Clifford Garstang's Blog, page 41

Virginia Writers’ Club Symposium

[image error]Last weekend I attended the Virginia Writers’ Club annual meeting, which included the organization’s centenary celebration, and its 2018 Symposium: Navigating Your Writing Life.

When I arrived at the hotel outside Richmond, VA, the lobby was a sea of red—lots of young men and a few women wearing Indiana University sweatshirts, several identifying the wearers as members of the wrestling team. When I got to the check-in desk, I asked one of the slightly older men who appeared to be in charge of the group what was going on. (I assumed he was the coach, because he was huge, but it turned out that he was the assistant coach; the head coach was the much smaller man standing next to him. I learned something about making assumptions, I guess.) The team had just arrived for a meet the next day—against the University of Virginia, some 60 miles away—but they were staying in Richmond because of the cost of hotels in Charlottesville. I mentioned that I had gone to grad school at IU and wished them well in their competition. (They lost.)

The evening program on Friday involved a VWC awards presentation and a business meeting, none of which had much to do with me, even though I’m technically the “facilitator” for a subchapter of the VWC (SWAG Writers) and I’m also a dues-paying member. We had a decent meal, which was followed by the highlight of the evening: a keynote address by Jeanne Larsen. Jeanne spoke eloquently about sources of inspiration and ways to approach the job of writing, and she even gave me a plug by mentioning my novel in stories, What the Zhang Boys Know. (A long time ago, I did a reading from that book in Roanoke, which Jeanne attended along with a lot of her students from the Hollins University writing program.)

The Symposium itself was all day Saturday, and included four blocks of workshops plus book sales. I attended sessions with Mollie Cox Bryan (The Language of Suspense), Betsy Ashton (Build a Social Media Marketing Plan), and Austin Camacho (Plotter or Pantser: Two Ways to Tell Your Stories). I also presented one of the workshops. My topic was “From Rough Draft to Final Draft: The Best You Can Make It.” I was talking basically about how to approach revision, using your rough draft as a starting point and asking big-picture questions (about character, plot, time line, and structure, for example) but then thinking about specific style techniques (and mistakes) in the actual rewriting: punctuation and grammar, overuse of adverbs (when a more precise verb would be better) and empty words (that add nothing and so can be cut), and usage errors. I think the talk was well-received. In a future post, I’ll present some of my specific suggestions.

Gatherings like the VWC Symposium can be useful tools for writers. They provide an opportunity to network with other writers and learn at the same time. Given the typical audience, these sessions tend to address self-publishing topics and/or genre writing. In my presentation, I tried to bridge the gap between traditional and self-publishing, and my suggestions should be applicable to both genre and literary projects.

Professional Development Weekend

[image error]I graduated from the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program in 2003 (the first graduating class of that program). It was a fantastic two-year experience, and in some ways it hasn’t yet ended. Not long after I graduated, the program instituted an annual professional development weekend for alumni back on campus in Charlotte, NC.

In its current form, the alumni weekends come in two varieties: in odd-numbered years, the program director organizes a series of panels and workshops led by industry professionals—editors and literary agents—who expose alumni to the publishing world in a way that the academic courses usually do not; and in even-numbered years the alumni themselves organize the weekend and share their expertise among themselves.

I’ve participated in both varieties. Over the years—in the MFA program and in various writers conferences—I’ve workshopped with some wonderful writers. But workshopping with an agent or an editor is different. For one thing, in the back of your head there is a wish that the agent or editor would see such promise in your work that he or she would want to help you get published. (Deny it if you will, but I bet that’s true for most of us.) For another, the opinion of an agent or editor carries a lot of weight. These are the gatekeepers. Writing teachers may be spot-on with their advice, but the gatekeepers stand between you and publication, so it pays to listen to what they have to say.

The alumni-organized weekends are partly about learning but also—maybe mostly—about connections and networking. One of the great things about an MFA program is building a community of writers, but after graduation the bonds tend to weaken and break. These weekends help us strengthen the ties and make new ones.

