An Interesting Twist

Last Sunday night I wrote a short story, from beginning to end, from about 12:30 to 4:00 am. I haven’t done that in a long time. In fact, I hadn’t completed a story in nine months, which is painful. It’s been a slow, rough year.

Most of those nine months I’ve been talking about displaying accurately through prose the way people talk in real life. I’ve also been trying to bring plot into my writing, which is something I’ve always had trouble with — that’s why I chose nonfiction at school, I didn’t want to have to come up with stories, just write them out with good language. Last Sunday night I gave both of those ideas a resolute middle finger and wrote a completely plotless, third-person narrated, magically-inclined story about a guy wandering through the woods to a swimming hole he and his friends used to go to as teenagers, where he inadvertently causes a tree to grow two-hundred feet tall in a matter of minutes, sucking up all the water in the swimming hole.

I did it again yesterday, but thankfully in the afternoon so I don’t feel deathlike today. It was a little shorter and maybe not as good. In it a man-made pool in New Mexico rains into the sky, drying up clouds and blowing them away. Why? Not a clue! Is there a point? Fuck no! But I wrote and that always feels better than not writing.

It’s not the first time I’ve written that type of fantasy (I wanted to describe the story as “fantastic,” but in the way that isn’t an indicator of quality). I wrote one for a fiction class in college called “He is Melting” in which a house is inflated like a balloon by butterflies that explode out of a woman’s mouth. That was three years ago by this point, though, and I was surprised when I returned to that type of story. I guess it just goes to show me that I should stop trying to write in any particular way. Turns out it might have been stifling me.

Seymour Glass

I spent the last week re-reading Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenter, and Seymour, an Introduction, by J.D. Salinger. It’s plenty known that I have a big thing for Salinger, and this here will not deviate from that.

First of all, these two “short stories,” for lack of a better term, each include one or more truly fabulous sentences. In Raise High, Seymour Glass says in his journal “I’m some sort of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.” As a sentence it’s nothing particularly out of this world, but the sentiment in it has such incredible warmth, that even just typing it out here made me smile. Then in Seymour, which is somewhat accurately described as long physical description by Buddy Glass of his older brother with plenty of tangents, Buddy makes a side note”(No one in my family, not even Seymour, ever felt drafts. Only terrible drafts.)” Again typing this out made me smile. The sentence, and really just the word terrible, is doing a hell of a lot of work describing the Glass family. There’s another moment like this earlier in the story where Buddy says his little sister Boo Boo went through a phase in her young womanhood where she just died about ten times a day from embarrassment. Love it.

Second, Salinger in these stories has the kind of vocal narration that I aspire to. More so in Raise High, I as a reader got the distinct feeling that Buddy Glass was sitting in my room telling me the story of Seymour’s wedding day. As Seymour said in his own story, Buddy has “A Gift for the Patterns of Colloquial Speech,” capitals his. I like capital letters strewn in the middle of sentences, if used sparingly. They can be used very well to refer, mildly sarcastically, to the Big Ideas and Major Events.

The narration in Seymour can at times be almost impenetrable. Once you get into the rhythm of them, it’s fine, but it takes work. One sentence might sound something like this: “This is a sentence, and this is an aside about something somewhat related to the subject of the sentence, which really needs to be considered with this piece of information here, (sorry about all the asides, I’m trying to be clear) that can be hard to understand.” When sentences have that much going on all at once, it loses the vocal nature. No one speaks like that in real life. Anyone would just cut themselves off halfway through and restart. But people do, when they’re trying to get all their points across as quickly as possible, and they don’t want to go back and edit anything later, (because that might lose the immediacy of the statements) write like that.

I like that I titled this “Seymour Glass” and I’ve barely said anything about him. Whatever.

Point A – Point B

I’m sad to say that since I left Pittsburgh almost three weeks ago the speed of my reading took I sharp fall. Finally, finally today I finished The Question of Bruno by Aleksandar Hemon. I wasn’t nearly as excited about it than I have been with some of the more recent collections I’ve read, at least not during the beginning, but the penultimate story, “Josef Pronek and Blind Souls”, which might be called a novella, and the story “A Coin” were far and beyond incredible.

“A Coin” begins: ”Suppose there is a Point A and a Point B and that, if you want to get from point A to point B, you have to pass through an open space clearly visible to a skillful sniper. You have to run from Point A to Point B and the faster you run, the more likely you are to reach Point B alive.”

When he gets into the Bosnian War stuff, he’s like a goddamn scalpel. Very clear, very calm, and there was a hell of a lot going on that could not be described as calm. In a lot of the other stories, like “Islands,” the first in the collection and one that I referenced in a previous post, Hemon tosses words around because it’s fun. I think it must have something to do with the fact that English is his second language. I mean, I can’t say for sure because I only speak English, but I’ve always gotten the impression that because of the varied sources English comes from our language has a hell of a lot of synonyms, and a hell of a lot of words with very specific and often esoteric differences in denotation. It can make the language frustrating, sure, but it also gives writers so much to play around with.

