Reyn is about Galya, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, who is disturbed by (and at the same time denies) the shallowness of her life in New York, caught up in clubs and restaurants and a dehumanizing job. Her friend is moved by deeper waters to explore her Jewish heritage in Poland and when the story begins Galya has arrived in Warsaw to visit, to offer her help to Lauren who has a problem. But is Lauren really the one with the problem, the story asks? This is one of the better stories I’ve seen in One Story in quite a while.

Next up: Short Story

The New Yorker: "Puppy" by George Saunders

I’m not completely sold on this story told in alternating points of view of two women who at first seem very different. First we see Marie with her children on their way to investigate a puppy advertised for sale because Marie is a mother who spoils her kids, although she says her kids are “well-loved.” Marie might be on mood-altering medication, given what the sight of the glorious sun on a cornfield does to her. She seems a little too happy. Callie on the other hand is trying to hold her family together with no money and she has a child who, at the very least, is hyper-active and probably worse. And their filthy dog has a had a pup that they can’t keep so she is hoping this stranger who called, Marie, will buy it. When Marie and the kids arrive, I think the reader realizes that Marie and Callie are not that different, and that it was luck or fate or some other invisible force that took them in opposite directions, the same force that decides the fate of the puppy, Callie’s son. And both Marie and Callie see it too. The question I have here is, whose story is this? Callie? Marie? The puppy? I find the two points of view frustrating, especially because Marie and Callie sound alike. We begin with Marie’s point of view and she does change along the way, but the ending is in Callie’s point of view and that is the voice we’re left with.

May 28, 2007: “Puppy” by George Saunders

LitMag Wave: Willow Springs

Willow Springs No. 58 (Fall 2006) is not the most recent issue, but it’s the one I’ve got. I enjoyed much of it, including a piece by Sherman Alexie (“My Encounters with the Homeless People of the Pacific Northwest”), which is listed as nonfiction but reads very much like Alexie’s fiction. There’s also a nice short story by Robert Lopez, “Vaya con Huevos” (which would be translated “Go with Eggs”) about a man who isn’t altogether there. I also liked Jess Walter’s “Sex Talk” about a boy who has an awkward relationship with his father.

But the reason I even have the issue is that it includes David James Poissant’s “Between the Teeth,” a story that I heard him read at Sewanee last summer. For my reading I had tentatively planned to read from “Stonewall,” my story from last year’s Confluence about a dead dog. But when Jamie read this story, about a dead dog, it seemed to trigger a series of dead dog readings and by the time it was my turn I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I remember that I was sitting behind Mary Flynn, editor of Blackbird, and I said “I thought you couldn’t get a dead dog story published?” She turned around and said, “You can’t in my magazine.” Obviously Jamie did, and so did I, but I ended up reading something else.

Also in this issue is a very interesting interview with Marilynne Robinson, which you can download.

Next up: One Story

How to Write a Short Story

This isn’t an essay on craft. No conflict, rising action, denouement; no Freitag’s triangle; no character, setting, plot. This is about process. More or less.

1. Have an idea. Brilliant, huh? Where do ideas come from, anyway? I frequently have ideas for stories while I’m writing other stories, plots or characters or predicaments that don’t fit in what I’m working on at the moment. Sometimes I see someone who, I imagine, is interesting (often after I fabricate an identity for them, and don’t ask me where that idea comes from). Or I read a story in the paper that seems odd or drama-filled. I try to write all this stuff down. I have a file on my computer called “Story Ideas” and it has about a hundred documents, all stories waiting to be written.

2. Start Writing. Unlike some writers, I don’t always know where a story is going. I don’t even know where the proper starting point is but you have start somewhere, right? So I start and keep writing until I have a sense of who the characters are and what the conflict is. I then usually stop and make some notes about what I know about these things that hasn’t made into what I’ve written so far.

3. Think. This is the hard part. This might involve looking at what I’ve got so far and imagining scenes—five or six of them—into which the story could be broken. I’ve probably written a couple of them already at this point, but a few more are needed. You might jot down a summary of the scenes on note cards (I don’t, but I think about doing it) so that you could rearrange the scenes if that seems like a good thing to do. This is also a good time to figure out how the story might end, which is a whole other discussion.

4. Finish writing. Having identified what the scenes are and the order in which they should appear, I go back to my beginning and finish the story, writing through to the end I’ve envisioned. Done? Not quite.