This year I was asked to be on the steering committee of alumni who organized the weekend, and partly because I failed to decline fast enough, I became the de-facto chair of that committee. Our first step was to solicit ideas for programming from other alumni, and I was pleasantly surprised when the suggestions we received seemed to sort themselves into a program that would fill the time allotted. We then recruited speakers, including a book publicist who was not associated with Queens.

In the end, we presented three panel discussions (Publishing, Continuing Education, Marketing & Branding) plus a series of prose and poetry craft talks (Query letters & Book Proposals; The Business of Writing; Freelance Editing; Writing Sex Scenes; the Activist Poet; Cross-Genre Poetry; The Art of Found Poetry). We also had a social gathering on the night before the event and an open-mic/book fair to end our very full Saturday of programming. Because in the past we have found that many attendees have to travel on Sunday, it is difficult to schedule substantive sessions for that morning. So this year we introduced a new offering—DIY workshops, where we grouped writers together, instructed them to exchange manuscripts ahead of time, and provided space for them to meet and exchange comments, all without the traditional workshop “leader.”

The feedback I’ve heard has been very positive, and from my own observation—I appointed myself as moderator of all three panels to make sure that the discussion kept moving forward—I thought the program worked well.  We’re now in the process of soliciting evaluations that will help the next steering committee make improvements for next time.

I’m Board

[image error]Some writers are virtual hermits, barricading themselves in their dens/studios/garrets in order to bleed onto the page in private. I admire that sort of commitment, and probably I would get a lot more writing done if I did that myself, but apparently, it’s just not me. Not that I’m an extrovert. I’m that awkward fellow at a cocktail party sipping my red wine in a corner, admiring the books on the host’s shelves. But I do feel the need to engage with other people, to exist in public, and to get out of the house from time to time.

I also feel a certain obligation to serve. The world needs people who volunteer to get stuff done, and I’m pretty good at that, I think. While it takes time away from the writing, public service is rewarding and, most of the time, fun. I’ve always served on various boards and committees: I was on the board of the Northwestern University Alumni Association for several years and was an officer of the Northwestern University Club of Virginia, which I started, for about 15 years; I’ve served as an officer of the Democratic Party Committee in my county as well as serving as our representative to the State Central Committee in Virginia; I was a founding Board member of the Friends of Korea, a non-profit started by Returned Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Korea; and I started and continue to operate a non-profit writing group in my community.

But the focus of my volunteerism currently is the three boards on which I sit.

[image error]I am finishing up the first year of my second term on the county Electoral Board and currently hold the position of Secretary. (There is a small amount of pay associated with this position, but not enough to take it out of the volunteerism category.) In Virginia, every locality (counties and independent cities) has a three-member Electoral Board appointed by the Circuit Court for that locality. The Board is responsible for hiring and supervising the Registrar of Voters and officers of election and for running elections. Because we have elections every year in Virginia (two in most years), we have duties year ‘round. With the attention that election security has received, we have made an effort recently to upgrade our voting machines, which has made the past year especially busy for us. October is a particularly busy month as we conduct testing of the machines and training of officers of election prior to the November general election. (Vote on November 6!)

[image error]I’ve also just started my second term on the Board of Trustees of the Frontier Culture Museum. Because the Museum is a State Agency, my appointment comes from the Governor and is somewhat political, although I am free to act independently. I sit on that Board’s Executive Committee, which directs the regular functioning of the agency, and recently served on the Search Committee as we recruited and ultimately hired a new Executive Director. The ED search took an extraordinary amount of time, but now that we’ve put that behind us, my duties are lighter. The Executive Committee does meet monthly, and there are always special events to attend, but service to the museum is not a huge burden. I enjoy being able to contribute to this organization, the mission of which is to educate the public—especially children—about the people who migrated to this part of Virginia, when it was still the “frontier.”

