Ethel Rohan's Blog, page 19

Surreal

That's how it felt to read Myfanwy Collins's response to Hard to Say (PANK, 2011). I've respected and admired Myfanwy's writing for several years now and it felt both strange and wonderful to receive her praise of this little linked collection, at least little in terms of length, but for me huge to put out in the world. As I read Myfanwy's post, my skin came alive.

Here's an excerpt.

"I do believe that Hard to Say, a painfully beautiful linked collection of stories by Ethel Rohan, will leave you as speechless as it did me … It's a gorgeous book. Read it."

You can read the full, brief post here. Thank you, Mfy, for your kind words.

Myfanwy Collins has an exciting year ahead. Her novel, ECHOLOCATION, is forthcoming from Engine Books, March, 2012. You can pre-order ECHOLOCATION here.

"Fearless, elegant, and accessible, Echolocation is literary fiction at its best. With heartbreakingly beautiful prose, Myfanwy Collins tells a gripping and tender tale of broken souls yearning for wholeness. These are characters who will stay with you long after you turn the last page. It's a dazzling debut!"

—Ellen Meister, author of The Other Life

Also, Myfanwy Collins's story collection is forthcoming from PANK in 2012. I'm excited to read both these works. Congratulations, Myf.

Other titles I've recently purchased or plan to very soon:

Shut Up/Look Pretty, Tiny Hardcore Press. Lauren Becker, Erin Fitzgerald, Kirsty Logan, Michelle Reale, and Amber Sparks. Order here.

The Last Repatriate, Matt Salesses, NOUVELLA. Details here.

Jason Jordan's nouvella, The Dying Horse. Main Street Rag, January, 2012. Order here.

Laura Ellen Scott's novel, Death Wishing. Ig Publishing, October 1, 2011. Order here.

"This is a terrific story, beautifully written, and completely enthralling."—Dorothy Allison

"I admire the sentences, the clarity of mind, and characters who catch and keep our attention. Bob Dylan sings about a journey 'all the way from New Orleans to Jerusalem…' as way of apotheizing, scrutinizing, and recognizing the world we live in. Laura Scott is on the way."—Alan Cheuse

Congratulations, All.

 

Diary of a NYC Weekend

I've had quite the few days. Literary Death Match during Litquake last Thursday night was an experience. There were 250+ people in attendance in this fantastic San Francisco venue, Beatbox, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I shared the LDM stage with three other readers/contenders and it was a pleasure to meet them: Myron Michael, John Butler, and Simon Rich. I was the only woman, John Butler the only Irishman, Myron Michael the only African-American, and Simon Rich the youngest-ever writer for SNL, starting his four year stint at SNL at all of 20.

I went over my 7 minute allowed reading time and was duly water-hosed. I didn't care. In fact, the dousing enhanced my evening. Simon Rich won the LDM title on the night. Congratulations, Simon. And my deep thanks to LDM organizers, Todd Zuniga and Alia Volz.

The next morning I flew to New York. Just as the plane landed in JFK at 5:30 pm EST, a rainstorm blasted. I suffered a hot, packed shuttle ride from JFK to my hotel in Midtown. That pleasure lasted all of 2.5 hours. On arrival in my room, I scanned the room service menu, but quickly decided I didn't come all the way to NYC to sit in. Through my floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall window, the city's stunning night skyline beckoned.

I walked eight blocks of NYC before chickening out and returning to the hotel. The hotel boasts a hip tapas bar and restaurant the size of the entire block. I was still in my sweats and sneakers, surrounded by all these young, beautiful people. Fear got the better of me again. Back to my hotel room I went. Again I scanned the room service menu and again I decided I was damned if I was staying in my room.

I went back out into the city with its drizzling sky and this time I found a fabulous, bustling, alive restaurant. I enjoyed a delicious dinner with a half-carafe of red wine and Joseph O'Connor's novel, Ghostlight, which is proving a wonderful read.

