"North Country" by Roxane Gay

Let's just go ahead and declare it the year of Roxane.  Seriously.  Her novel, An Untamed State, (which I was psyched to procure a copy of at this weekend's Muse) is getting rave reviews and her upcoming book of essays Bad Feminist, is going to break the internet, IMHO.  You can also find her tweeting about all the things.

I got a chance to attend a session with Professor Gay at this week's Muse conference, hosted by Boston's Grub Street.  The Brutal Languages of Love was fun, real, and insightful: not surprising.  One of the most valuable lessons I took from the session was the question of mixing love and politics.  A fellow conference attendee asked Ms. Gay how she navigates this challenging territory.  "I am a woman and I write.  That is a political act.  But I don't let politics stop me from writing what I want to write," Ms. Gay said. She reminded us that politics should be organic to the work.

Want an example?  Read Gay's "North Country," which is included in the Best American Short Stories of 2012.  I am almost rendered wordless in the face of explaining the beautiful intricacies of this story.

Confession: I am a Women's Studies minor dropout.  It was my senior year and I knew the last few courses to fulfill the minor would be dark and hard and twist my twenty-one year old brain like taffy, so I gave up and took fun classes like "The United States" instead.  It is very important to know all of the state capitals.  Women's Studies frustrated me; I guess I'm a bad feminist.  It was assumed that we would complicate (verb) our lived experiences (what other kinds of experiences are there?) by making the personal political.  I was happy to board that train.  But it was always a one-way ticket.  We never examined things in reverse.

That's what I love most about this story.  The politics are organic.  Kate is a Black woman living on the Upper-peninsula of Michigan, working in an all-male department as a university professor.  She's deeply unhappy with her surroundings but we also learn that Kate sought this desolation to escape a previous trauma.  Are gender, race, and class at the heart of this story?  Absolutely.  But so is Kate's broken heart.  The political becomes very personal in "North Country" and that's why I love this story.

"Taken" by CB Anderson

I spent Saturday at the Newburyport Literary Festival with my husband and he dug CB Anderson's reading from her collection, River Talk.  We're going to try to share, read, and discuss a short story each week in our own personal, world's smallest book club, in recognition that in about thirteen years our son will leave the homestead and we'll need to talk about something other than him.

Our first selection is Anderson's "Taken," which is the story of Michael, his brother Sheridan, and Sebastian's ex-girlfriend Et.  They live in Maine and shoot all the things, then they carve the things up and hang them on walls to honor them.  That part was a little hard for my all creatures great and small loving self but Anderson's strength is setting, and she nails it.  You are firmly planted in the middle of Maine where a random nighttime gunshot and a taxidermist are the norm, not the exception.

I'm looking for change, or the missed opportunity for change, in the stories I'm reading these days, and this falls into the missed opportunity bucket.  Michael is the better man, the better brother, and the better hunter.  He's ready to make a play for poor, dumped, white-haired, Alanis Morrisette-loving Et.  He's got the scallops and wine and everything y'all.  Yet he's also carting his human barnacle of a brother around town because Sheridan lost his license and he's dropping two hundred big ones on little bro at Wal-Mart.  Michael can take down a wild animal in one shot but he's a fool for his brother.  He knows it, Sheridan knows it, and Et knows it too.  It's why she stops making pies for Michael and heads back to Sheridan's love shack.  Michael's the better man, but until he figures that out, he's destined to spend most of his time with dead deer.

The Irony of a Short Story Blog

It's a SHORT story right?  And this is a blog, not the NY Times.  But alas, I haven't made the time to read a story and post my response in over a month.  How can that be?

Work, holidays, family, The Good Wife Seasons 1-4, writing, exercise….and these 24 hours we are given seven times each week quickly disappear.  

I'm taking a look at my priorities this week as my spring semester looks to be busier than ever, and that's going to mean some tough choices about how I spend my time.

I don't know if Shorty will continue to Get Down, and I know that all three of you reading this are very sad about that.

But it might.  I mean, they are SHORT stories after all.

So if you've happened on this blog trust that I still love short stories and I hope you'll take the time to peruse what I've read and recommended over the past six months.  

Stay tuned….

"The Briefcase" by Rebecca Makkai

I started reading this short story two weeks ago.  I finished a couple of pages, loved it, and then set the book down.  Two weeks passed.  This is not a reflection of Rebecca Makkai's cool and inventive story, but of the time management challenges faced by writers and readers everywhere.  My son must be fed.  My body must be cleaned.  My work must be done.  As essential as writing and reading are in my life, sadly, sometimes they get pushed to the side.  The good news is that I always manage to course correct.  I sit down with my planner in front of me and I make time like some people make cookies.  I can't make cookies to save my life, but I can turn my daily planner into a living and breathing thing with nothing more than the force of my will and a perfectly sharpened pencil.  Yesterday writing was pushed aside.  Today, I write.  There's always today.

