Kevin Lynn Helmick's Blog, page 3
June 29, 2012
The Write Room: The Collector-a flash of fiction
The Write Room: The Collector-a flash of fiction: Flash fiction is something I don't have a hell of lot of interest in, but a lot of people do, so I pump it out once in a while has a kind of...
The Write Room: Garden Party
The Write Room: Garden Party: Well the time has come again, and it comes more often than every five years, but those little timely reminders of how old I'm getting are co...
The Collector-a flash of fiction
Flash fiction is something I don't have a hell of lot of interest in, but a lot of people do, so I pump it out once in a while has a kind of mental calisthenic. I very rarely share it or do anything with it. But I have even less interest in blogging so it just might be the perfect vehical for my flash attempts.
THE COLLECTOR
The land was his by the way of a will. It was all that he had; the land, the trees, and the artifacts that had been collected by himself and descendants and thought of as a kind of pension. A menagerie of obsessions that decorated the acreage and cluttered the halls of the home where he was raised and now just fodder of ever lessening value.
He locked the doors of the car, coughed till his lungs restricted, choked and rolled the windows tight. He’d been offered great sums of money from the advancing population. Time and again they came with their check books, blue prints and plans for development. He turned them away.
He felt the heat and heard the cracking of fallen timber in the smoke and flames outside. He’d been ordered to evacuate. He’d been given orders over the years on other things too and ignored them as well. It was his land and he’d do as he pleased.
He heard the sound of the tires on the car exploding, one by one and smelled the stench of burning rubber and wires. He had no wife or children to speak of, or would speak of him and he kept to himself, his junk and integrity.
He removed his fingers from the steering wheel and with it came strings of plastic and flesh. They said the fire was coming his way and he thought if it did, it would be his to own as well.
THE COLLECTOR
The land was his by the way of a will. It was all that he had; the land, the trees, and the artifacts that had been collected by himself and descendants and thought of as a kind of pension. A menagerie of obsessions that decorated the acreage and cluttered the halls of the home where he was raised and now just fodder of ever lessening value.
He locked the doors of the car, coughed till his lungs restricted, choked and rolled the windows tight. He’d been offered great sums of money from the advancing population. Time and again they came with their check books, blue prints and plans for development. He turned them away.
He felt the heat and heard the cracking of fallen timber in the smoke and flames outside. He’d been ordered to evacuate. He’d been given orders over the years on other things too and ignored them as well. It was his land and he’d do as he pleased.
He heard the sound of the tires on the car exploding, one by one and smelled the stench of burning rubber and wires. He had no wife or children to speak of, or would speak of him and he kept to himself, his junk and integrity.
He removed his fingers from the steering wheel and with it came strings of plastic and flesh. They said the fire was coming his way and he thought if it did, it would be his to own as well.
June 15, 2012
Garden Party
Well the time has come again, and it comes more often than every five years, but those little timely reminders of how old I'm getting are coming at me from friends and barely friends from the shadowed misty past that yet another class reunion as at hand. Thirty years...shit.
I've never gone to one, not one and it isn't because I don't think I'd enjoy it, I'm sure I would. I just don't quit have the desire to drive 4 hours and talk about schools days, most of which I skipped or was too fuckin stoned to know that I was there anyway.
There's even been suggestions that I read from one my books. Right, like that'll entice me. No way could I compete with REO Speedwagon, Journey ballads and the class dorks' new Russian wife he just bought. No way, nor would I wanna try.
Don't get me wrong, there are people that I'd love to see again and share a laugh with, most of which I'm still friends with and chat with often now thanks to social media. I'm talking to friends I thought I'd never see again. Pretty cool.
My wife says I lack sentiment. I deny this observation because I do reflect often on those tender years of growing, learning, good times and bad. But I'll admit I spend a lot more time thinking of the future that I do the past.
Nostalgia's great and healthy in small doses. The Human spirit, for some reason and to a great extent is powered by nostalgia. I don't know why, but people always have the notion that the past is the place of better times. "Good ole days" they say. And some of them were and some of them were not.
She says, my wife, "There's not a nostalgic bone in your body." Again, not true. I don't know if nostalgic is the right word, but I remember as I write this, hay rides being pulled far to fast by a 4x4 in the cool autumn nights down gravel roads and across the county. Keggers around a bon fire, drinking till dawn, skipping school and bumper skiing. One time when three of us almost drowned in Lake Wilderness by tipping a canoe in April. That was but one very close call, very close. And certain faces that did not survive those years and risky activities.