Saturday, I explored the city on foot amidst sunshine and the fabulous insanity that is NYC. This was only my second visit to this great metropolis. Early afternoon, I primped and primed for my reading in Brooklyn at Unnameable Books with Greg Gerke and Kathy Fish. I took the subway. O my God. The NY subway system. I was a subway virgin. I couldn't even figure out how to get the metro card, people. A Dublin woman came to my rescue. We must just KNOW each other. Weekend maintenance meant that the subway trains and routes had all changed. CHAOS. And then, friends, then, while I was waiting on the platform for the R train that should have been the Q train, a RAT raced right past my feet. You know how I feel about rats, right? O God.

1.5 hours later I arrived to Unnameable Books, harried, but hopeful. At last, I got to meet the wonderful Kathy Fish. And she is wonderful. Kath, Greg and I read outside in the bookstore's white-graveled garden. The wonderful Kim Chinquee, Ellen Meister and Robert Lopez, among others, attended.

Thank you, Greg Gerke for your generous intro and for organizing this excellent evening. Afterwards, Kath and her husband, Dave, Greg, Kim, and I went to dinner together in Brooklyn. The restaurant was middle-eastern and we five sat at a round table. I love sitting at round tables with small groups for dinners and conversation. The food and wine were delicious and the company wonderful. I had a great night. Thanks, all.

Sunday, I set off again in my sneakers. I waited in line in Times Square for two hours to get matinee tickets to Billy Elliott on Broadway. I was also a Broadway virgin. I LOVED Billy Elliott. It was riveting and funny and heartbreaking and political and personal and incredibly inspiring and uplifting. The talent on that stage, friends, from adults and children alike. Unbelievable. After Billy Elliott, it was another race-on-foot back to my hotel room to get changed and readied for my reading at Sunday Salon with Kathy Fish, Heather Fowler and Rebecca Leece (alas Jen Michalski couldn't make the reading. I missed meeting you, Jen, and listening to your work.)

The first person I met when I walked into Jimmy's No. 43 was Sara Lippman and it was friendship at first sight. She's warm, kind, funny, beautiful, and another wonderful writer. Because of Billy Eliott, I felt inspired to go outside my comfort zone for this reading and I read material that I knew would be difficult and painful.

I was also unprepared for meeting in-person so many other wonderful online friends and writers. It was truly staggering to have so many peers and friends come out to hear us read: Erin Fitzgerald; Paula Bomer; Meakin Armstrong; Julie Innis; Lorena Landos; Susan Tepper; Lou Freshwater; David Backer; Brian Gresko; Sean Ferrell; and more. Thank you, everyone.

Especial thanks to Erin Fitzgerald. Erin commuted all the way from CT for the reading. It was a joy to meet you at last, Erin, and I'm only sorry we couldn't spend more time together.

It's hard when I meet people just as I'm about to read because I'm distracted and nervous and even at the best of times can be shy and at a loss for conversation. Please know, all, that I truly appreciated each and everyone of you being there (except for the guy in the back who throughout looked so damn FURIOUS). I'm grateful, too, for the new writers and friends I got to meet, including the wonderful Nita Noveno, Rebecca Leece, and Jenny Halper.

My Sunday Salon reading wasn't my best performance. The insides of my insides shook and the unrehearsed material proved even more painful to read than I'd feared. It was, however, my bravest performance.

I'm glad my bravest performance took place in NYC. The trip made absolutely no sense, especially financially, but I'm so glad I went. I was alone and felt occasional pangs of loneliness, but I also felt adventurous and exhilarated. When I think back on my beginnings my first instinct is to say that I never once imagined I would get to this present life, but that's not true. Despite anxiety, depression, sadness and suffering that have always dogged me, I've also always felt 'someone up there' is watching over me and cheering me on. That 'someone up there' is just never going to make it easy for me.

Someone In Particular's Tongue

On Saturday night, at Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, Kathy Fish introduced me to Robert Lopez. Since then, I read Robert's story collection from Dzanz Books, Asunder. This is my response to Asunder:

"Someone In Particular's Tongue"

Someone in particular tongued the tracheotomy scar of the woman who talked out of the left side of her mouth. The scarred woman felt watched and pictured a monkey squatting on the back of the couch next to their heads, egg yolk dribbling over his chin and fingers and falling dangerously close to someone in particular and her.

She imagined too a man on a train with flowers. This man plucked the red rose petals to a chant of, someone in particular loves me, loves me not. He then pushes the asundered petals into his mouth. Rose juice stains his teeth and gums. The man and monkey comment in unison, say someone in particular's tongue looks like it's covered a lot of geography. Outside, rainfall sounds like laughter.