Now for the story.  I pulled out the 2009 version of The Best American Short Stories a couple of weeks ago with the intention of picking a story whose title jumped out at me.  To begin, Alice Sebold edited that year's collection and I adore what I've read of hers, including Lucky and The Lovely Bones.  Sebold's memoir, Lucky, which details her sexual assault in college and its aftermath, took place at my own alma mater, Syracuse University.  Years after Seebold's attack, I played frisbee and had picnics in the park where she was raped, never knowing the sad legacy that park held in its history.  If you've only read The Lovely Bones and haven't yet made it to Lucky, do read it.

I chose Rebecca Makkia's story, "The Briefcase," because a briefcase seems like something that almost always holds a secret.  Today, they also feel like a bit of an anachronism, like the businessperson's version of Blockbuster Video, as more offices go paperless and iPads or netbooks replace our thick stacks of papers and reports.

I've been thinking in terms of Goal, Motivation, and Conflict in my writing lately so I'm going to approach my reading of this story with those concepts in mind.

Goal: The unnamed prisoner escapes his bondage in what I read as a dystopian future, though I suppose it could have also been in a not-so distant past, or even in the present.  When the guards see that a man is missing from their line, rather than taking the time to hunt him down, they replace him with the first man they see on the street: a professor carrying a briefcase.  When the line marches on, the protagonist steals the briefcase and decides to steal the professor's identity as well.  His goal: weave himself into his new life without getting caught.

Motivation: The prisoner's goal is survival.  We can only assume that his replacement, the professor, and the other 199 men in that line are dead.  Should he be revealed as a fraud, death will be his final sentence too.

Conflict: Using the generosity of the professor's friends and a post-office box, the prisoner lives in safety for a year.  He deals with the guilt of knowing that his own escape directly caused the death of another man by telling himself that in living, he is living for both himself and the professor.  But his plan fails when the professor's widow seeks him out and exposes him as an impostor.

My favorite part of this story is that Makkai manages to pull "it" off without identifying her main character's name, the location, or the time in which "The Briefcase" takes place.  Even without those details, we are still drawn into the world and the protag's journey.  I don't know how Makkai pulled that off exactly, but she does.

"ReMem" by Amy Brill

I'm back to my blog after a month of nonstop editing on my manuscript and I'm happy to be here to share a great story with you.  I'm particularly excited about this week's author because I got to hear the lovely Ms. Brill speak about her latest novel, The Movement of Stars, at the recent Boston Book Festival.  Full disclosure, I haven't read the book (yet) but it's about a 19th century lady astronomer on Nantucket.  I'm going to read it back to back with Liz Gilbert's The Signature of All Things, which is, of course, about  a 19th century lady botanist.  I will get so in touch with my dormant lady scientist that I might just be able to perform some amazing feat like changing a light bulb.

One last fascinating tidbit about Amy Brill: her Twitter page says that she had a baby in a car, so she's clearly some sort of superhero, considering the fact that I could barely have a baby in a hospital.

On to the story...

"ReMem" was published in this month's One Story, otherwise known as the lit journal you can fit into your pant's pocket.  And long story short (pun intended), I loved it.  It's this really cool sci-fi-ish, futuristic, dystopian....family saga?  YEAH IT IS.  You've all read George Saunders Tenth of December by now right?  Assuming you have, because you must, imagine Saunders with a bit less self-awareness and a smidge more emotional connection to his characters (no judgment--- I clearly adored his book, like he cares anyway).

"ReMem" tells the story of Alfred and his daughter Lauria, and his dead wife Elleni is in there too, because Alfred and Lauria live in a world where all of their memories are recorded and can be accessed at any time through various fancy technological interfaces.  The only problem is that Alfred's been getting these nasty headaches...oh and one other problem: humanity is contemplating the possibility of going body-less.  Just upload your memories to the server and you can be released from that pesky physical existence of yours.

A sign of a great short story is that it satisfies while also leaving you wanting more.  ReMem fits the bill.

"Milk" by Ron Carlson

I need to ramble a bit today.  May I?  Yes, it's your blog and it's a blog.  Ramble.

I love short stories and I love the idea of the people that write them.  Even if they are evil or otherwise unfit as humans, and they probably aren't but even if they are, I think if you write short stories you get a free pass.  When I thought Alice Munro was actually on Twitter last night I was so excited, and then felt sort of sad and shamed when it wasn't her.

One of the reasons I love short stories is because you can be in a bad mood, then you read a short story, and it makes everything just a little bit better.  It shifts your perspective just enough to make you realize that, like the story itself, your mood won't last forever.  Your mood, you realize, is a short story.  I'm generally a happy person but yesterday, well yesterday I didn't want to read a short story but I needed to, and I picked a great one: Ron Carlson's "Milk."

Do you know his work?  I didn't but I'm a fan now.  Not only did I enjoy his writing but he's got a great head of hair and I'm a sucker for any guy that can rock a jean jacket.  I think he would be fun to take to a dive bar on the Jersey Shore.  We could play pool and drink beer and talk about the writing life.  Ron, if you're reading, call me.