5. Revise. This might actually involve a few interim drafts, possibly with input from a few trusted friends whom you allow to read your story. You’ll get a sense as you read it yourself or hear others read it whether you are starting and ending in the right place, whether your protagonist is someone whom anyone should care about, and whether your dialogue makes any sense at all. This is all important information.

6. Write the final draft. After thinking about it, getting input, and rereading your own work, do to the story what you think needs to be done. Possibly rewriting the whole thing. (This might be a good time to retype the whole thing so that you can think about each sentence for real instead of using inertia to carry sentences from one draft to the next.)

7. Read it aloud. I’m a bit of a ham, especially when no one can see or hear me and I like to read a story as if I’m performing it before an audience. You get a great sense of your language’s rhythm this way, repeated words that you didn’t intend to repeat, commas that you don’t need or commas that you do, and other mechanical elements that you overlooked in the actual writing. If you can give yourself chills with your ending, you’ve got a hot story.

8. Write the final, final draft. Input the changes you made while writing. Proof read. Proof read again. You’re done! Pick the perfect magazine and submit.

LitMag Wave: One Story #88

"Aerogrammes" by Tania James is about Hari Panicker, a widowed Indian immigrant in the U.S. whose son Sunit is in New York trying to make it as a screenwriter. When Hari takes a fall and needs care, he lands in the OmniHome, a facility that is as depressing as it sounds. While hoping Sunit will come visit, he becomes friends with May, a woman who sponsors a street orphan in Bombary, about whom Hari has doubts. Hari hopes to live with Sunit but as the story unfolds, that seems unlikely.

This is a good story. We're told in the author's bio that it is her first published story. A promising start.

Next: Willow Springs

The New Yorker: "A Beneficiary" by Nadine Gordimer

This isn’t one of my favorites. I like the language well enough and the protagonist Charlotte is interesting (if not fully formed), but the story seems too familiar. Charlotte’s parents have been divorced since she was a child (her mother was an actress, her father a neurologist). She is close to her father, though they are dissimilar, and after her mother’s death, while going through her papers, she discovers a secret. Almost from the moment the reader knows that there’s a secret she can guess what it is, and yet she hopes that she’ll be wrong. But she's not and the rest of the story is what Charlotte will do with the information.

“Charlotte—that was the identity she had in any context relating to her mother—sifted through the envelopes. If her mother had had a personal life, it was not a material possession to be disposed of like garments taken on and off; a personal life can’t be “left to” a daughter, like a beneficiary in a will.”

This sort of thinking makes the story worthwhile, even if ultimately its outcome is too predictable.

May 21, 2007: “A Beneficiary” by Nadine Gordimer

Uke Rivers Delivers, by R.T. Smith

More Short Story Month.

Although I first knew of R.T. Smith as a poet and the editor of Shenandoah, he’s also published numerous short stories, and the stories in this slim collection have appeared in such notable publications as Zoetrope: All Story, Virginia Quarterly Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner and Missouri Review, among others. And this is all finely crafted stuff, ranging from Civil War historical fictions to stories about contemporary Civil War reenactments, and along the way exploring Southern culture in a, let’s say “colorful” way. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that “Docent” from this collection was in Best American Short Stories and both “Docent” and “I Have Lost My Right” were in New Stories from the South. And if that weren’t enough recognition, “Jesus Wept” won a Pushcart Prize.)

And I would have to say that those three honored stories are my favorite stories from this collection. “Docent” is told from the point of view of a guide at the Robert E. Lee Chapel on the campus of Washington & Lee University (home of Shenandoah), and is rightly praised for its distinct voice.

“And please do not hesitate to touch the pews or try them out. If you’ll kindly look at the wall to your left, you will see the engraved plaque testifying that the General, whom some students wanted to call President Lee, which you must admit has a nice ring to it, sat here during services, though he often napped, accustomed as he was to catching a few winks on campaign.”

I’ve heard Rod Smith read from this story and it is a bit hard to reconcile his voice with that of his character’s, but that’s what makes fiction fun. “Jesus Wept” on the other hand is in the point of view of the son of a preacher who is fond of his liquor and who treats his sons like slaves.

Because I am a prose reader for Shenandoah and frequently attend literary events at Washington & Lee, I see Rod frequently. It was therefore especially enjoyable for me to read these stories with his voice in my head.

Things Kept, Things Left Behind, by Jim Tomlinson

More Short Story Month.