[image error]The third Board is the Board of Trustees of the American Shakespeare Center. I often tell people that one of the reasons I moved to Staunton, Virginia from Washington DC is that my local real estate agent pointed out the Blackfriars Playhouse to me, which in late 2000 was under construction. Any community that was building a Shakespeare theater, it seemed to me, was a good place for a writer to settle. The American Shakespeare Center has been the engine behind the revitalization of Staunton, and I was a patron and fan from the moment the theater’s doors opened in 2001. (The ASC, then known as Shenandoah Shakespeare Express, operated as a touring company for many years before they put down roots.) My support of the theater was noticed, and last year I was invited to join the Board, which I was thrilled to do. And as soon as I did, we launched an Artistic Director search. I was not on the search committee, but the full Board did meet several times to evaluate candidates, so that was also time-consuming. Now, though, the job is all about helping the new AD fulfill his vision for the organization, which is thrilling.

While these endeavors have little or nothing to do with my work as a writer, they do add meaning to my life, and I have no regrets about taking them on.

Guest Post: A Case For the Mainstream, by Jody J. Sperling

A group of cougars live outside Los Angeles. They are testament to the amazing adaptability and strength of living creatures and metaphorical cautionary tale to writers of literary fiction. Because of the expanding network of interstates and highways enclosing the Santa Monica Mountains, the cougars are trapped in their habitat.[image error]

Only the luckiest of the fittest remain. These are forced to mate among each other, which has resulted in inbreeding and all the consequences thereof. Wildlife biologists speculate extinction within several generations for the cougars south of highway 101.

 

The Genre with Standards

The only genre that requires a graduate degree is literary fiction, the genre that embraces the long title: In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,” A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. A 2012 essay by Edan Lepucki cited five hallmarks of the genre: the above cited long title; adultery; blah, blah, blah, cue epiphany; “a dog barks, someone eats a watermelon, a car drives away”; subtle action signifying huge unconscious consequences.

Since graduating three years ago, I’ve often wondered if my MFA was worth it. For tangible returns, I spent fifty-thousand dollars, bought two-dozen novels and made an enduring friend. The price seems steep. Yet, I’ve never regretted accepting the debt.

[image error]I was introduced to literary masterpieces such as Train Dreams, The Unchangeable Spots of the Leopard, 10:04, and 2666. I met peers who enjoyed discussing David Foster Wallace, Marilynne Robinson, and Bernard Malamud. These writers and their works remain among my favorites, and I’d argue anyone who hasn’t read them is missing a depth of thoughtfulness we need in these times of quick-draw sensationalism.

 

The Guard Changes

David Carr and David D. Kirkpatrick wrote an article in 2002 titled “The Gatekeeper For Literature Is Changing At New Yorker.” In the article, the David’s discussed the elevation of Deborah Treisman who would replace Bill Buford as fiction editor.

Treisman “long hoped to showcase more experimental stories and less fiction by and about men,” the Davids wrote, though they conceded “Mr. Buford managed to shake up the sleepy image of The New Yorker’s fiction, relying in part on a hefty dose of established, well-known writers. Breaking the New Yorker’s traditional mold, Mr. Buford even published short stories by the prolific horror writer Stephen King.”

 

If Literature Is A Holiday, Flannery O’Connor Carves the Turkey

Blame Flannery O’Connor. It didn’t start when she joined the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1946, eight years after the program’s founding, but she and later Raymond Carver—who attended Iowa in 1964—anchored the MFA tradition. Both are paragons of literary fiction. Both wrote works of insight and clarity. O’Connor was the master of inevitability. My MFA thesis advisor, frequently quoted O’Connor’s definition of a story in class and he just as frequently asked us what “a complete dramatic movement” was. No one could answer.

Shortly after Carver appeared on the MFA machine most literary writers followed suit. In 1967 the esteemed Columbia University MFA in fiction was founded.

A model was born. Write literary works for five or seven years; submit twenty pages of your best work to a selection of MFA programs in hopes of earning admission; begin graduate studies with dreams of fame; graduate with an invitation to teach college composition; slave at a collection of short stories or a novel for another five years; publish a book; fight for an adjunct spot in a new MFA program; teach at the new program; indoctrinate another generation in the cycle.

 

You Get What You Pay For

This extreme investment in one genre has created an almost insurmountable threshold for admission. Once admitted, you’ll fight for publication into a handful of approved magazines.