Back to "Milk." As you know I'm always looking for lessons in the short stories I blog about and there's a doozy in this one.  If you've been struggling with the issue of scale, read this story, the story of a father named Jim.  Here's the grand theme: being a parent is terrifying.  How does Carlson approach his theme?  By zeroing in on the story of one father.

There are the twins, and their generic adorability that cloaks their true purpose in life: to create a sense of fear in their dad that is so profound that it makes even milk cartons seem ominous.  I try not to let myself think of the unique pseudo-death that I would experience if anyone took my child, but that terror creeps in at times.  It hits me when bad things happen in the world, but yes, it also catches me unexpectedly, not in the moments of sadness but in the moments of joy.  What if I ever lost those moments?

I appreciated that Carlson told this story from a father's point of view, because in my experience worrying is often seen as the purview of women.  It made me look twice at his fears and see them more clearly.  If you are interested in stories about parenthood, if you want to study the use of scale, or if you are in a wicked mood, read "Milk."

"Pilgrims" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Yes, that Elizabeth Gilbert, of the Eat, Pray, Love fame and the recent new release of a novel, The Signature of All Things, which is getting great reviews, that Elizabeth Gilbert has a sordid past as an acclaimed short story writer.  Oh how I loved the recent Times story that glimpses the young Gilbert, hawking her fictional wares in the big city, refusing to accept no for an answer.  Then this---"Pilgrims," gets published in Esquire when Gilbert is just a wee lass.  

For the writers in my readers, the lesson Gilbert has to share is to Go There, Go Everywhere, Go at Once, but Go.  You won't write dialogue like that spoken between Martha and Buck, the two horse-wrangling main characters, if you don't Go and Listen to the voices of the lost seekers.  Or you will, because there are no rules, and if you follow the first lesson Gilbert taught us, the one in persistence, then you can live under a rock and still write pitch-perfect dialogue, because that's your way to get there and that's another rule: the only way there is the one you take.

The victory of "Pilgims" is the life infused in Martha and Buck through their own words.  What talent it took for Gilbert to stand back and let them speak their drunken memories and falsehoods, as if she's not really there at all.  The best writing is invisible, of course, and this is a perfect example of that.

The gift that I'll carry with me in my writing bag of tricks is how specificity breeds generality.  You don't get to grand themes by writing grand themes (unless you do, and that's your rule) but rather by zeroing in on two humans next to a campfire.  If you can capture those two humans then this magical thing happens: they become any two young people who are seeking a thing they don't know and can't name, who decide that riding bareback in a dark meadow is as good an answer as any.

"Gazebo" by Raymond Carver

My urge is to copy and paste the story here, because nothing I can say about it can do it justice, and because it's so....I haven't eaten meat since I was twelve years old, but I imagine that when you take a bite of a perfectly cooked hamburger, fresh off the grill, it's something like my experience reading "Gazebo."

There is, of course, the opening:

That morning she pours Teacher's over my belly and licks it off.  That afternoon she tries to jump out the window.

There are these people trying to end something, Duane and Holly, trying to end it but they can't end it.  This way of honoring that our bad choices are runaway trains, as unavoidable as gravity....it's beautiful.

I'd open my eyes and look at the ceiling and listen to it ring and wonder what was happening to us.

But maybe I should be looking at the floor.  

I'll never forget that line.  This isn't a story; it's a tattoo.

My writer friend Kathy and I have been emailing back and forth about short stories, talking about this idea of whether something "happens" or not.  And I think a lot of readers are looking for that moment in the stories they read.  I think they want the stoning scene in The Lottery, if I'm being honest.  Great story, but in some ways that scene is the least interesting part of it.  Just sayin'.

And that's not Carver.  He doesn't zoom back and spoon feed you a climax.  He puts a target on the backs of two or three people and lets you witness the hunt.

I get down on my knees and start to beg.  But I am thinking of Juanita.  This is awful.  I don't know what's going to happen to me or to anyone else in the world.

Do you clap or cry after a line like that?  Maybe both.

So okay, it's happened.  I'm a Carver fan.  What should I read next?

"Karma" by Rishi Reddi

This week I read, "Karma," which was recently selected for One City, One Story in Boston.  Copies of the story are being made available all over the city and you can also access it for free online HERE.  And for my New England friends who weren't already planning to attend the Boston Book Festival, consider this blog post your sign from the universe.  Rishi Reddi will be on hand to give a talk about her story, along with lots of other yummy, juicy author types.  Let's show Boston and Copley Square some love.

"Karma" is the story of Shankar Balareddy.  I like Shankar.  I do.  He saves the dead birds that are landing on the streets of Boston, confused by the lure of city lights at night.  He cooks his wife a nice dinner.  And though I was left feeling like I wished Shankar could treat himself with the same persistence and care as his beloved birds, Reddi has certainly crafted a wholly believable character, the kind of person that can't get out of his own way.  There is a Shankar in all of us.