I'd love to do it all over again, I would, but its already been done, so, to quote Jack Sparrow, 'bring me that horizon.'
Now days when I see or hear the word, reunion, strangely enough what pops into my brain is the Rick Nelson song, Garden Party, and the line in particular, 'if yer gonna play a garden party, I wish you a lot a luck, but if memories were all sang. I'd rather drive a truck.'
So to all of you from 82, who are still truckin, I can't think of anybody else I would have rather shared it with. You guys are all aces in my book. And from this days perspective I wish ya a lotta luck, love, happiness and good fortune and if our paths meet again I hope that it be like accidental ships in the night and in some far away point on the globe, because those encounters make for the best reunions.
Have a great time and raise a glass for me, I'm fine and still suckin air. I'll be thinking of you as I do more than you know.
I've never gone to one, not one and it isn't because I don't think I'd enjoy it, I'm sure I would. I just don't quit have the desire to drive 4 hours and talk about schools days, most of which I skipped or was too fuckin stoned to know that I was there anyway.
There's even been suggestions that I read from one my books. Right, like that'll entice me. No way could I compete with REO Speedwagon, Journey ballads and the class dorks' new Russian wife he just bought. No way, nor would I wanna try.
Don't get me wrong, there are people that I'd love to see again and share a laugh with, most of which I'm still friends with and chat with often now thanks to social media. I'm talking to friends I thought I'd never see again. Pretty cool.
My wife says I lack sentiment. I deny this observation because I do reflect often on those tender years of growing, learning, good times and bad. But I'll admit I spend a lot more time thinking of the future that I do the past.
Nostalgia's great and healthy in small doses. The Human spirit, for some reason and to a great extent is powered by nostalgia. I don't know why, but people always have the notion that the past is the place of better times. "Good ole days" they say. And some of them were and some of them were not.
She says, my wife, "There's not a nostalgic bone in your body." Again, not true. I don't know if nostalgic is the right word, but I remember as I write this, hay rides being pulled far to fast by a 4x4 in the cool autumn nights down gravel roads and across the county. Keggers around a bon fire, drinking till dawn, skipping school and bumper skiing. One time when three of us almost drowned in Lake Wilderness by tipping a canoe in April. That was but one very close call, very close. And certain faces that did not survive those years and risky activities.
I'd love to do it all over again, I would, but its already been done, so, to quote Jack Sparrow, 'bring me that horizon.'
Now days when I see or hear the word, reunion, strangely enough what pops into my brain is the Rick Nelson song, Garden Party, and the line in particular, 'if yer gonna play a garden party, I wish you a lot a luck, but if memories were all sang. I'd rather drive a truck.'
So to all of you from 82, who are still truckin, I can't think of anybody else I would have rather shared it with. You guys are all aces in my book. And from this days perspective I wish ya a lotta luck, love, happiness and good fortune and if our paths meet again I hope that it be like accidental ships in the night and in some far away point on the globe, because those encounters make for the best reunions.
Have a great time and raise a glass for me, I'm fine and still suckin air. I'll be thinking of you as I do more than you know.
March 4, 2012
A Good Cafe, Delmar
Several have asked about my recent reading at the Mashuggah Cafe in St, Louis last week, so I thought I'd drop a line and share my perspective of the crime scene at Noir at The Bar. Now mind you the reading part was less important than one might think in comparison to actual space and time occupied at the little cafe on Delmar in the University City part of town that night.
I should point out first, that I had my reservation about going at all. I don't like readings. They're usually so fucking pointless and boring. But this one seemed more along the lines of, I don't know, "my kinda folk," and that's what convinced me to do it. Still, the reading part nagged me, worried me a little, not fear of public speaking but a worry along the lines of lost in translation. Something changes when fiction is read aloud, a certain dynamic, or delivery that might best be suited best for actors rather than writers, Never the less, I went anyway, for reasons, at first, selfish, I suppose, like any other unknown writer would justify the acts of performing and wagging their little tail for the treat of applause and acceptance. "I need this, it'll be good for me, get out there and meet some people." Is what I told myself. And that's what I did.
Now I won't go on about geography, travel, and hotels, because anyone whose driven the length of Illinois, or width of Kansas or Nebraska, or Texas, as I have will know, there's not much to say about it, externally anyway. But the time and space I will entertain.