[image error]The New Yorker, Granta, The Paris Review, and a few others publish mostly Alice Munro. On occasion these magazines include an “emerging writer,” the definition of “emerging” I think being “a graduate of the Columbia MFA.”

When the great day arrives your story will appear in the esteemed magazine and its readers will be the handful of wealthy elites who possess graduate, and post graduate degrees. The story will net a minimal payment, and you’ll be forced into teaching to earn a living.

Anyone with less than five years of college will ask, “What’s the point?” You’ll routinely hear readers at the fringe of the literary conversation say, “Talk about boring,” yet you won’t ask yourself how you can learn from authors north of the 101.

 

A Case For the Mainstream

No one can pinpoint when literary fiction split from mainstream. Recent articles continue to define what literary fiction is, and in doing so, participate in political nonsense. Ray Harvey wrote in The Writing Cooperative “The difference between popular fiction and literary fiction is subtle but unmistakable.” He states “the criteria for literary fiction is this: depth of style, seriousness of approach, and an explicit emphasis on theme.”

[image error]Sorry, Ray. Your main highlight in the article is less than hot air: it’s nonsense. Stephen King and Dean Koontz have great depth of style. John Grisham and James Patterson are completely sincere in their approach, and Johanna Linsdey and Danielle Steel emphasize their themes with clarity, but no one would argue these authors write literary fiction.

Perhaps a more thoughtful distinction between literary and mainstream fiction would be this: Literary fiction always wants the reader to remember she is reading. This may sound absurd, but I’d like to ask James Patterson if he’d rather his readers remember, “I’m reading” or if he’d prefer they say, “I was transported into a world of suspense and intrigue.”

The best path for all readers would be to stop pitting popular fiction against literary fiction. If we hope for fiction to avoid the way of the Santa Monica Cougar, we need to embrace craft tips from every genre. Mainstream fiction sells, and that’s all the case anyone should need for engaging in conversation about what mainstream writers do right. But if you want another perspective, consider whether Dostoyevsky would’ve defined himself as a writer of literary fiction.

 

About Those Cougars

Literary writers have created a Los Angeles interstate trap of their own in the MFA culture. As they specialize they tend to barricade themselves from diversity. This is done in the name of purity or art, or both.

Without a bridge between worlds, literary writers will go the way of P-18, a one-year-old cougar living near the Getty Center who was fatally struck by a motorist. This is the danger of writing for a harried population of readers.

 

The Worst That Could Happen

Suppose you buy a copy of Angels and Demons, and suppose you read it with no predisposed notions of what you’d find.

Harold Bloom claims to have read a selection of popular fiction, but it’s impossible to imagine he did so with an open mind. His criticism of mainstream fiction smells of religious zealotry. No one likes a bigot.

What would happen if you read Johanna Lindsey? Do you imagine you’d spoil your pure artistic soul?

I was afraid to read popular fiction because it seemed my professors felt it would ruin me. But after years of failure to publish my own writing, after years of reading exclusively literary fiction, I felt stymied to craft a story I was proud of, and I regularly bored myself to distraction.

[image error]Then, sometime in 2015 I started reading Stephen King and James Lee Burke. Burke has published roughly twenty novels about a Louisiana detective named Dave Robicheaux. I read these mainstream hacks mostly by audiobook, because I wanted to save the purity of my eyes for truly important works of literature. Around the same time, my writing began to improve. Are the two events corollary or causal?

 

Unsolved Mysteries

The monologue I most frequently aimed at my $50,000 friend, one I continue to recite, goes something like this:

“I’m suspicious about the addictive quality of X book by X author. Isn’t there something wrong with getting so enthralled in suspense? I don’t trust that feeling like I’m getting pulled into another world. I don’t like to forget I’m reading.

“Shouldn’t a good book be able to captivate me without loading action and adrenaline onto every page? I relish Y author, but always find it harder to read her after finishing something by X. It’s like X is a drug. And I really don’t like how X puts entertainment at the forefront at the expense of character development.”

If I’m in a particularly ungenerous mood I might disparage X. “His characters behave in ways that no real person would, which gives me the feeling he’s forcing the plot on the character rather than letting action develop through hard studied human behavior. Plus, every time X’s characters bleed the author remarks that blood tastes like pennies. Who sucks on a penny anyway?”