Shankar has some help in staying downtrodden though, in the form of his successful brother, Dr. Prakash Balareddy.  Prakash is....Prakash is.....Prakash is an asshole.  There's just no other way to say it.  He kicks his brother and his sister-in-law out onto the street.  He hangs out with a real hoity-toity crowd.  He's entirely unlikeable.  Except that he's not.  I empathized with Prakash and I'm curious if other readers felt the same.  We all like Shankar.  We all want to point him in the right direction, away from the deceptive lights that cause him to smack against metaphorical skyscrapers.  But because of the honesty in Reddi's story, we also have to admit to ourselves that if Shankar was our brother, we'd have probably tossed him out too.  "Shankar!" we'd yell.  "Get it together!"  Watching Shankar circle the drain of victimhood would be, well, draining.  Because there's a little bit of Prakash in us too.

Boston is a minor character in the story so if you love the city you'll love this read.  And anyone who has any sibling issues will surely connect too.

"Stickmen" by Andrew C. Gottlieb...plus Thoughts on Publishing Short Stories

Today I'm going to give you my usual thoughts on my experience reading a selected short story, in this case "Stickmen" by Andrew C. Gottlieb.  But because of where I discovered this story, you're also going to get my newbie musings on the submission and publication process of short stories.

"Stickmen" won the American Fiction, Vol. 11 contest for best previously unpublished short story.  As someone with an infinitesimal amount of publishing creds, I was compelled to add this particular anthology to my short story collection when I saw it in the lovely Jabberwocky Bookshop, while I was attending the Newburyport Literary Festival in the spring.  The idea that some kind publishing souls would actively seek out homeless short stories, these little orphans holding out their soup cups, all dirty-cheeked and hollow, spoke to my soul.  I have short stories like that, stories I believe deserve a real home, a family to call their own, a decent meal and a warm bed.

I emailed Andrew Gottlieb to see if I could get the lowdown on his story's journey to publication.  He was kind enough to reply.

Gottleib wrote "Stickmen" in 2001.  It received first prize in the AF contest in 2009.  As Denzel said, "This shit's chess, it ain't checkers."  Take a wild guess what my new online friend was doing in those eight years?  Submitting and editing.  Editing and submitting.  By Gottleib's own estimate, though "Stickmen" was a finalist in several contests and received other promising feedback, it was passed over for publication 64 times in those eight years.

I would love for someone to write a book that tracks the journey of this story, from journal to journal to contest to journal.  I would drool over interviews with first readers and editors giving us insight into their rejections of a great story.

In Clint McCown's introduction to AF, Vol. 11, he takes a stab at one of the reasons why:

"While it may be simple to select the best apple from a barrel of apples, the process is more daunting when one is faced with comparing a first-rate apple to a first-rate orange, and a first-rate pomegranate, and a first-rate kumquat.  Taste invariably enters the decision." 

But 64?  The mind reels.

"Stickmen" is the story of Jimmy Remler and his father, and though Jimmy is our narrator, he gives such a powerful voice to a man who is losing his that his father became an honorary main character.  Jimmy's father is dying and has been for a very long time.  He has things taken from him that we healthy people toss mindlessly amongst each other, like frisbees on a July beach.  I see that here, in Gottleib's story, this passing of life from the dying to the living.  It is one of the many sensitivities that pulled me into this story.

I lost a friend a couple of weeks ago to ALS.  His struggles and his bravery were captured in "Stickmen."  When Jimmy's mother tells him that the end could come any day, that he must be ready for it, I knew that Jimmy would never be ready.  That even when we know it's coming, death shocks us.

Jimmy recounts a memory from his youth, when his father, forced to sit in the car because of his disease, watches young Jimmy fall from the jungle gym.

I knew that's what made the memory special for me.  You have to admire a man who could do that every day, who could sit there missing out and knowing it.  

Yes, that's it, exactly.

This story will stick with me (pun somewhat intended) for a long time, because Jimmy felt particularly alive to me.  He is out there in the world somewhere now, still grieving, but no longer drawing stickmen.

If you get a chance to read "Stickmen," send Andrew Gottleib a quick note.  Wicked nice guy.

"A Platonic Relationship" & "Eric Clapton's Lover" by Ann Beattie

I found Ann Beattie (not that she was lost) through Dan Kois, who went on a mass-market paperback binge this summer for Slate Magazine.  My copy arrived from the street drug known as "Amazon Prime" two days later, smelling like an old person's shoes.  Note the stains of unknown origin on the cover.

The pages are that perfect burnt gold color of old paperbacks and I have to hold it ever so gently so that it doesn't disintegrate in my hands.

I chose my first story by its title, "Eric Clapton's Lover."  I went through an intense period of obsession with an Eric Clapton Greatest Hits Album in my late teens.

