Today, my life resembles a play by Tennessee Williams.

Setting: A bog, where screeching birds teem. The sky is overcast and humidity near 90%. Hot, wet, steamy, low-light cutting through blinds.

Dramatis Personae: A woman in her 30s, feeling misunderstood and desperate. Her dog, hot, shedding, panting.

Mood: Angst ridden tempered with ennui.

Action: She is ready to clench her fists and storm from one wall to the next, beating her chest. Why? Why? Why? Ready to watch ice cubes melt in her glass as she walks out onto the terrace in her slip. Ready to grab someone by the shoulders and shake. Ready to liquefy, melt into a puddle on the floor.

Fin: Let the desperate music play and the curtain fall. Do not take a bow.

Result: Today, I am over the top. Today, I am over it. Give me strength.

My friend Kat is a lovely person. She is smart, funny, kind and she is an amazing reader. She reads quickly and deeply. I admire that. She is also very generous and it is thanks to her that I have been turned from one who approached the reading of short story collections with disinterest to one who loves them almost as much (and sometimes more) than novels. I’m a short story collection convert and I’m taking up the cause of the collection and saying to the publishing machine (not that it is listening) that people DO like to read collections and if you would quit convincing yourselves that they are a hard sell, then the readers of the world would listen.

Okay, so, the last short story collection I read was the absolutely brilliant Fidelity by Michael Redhill. Before reading this collection, I had known of Redhill only through his association with Brick, but after reading it I am eager to seek out more of his work. The stories in Fidelity are quiet; they sneak up on you. They are also very close, very intimate without seeming to be so. You are instantly pulled into the world of the story, even though you’re not sure you want to be there, but you can’t help it because what you see is yourself and how you would feel, react.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the uncomfortable and expertly written story, “Cold” in which a man takes off on his first trip to Europe (leaving his pissed off wife behind) with his broken-hearted college roommate (whom he has not seen in years). In the end, realizing that nothing is as it seems–not life, not our tenuous relationships, not our understanding of who we are–he ends up on something of a ledge, where a man thinks he is trying to commit suicide and attempts to stop him:

If I’d spoken his language, I might have been able to explain how I’d come to this moment in my life, but what people say about themselves is not nearly half of what you need to know about them. After another moment, I stepped back from the parapet and the man lowered his hands and smiled at me warmly. A misunderstanding is all it was.

Without hesitation, I say to you, buy this book.

Got The Missouri Review yesterday. It is titled “Confessional” and has a new layout. It’s quite attractive and features such work as an excerpt from Saskia Hamilton’s forthcoming book, The Letters of Robert Lowell. I started to read these letters and was completely sucked in. I should very much like to read the book. The only other thing I’ve read so far is the Steve Almond short story (“My Mouth, Her Sex, the Night, My Heart”), which on the surface seems simplistic (horny guy almost gets laid) but is actually a layered and textured analysis of sibling relationships–how they form and break apart. The ending was kick ass.

Just finished reading Quick Fiction issues #6 & #7–both issues of this beautiful little journal were utterly fantastic. I was especially taken with the stories by Chanel Dubofsky, Emily Fridlund, and John Parras in Issue #6 and the beautiful story, “Flying,” by my pal Jeff Landon in Issue #7. If you don’t already have a subscription to Quick Fiction, you should consider it as well worth your time and money.

I started reading Sam Lipsyte’s Home Land and immediately put it back down. Was this going to be yet another ironic-er than thou book about a young white male who is obsessed with masturbation? Could I stand it? Well, turns out I could, because once I picked it back up, I couldn’t stop reading it.

This book is funny and ribald and, at times, desperately sad but mostly it is brutally, frankly, genuinely honest–and that is what appeals to me the most. I get the impression that Lipsyte did not hold back on one thing he wanted his protagonist Lewis Miner (aka, Teabag) to say. Could I have done without some of the misogynistic and/or violent bits? Sure. Do they stop me from liking the book as a whole? Nope. I like this book. I like it an awful lot. In fact, there were times that I loved it. It made me laugh. And there were times where I had to stop myself from reading aloud from it to my husband (is there anything more annoying than when someone does this–reads aloud from a book they are in process of reading? How can you ever be in the moment of humor they are in?).

In the end what this book is about is not just the fucked up life of Lewis Miner and his assortment of odd friends. It’s not just about updating old classmates on how life is going. In the end, this book is about how we make it through life and how in the end we might realize that this is all we’ve got: living–one of the members of the sad assortment of our givens (the other one being death). Other than that, we have what we can seize and maybe what we can seize, is love.

The most wonderful and heroic things the anti-hero Lewis does are for love. Such as in the end of the book when he finally punches his friend Gary in the head and why does he do it? He does it because Gary was a jackass about his dead mother, who is, perhaps the only person Lewis has ever fully loved. For it was she who taught him that all important lesson: “The trick is to give unto others that which you mean to seize.”

I’m not going to say that this book is for everyone. But, for what it’s worth, I thoroughly enjoyed it (although I usually skipped the masturbation scenes).

The archives for one of the best radio shows out there, Word by Word, have been updated (though they are still in progress in terms of format). New shows have been added, including Steve Almond, Sue Miller, Andrew Sean Greer, and a panel discussion of Jayson Blair’s memoir.

The third issue of Lilies and Cannonballs Review is now available. Visit them online at www.liliesandcannonballs.com.

If you will, please take a few minutes and read an absolutely stunning piece of writing by my friend, Mary Akers–On Receiving Notice of My Stepdaughter’s Pregnancy. I promise that you will be moved by the honesty and raw emotion in this piece.

Out of town today and tomorrow. Going to meet my excellent friend Ellen Meister, among others. Happy day!

The documentary Rock School is getting rave reviews everywhere I look. So much hearty congratulations to my pal Robin Slick and her talented kids who are a huge part of the story. I can’t wait to see this movie!

“Appoggiatura” is the word 13-year-old Anurag Kashyap spelled yesterday to become the 2005 national spelling champion. Congratulations to him!

One of my favorite journals, Lilies and Cannonballs Review, has an updated web site, including excerpts from past and present works.

It’s a wonderful journal. I would encourage you to check out their site, read the excerpts and consider subscribing and/or submitting work.

You’re Tennessee!

A vibrantly musical individual, you probably know how to play multiple instruments. At the heart of your love for music is the guitar, though you have a soft spot for violins, which you refuse to call anything but fiddles. Fiddlesticks aside, you are very thin and have excellent posture. If you ever run for elected office, you won’t even be able to get your hometown to support you. I guess that’s why they call it the blues.

Take the State Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

thanks to Sharon for this fun quiz.