Emerging Writers Network

National Short Story Month - The Hat Act by Robert Coover

"The Hat Act" by Robert Coover is the last story in his collection Pricksongs & Descants. This collection was actually my introduction to Coover's work back in 1988 (when it was almost 20 years old) after having read one of the stories from within, "The Babysitter," in an anthology for a creative writing class (Thank you Alyson Hagy!). Dipping in and re-reading various stories this past week or so has been a great reminder of what it was that excited me about Coover's work with this introduction to it.

Re-reading "The Hat Act," I am a little surprised at the difference between my 22 year old reading self vs. my 46 year old reading self. The question is whether or not I actually understand what I read better now, or if perhaps I think a bit too much of my ability to read now and develop theories that are ridiculous?

The story begins:

In the middle of the stage: a plain table.

A man enters, dressed as a magician with black cape and black silk hat. Doffs hat in wide sweep to audience, bows elegantly.

Applause.

He displays inside of hat. It is empty. He thumps it. It is clearly empty. Places hat on table, brim up. Extends both hands over hat, tugs back sleeves exposing wrists, snaps fingers. Reaches in, extracts a rabbit.

Applause.

And it continues going back and forth between the magician's moves, and the crowd's response, though it's not always "Applause."

Later in the story:

Trembling with anxiety, magician presses out first hat, places it brim up on table, crushes second hat on floor. Wads second hat, tries desperately to jam it into first hat. No, it will not fit. Turns irritably to pitch second hat into wings.

Loud booing.

Freezes. Pales. Returns to table with both hats, first in fair condition brim up, second still in a crumpled wad. Faces hats in defeat. Bows head as though to weep silently.

Hissing and Booing.

The story continues on with the magician doing better and better tricks to applause, and then any time the crowd was not as happy as they had been with previous tricks, they let the magician know. And here's where now I think maybe I see something I didn't see 24 years ago--the fact that the story appears to be Coover's description of what it's like to be a writer of fiction, and especially a writer of fiction that tended to walk on the high wire. When that wire wasn't high enough, or dangerous enough, readers would be quick to let him know. At least that's how I see it now--who know what I'll think when I'm reading this story at age 70 in another 24 years.

The ending is a particularly brutal ending that I won't spoil here--I highly suggest you find a copy of this book and read it yourself.

National Short Story Month - Latitude by Merrill Joan Gerber

Merrill Joan Gerber's short story, "Latitude," comes from her collection, This is a Voice from Your Past. It begins:

Martha stood under the bright dining-room light behind her mother-in-law, snipping deftly at the gray hairs high on the thick, slightly wrinkled neck. Funny, she thought, that she would trust me at her back with a sharp instrument. She clipped the hairs neatly, feeling them brush her legs as they fell to the floor. When she got home, she would have to shake out her shoes.

This paragraph shines on some of the things I've really enjoyed while getting myself caught up on the decades of great writing Gerber has provided readers with: the humor (the line about the sharp instrument), the frequent writing on family and relationships within, and her attention to detail (that last line).

This particular story moves nicely timewise to give the reader  more insight into that first paragraph, and especially the line of humor, with back story about Martha and her husband Will, and their courtship and Edna (the mother-in-law) and her husband's strong stance against their son moving so fast with the first person he connected with. How they got past that, and how they get to the point of cutting hair is deftly handled, and wonderfully told.

National Short Story Month - A Full-Service Shelter by Amy Hempel

The new issue of Tin House (52, not currently visible on their website) has a plethora of great short stories and one of those is "The Full-Service Shelter" by Amy Hempel. Nearly every paragraph, and many second and third sentences within paragraphs, in the story begins "They knew me..." or "They knew us..." with the "they" in question being dogs that are at the full-service center.

They knew us as teh ones who got tetanus shots and rabies shots--the latter still a series but no longer in the stomach--and who closed the bites and gashes on our arms with Krazy glue--not the medical grade, but the kind you find at hardware stores--instead of going to the ER for stitches where we would have had to report the dog, who would then be put to death.

or

They knew us as the ones who argued the names assigned at Intake, saying, "Who will adopt a dog named Nixon?" And when Nixon's name was changed--changed to Dahmer--we raggedon them again, then just let it go when the final name assigned was O.G., Original Gangster. There was always a "Baby" on one of the wards so the staff could write on the kennel card, "No one puts Baby in the corner," and they finally stopped using "Precious" after a senior kennel worker said of a noble, aged Rottie, "I fucking hate this name, but this is a good dog."

These are examples of the writing to be found within the story. Hempel is very straightforward with her writing, allowing her narrator to assume what it was that the dogs in the shelter would notice of her and  her working partner, based essentially on everything that she did and thought while working. Putting her own feelings and efforts into the thoughts of these dogs.