In her head, nonsense talk won't shut up, Resnick rhymes with lick and the world should be starved of mens of the houses. She tries to focus on someone in particular's tongue at work, to let it wash over her. Her mother and sister also scale the walls of her mind. The monkey sucks the last of the huevos off his hands and chatters in time to the rainfall. Babble also pours from the television and keening rises out of the gramophone she'd inherited from her grandmother. The man on a train with flowers chokes on a shred of rose. She can still smell the smoke from her scars.

Someone in particular licks and licks. She wonders if he can taste windshield. He murmurs and it's her language, but she can't understand. She wishes for paid help, for someone to sign with interpreter's hands what he's saying. But sign is another language she can't understand. There's noise from her scars, like a vacuum. Someone in particular doesn't seem to hear. Scars as white and expectant as beverage napkins. Someone in particular lifts his head and asks if he should keep licking, says he doesn't know anything about anything.

She fixes them drinks. In the corner of the kitchen, on the floor, ants are acraze. They drink outside in her car. She almost died from a car and so likes as much as possible to live from a car. She shows someone in particular the roll of caution tape. Ever since the accident, black and yellow are her favorite colors.

"Is that weird?" she asks.

"Sometimes when I drive," she continues,"the windshield becomes blades, sharp and whirring, like a ceiling fan on high."

"I'd so many holes in my face and neck, I couldn't even drink a glass of water."

She stops herself from telling him it could be worse, she could only have one lung.

He complains the Polish vodka burned his tongue. She worries maybe it was her skin, her scars, that had burned. He balances the roll of caution tape on his head. They laugh. She also doesn't tell him that lying there broken on the highway that night, she'd felt she was sinking, drowning. Her neighbor's dog bays. She sometimes dreams about red swimming pools. Once, the crack of billiard balls brought her right back to that highway. Another time it was bowling pins. Then during a baseball game. In the emergency room, everyone had huddled around her, working on her in a frenzy, and she'd recalled Jesus and the apostles gathered around the long table during the Last Supper. He asked to go back inside and watch television. She needs to use the bathroom anyway. Her surgeon's hands were like those of a porcelain child.

From the television, streams the blues. She wants to exercise, to run.

He drains the last of the Polish vodka. She considers pretending to fall asleep in his arms and allow him to peek.

"Just so you know," she says. "All my scars are showing. This is it. Todo. Totus."

"Thanks," he says.

"A lot of people have allergies to scars," she adds.

"I'm good," he says.

She feels like an empty park.

"Did I say the wrong thing?" he asks. "Should I go jump off the pier?"

It always comes back to drowning. She wants him to tell her a story, any story about anything but drowning, but it's embarrassing to ask. Instead, she tells him a story about tables in restaurants and how as soon as one party leaves the table is wiped down and the glasses, flatware, and napkins are replaced, everything about those last people at that table erased.

"If I was a different person," she finishes. "I'd think there was nothing sadder than an empty restaurant table."

For a time after the accident, they thought she might remain blind, that her corneas might be cut beyond repair. The first thing she saw after her bandages came off, was a tree. Seeing that tree, it was like coming up out of the bottom of water, right as you thought your lungs would burst. Someone in particular looks from the television and into her face and she's not sure if it's the show or her he doesn't seem to like one bit. She tells him her mother had wanted to name her Betty.

"I prefer Danni," he says.

She smiles and offers more vodka. "Protein?"

He refuses, and she suggests a Chinese take-in.

"More poison," he says.

He gets up to leave. After something like that, he asks, do you mind dyin' more or less? She shrugs, These things will sometimes happen. She again wants that sign language person to appear, to move her hands and communicate something of substance between someone in particular and her. He's the first man not to look at her with pity. There's a sensation at the back of her throat, like mice scratches. As soon as he leaves, she's going to mop her kitchen floor. She tries to think of something funny to say. She'd like to touch his face, to read it like Braille. He lifts his hand and she thinks maybe he's going to read her, but he waves, as if they are at a distance. Her lungs crash together. He's going to follow all the others to Timbuktu. She wonders what's the opposite of drowning to death. He speaks, a question, but again she can't understand. She replies yes and no and maybe so.