The space, The cafe, Mashuggah they call it, and I don't know what it means and don't really care, but it's good cafe, with wear and character that probably comes from generation of students that passed across the wood floors with their shoes full of hope and possibilities, that only the youth can understand with all their limitless passions and certain hopeful beliefs of a world that only exists for that short 4 year, ok, maybe 5 or six year period, maybe longer because some never leave that comfortable nest. I'm wandering away here. The cafe, was a tiny little coffee bar, with patina and an assortment of beers I gathered from observation. And really good coffee.
There was art on the walls, some local, some good, some not so good. I noticed some good photography and a sketch by Picasso that caught my eye early on arrival. It looked original, although I'm sure it wasn't, in the company of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams poster upstairs and flowered water color that might have come from a child.. Maybe though, one never knows anything for sure. A hand made Bob Dylan discussion group sign, of wood, I think, hung proudly above the quiet patrons focused on their laptops. I spied a few screens and most were writing something, word doc pages, and reminded me of my own twenty something days in university town cafes like The Deadwood in Iowa City, only then, it was a pen, notebook, pitcher, and an overflowing ashtray at the table.
The tables were unstable, and the chairs an assortment. Posters of local bands and other events were cloaked in the mystery from their designs and clung to a cork board outside the surprisingly clean restroom. This I took in, in the afternoon, the reading was at seven, but I wanted to case the place and neighborhood first, so I did and felt very old and out of my element among the afternoon crowd of students. But that's alright, I was there once upon a time, in a different space and time, but I was there all the same. I get it.
Seven PM, maybe a little after, because I'm never too eager to make a mistake these days, so I plan my arrivals and departures carefully and for effect. The effect being one of never being around one place too long, so as your presence lingers longer than it should. Another is, I know myself, and I can can come across as a bit gruff and intimidating sometimes, but I'm actually pretty passive and accessible when you get to know me. Anyway, my wife and I left the hotel at seven and we walked the the three blocks or so. It was a warm, balmy evening with rain in its future, and the atmosphere was a little different. Gone were the students, and learners and their plans, replaced with doer's and worker bees of the community and the writers that I'd be reading with, and wanted to meet. No. I really did. For the writing business is a lonely one, and I was aware of some of these writers and their activities over the years. I was hungry for stories, not from their pages, but from the trenches. The real stories. In all honesty, I don't think very many writers really give a shit about another writers work, when their in the same but opposite trench together. Under that somewhat equal and level playing field. they want to know about each other, the writer.
So here we are, all smiles and hand shakes, a group of wordsmiths' on their way somewhere. To where? who knows, but on their way in their, our, minds anyway, and that's always a good place to be. All were younger than me except one veteran of the biz, and all were full of giddy and life for the moments they were allowed to wave their achievements. Our host for the evening, Scott Phillips and Jed Ayres, were already there. Scott, a man of notable writing achievement, seemed quiet and reserved and that most likely comes from years of stupid questions asked by writers of lesser notoriety. Writers who want something form him, most likely help, help from his coat tails to his shoulders. Help he probably has no desire and very little power to give and I don't blame him, for he knows, as I know, and every writer eventually learns, that at the end of the the day, it's all about the writing and the writer, and nothing else. There's not anything anyone can do for a writer outside an honorable mention here and there and among the right people. That's all, but you can't ask for that, no, no. You have to earn it. Again, it's all about the writing.
Jed, in my opinion and that's gathered in short, but seemed like a man of infinite kindness and generosity and good man to have for a friend. I knew this when he insisted on paying for the books I brought him as a gift and his manners toward my wife, and the way his eyes saw you, listened to you, in conversation. I knew he either had proper upbringing, and by proper I don't mean money, but proper as in good parenting. Or, a really shitty up bringing that mixed with his intelligence, made him humble, honorable and reliable, for through some freak of nature it happens sometimes that people become the very thing they we're denied as a child. Either way, a gentleman and a scholar, probably of the street, and og his own doing, but that would be even better.
The reading, I won't say much about it, because it's one of those, ya had to be there things. The guys from KC, fine writers and fine young men, full of enthusiasm and good intentions, and read some fine and impressive copy. The kid from South Africa, another, good man, and I'm always pleased to meet a foreigner traveling abroad. The local guy, was about my age but had written for more than I and seemed very at home and use to it all. I on the other hand had stopped writing in the early nineties to focus on a more "tangible, profitable and realistic career," so I thought, but that didn't pan out either. So I returned to writing, around 08, feeling like, fuck it, if I die broke, at least I die rich with leaving something behind other than a tombstone. Writing is what I've always wanted to do. To be a writer, at some point meant a lot to me, and I wanted that feeling for love of what I do back in my life and it is.