Writer's Note: How great is Spotify?  I am now listening to the exact album I used to play on repeat while driving around my one-horse town with my best friend. "After Midnight" was our favorite song.

The second story, "A Platonic Relationship," was Beattie's first to be published in The New Yorker.  She was 26 at the time.

I have swallowed the jealous bile in the back of my throat.  On to the stories...

Opening lines: 
(ECL) Franklin Fisher and his wife, Beth, were born on the same day of March, two years apart.
(APR) When Ellen was told that she would be hired as a music teacher at the high school, she decided that it did not mean that she would have to look like the other people on the faculty.

Gonna cause talk and suspicion, we gonna give an exhibition....

Inciting incidents:
(ECL): Franklin Junior leaves home with his new bride, a tractor-trailer driver.
(APR): Ellen gets a new roommate named Sam.

Surface problems:
(ECL): Franklin is fired from his magazine job and has to work at a movie theater that has rats in the soda machine.  Beth can't get out of bed.  Franklin starts to drink and seeks out women in parking lots.  Beth gets out of bed and becomes a feminist, but still dates a man who tries to name her cat for her.
(APR): Ellen spends inordinate amounts of time cleaning Sam's room for him, replacing one albatross (her ex-husband) for another.  She drinks too much beer.  Sam hightails it out of town on a hot, new motorcycle, leaving Ellen behind to reconcile with her ex-husband.

I desperately want Taylor Swift and John Mayer to cover Clapton's "Promises."  

Story-worthy problems:
(ECL & APR): Beattie's stories is understated.  They are not the fireworks; they are the uncomfortable barbeque where your divorced parents each bring their new partner and you sit watching your mother devour the crudite and your father stare at his much younger girlfriend's ass.  They aren't the murder in the dark of night; They are the days created the motive.

I love this line from ECL: "Being born on the same day seemed a very good thing to go on," he said.  And this: "I realized there was nothing I wanted to say to you and there was nothing I wanted to hear," she said.  Isn't that just the perfect two-line summary for a divorce that goes out as a whimper instead of a bang?

I found Ellen much less sympathetic than Beth.  At least Beth shows a little verve by getting transferred out of the lingerie department at her new job for talking too much to the customers.  Ellen just circles back to where she began.  Having gathered the courage to leave her husband and pursue her own dreams, she lets Sam use her like a gas station and ride off into his own sunset.  I want to visit her in another ten years and if she's still with her husband, or cleaning for another tenant, I'm staging an intervention.

Click HERE to read ECL on the VQR website.  Gotta buy the book or snag an old New Yorker for APR.  And go listen to "Lay Down Sally" while you're at it.

"The Messenger Who Did Not Become a Hero" by Douglas Watson

One of my most recent writing goals was to subscribe to a lit mag.  After months of vacillating, I finally settled on One Story.  Only the rocket scientists among you will figure this out but the gist is that you receive one story every three to four weeks.  I love that I know I'll read the entire thing and it's also pint-sized cute.  Note comparison size with equally esteemed literary magazine in picture below.  

 

Now on with the story.  It should go without saying that lovers of literature should have the patience to give stories a minute to form before we make any rash decisions.  That being said, aspiring writers are berated and barraged with the lament that WE MUST GET TO IT! or terrible things, things much worse than eternal oblivion, will befall us.  Who can blame me if I've become part of that culture where something must explode or die or cheat or implode in the first sentence, lest we should become momentarily bored?  

If, and I still think it's a big if, an immediate inciting incident is one of the rules, then Watson breaks that rule.  We have (gasp) about a page and a half of backstory before the proverbial crap hits the fan and everything changes for our new friend, the unnamed messenger.  

First line: There was a messenger who was stuck working for a no-good king.  

Inciting incident: The messenger lays eyes upon the woman of his dreams, she of the wispy-hair and revolutionary predilection.  It is love at first sight.

Surface problems (spoiler alert): His true love is shot and dies in his arms.  He is captured by the king who he betrayed and banished to Sumatra.  His ship wrecks.  He has his Tom Hanks moment in the sun.  Like Tom, he seeks salvation and travels over harsh lands until he comes upon the city of Our Zurich.  I realize that this all sounds very morose but it's actually hilarious if you get this kind of humor.  I laughed out loud in several places.  

Story-worthy problem: In the messengers's own words to the people of Our Zurich, "Are you misspending your life?"  It is, I think, probably the question of our time.  I love that Watson put this SWP into the context of a different era because it wouldn't have been as effective if the messenger was some poor 21st century office worker trapped in a cubicle.  The resolution is satisfying because it is not entirely fulfilling for the protag.  His life was not wholly misspent.  He had awoken.  He had escaped.  The flip side of this is that he waited too long and was old, so he soon dies, but not before he realizes that, "Life thrummed in all things."  

It's an unexpected, poignant, funny and weird story that I hope everyone will check out.  