"Try Chop Suey," she tells him. "It's the gateway to Chinese."

He leaves, and as soon as he's out of sight she returns to her car. She wonders what would have happened if she'd asked someone in particular to leave his tongue.

 

 

"When he laughs his happiness builds just like a normal person's, but at the top his eyes go blank, as if there's nothing there."

That wonderful sentence is taken from May-Lan Tan's short story "Legendary" which was published in the summer issue of Zoetrope: All Story.

"Legendary" is a powerful story about obsession, desire and the absence of love. I read riveted from the first sentence right through to the story's last, hold-your-breath moments. The work brims with gorgeous prose and finely-wrought tension and is a delight to read. Congratulations, May-Lan Tan.

I received several surprising and wonderful responses to my giveaway offer for a copy of Zoetrope: All Story's summer issue signed by Francis Ford Coppola. The note that most moved me was written by May-Lan Tan! It turns out that "Legendary" is Tan's first published story. Wow. I know if I was her, I'd really, really want this signed copy of the issue, and I'd frame it!

So congratulations again, May-Lan Tan, the issue is on its way to you in London. In exchange for the issue, Tan will buy a book from the Center for Fiction in NYC, a non-profit organization dedicated entirely to fiction, where she's currently renting a writing space. Tan will also write five postcard stories and leave them inside books at libraries in New York City and London. Five! My favorite and lucky number. Thank you, May-Lan.

I know several of you were disappointed not to be the lucky recipient of this signed issue and I'm sorry. I enjoyed hearing from all of you.

Have a good weekend, friends.

Night O What A

Last night, my husband and I attended Zoetrope: All-Story's Fall Issue launch party in North Beach's Cafe Zoetrope. I love Zoetrope: All Story and subscribed to the magazine for years, back in the days when the magazine was published in this large newspaper style and the print would bleed onto my hands.

Even after we moved house with its tiny office last October, I kept my stacks of these old Zoetrope magazines and I still return to those stories. For a time, I also read submissions for Zoetrope, but such volunteerism required going downtown to the Zoetrope offices at least once a week and back then my girls were babies and the effort quickly proved too much.

Last night, my husband reminded me that the first Zoetrope: All Story launch party we attended, I told him if I ever got a story published in the magazine I could die happy.

"And now?" he asked.

I laughed hard.

Last night, unlike in nights past, they didn't have actors read from the new issue. They did, however, offer free house wine, appetizers, and Francis Ford Coppola.

It's something to behold the power and pull of celebrity.

Even I wobbled over to Mr. Coppola in high heels and he graciously autographed a copy of the summer issue. Sorry, the current horror issue appealed to me less.

Would you like that signed copy of Zoetrope: All-Story's summer issue? Leave a message in the comments or email me through the contact page here and tell me.

If you're willing to work a little to get the issue, all the better. Karma, you know? Pay forward. Like do something nice for somebody else. Or write a guest post for this blog. Or subscribe to a lit mag, or just buy a single issue. Or share a link to the last story you loved. Or send a postcard to someone somewhere and tell them you love their work. Hell, write someone somewhere and tell them, I love you.

Vol 15 No 2

Summer 2011

Oceanic by Stuart Dybek

T.A.R.P. by Emily Ruskovich

Legendary by May-Lan Tan

The Fly by George Langelaan

Guest Designer – Beck Hansen

I Should Tell You

I'm going to New York, to read first with Kathy Fish and Greg Gerke, and then with Kathy Fish (again!), Heather Fowler, and Jen Michalski as part of Sara Lippmann and Nita Noveno's Sunday Salon series.

I've already had the pleasure of meeting Greg Gerke twice in San Francisco. I'm ridiculously excited to at last meet Kath, Heather, Jen and Sara. Won't you please join us if you can? Or at least spread the word? Details are below. Thank you.

This will only be my second trip ever to New York city. I wish I wasn't traveling alone, but I have every intention of making the most of this weekend getaway in glorious NY.

This trip will also include lunch with my agent, Terra Chalberg. Terra and I have talked over the phone, but this will be our first meeting. Did I mention I'm excited?