It has nothing to do with fame and money, and I don't know why people insist on putting those two together, because they're not same thing and very rarely, accompany on another and even more rare is that the accompany a writer. I mean shit, it is a very very small club, of rich and famous and writers, face it. What I brought home from this trip is this; I write, and I came to read, because I'm on a road with fellow travelers, passing by, a road home, so to speak. A road to a place I want to be, a place warm, and satisfying. A home where I've never been, where I belong, where their's a warm fire and comfortable cat purring on the hearth. A cozy home after a long jounrney through the winter of life, and the slipperss fit and the coffee is good, and there's art on the walls and in my heart and in my mind. Home, like a good cafe
I should point out first, that I had my reservation about going at all. I don't like readings. They're usually so fucking pointless and boring. But this one seemed more along the lines of, I don't know, "my kinda folk," and that's what convinced me to do it. Still, the reading part nagged me, worried me a little, not fear of public speaking but a worry along the lines of lost in translation. Something changes when fiction is read aloud, a certain dynamic, or delivery that might best be suited best for actors rather than writers, Never the less, I went anyway, for reasons, at first, selfish, I suppose, like any other unknown writer would justify the acts of performing and wagging their little tail for the treat of applause and acceptance. "I need this, it'll be good for me, get out there and meet some people." Is what I told myself. And that's what I did.
Now I won't go on about geography, travel, and hotels, because anyone whose driven the length of Illinois, or width of Kansas or Nebraska, or Texas, as I have will know, there's not much to say about it, externally anyway. But the time and space I will entertain.
The space, The cafe, Mashuggah they call it, and I don't know what it means and don't really care, but it's good cafe, with wear and character that probably comes from generation of students that passed across the wood floors with their shoes full of hope and possibilities, that only the youth can understand with all their limitless passions and certain hopeful beliefs of a world that only exists for that short 4 year, ok, maybe 5 or six year period, maybe longer because some never leave that comfortable nest. I'm wandering away here. The cafe, was a tiny little coffee bar, with patina and an assortment of beers I gathered from observation. And really good coffee.
There was art on the walls, some local, some good, some not so good. I noticed some good photography and a sketch by Picasso that caught my eye early on arrival. It looked original, although I'm sure it wasn't, in the company of the Boulevard of Broken Dreams poster upstairs and flowered water color that might have come from a child.. Maybe though, one never knows anything for sure. A hand made Bob Dylan discussion group sign, of wood, I think, hung proudly above the quiet patrons focused on their laptops. I spied a few screens and most were writing something, word doc pages, and reminded me of my own twenty something days in university town cafes like The Deadwood in Iowa City, only then, it was a pen, notebook, pitcher, and an overflowing ashtray at the table.
The tables were unstable, and the chairs an assortment. Posters of local bands and other events were cloaked in the mystery from their designs and clung to a cork board outside the surprisingly clean restroom. This I took in, in the afternoon, the reading was at seven, but I wanted to case the place and neighborhood first, so I did and felt very old and out of my element among the afternoon crowd of students. But that's alright, I was there once upon a time, in a different space and time, but I was there all the same. I get it.
Seven PM, maybe a little after, because I'm never too eager to make a mistake these days, so I plan my arrivals and departures carefully and for effect. The effect being one of never being around one place too long, so as your presence lingers longer than it should. Another is, I know myself, and I can can come across as a bit gruff and intimidating sometimes, but I'm actually pretty passive and accessible when you get to know me. Anyway, my wife and I left the hotel at seven and we walked the the three blocks or so. It was a warm, balmy evening with rain in its future, and the atmosphere was a little different. Gone were the students, and learners and their plans, replaced with doer's and worker bees of the community and the writers that I'd be reading with, and wanted to meet. No. I really did. For the writing business is a lonely one, and I was aware of some of these writers and their activities over the years. I was hungry for stories, not from their pages, but from the trenches. The real stories. In all honesty, I don't think very many writers really give a shit about another writers work, when their in the same but opposite trench together. Under that somewhat equal and level playing field. they want to know about each other, the writer.