In general, however, if you’re going to pick up a book by Hemon, I’d recommend Nowhere Man over this one. It’s his second book and it left by the wayside many of the things I didn’t like in Bruno, his first.

Piles of Fiction

On Monday night I had the pleasure of watching Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas with someone who had never seen it before, nor is she a regular drug user. The look of incredulity that grew over her face through the two hours was something I hope never to forget.

Now that I am a re-registered user of the Carnegie Libraries of Pittsburgh, I have adopted a love-em-and-leave-em style of reading. I gorge voraciously for a few days, then as soon as I return the book I get a new one. So out with Last Evenings on Earth and in with The Question of Bruno, by Aleksandar Hemon. More short stories.

I read Hemon’s Nowhere Man my junior year, and I do remember liking it. He’s got a pretty interesting relationship with the English language. When he moved from Bosnia to Chicago in 1992, after the war (or during, I can’t remember how long that took) he barely knew any English, but he started writing in English by 1995. How he came to learn English that well that quick I am unfamiliar with, but it’s resulted in some interesting descriptors and images. “Bashful whisper of waves” is pretty good, no?

Ok, so I’m not done with Bolaño. But this one is about him in real life, not fiction, and as happens frequently I like him a lot less in his real life than his fiction. Apparently he hated magical realism, which I disagree with intensely. You know how I love me some magical realism. Of course he also hated Isabel Allende, which I very much agree with. He called her a “scribbler” and I call her a hack. Dovetails nicely. He was so forceful with his critiques of her that right after he died, Allende was asked about him and said “death does not make you a nicer person.” Ice cold.

 

Rain Delay

The Little League World Series is a really strange thing. These kids are 11 to 13, I think, and they’re goddamn strong, tall little fucks. Also, you have teams from Philadelphia, Mississippi playing places like Saudi Arabia. But the commentators are trying to convince me that there are people who has set up their viewing blankets 4 hours before a game plays. I hope they’re blowing it out of proportion.

Right now the game is actually Canada versus Saudi Arabia, and SA just went on a 5-run jag in the top of the third. This shit’s getting intense. Although I have taken notice that many of the boys on the Saudi team are white. I’m guessing Army brats, but I mean it’s a little weird right? There are Arab players, but the cheering section is even more skewed. I imagine it has something to do with a wealth gap. But maybe I’m just feeling a little edgy, I was watching Republican’s campaign earlier and it set my day on a kilter. I will require a nap.

On the other hand I did manage to plow through the first five stories in the Bolaño book. In the last two he gave up on naming his characters and just went with A and B (although B is the protagonist.) I can’t yet decide if it interfered with my reading, which is something I don’t cotton to, when writers get in their own ways. But it wasn’t as bad as Host, so I’ll make it.

Rain delay for the Little Leaguers.

Somebody’s Got A Case of the Mondays

I’ve had a conflicted relationship in Mondays this summer. It’s deadline day at the City Paper, so I do always have to be up at a reasonable hour, but all I have to do is type for ten minutes and send an email, it’s literally the least I could have to do. So after that modicum of work I have M0ndays almost entirely free. Right now, for instance, I am leisurely enjoying a cup of coffee and reading Warren Buffett’s Op-Ed in the New York Times; I’d feel just horribly pretentious if I weren’t wearing a t-shirt that says loudly and in all caps “Drink More Beer!” across the front.

I’m pretty sure I was legitimately sick this weekend, and I still have sinus pressure like a motherfucker, but it’s always a toss-up, due to my perpetual combination of hungover-stoned-underslept. In any case, I was laid out pretty bad for Friday and Saturday. Luckily I recovered quickly enough to go to the Carnegie Science Center with my good friend Hilary yesterday. I was there ostensibly to interview someone for the Everyone’s A Critic section in the paper, which I did, but I made sure we went early and stayed late so we could play with the kids toys. I played air hockey against a robot. A Fucking Robot. I love science.

A few notes:

1. I’ve finished with Miranda July, and I want to read one of the following collections next: Both Way is the Only Way I Want It, by Maile Meloy; Pastoralia, by George Saunders; or Last Evenings on Earth, by Roberto Bolano. Opinions from the peanut gallery are greatly appreciated.

2. It’s always good to hear rich-fucks like Warren Buffett vocalize their support for higher taxes on the rich, but I seem to remember him doing that before and it not having any effect.

3. Rick Perry is running for President. He’s the first Republican running who scares me. A reminder: since he became governor of Texas, Texas has executed 234 people.

I may be getting over my illness but there’s still a lot of real fucked up shit going on isn’t there.

There’s a Hole in My Arm

I wrote this yesterday but forgot to press publish:

“Turns out my feature on the Cyberpunk Apocalypse for the City Paper is the cover story. I only just discovered this because I’ve been asleep off and on all fucking day. I have that feeling like when you wake up from a nap and it’s as if you’re still dreaming. But now I’m drinking coffee and if that doesn’t work I’ll try beer. I feel like I should be a little more excited about the article than I am. I can’t even link to it because they haven’t updated the website yet for this week. But I’ll get to it.”