Today’s collection is Things Kept, Things Left Behind by Jim Tomlinson. I got this book when it came out last fall since Jim is a friend, but for some reason didn’t get around to reading it until this weekend. (Sorry about that, Jim!) But it sure was well worth the wait. I’ve heard Jim read a couple of times, both times (at Sewanee and AWP) from the book's opening story “First Husband, First Wife,” which I’d also seen in Five Points. I also recognized the second story, “Lake Charles,” but there isn’t a publishing credit listed for that one so maybe I saw a draft of it. It’s a terrific piece about brothers and a horrible event that both keeps them apart and holds them together. In fact all the stories in the collection are terrific. The two connected stories that make up the title of the collection, “Things Kept” and “Things Left Behind” are excellent, and I love the images Jim creates in both.

Possibly my favorite story is one that was unknown to me: “Prologue (two lives in letters).” Claire and Davis are two high school students when they meet at a youth leadership conference in 1963 and they continue to exchange letters through years of college and war protest and marital problems. It’s rare for me to not want a story to end—I’m usually ready to move on to the next one—but I wanted to keep reading these letters! Since the story is called a prologue, maybe Jim is working on something else about Claire and Davis. An “Epilogue,” at least? This is a powerful collection of wonderful stories and it is no mystery why it won the Iowa Short Fiction Award.

The New Yorker: "Hanwell Senior" by Zadie Smith

I rather like this story by Zadie Smith. It is narrated by the daughter of Hanwell and reaches back in time to the sketchy relationship between her father and his father, Hanwell Sr. The men were estranged, Sr. having walked out on Hanwell’s mother, but the daughter by this time has learned a great deal about them both and their infrequent contacts. It also turns out that the narrator’s brother was estranged from Hanwell, history repeating itself. “It happens that in the course of my professional duties I am often found making the statement ‘I don’t believe in patterns.’ A butterfly on a pin has no idea what a pretty shape it makes.” But there is an implied caveat that the pattern is inevitable.

May 14, 2007: “Hanwell Senior” by Zadie Smith

Believers, by Nathan Leslie

I'm falling behind on my Short Story Month schedule. Sorry! Can I blame the heat? Today I offer Believers by Nathan Leslie. I've got a review of this book coming out in RainTaxi this summer, so I don't want to say too much. But let me focus on a single story.

"Cargo" is a story told in letters from Charles to Susan. Charles is among a small group shipwrecked on a Pacific island. They have found food and water, but I'm not quite sure what Charles is writing the letters on or what he's doing with them when he finishes. The group is "captured" by natives, although they don't seem too threatening. The natives chant their love for the U.S.A. and their desire for "cargo." To their surprise, and ours, they meet an American who lives among the natives, an anthropologist, who explains the basics. The visitors continue to learn about the locals but feel more and more threatened by the desire for "cargo." It's an odd little story that doesn't really go anywhere, other than to explore contrasts in cultures and beliefs, and the misunderstandings that result from poor communication. Which, basically, is what the whole book is about.

storySouth Notable Stories

storySouth has released its list of Notable Stories for 2006. The short list of 10 will be announced on May 23. Congratulations to the writers!

Also, a special congratulations to Storyglossia, named Magazine of the Year, for its six notable stories!

Get Down, by Asali Solomon

I'm not the intended audience for this collection, Get Down, by Asali Solomon, which is mostly about young African American girls growing up in Philadelphia, but some of it speaks to me anyway. The most powerful story here is "First Summer," which is about a young unmarried couple with a new baby and how they are both struggling to do the right thing. The father, Rufus, is tempted to stray when he meets a girl he knew in high school, but he hates doing it. Plus, he knows it isn't the end of temptation, but for now he does the right thing--more or less.

It's a fine debut collection; the novel she's working on should be more rewarding.

storySouth

storySouth is one of the best online literary magazines going, but for some reason it usually escapes my notice (perhaps because they aren't pushy and don't fill my email inbox with notices and announcements). But I happened to visit them today and I was glad I did because I discovered that the current featured story is by my fellow-Stauntonian Richard Plant. The story is "Professing Caliban" and is about a community college English teacher who is up for tenure and in order to bolster his C.V. takes the part of Taliban in a community theater production of The Tempest. Check it out!

And while you're there, also take a look at the two poems by Jilly Dybka.

