I was moved by Gary Fincke‘s Flannery O’Connor Award winning collection Sorry I Worried You. The protagonists of these stories are not lightweights–that’s for sure. Often they are unreliable or even menacing and they are not afraid to show the reader their dark hearts, their secret places. So, too, the stories within are neither light nor easy–they are dark, complex, often funny, but more often tragic. Still, for some there is a light at the end of each tunnel–it may be a dim light, but it’s there in the form of hope.
My favorite story of the bunch is the timely “Book Owner”–a sort of catalog of one man’s life long obsession with all things writing (including plagarism, hypergraphia, and literary hoaxes) and compulsive lying–which leads him into and out of the Vietnam war, after which he comes back home and fulfills his destiny.
What a tragic, fascinating, and haunting (for me anyway) news item–Elderly Widow, Her Caretaker Found Dead:
A 106-year-old widow and her 30-year-old caretaker died together in an apparent suicide pact at the home they shared, authorities said.
There are so many unanswered questions and I’m left to wonder if this was a Harold and Maude relationship or merely platonic or mother/son or what. And how could he strangle her? And why did he, at age 30, think it was his time to die? Could he not stand the thought of living without her?
Last night I watched the first part of the three part documentary Country Boys on PBS (if you missed it, you can watch it online). It broke my heart and also made me homesick.
I did not grow up in the Appalachians where this film takes place, but I grew in an area quite similar socio-economically–farming and mining country, though the mines were all shut down, the boom towns busted, and many of the miners and their families left behind to find other work (like prison guard). Some of the kids on my bus had no indoor plumbing. One family used an old billboard as part of their roof–the younger children hanging out on the porch in shitty diapers, with liter Pepsi bottles in their hands. Many families smelled of the woodsmoke from the woodstoves they used for heat all winter.
Horrible things happened to some of these kids but you only heard about it through the grapevine. Usually you just pretended that horrible things did not happen. Until one day, a girl a grade higher from me turned in her father and a couple of her brothers. They had been molesting her for years. But you never would have known it from her constant smile.
It was not an easy place to live but it was a beautiful place and that is what I notice when I watch this documentary. These kids living through trauma and heartache and poverty but still finding something to believe in. Finding some hope. It is gorgeous.
The filmmaker, David Sutherland, is the same one who made The Farmer’s Wife (if you’ve not seen it, check your local library, which likely has a copy), which is a film that broke my heart in a similar way.
On the flip side, I am reading the book Prep, which does not break my heart or make me feel homesick because it is so far from my experience that it might as well be science fiction. Prep is partly about privilege and partly about being on the outside of privilege (although this is not fully believable as the narrator is living a privileged life whether she wants to believe it or not–especially when one compares her to the children in the documentary above).
With that said, it is highly readable and entertaining. My problem is not at all with the writing. The main problem I have with it, is that the protagonist always allows herself an out, thus she never really calls herself on her bad, sometimes cruel, behavior–not even in her dark moments. With that said, I’m not finished it yet, so she may redeem herself.
Check it out–the amazing Joseph Young has redesigned his web site: www.josephyoung.net. Make sure you click on all of the links in the sidebar because each contains a treat or many.
When I was in grade school I got a novel out of the school library that scared the bejesus out of me. It was about a marauding pack of feral cats that were terrorizing a community (killing people, doing damage, etc). I believe the protagonist was a young girl about my age at the time (11) who was trying to help figure out what was happening (the community didn’t know the perpetrators were cats at first. Did they think it was a monster? I can’t remember). The ending, if memory serves, was bleak.
In a nutshell, it seemed a shitty book for kids who are already easily creeped out (me). I wish I could remember more–like the title–so I could find it again and see if it was as scary as I remember it. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
The reason I mention it here is that I believe it was the first time I had ever heard the term “feral cat” used, as opposed to alley cat. And early this morning I woke up from a dream at the end of which I was attempting to pet a huge, fluffy feral cat when it started to growl–low at first–and then howl and then bite and scratch the shit out of me.
So when I went online searching for the above mentioned book, instead I found this: Cat Writers’ Association. Who knew? Incidentally, this is an association for people who write about cats as opposed to cats who write (although there may be an association for them as well).
There is nothing better than when someone kind and deserving gets great news. And yesterday, that someone was none other than Jim Tomlinson (here is his flash Flights, which was in the issue of SmokeLong I guest edited), who won the Iowa Fiction Prize. His winning collection will be published in the fall of 2006. Congratulations, Jim!
The winter issue of failbetter is live and along with fiction. poetry, and visuals are interviews with Mary Gaitskill and Billy Collins.
Couple of things:
* Sarah Salway & Sarah’s Writer’s Journal
* Matthew M. Quick
* Justin Crouse
For your reading pleasure today, I offer you fiction from Void Magazine: Self Defense by my beautiful, talented friend, Jordan Rosenfeld.
Across from the end of my street is a small pond, which is nearly empty of water by the end of summer. I hadn’t thought much lived there other than frogs and mosquitoes, but now I know that I am wrong.
It seems two (one of our neighbors saw them, this is how I know two) beavers have set up shop in the pond and this poor tree (note the bottom of it, how it is girdled by their gnawing) stands as evidence of their work ethic, their fearlessness in the face of a daunting task.
Cutting down trees is difficult work and it takes skill and vision. You have to know how where to make your first cut in order to plan where the tree will fall. If you cut wrong, you could end up in a dangerous or frustrating situation. And how do these creatures know where to cut? Clearly, there is instinct involved.
I wish I could see them working on this tree. It seems, though, that they have stopped for the time being. It’s cold out. They are underground.
They have inspired me, though. Reminded me that even though a task may seem daunting, if you persevere you will reach your goal (not always true, of course, but this is what I’m telling myself). A reminder for the new year.
And what, you might ask, is this a photo of? Well, my friends, it just so happens to be one of my favorite Christmas presents–the amazing Tush-Cush.
Like most of you, I am at my desk for many hours each day, and when I am I sit in a hardbacked wooden chair. Allen Dean hates my chair. Thinks it looks uncomfortable. Thinks I need something ergodynamic. He would be happy to see me in a big, wheelie, puffy chair that tilts and moves up and down. It makes his back ache to see me in my austere wooden chair.
And, lately, it must be said that my wooden chair makes my back ache, as well. But the problem is that I love it. I don’t want to wheel or move up and down and I certainly don’t want to sit on something puffy.
If I could kneel on shards of glass and type, I would. I want to suffer (not really, but it sounds impressive when I say that).
And so, instead of getting me a chair I would not like, he got me the Tush-Cush so that I might have just a bit more comfort. And I have to say that–even though it vaguely resembles a hemorrhoid ring–it is fabulous. Everyone who sat on it thinks so (and that included everyone who was at my house on Christmas day–there was much jockeying for who would be next on the Tush-Cush).
I love my Tush-Cush (and I love saying Tush-Cush). Tush-Cush. Tush-Cush. Tush-Cush.
Vestal Review #24 is live, with stories by Avital Gad Cykman, Maryanne Stahl, and me (among others).
myfanwy collins 