I found it to be an oddly strong story in how I was pulled from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph--I couldn't stop myself if I had wanted to, but there wasn't some huge plot point dragging me forward, or any big character-development. There was something in the language and the way of allowing those other charcters to define the narrator, even though with her own voice, that kept my attention and interest.

And a quick side note--as one fascinated by Richard M. Nixon (I attribute this to a--he was fucking fascinating and b--he was probably on the television screen more than anybody the years I was three through six {1969-1972}), I actually did have a dog named Nixon--we found out he had been born the night Nixon died--how the hell could we NOT name him Nixon?

National Short Story Month - A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends by Stacy Bierlein

The title story from Stacy Bierlein's A Vacation on the Island of Ex-Boyfriends starts:

In three days we have played, cried, ran, fought, laughed, danced, and built fires with them all--every man we've ever wanted. We're exhausted.

The two women the story is about get sidetracked on their way to Nantucket and end up on an island where each of their entire  list of former boyfriends is lined up along the beach. It's a fantastic scenario and Bierlein plays it out interestingly right on through to the end. Anna, the narrator, goes through her list chronologically, though is surprised by the inclusion of Michael--a man she had a one-night stand with--he was told by the person on the Ferry that brought eveybody to this special island that they'd apparently had an emotional connection.

Bierlein does a nice and subtle job of differentiating the two women and their personalities by describing the actions of their respective boyfriends on the islands--Anna's seem quiet and pretty introspective while Tammi's are louder, engaging with each other, and still trying to curry favor with each other.

The ending, having to do with Michael and Anna has Bierlein commenting, again with great nuance, about how both men and women view relationships, as well as how they communicate.

A full review of the entire collection is forthcoming here at the EWN--the half I've finished so far though has been great reading.

National Short Story Month - Guest Post - Noy Holland

A guest post from the fantastic story writer, Noy Holland:

Joseph Cardinale's work is ambitious and humble, carefully composed and recklessly felt.  His stories are infused with an intoxicating spiritual depth; his characters become exalted, irrational, gorgeously unpredictable.  They want the impossible and the impossible happens.  They believe in the possibilities of transformation, and they stand fast by their convictions. Here is a writer who seeks the transformative, who exults in the promise of language to deepen and complicate experience.  "Any good book is an experiment in living," someone said.  Joseph writes stories which relieve readers of the trivia of the world; his stories are invitations to compassion, aesthetic bliss.  They are necessary, and, in their nimbleness, their intensity of feeling, thrilling to read.

 

--Noy Holland  

author of Swim for the Little One First (forthcoming from FC2), What Begins with Bird, and The Spectacle of the Body

National Short Story Month - After the Leaving by Aaron Burch

There are not hundreds of stories available to read by Aaron Burch, which seems odd for a guy that's been around during much of the internet explosion of literary journals, and for a guy that has been a fairly large part of that community. It seems to me though that what Burch has done, that maybe some other writers didn't do, was hold off before publishing. That is, it seems as if maybe he buried a lot of stories in his own personal locker somewhere, waiting until he was writing at the level he wanted others to be able to see before he began submitting.

I could be completely wrong about this--he may just have really started to write seriously three years ago and be publishing a high percentage of everything he's written. What I don't find though, when Googling his name, are stories that I find to be really slight versions of his better works.

"After the Leaving" can be found in the new issue of Unsaid and it's a story told in 39 short sections across ten pages. The tale has a Noah's Ark feel to it as there is a large item being built by a single person (at first) that seems to be a boat, and in fact ends up being one. There's also a current to futuristic feel though (as opposed to Noah's Ark times) as items that are used to make up this boat include many items from our own daily lives (computer monitors, tires, and the like).

What was "the Leaving?" The reader is never really told. The phrase "After the Leaving" is used a couple of times, but there's not really any explanation for what it was, or what life was like prior to that event. There are also frequent references to The Factory, where all men seem to be employed, though all seem to be working on their own, without much idea of what anybody else there is doing.

Burch has done a nice job of creating this world that is unfamiliar, while not being so unfamiliar so as to make it unapproachable by his readers. Much of what I note in the previous paragraph was hit upon in a great second section:

We hadn't been the same since the Leaving, since the silence came and cast a dark shadow over the town like a storm-front tht threatened but never happened. We worked together, all the men of the town, at the Factory, though not together--we traveled to work separately; had our own rooms and, presumably job tasks; left when we were done, no two of us at the same time. Not one of us at the factory knew what the others among us did. Nor did we much care.