Brooklyn Reading, Saturday, October 15th 5-6 pm

with Kathy Fish, Greg Gerke, and Ethel Rohan

Unnameable Books

600 Vanderbilt Ave (between Dean St & St Marks Ave)

 

Sunday Salon Reading, Sunday, October 16th 7-9 pm

with Kathy Fish, Heather Fowler, Jen Michalski and Ethel Rohan

Jimmy's No. 43

43 East 7th Street

New York, NY

There Can Be Days

One of my best and oldest friends asked, "Are you happy?"

"On a scale of one-to-ten?" she asked.

The questions are a loop annoying my mind.

This morning, the scratches over my stomach and ribcage are red, long, intersecting, sore, and pretty.

I felt this thrilling sense as I read Daniel Orozco's debut story story collection, Orientation, that Orozco was a rule-breaker, risk-taker, and rebel craftsman.

Orozco's nine stories read respectively as: A new employee's office orientation told in monologue; four portraits of insatiable hunger and strange desires; disturbing snapshots from the life of a long-distance runner; the last, horrific chronicles of The Presidente-in-Exile; a startling and moving police blotter report; a series of ill-fated and harrowing connections; unforgettable excerpts from the life of a temporary office employee; and chilling and glorious accounts of a Bay Area earthquake told from countless locations and points-of-views.

These nine stories are often fragmented, messy, jarring, and even sometimes abortive. The stories are also brilliant and wonderfully surprising, interesting, original, and affecting.

God, they made me feel.

"Are you happy, Ethel?"

"On a scale of one-to-ten?"

Write me a story, Daniel Orozco. Put me in that story, Daniel Orozco. Break rules, take risks and be your rebel you, Daniel Orozco. Make everything less hard and scary, Daniel Orozco. Give my story an ending as exquisite as Clarissa Snow's in "Temporary Stories" or that of the owner of the forgotten Honda in "Shakers."

An excerpt from "Shakers":

"Out here they go on about how the light chisels, how it polishes and defines the edges of whatever it falls upon and imparts a dazzling clarity. They go on about how the light comes down around you in curtains or how it pours and spills like honey. It gleams and glints, it sparks and flares. The light has weight, it has density, it is palpable. Sometimes you can even hear it, zinging metallic and bright! What crap. When they aren't steeped in the cliched golden hues of a shampoo commercial, the skies most days are an insipid palette of white and blueish white and yellowish white. Every vista is dull and bleary, a sun-bleached smudge in the distance. And nothing is chiseled. Everything you look at is foreshortened, flat and common as a souvenir poster. Although there can be days–those mornings of unseasonable fog when the sunlight is filtered through a fragile veil of cloud that renders the air itself luminous as milk; or the clear, cloudless afternoon when you're walking under a canopy of trees or through the lobby of a building downtown, and just before moving out of the shade, you take off your sunglasses and stand there a moment and anticipate entering the world of sunlight."

The Loudest Sound and Nothing

I bought a dozen new books at the 12th Cork International Short Story Festival, all short story collections. Last night, I finished Clare Wigfall's debut collection The Loudest Sound and Nothing (Faber & Faber, 2007). It's an interesting, eclectic collection rich with seventeen diverse stories and a plethora of characters. I especially appreciated how Clare ended her stories–often on a downbeat and someplace surprising and unexpected, and always satisfying.

From Clare Wigfall's, "Folks Like Us":

"What happened next all went so fast I didn't know what was going on at first. 'Fore I knew it, Bonnie's scrambled up and grabbed at my Colt which we always have close by us when we sleep, and a shot rings out, so damn loud it feels like the sky might crack up, and there was a fallin and a crash and then there was this goddamn fella in a sheriff's uniform lyin just a nickel's width from Bonnie's toe. For a second there she just stood still and watched that fella lyin on the dirt. He was crumpled over himself, left leg bent back crooked, right arm reachin out almost to Bonnie's foot, a pistol ridgin the dirt where it'd skidded from his hand, big face slammed up against the gravel, fat lips gookin out like a baby's might when suckin, eyes still as marbles. And Bonnie just stood there quiet, her face pinched in like a doughball. She didn't say nothin. I'd sat up and I could feel the sun hot on my neck and I could feel a trickle of sweat travelin down 'tween my shoulder blades, real slow like, tricklin plenty, but still I didn't curve back my arm to wipe it away. Then she done turns to me and out slips them thoughts that is skeetin through her mind, Clyde … Clyde … what you think? Maybe he's not dead, Clyde."