But this monologue can easily swing the other direction. “Why can’t Rachel Cusk hold my attention? I read for two hours tonight and can’t remember a single thing that happened. My mind kept wandering. Isn’t it the author’s responsibility to draw me in?

[image error]“And the truth is I think I learned more about the human condition when I read Johanna Lindsey’s One Heart to Win than I did when I read Outline. Shouldn’t that count for something? A month from now I won’t remember a single detail about Outline, but I’ll never forget that scene in Lindsey’s novel where the woman gave a piglet an Eskimo kiss. Preposterous! The image of a woman nuzzling a pig is juvenile and sentimental, but picturing it gives me pleasure. Should reading give me pleasure?”

 

Erase the Distinction

The truth isn’t hard to find. If you can abandon your notion that popular fiction should be forbidden by any serious reader you’ll see the answer. Stephen King is a great writer. King will outlast most writers of his generation, and it’s not because he sold more copies than his contemporaries. He will endure because his work appeals to the complete person.

Marilynne Robinson will endure because her work, in its precision, sticks to the soul like a barb and salve. She has crafted stories of characters that live inside the reader.

I apologize if you thought the distinction was between literary and commercial fiction. You’ve wasted your time. Professors and critics owe you an apology too, because in their greed and pride they’ve spent their careers guarding their tiny plot of land rather than seeking to admire meaningful writing.

Maybe you’re scared to explore. You might think if you read popular fiction and like it it could be the end of challenging yourself with quieter novels. I assure you, this isn’t the case. As much as I boast about the greatness of 11/22/63, I also praise Gilead.

Genres exist for a reason. It can be helpful to know whether you’re picking up a book about aliens or one about a pastor living in the rural Middle West. But if you use genres to limit your reading, you miss the richest experiences. Don’t cheat yourself.

 

A Reading List

Suppose I’ve persuaded you to read more broadly. You might want a few recommendations on where to start. Understand, my tastes may differ from yours, but especially if you’re a writer you shouldn’t give up on popular and mainstream fiction solely because my recommendations don’t appeal to you.

Try these:

Watership Down by Richard Adams – It’s about rabbits.

The Stand by Stephen King – It’s about a global infection and the fallout.

Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis – It’s about god in outer space.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline – It’s about virtual reality.

My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgård – It’s about Karl’s life, but written in a prose that upset nearly every critic.

Dodgers by Bill Beverly – It’s about kids with guns running from the police.

The Cartel by Don Winslow – It’s about drugs and sex.

 

Jody J. Sperling lives in Omaha with Ashley, Silas, Edmund, and Tobias. His work is forthcoming in Whiskey River and Adelaide Literary Magazine. Previous works have been published in Litro, Midwestern Gothic and elsewhere. He also writes regularly for Bookfox.

The Indiana Authors Award

[image error]The Indiana Author Awards are sponsored by the Eugene & Marilyn Glick Foundation and the Indianapolis Public Library. Each year for the past ten years, awards have been bestowed on authors in three categories: National Author, Regional Author, and Emerging Author. (In addition, some years distinguished writers have been recognized for Lifetime Achievement or genre writing.)

In 2014, I was honored to be a finalist in the Emerging Author category. I traveled to Indianapolis for the awards event, which included a live appearance at the library in addition to the awards dinner. In order to provide greater exposure to emerging authors, the library names three finalists in that category, so that all three come to the event without knowing who will win, whereas the national and regional winners are announced in advance. For the Emerging Author finalists, at least, there’s agonizing suspense as the winner isn’t announced until the very end of the program—over dessert. Because there is a nice trophy and a cash prize, plus a grant to an Indiana library of the winner’s choosing, it’s a pretty big deal.

That year, I didn’t win. The winner was Kelsey Timmerman, a non-fiction writer from the Muncie, Indiana area who had been a finalist the year before. Kelsey was a deserving winner and I was very happy for him. (Kelsey’s new book is Where Am I Giving. Check it out!)