There are just some great sentences in this story:

In the same manner, none among us now wants to admit any sense of doubt, about each how and why of the way things are, and the where of our current location or possible destination.

and

Prayers, we started calling them, unsure where we'd heard the word before, and we repeated the overheard words to each other and ourselves, hoping to recreate whatever their meaning might be.

This story fits well in Unsaid (not a surprise, David McLendon doesn't pic things that don't), showing just what level burch is writing at these days. You'll be happy if you pick up this journal, and this story by Aaron Burch will be one of the reasons why.

National Short Story Month - Copper Top by Karl Taro Greenfeld

"Copper Top" originally appeared in an issue of New York Tyrant and now leads off Karl Taro Greenfeld's debut collection, NowTrends (Short Flight/Long Drive, 2011). It's an interesting selection to lead off a collection with its metafictional aspects, the narrtor's name is Karl Taro Greenfeld, who is a writer, with a wife and two daughters with the same name as the author's wife and two daughters.

The story begins simply enough, with Greenfeld carrying a jug of his own urine due to his doctor needing to perform more tests on Greenfeld having determined that his copper levels were off the charts:

When I asked what was normal, he said these numbers were off the chart.

That's just an expression, I told him.

No, he said. I am looking at a chart here, and those numbers are not on it, anywhere.

Greenfeld sneaks sly bits of humor such as this into the story sporadically. He also begins to very subtly foreshadow the fact that perhaps this additional copper is affecting Greenfeld more than he realizes, slowly allowing the reader in on facts that show this to be the case while doing so in a way that keeps the Greenfeld character in the dark.

The story is an excellent one and has me looking forward to reading the rest of the collection. While it has metafictional aspects to it, the story itself is straightforward, and interesting and very well done.

National Short Story Month - The Ones Who Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones does some things in his stories on what seems to me is a regular basis (though I must admit, I've probably not read more than a couple dozen of his most likely hundreds of stories published to date--I've done a better job of keeping up with his prolific novel writing pace). At lesat one of these seems to be something you can't get away with regularly unless you're a pretty damn good writer--and that's demanding that the reader remember he/she is reading a story. About halfway through "The Ones Who Got Away" (the pseudo-title story from his collection The Ones That Got Away), Jones narrator starts a section with:

This is the part of the story where I tell about meeting Tim in the third grade, I know. And all our forts and adventures and girlfriends, and how we were family for each other when our families weren't.

There's a fairly solid reason behind the narrator talking about when and where he met Tim by this point in the story, but that whole "This is thepartof the story..." means of leading into it is something that Jones seems to have done in quite a few of the stories that I've read. It seems to me you need to have a great deal of confidence that you've got your reader completely hooked before you try to pull off this move, this stopping and snapping your fingers in their faces until they say Yes, we realize you're telling us a story, get back to the damn thing. It's something he's earned though as Jones writes stories that make you tell him you're willing to take a small tangent so long as he gets back to the tale eventually. And he always does.

He also does a realy nice job of foreshadowing fairly regularly. This story starts:

Later we would learn that the guy kept a machete close to his front door. Tht he kept it there specifically for people like us. For the chance of people like us. That he'd been waiting.

I was fifteen.

About a quarter of the way through the story he notes:

Like I said, we were fifteen.

Tim still is.

Both of these will lead a good reader to realize that they're not simply reading a story about a kidnapping as it appears. Of course that probably was already in the mind of a read of Jones' stories--a simple kidnnapping hardly seems strong enough fare for his work. I will say this though, while Jones does a fantsatic job of foreshadowing, he also leaves himself enough wiggle room to constantly still surprise his readers. I've not read one of his stories yet that doesn't have an aspect that catches me off guard, but alwyas in a way that makes sense, that has me looking to re-read the story and figure out what should have led me to expect it.

National Short Story Month - From the Crooked Timber by Okla Elliott

Just purchased direct from Press 53, Okla Elliott's collection, From the Crooked Timber. Some nice blurbs on this one from scads of writers: Thomas E. Kennedy, Jonathan Monroe, Franz Wright, Duff Brenna, Kelly Cherry, Lee Martin and Lee K. Abbott. I've only started peeking into this one but enjoying every bit that I've had a chance to take in so far--look for a post about a story or two before the month is over.

A Novel to Pre-Order: David Abrams's Fobbit

This has nothing to do with National Short Story Month but it's a book I've been looking forward to for over seven years--back when it was probably still a germ in the David Abrams's mind. Here's a link to an EWN post from August 2005 in which David allowed me to post an excerpt from his journal when he was serving over in Iraq. These journal postings David was writing led to him finding an agent, and turning his words and ideas into what I'm sure is a great novel, Fobbit (yes, a slight tweak from the Fobber in the  journals).

The cover has been finalized and the book comes  from Grove in September!