The Way the World Works

I received my contributor's copies of The Chattahoochee Review. The magazine boasts a new editorial staff led by Anna Schachner and Lydia Ship and its list of contributors reads like an embarrassment of riches.

It's a gorgeous issue with cover and layout design by Vanessa Lowry that's pretty to look at and satisfying to hold. The issue contains my review of Roxane Gay's forthcoming collection, Ayiti. Thus far I've read in order: Anna Schachner's editorial note; Aimee Bender's story, "Origin Lessons"; Roxane Gay's story, "More Hers Than His"; Caitlin Horrocks's story, "Flight" and Kevin Wilson's "A Series of Lessons."

Just like the characters in Kevin Wilson's story, "A Series of Lessons," as a child, I killed slugs with salt. Our family also killed mice with traps and once, in our back garden, my brother's friend killed a rat with a hurling stick. I remember rolled newspapers with black, bloodied dots of fly parts.

I most remember our dogs. The theme of 'lessons' is woven throughout this magazine issue. The lesson I learned from keeping dogs as a child is how cruel we can be to the beings we love.

From Kevin Wilson's "A Series of Lessons":

"The animal, now ten feet from Caleb, is not the dog that he has dreamed of for these past few months. Mangy and covered in mud, its back is hunched and the fur standing up as if touched by electricity, the color actually darkening. There is a sound now, low and steady, and it freezes Caleb in place, a growl punctuated by sharp exhalations of breath. Caleb's extended hand is now curled into a fist, and he slowly pulls it away from the animal, which is no longer moving, the muscles jumping across its skin. Caleb knows not to run, but this is all he can think of, to simply stay in one place and hope that things will fix themselves, which he has begun to learn, unfortunately, is not the way the world works."

 

The Chattahoochee Review Volume 31.1-2  

Fiction by Aimee Bender, Mathilde Walter Clark (trans. Martin Aitken),

Roxane Gay, Hannah Gersen, Caitlin Horrocks, Phong Nguyen,

Timothy Schaffert, Anthony Varallo, Kevin Wilson, and Rolf Yngve.

Poetry by Denver Butson, Fred Chappell, Chris Garrecht-Williams,

Chris Mink, Mike Smith, Natasha Trethewey, Kelley Jean White,

Paul White, and Robert Wrigley.

Essays by Augustín Cadena (trans. C.M. Mayo), Edward Hower,

and Lisa Lopez Snyder, winner of the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction.

Drama by Joyelle McSweeney.

Some Weird Skin Thing

I scratch my skin a lot. Especially at night. The worst nights, I wake up mornings and look as if ratnails tore at me. Even after all these years of worst mornings, my husband still says, "What the?" I tell him, myself, I scratch because I itch.

I loved Caitlin Horrock's debut story collection, This is Not Your City. It's an outstanding story collection written with great beauty, skill and compassion that I'll return to again and again in my lifetime to reread, study, savor, and celebrate.

The collection is so consistent it's hard to say I've a favorite story, but "Steal Small" especially makes my heart wish it could sometimes wear armor.

From "Steal Small":

"I brushed the backs of his knuckles. 'The gangrene's back,' he said, which it was, but he doesn't need to warn me like he thinks he does. He doesn't really have gangrene, just some weird skin thing that makes him itch so bad he scratches even in his sleep, until the skin breaks open and starts oozing, sometimes blood and sometimes something clear and sometimes both together, so his skin shines in the light like a pink glaze, like glass or pastry."

And then later, close to the story's heartbreaking end:

"[Leo's] skin thing is getting worse. He's got patches so bad they're swampy with fluid, where his shirts stick and scabs won't form. He's always been hourly at National Beef so there's no insurance. It's like he's molting into something new and horrible, and all I want to do is hold his skin closed, press the seams of him together, so he won't fall apart and nothing in our lives with change, because I figure I'm about as happy as I'm going to get the way things are."

You can buy This Is Not Your City, Sarabande Books, here.