In 2015, I was a finalist again! Because of Kelsey’s experience, I was hopeful that the second time would be the charm for me and I again went to Indianapolis for the awards dinner. Happily, over dessert, I was named the winner. It was a wonderful evening and I was thrilled to win. (I was interviewed immediately after the dinner and you can see the video here.

This year, all the past winners were invited to return for the awards dinner to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of the event. I went (this time I drove, thanks to some airline problems), and was pleased to see many people I knew from my two previous award dinners at the library, plus several past winners I had not met before (including John Green, bestselling author of The Fault In Our Stars, who kindly provided an autograph for my niece, who is a big fan). This time, I was much more relaxed, since I was not up for an award. I didn’t have to worry about giving an acceptance speech or being photographed (although there was a photographer present and I’m sure I showed up in a few of the pictures she took). Here is a picture of the dinner in progress – I can see the back of my head at a table near the front.[image error]

The evening concluded with a surprise announcement from The Glick Fund who had sponsored the event from the beginning. There will be no awards given in 2019, as they take time to reassess the program, but will come back with a redesigned awards program in 2020.

Although it’s unfortunate that the awards will be on hiatus next year, it’s great that they are coming back. Awards like this do a great deal to promote reading and encourage writers, both of which are important objectives.

A 3-book deal

[image error]First, there was Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet Volume I. Twenty stories by twenty writers set in twenty countries. The theme of Volume I was “It’s a dangerous world.”

Then came Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet Volume II, with a new theme: “It’s a mysterious world.” Twenty stories by twenty more writers in twenty more countries. 

Now there is Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet Volume III (“It’s an adventurous world”), with another twenty stories by another twenty writers and another twenty countries.

I’ve had a wonderful time over the last six years working on this project–reviewing hundreds of submissions, helping authors refine their stories, and selecting just the right pieces for each volume.  I’m very proud of the result and I am confident that readers will find each volume both entertaining and informative as they embark on their tours around the globe.

And here’s the deal: if you order all three books from the publisher, you can save $10.

Everywhere Stories: Publication Day Approaches!

[image error]A big box of books arrived at my house yesterday–the first copies of Volume III of Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small Planet.  The official publication day is still a couple of weeks away, but it’s wonderful to hold the book in my hands.

You can read more about this volume and the twenty contributors here, but for now just know that it covers the world (from Australia to Zimbabwe), just like the first two volumes. I’m pretty sure you’ll love it!

You can order from the publisher, Press 53, here: Volume III. You can also order Volume I or Volume II. But the best deal is to order all three volumes together and save $10.[image error]

Writing Goals Update

[image error]At the beginning of the year, I set some writing goals, which you can read about here. The goals were, intentionally, ambitious. With the year almost three-quarters gone, I thought I’d take a look at where I stand with respect to those stretch goals.

Finish Edits on Novel under Contract. Status: Almost done. My novel, The Shaman of Turtle Valley, will be published by Braddock Avenue Books for publication in March 2019. I expect to receive edits from the publisher at any moment, at which time I will need to drop everything else and focus on getting the manuscript in final shape.
Compile the Anthology under Contract. Status: Done. Volume III of my anthology series, Everywhere Stories, will be published in October. The book is done—I haven’t seen it yet, but the publisher has hard copies in hand.
Find a publisher for my novel. Status: Done. I’ve signed a contract with Regal House Publishing for that novel to appear in the Fall of 2020. I did a major revision of the book and have now submitted that version to the publisher for editing. Title: Oliver’s Travels
Finish the new story collection. Status: Done. Thanks to a short residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in February, I finished several new stories to complete the collection. All of those stories (except one) have been accepted for publication, and Press 53 has agreed to publish the collection in March of 2020. Title: House of the Ancients and Other Stories.
Finish the new novel. Status: Not done. I’ve been working on yet another novel for a couple of years now. I have some nagging concerns about it, but I think I’m close to resolving those problems and moving forward toward completion. Dare I hope for getting it done by the end of the year? With a residency coming up in November-December, I’m hopeful that I can still make significant progress on this book by the end of the year, but realistically, I think it will be next summer before this one is finished.
Query agents. Status: Not done. This one depends on finishing the new novel. I am currently unrepresented, but I believe the new novel has more commercial potential than my last novel did, so when it’s done it will definitely be time to shop around once again.
Dabble in the essay form. Status: Not done. I’ve become intrigued by the memoir and personal essay forms. I’ve written very little in this genre, but I’m determined to write some essays this year to see what I can make of them. Possibly a memoir or a collection of essays? That’s a longer-term goal, not likely to be finished in 2018. With so many other things going on, I haven’t started on essays. But soon . . .

