SSM 2010 - Guest Post - Todd James Pierce on Ralph Lombreglia

First I have to note something about this guest post, it comes from Todd James Pierce, who won the Drue Heinz Award a couple of years back, and thus knows a little something about short stories himself.  Second, this marks two years in a row that great authors have written a guest post about this author and this particular collection of short stories as John McNally did last year as well, and third, it's about an author that I too have raved about over the decade that the EWN has been in existence.

Todd Pierce on Ralph Lombreglia

In 1990, as a student at Oregon State University, I had vague ambitions to write.  And by vague ambitions, I mean that mostly I wanted to write a novel.   Like most every twenty-something wanna-be male writer living in America, I figured that I would somehow assemble my own experiences into the great American twenty-something novel.  My problem here was one of practicality: in the introductory fiction workshop we neither wrote nor studied novels.  We focused on short stories.  That year, in writing programs from Iowa to California, Carver was king.  If not Carver, well then Ann Beattie or Amy Hempel, both of them known primarily for their shorter works.  
     Truthfully, back then, I admired Carver more than I loved him.  I appreciated his flat honest narration and the way dialogue was its own type of violence.  Carver’s characters were primal, I understood, subdued by bourbon or sometimes pot.  But I never wanted to write like him—an author who published stories, essays, and poems.  Like I said, I wanted to write the great American twenty-something novel.
     Most nights, after I finished my coursework, I would struggle away on my novel.  It was, as best I recall, about college and part-time jobs and a girlfriend who dumped the protagonist (i.e. me).  Looking at this now, I clearly see that my base ambition was to re-write Bright Lights, Big City, with a little bit of grunge and general angst about the Gulf War thrown in for flavor.
   Two or three times a week, I would venture into the local used bookstore.  Mainly, I was looking for ARCs (Advance Review Copies) of forthcoming books.  But also, I would check out recent collections of short stories.  I was under the impression that if I were to write short stories for my college workshop perhaps I should have a better understanding of the form.  I was also under the impression that learning to write a short story would help me become a novelist.
     The first collection I bought at that little store, I’ve long forgotten its title.  Same for the second.  But with absolute certainty, I can tell you the third: Men Under Water by Ralph Lombreglia.  As a used hardcover, it was marked $6.
     I read the first story over a slice of pepperoni.  The second story, at home.  By dinner, the entire book.   For me, that collection was transformative.  Simply put, I did not know that stories could pull off such flights of emotion mixed with humor, nor did I know that stories could focus their drama so intently that endings blossomed with the emotional force of a novel.  Lombreglia’s narration, from the first sentence forward, was mercurial, seductive.  The lead story, which is about a troubled upscale restaurant, starts with such direction, such promise of interesting troubles, that even now I find it difficult not to read the story through to the close: “For a couple of months here,” it begins, “we had peace, relative peace, more peace anyway than you expect in the restaurant business.”  The final story, which relates the struggles of two film production hopefuls, begins with a similar mix of conflict and whimsy: “The Peter Pan Diner, 10:30am.  Breakfast with Gunther.”
     Little by little, I gave up on my great twenty-something novel.  (In part, I couldn’t decide what to do plot-wise once the girl dumped my protagonist because the corresponding events in my real life weren’t that interesting: we both moved on.)  And little by little, I started to write bad imitations of Ralph Lombregia’s stories.  For example, I wrote a story set in a struggling restaurant.  I also started a story about some friends trying to make a movie.  But these imitations were sincere: I wanted to know what it felt like to write a story filled with Lombreglia’s humor and depth.   I wanted to understand how his narrative effect emerged from mere words.  I wrote like him because I loved his work.
      Eventually I moved on, leaving my Lombreglia-imitations behind.  I passed through a Richard Ford phase and then an Updike phase.  Somewhere in there, I spent a lot of afternoons with Philip Roth as well.  And then, some years later, I learned how to speak in my own voice.
     But as this is National Short Story Month, I want to offer a note of thanks to a great American writer, the person who (through example) first showed me that short stories can open to the authentic exuberance of youth and to the lure of popular culture, that in fiction honesty and humor can, at times, be the same thing, and most of all that the short story is a form all unto itself..  Lombreglia is the author of two amazing books, Men Under Water, and Make Me Work.  To the best of my knowledge, both books are out of print but available as used on Amazon.
    Start with Men Under Water, it’s an amazing read all the way through.
    You can also find Lombreglia’s fiction—including a few recently published stories—on his website: ralphlombreglia.com
     Though his last collection (Make Me Work) was published over 15 years ago, I check his name on Amazon every so often because I know, someday, another collection will be released.  I look forward to it.

Todd James Pierce has published the novel, A Woman of Stone (MacAdam/Cage, 2006) and the Drue Heinz Award-winning short story collection, Newsworld (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2006) as well as a couple of books about writing and submitting work.  He's also recently wrapped up a novel about theme parks that he's been working on for some time and he's started The Story Lounge (look it up at Facebook), a place for discussions of stories and story collections.

Comments

[Ralph Lombreglia]

Todd, belated thanks for these very kind comments. Much appreciated. --Ralph