Now it’s Thursday morning and I’m trying to decide whether or not to go to work. My editor’s taking the day off so I don’t actually have to be in the office if I turn my work in, but I don’ have internet at my apartment yet so it’s either go to the office or be that asshole who sits in the coffee shop for hours on his computer and hardly buys anything. Also, here’s the link to my Cyberpunk story.

The cute girl who talked to me as we got off the bus, bitching about the Dark Knight Rises filming downtown and disrupting everything, is here at the coffee shop too, reading the City Paper. There’ really no way to go up and say, by the way my name’s on the cover, is there? Didn’t think so.

I have a hole in my left arm, right below the elbow. First it was a raw spot, I think from a carpet burn. Then it was a blister, then it was a popped blister, which tore off and left a hole. I picked out the scab one day and now it’ll probably scar. I’ve always been a scab picker.

I’ve been reading again. Thanks once more to Alexa for the vast array of short story collections she has to lend me. It’s called No One Belongs Here More Than You by Miranda July. It’s just as bizarre as the Keret book but in an entirely different way. The voice reeks of innocence, despite the very sexual content of some of the stories. It’s the kind of voice that makes it seem like the speaker is experiencing the world through a dense haze. Even with the title the stories are filled with some very lonely people, and I myself have been feeling very lonely.

I spent the night at a friend’s last night, because she lives in Highland Park and by the time everything was said and done I didn’t feel like fucking with the buses. I also just like sharing a bed with someone. No sex, not even spooning, but it usually just feels nice to hear someone breathing next to you as you fall asleep. She passed out almost instantly, and I was left to my thoughts, which as it turned out was not the best thing for me. It was the first time I’d felt that lonely while sharing a bed.

The Nimrod Flipout

For once, that totally random title up there isn’t mine. It’s the title of a book of short stories by an Israeli writer Etgar Keret, lent to me so nicely by Alexa. I’m not quite halfway through; I’ve been either out of town, busy with work, or drunk. But I asked for a book of short stories, and that’s what I got. I’m pleased to see, so far, that his stories are not uniform, which now that I think about it would have been pretty weird.

Some of them are the “plotless, quotidian” that Michael Chabon hates so much, but the thing is, I really liked them. The opening story is called Fatso, and in a nutshell it is about “you” a guy who, when you start getting hot and heavy with your new girlfriend, find out that at night, in much the same way Cameron Diaz in Shrek, she transforms into a fat, male soccer hooligan. So the story is about that, and then you kind of just… get over it. I love this story, and I have no idea why. I’m not kidding, why is this a good story? I’m guessing, grasping at straws, that it’s the tone and voice. It has the sensation of a person telling you a story, rather than a writer writing down a story that you then read, which makes me happy because that’s what I’ve been doing, in some cases.

The character sketch I’ve been working on is essentially this, characters at differing degrees of closeness to the main character telling the reader stories about the guy. So at least I know that it’s possible to write great stories that way, I’m not on a one-ended bridge, as it were. It’s a bit of a comfort.

The Comparative Heights of American Presidents

I realized something very important today: in the drawer by the shitty free coffee there are single serve Coffee-mate creamers. No more powdered creamer for me!

(Side note: In a shitty hotel restaurant in Iowa, my Mom and I were discussing where Naugahyde comes from; we settled on large, ugly brown herd animals named Naugas that produce Coffee-mate instead of milk.)

The other, more important thing that I realized was how hard it is for me to write when I’m not reading anything. As if to prove my point, I spent the time between that last sentence and this one reading about the comparative heights of Presidents, which like the population in general are trending taller. This is very important for me to know.

Trying to write flash fiction for the Weave contest has gotten me back interested in short fiction, so I’m currently in search of a good collection of short stories. For some reason I want one all by one author, instead of a “Best American..” style conglomeration. If anyone has any suggestions, please pass them along. The last one I read, I think, was Men and Cartoons by Jonathan Lethem, which is, at its base level, fucking awesome.

I’m so out of practice with short fiction that I think what I’m looking for are some clues about how to make a short story something more than a long piece of flash fiction. What I mean is that flash fiction, on the level that it works for me, is snapshot-based, image-based, or moment-based, however you’d like to describe it. And it seems that some short stories have a tendency to be the same way. Michael Chabon, who else would I reference?, called them “quotidian, plotless, moment-of-truth revelatory stor[ies],” which we landed on because plot became something tainted and out of the pulp magazines.

That’s what’s nice about working in flash fiction right now: I can be as plotless and quotidian as I damn well please. I don’t have to try to cram a plot into a thousand words, because no one expects that to work.

I really have no idea how to make plot work. That’s why I started writing nonfiction, because I didn’t have to make anything up, and even if it was ridiculous as long as I was telling the truth it didn’t matter.  But in fiction even the stuff that is essentially true to my life can come off as unbelievable or far-fetched, which turns readers off (it always did me anyway). So how do I create a believable plot without it being so cold and routine that I fall into the quotidian and the plotless? How do I write a plot that’s interesting enough to keep people reading but not too interesting as to be unbelievable?

I feel like I just spat my coffee at my keyboard and this blog entry is what came out.