"After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers

I mentioned last week how influential Hooked by Les Edgerton has been in my reading and writing.  This week, I edited three short stories and watched as the inciting incidents connected to the surface problems which both led organically to the story-worthy problem.  I finally get cause and effect and can feel my story-worthy problem guiding my way.  Pun intended: I'm hooked.  Not only has this approach changed how I write and edit, but it has changed how I read.  I'm picking up books at random and seeking out the inciting incident.  I'm barraging my husband with plot summaries and talk of the all-encompassing "SWP."  On tap this week: "After Rosa Parks" by Janet Desaulniers.

Opening Line

Ellie found her son in the school nurse's office, laid out on a leatherette fainting couch like some child gothic, his shoes off, his arms crossed over his chest, his face turned to the wall.  

Inciting Incident

You know when you were a kid and your mom used to respond to some generic childhood crisis with the wise question, "Wouldn't life be boring if we were all the same?"  After reading this story I'll pose a question to you, dear obscure short story blog readers.  Wouldn't life be boring if the inciting incident was obvious?  If we all saw the same inciting incident in a story?  When we read, don't we want to delve into the dance of creation along with the author?  

I'm going out on a limb but I'm going to argue that Desaulniers breaks some rules here and begins with some significant backstory.  The inciting incident, the disruption to Ellie and Cody's stability, comes later with her brother Frank's cancer diagnosis.  That's what changes everything.  

Surface Problems

Oh there's a lot to pick from here.  Ellie is a struggling single mom to young Cody, a child with a nervous stomach and a sensitivity to the sharp edges of the world that let's us know the future and all of its blemishes will be hard on Cody, and Ellie in turn.  Cody's an old soul, and what's worse for an old soul than a cookie-cutter public education?  Uncle Frank has come to help since the divorce went through, but his belly hurts too, for more nefarious reasons.

Story-Worthy Problem

If you haven't read anything by Parker Palmer, who writes about education but who really writes about life and justice and courage, please give him a try.  He changes the shape of your brain and heart.  He refers in his work to something called "The Rosa Parks Decision."  To paraphrase, it is the moment in your life when you decide to live on your own terms, at whatever the cost, because the cost of living under someone else's thumb will forever be too great once you see your world through your new eyes. 

This is the story-worthy problem for Ellie.  She's not the child quivering on the diving board, afraid to jump in.  She's the kid that won't even get off the bench, too resigned to the certainty that she'll fail to even stand up.  I imagine, though don't know for sure, that this moment of diving into the deep end, of reclaiming one's tenacity and hope, is common after divorce.  Ellie decides that if she can find her own terms, and then live by them, she and Cody will find their place in the world.  They'll both be free.

"A Real Doll" by A.M. Homes

I took a little time off from the blog because my "vacation" has been chock-full of family, writing, mini-golf, and bay swims.  But my fingers have been getting twitchy.

Today I'm going to share my reading through the lens of the book Hooked by Les Edgerton.  The talented and lovely Ms. Lori Goldstein was kind enough to read the first five pages of my WIP and referenced some key concepts from Hooked.  I can't thank her enough.  

I'm sure this will come as a shock to the seven people that read this blog, but I'm an untrained writer.  I took one creative nonfiction course in college and I'm quite sure the professor hated me.  Us Type A people make the worst creative writing students.  Alas, I'm trying to learn as much as a I can the old-fashioned way: by reading tons of books on craft.  Hooked makes it simple.  Well that's not quite right.  If it was simple I would be on my book tour instead of writing this blog for you seven people.  Better put, Hooked points you in the direction of Mt. Everest and says, "Go climb that." But at least I have a better idea of which way I'm walking now.  

In an attempt to put these ideas to use I'm trying to find the elements discussed in Hooked in the books and short stories I'm reading.  These include the inciting incident, the surface problems, and the story-worthy problem.  I'm also going to highlight opening lines of the stories I read.

It's ironic that the first time I'm doing this on the blog is with "A Real Doll" because this story is so off-the-charts unique that to try to reign it into my neat boxes feels like lassoing a wild stallion.  But lasso I will.

Opening lines:

"I'm dating Barbie.  Three afternoons a week, while my sister is at dance class, I take Barbie away from Ken.  I'm practicing for the future."

Inciting incident:

The story begins when the narrator, Jenny's brother, notices that his sister's Barbie has come to life.  

Surface problems:

Where do I begin?  In any intense sexual relationship between two young people, problems are expected.  When one of those young people is a Barbie, things can get really complicated.  You might give Barbie too much Valium, overestimating her tolerance.  You have to decide what romantic gift to buy her.  Do you get her the pool, snowmobile, or grand piano?  And of course, you have to compete with the anatomically incorrect Ken.  