Herb's Pajamas, by Abigail Thomas

Most writers I know are fans of Abigail Thomas. I know I have been since I read her creative non-fiction book, Safekeeping, a few years ago. The short story collection, Herb’s Pajamas, predates that wonderful book, but I’m only now getting around to reading it. The stories here are loosely linked. The four stories, one of which comes in 15 parts, named for various parts of the protagonist’s wardrobe, are about people who live on the same block in New York. They may appear in cameo in the other stories (in “Bunny’s Sister,” Bunny recalls seeing a woman wearing a hat with cherries, who is certainly Edith from the “Hats” section of “Edith’s Wardrobe”), or they may play a more substantial role (Belle turns to Edith for help when Ray, who had appeared in Edith’s story, dies suddenly in “Herb’s Pajamas”).

They’re all engaging stories but I was most surprised to like “Bunny’s Sister” because I’m not usually a fan of stories with adolescent protagonists, the “coming of age” genre being my least favorite of all. But Bunny in this story is both older and younger than her chronological age. Her older sister has run away because of a conflict with their mother and step-father and Bunny, having her own conflicts with them, sets off to find her, experiencing along the way the unexpected kindness of strangers.

“You leave traces of yourself, Bunny thinks, everywhere you’ve been. Silvery shapes. She has thought hard about it. Because to tell the truth this isn’t the only time she has seen Merle. The first time was on the bus that goes up Broadway. Bunny had been outside the Cathedral Market. There in the third window, her face against the glass, was Merle. She hadn’t smiled, she hadn’t waved, she had just fixed her eyes on Bunny. She’d looked sad.”

It’s a fast and rewarding read from a terrific writer.

The New Yorker: "One Minus One" by Colm Tóibín

An Irishman in Texas, alone, wants to reach out to his former lover but feels he can’t. He recalls the time six years earlier when, alone in New York, he flew home to Ireland to be with his mother—with whom he had a distant, cold relationship that he struggled always to understand—as she lay dying. This is a man who knows he is unapproachable and he knows where he gets it, and yet he can’t do anything about it.

“My brother and I learned not to trust anyone. We learned then not to talk about things that mattered to us, and we stuck to this, as much as we could, with a sort of grim stubborn pride, all our lives, as though it were a skill. But you know that, don’t you? I do not need to call you to tell you that.”

This is a touching, internal story that I enjoyed. The retrospective feeling of the story is apt, even though this character has changed little, it seems, from the man he was only six years earlier. He has some greater understanding about himself, I suppose. I’d like to see him again in a few years, to see if he has managed to overcome his self-repression. This is, I think, one of the year’s best stories so far.

May 7, 2007: “One Minus One” by Colm Tóibín

The Language of Elk, by Benjamin Percy

More Short Story Month: The Language of Elk by Benjamin Percy is another fine collection, at its strongest when and beast confront one another. The title story is a terrific example.

Pete Foder is the proprietor of Foder Ranch, a hunting paradise where for $5,000 he will guarantee success, no matter how ridiculous the client is. His property has a huge elk population and he releases an old bull elk into the wild now that he’s past his breeding prime. Pete feels for the animal.

“For nearly ten years this has been his life. His beard has faded into a silvery hue, like mine, its golden luster lost. Soon I will have to set him loose. His arthritis prevents the slick application of his manhood and his daughters have become his lovers and for the sake of the quality breeding, I will have to set him loose and then he will find peace before the stare of some suburbanite’s muzzle.”

Complicating Pete’s life is his autistic daughter, whom he loves and fears, and who seems more comfortable communicating with the old bull elk than with Pete. To understand her, Pete has to learn the language of elk.

“Winter’s Trappings” is a story in which another set of males compete. A woman flees her abusive husband, young son in tow. They collide with a buck who flips over the cab into the bed of the pickup. He’s left in the truck overnight and the next morning when the woman’s sister (a powerful woman and a veterinarian) goes to butcher the animal, it turns out that he’s alive and so, instead, she nurses him to health. Meanwhile, the husband shows up, with results that are more or less predictable.

It’s a terrific collection and its being followed soon by a new book. More stories to look forward to. [I enjoy, also, reading the acknowledgements. Percy mentions a number of people familiar to me including Dan Wickett, the prime Short Story Month mover, but also Wyatt Prunty and Cheri Peters of Sewanee, where Percy was a Tennessee Williams scholar a couple of years before I was. There’s hope for me, maybe.]