Book Review: Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye

[image error]Shelf Life of Happiness by Virginia Pye

Press 53, October 2018

Reviewed by Clifford Garstang

 

Full disclosure: the author is a friend of mine; I was provided a review copy in advance of publication by her publicist; Press 53 has published my two story collections and the three anthologies I’ve edited, as well as the literary magazine I used to edit. Having destroyed my credibility with these disclosures, let me try to earn some of it back!

I read and enjoyed Pye’s earlier books, River of Dust and Dreams of the Red Phoenix, both historical novels set in China. Because of my own familiarity with China, I was drawn to these stories of conflict between American missionaries and their Chinese counterparts, set against a backdrop of enormous changes taking place in Chinese society.

This book is completely different. Comprising nine stories set in contemporary America (except for the one set in Rome), it will be relatable to a wider audience. The title story, which concludes the book, is exemplary. In it, a young man who got his start in the publishing business with the help of his female friend is now tempted by her apparent advances, despite the fact that they are both happily married to other people. What is happiness, the story asks, and how long can we expect it to last?

This sense of underlying anxiety is also at the heart of “Crying in Italian,” in which a couple visits Rome with their two children. Maybe it’s because of the setting and the mention of the Coliseum, but the story puts me in mind of Edith Wharton’s “Roman Fever,” one of the great short stories of American literature. This story, told from the wife’s point of view, is about the appeal of following a different path than the one we’re on.

Two of the stories in the collection involve artists at the end of their careers. In “White Dog,” a painter visits the home of an arrogant gallery owner and there is an inevitable clash of the creative and commercial sides of the art world. In “Redbone,” another painter faces a more existential conflict, that of being understood. “All I ever wanted was to be part of a dialogue,” he says.

Perhaps the biggest emotional wallop of the book is felt in the opening story, “Best Man.” Here, a man has come to Reno to be the best man in his old friend’s wedding. As it develops, though, the groom, who is marrying a woman, is gay and dying of AIDS. From the beginning, the reader is aware that there are unresolved feelings between the two men, and the best man finds himself in an awkward situation.

Although the settings in the stories are varied and the central characters unique, the stories share a contemporary sense of disquiet and longing. They ask themselves what is it going to take to make them happy, and how will they know when they’ve achieved their desire. It’s a wonderful collection by a fine writer.

The book publishes in October but is available for pre-order now.

Everywhere Stories Contributor Spotlight: Louise Farmer Smith

[image error]Everywhere Stories: Short Fiction from a Small PlanetVolume III is now available for pre-order. Like the earlier volumes, this book includes 20 short stories by 20 writers set in 20 countries. Louise Farmer Smith’s story is set in New York City, the United States.

 

Louise Farmer Smith’s short stories have received three Pushcart nominations, appeared in eight anthologies and many literary journals. A PEN/New England Discovery, Smith has published One Hundred Years of Marriage, a novel in stories, Cadillac, Oklahoma, a story collection, and The Woman Without a Voice, Oklahoma history, all from Upper Hand Press. She has taught English, trained as a family therapist, and worked in a congressman’s Washington office. Her work has been supported by the Ragdale Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She was a 2005 Bread Loaf Contributor.

[image error]Comment on “The Apartment on Riverside Drive”: Every writer needs an outrageous aunt, one who meddles in the family’s business, tries to disrupt the parent’s marriage and belittles the children’s education. Though she makes it clear she is too good to live in her sister-in-law’s house, still she hovers, threatening to move in. I was lucky to have such an aunt whose ghost, like smoke from a dying ego, has wafted through my fiction and, in an altered form, turned up in “The Apartment on Riverside Drive.”