Story-worthy problem:

It seems reasonable, as someone who has only known and never been a teenage boy, that all sorts of strange things must go through boys' minds on the topic of sex.  I think that if we are all being honest with ourselves, it isn't what this boy does to Barbie (and Ken for that matter) that is strange, but rather Homes's ability to so vividly enter the mind of a pubescent teenager and to capture the force of his infatuation.  As I read, the question that drew me forward was: What is wrong with this kid?  That's the story-worthy problem that engaged me.  When he callously dumps a recently deformed Barbie at the end of the story, I think the answer is revealed: nothing.  He's just a teenage boy.  It's A.M Homes that is the exceptional one.

Click HERE for a full-text version of "A Real Doll." 

"The Rest of Her Life" by Steve Yarbrough

I picked up one of my short story anthologies tonight, cracked a cold beer, and started scanning names and titles.  I went with a Steve Yarbrough story because I saw him speak a couple of months ago at the Newburyport Literary Festival, and he was a trip.  He's this immediately noticeable man with flowing blonde hair and a deep Southern drawl.  Since I always like to Biff, aka BFF, aka make best friends with, famous people, I made a point to ask him about his comment on Truman Capote short stories after  his talk.  He, like me, loves Capote's ghost story, "Miriam".  All of this gave me high hopes for his story.

As I move through the short story literature, I've been coming across, or perhaps I've been draw to, very literary, and sometimes abstract, short stories.  These stories teach me a lot about craft, pacing, language, and what it takes to create a character that can live off of the page.

Yarbrough does all of that in TROHL, but there's more here that I connected with.  Teenage Dee Ann should be worrying about nothing other than sneaking around with her boyfriend Chuckie, but her mother's murder turns her world upside down.  But it's also a story about what the men in her life do to Dee Ann, or what they will always fail to do.  Yarbrough's sensitivity to his female protagonist impressed me.  Yarbrough could be the spawn of Raymond Carver and Ann Hood.  Emotion is salvaged, even highlighted, within his sparing, realist approach.

I'll look for more Yarbrough after this.  If you've read this story, I'd love to know what you think of Dee Ann's final decision.  Why did she lie?  I'm chewing on that question after the story's put down---always a good sign.

"The Faery Handbag" by Kelly Link

"The Faery Handbag" is the first story in Kelly Link's collection entitled Magic for Beginners and was a gift from my husband for Mother's Day.  I had never heard of this book and I've heard of every book in the known world, so big ups to Andrew for surprising me.  It's covered in rave reviews and my first thought upon seeing it is that it looks incredibly weird.  Right up my alley.

We're talking magic realism, fantasy, make-believe here, which makes my brain go a little wiggly because isn't all fiction make-believe?  Well, you say, fiction consists of stories that could happen.  This story is about a grandmother who carries a purse that can hold an entire village of Baldeziwurlekistanians.  That could never happen.  The fact that I think that technically it could, or might, demonstrates that I'm also weird, and therefore a great fit for this genre.

I can't help but compare "Faery" to last week's reading of Alice Munro.  I can't help it.  Forgive me if I offend anyone.  

Here's the thing.  Munro, as I told you, is like a Picasso.  I could never have a Picasso in my house.  I spill things constantly.  The poor Picasso would be covered in Diet Coke or ketchup within a week.  But I appreciate great art.  I know a Picasso is genius which is why I would respect it enough to keep it away from me (aside from the obvious financial constraints). 

Link's writing is not Picasso, but I mean that as a compliment.  Link's stories are like the fun vintage painting of a door with handles that look like hands that I'm seeing right now above my computer screen, or the cute owl picture I got at Ikea last year.  They make me feel warm and happy and like it's okay to be myself around them.

Faery is a great story with tremendous depth.  It follows Genevieve (coincidentally the name I chose for myself in 7th grade French class) and her grandmother Zofia in their quest to protect a very special purse filled with hundreds of people.  As you can imagine, hijinks ensue and questions linger at the end of this wonderfully weird story.  What I loved about it, aside from the bizarre plot, was how Link writes in such a way that what is completely insane and unfathomable feels like it is also happening at this very moment in your own backyard.  

Ms. Link apparently likes to share, so I found the story free on her website.  All of my fellow weirdos, enjoy.

"Runaway" by Alice Munro

I'm almost ashamed to admit that this was my first Alice Munro experience, and I choose that term with purpose.  I didn't read Munro; I experienced it.  Because the entire time you are reading her, you are also set alight with the flames of awe and jealousy.

How did she do this?  How did she do all of this in the first two pages? How did she make me feel so mournful and tired as I sit at my lovely pub table with a glass of hot coffee?  How did she transport me to this horse farm and make me love a goat?  How does she manage to maintain effortless control over not only the characters and her perfectly paced plot, but also the weather, the quirks of various animals, the details of mobile home carpeting, and the particular smell of apple-scented soap?  How does she switch narrators without so much as flinching?  How does she manifest Clark, Carla, and Sylvia in an alternate universe in which they continue to exist after you are done reading?  How does she make you keep thinking about Carla's hair, or Clark's cruelty, or the damn goat?

I am the granddaughter of a frugal, Depression-raised Polish grandmother who saves the other half of her pickles and ginger ales.  Opulence makes me uncomfortable.  I can't say I enjoyed this story because it was just too good.  Munro's mastery is distracting.  Imagine trying to get dressed in the morning with a Picasso hanging on your wall or a 10-carat Kardashian-sized diamond on your ring finger.

Munro 101: She is not to be read; she is to be experienced.

"A Father's Story" by Andre Dubus

Last weekend I attended a short story session at the Newburyport Literary Festival where the speakers were, of course, asked to name some of their favorite short stories and authors.  

"A Father's Story," by Andre Dubus, was discussed because of the advice Dubus had given to one of the speakers: write toward the surprise.  

I love a good surprise and I've never read a thing by Dubus, I'm ashamed to admit.  

I read and I read.  I read till the end.  I looked around me in the silent library.  Where was the surprise?  It is a quiet story, as peaceful as a lullaby.  There are beautiful moments and a profound discussion of faith.  But surprise?  Shock?  Not for me.

As I told my husband about the story this evening, he asked me when the story had first been published (1987 I believe).  Would the surprise have been shocking then?  Am I unshockable?  Are we all?

I compared the climax of the story with my new favorite TV show, Pretty Little Liars.  What took place in the Dubus story is a day at the beach for those characters.  They've seen that level of surprise and stress a million times over, as have I, as a loyal fan.  My best friend and I refer to it as TV crack.

I admit this with a fair amount of chagrin because this story is a work of art.  

"It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment.  What creates despair is the imagination, which pretends there is a future, and insists on predicting millions of moments, thousands of days, and so drains you that you cannot live in the moment at hand."  True.  Relevant.  Precise.  

My advice?  Read Dubus to return to a simpler time.  Read it to meditate on faith and family, on courage and great writing.  Take a break from addictive stimulation and ponder the simplicity of 1987.

Why I Love Short Stories

I love short stories because because every one always talks about them like they are a dying grandmother, like they aren't in the room, and that endears them to me.

I love short stories because the last time my father was at my house he picked up one of my short story anthologies, turned to Jack London's, "To Build a Fire," and started to read.

I love short stories because I can read them before bed and they give my mind a thought project that lulls me safely to sleep, protected from my various other potential perseverations.

I love short stories like I used to love washing the dishes at the Blinker Cafe in college, because I can  hold the task of reading them in my hand and see the beginning and end of it.

I love short stories because when I started this blog I actually wondered if I would run out of stories to write about and the stories that keep accumulating in my life are laughing with me about my foolishness.

I love short stories because they make me feel closer to authors whose novels distanced them from me.

I love short stories because they're the underdog, but they don't think of themselves that way (at least not the good ones).

I love short stories because they can form in your mind in an instant and then pour out of you like a confession.

I love short stories because they are almost perfectly timed to the enjoyment of one bottle of beer.

I love short stories because I'm weird.

I love short stories because they connect me with other weird people who love short stories.

"The Thing in the Forest" by A.S. Byatt

As a world-famous chronicler of the short story form, I should probably proceed to write with great confidence and authority about A.S. Byatt's long short story (or is is short long story?) entitled, "The Thing in the Forest."  If you, like me, are of average intelligence, you will know that this is not possible; it's A.S. Byatt after all.  I believe she may be an alien sent here to make humans feel stupid which will ultimately allow her to lead her alien race in assimilating us.

"The Thing in the Forest" is the first story in Byatt's collection, "Little Black Book of Short Stories."  Many of you may know her as the author of the lovely, difficult, world-renowned novel Possession.  Every time my husband talks about his experience reading that book he shivers and gets a far away look in his eyes as if he needs to be held for a few minutes before he can go on living.  My advice on Possession: once you make it through the first 200 pages you're golden.

"The Thing in the Forest" is the story of Penny and Primrose, two little girls turned neurotic middle-aged women, who see a giant worm in the forest when they are evacuated from their homes during the height of WWII.  The image of the worm splitting itself in two to wrap around a tree, then coming together again whole on the other side is forever imprinted on my mind.  The alien Byatt uses her magic to create a full-on sensory experience.  The worm's odor leaks of the pages.  I can hear it slurping and slapping as it makes its way across the forest's floor.  I kept picturing a less jovial Jaba the Hut.  Through Byatt's masterful imagery, we are transported to the forest, both in Penny's and Primrose's childhood, and again when they return to the forest as grown women, seeking some closure from their frightful hike in the woods.

Did the girls really see the worm or did the worm represent the horrors that war inflicts on children?  Is the worm Hitler?  Did Primrose, who later becomes a storyteller by trade, create the worm for herself and Penny?  And who or what is Alys, the little girl the worm ate?  Is Alys the girls' last, tenuous grasp on innocence?  

I have no idea, but sometimes that's the best part of short stories.