So here we are, all smiles and hand shakes, a group of wordsmiths' on their way somewhere. To where? who knows, but on their way in their, our, minds anyway, and that's always a good place to be. All were younger than me except one veteran of the biz, and all were full of giddy and life for the moments they were allowed to wave their achievements. Our host for the evening, Scott Phillips and Jed Ayres, were already there. Scott, a man of notable writing achievement, seemed quiet and reserved and that most likely comes from years of stupid questions asked by writers of lesser notoriety. Writers who want something form him, most likely help, help from his coat tails to his shoulders. Help he probably has no desire and very little power to give and I don't blame him, for he knows, as I know, and every writer eventually learns, that at the end of the the day, it's all about the writing and the writer, and nothing else. There's not anything anyone can do for a writer outside an honorable mention here and there and among the right people. That's all, but you can't ask for that, no, no. You have to earn it. Again, it's all about the writing.
Jed, in my opinion and that's gathered in short, but seemed like a man of infinite kindness and generosity and good man to have for a friend. I knew this when he insisted on paying for the books I brought him as a gift and his manners toward my wife, and the way his eyes saw you, listened to you, in conversation. I knew he either had proper upbringing, and by proper I don't mean money, but proper as in good parenting. Or, a really shitty up bringing that mixed with his intelligence, made him humble, honorable and reliable, for through some freak of nature it happens sometimes that people become the very thing they we're denied as a child. Either way, a gentleman and a scholar, probably of the street, and og his own doing, but that would be even better.
The reading, I won't say much about it, because it's one of those, ya had to be there things. The guys from KC, fine writers and fine young men, full of enthusiasm and good intentions, and read some fine and impressive copy. The kid from South Africa, another, good man, and I'm always pleased to meet a foreigner traveling abroad. The local guy, was about my age but had written for more than I and seemed very at home and use to it all. I on the other hand had stopped writing in the early nineties to focus on a more "tangible, profitable and realistic career," so I thought, but that didn't pan out either. So I returned to writing, around 08, feeling like, fuck it, if I die broke, at least I die rich with leaving something behind other than a tombstone. Writing is what I've always wanted to do. To be a writer, at some point meant a lot to me, and I wanted that feeling for love of what I do back in my life and it is.
It has nothing to do with fame and money, and I don't know why people insist on putting those two together, because they're not same thing and very rarely, accompany on another and even more rare is that the accompany a writer. I mean shit, it is a very very small club, of rich and famous and writers, face it. What I brought home from this trip is this; I write, and I came to read, because I'm on a road with fellow travelers, passing by, a road home, so to speak. A road to a place I want to be, a place warm, and satisfying. A home where I've never been, where I belong, where their's a warm fire and comfortable cat purring on the hearth. A cozy home after a long jounrney through the winter of life, and the slipperss fit and the coffee is good, and there's art on the walls and in my heart and in my mind. Home, like a good cafe
February 9, 2012
13 shots of noir, Paul D. Brazill, a short sharp interview.
At a good cafe, known by the local underbelly of artist, writers a musicians as The Write Room, he steps in from the brisk evening weather and strolls the stench of absinthe and opiates to my corner booth in back. I watch him walk and wave away the waiter.
It’s Thursday night and the only patrons are the truly dedicated, and whispering his name from the shadows and stealing glances at man, the myth, the legend; Paul D Brazill.
KLH: Brazill, what’s up, have a seat. Can you pitch your latest publication/ project in 25 words or less?
PDB -13 Shots Of Noir is a collection of flash fiction and short stories in the vein of Roald Dahl, The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents ... Crime, horror and dark fiction are contained within the pages of 13 Shots Of Noir.
KLH: Hey man...which books, films or television shows have floated your boat recently?
PDB -Books: I'm currently enjoying William Ryan's historical crime novel, The Holy Thief and I loved J J DeCeglie's Drawing Dead.Very different flavours. Both very tasty.
Films: Kill List was a more than worthy follow up to Down Terrace.
TV: The new season of Justified seems well on form so far. Sherlock was top stuff.
KLH: None a mine huh, nice. No, no, don’t worry about it, really. Listen, I was wondering; is it possible for a writer to be an objective reader?
PDB -I'm not a particularly objective person, so ... Some people seem to be able to have critical detachment. I don't. I either like something or I don't and I don't really care why.
KLH: What about the screen. do you have any interest in writing for films, theatre or television?
PDB -Television is more of a writers medium and there's a lot of meaty stuff being done at the moment, so that's very attractive.
Films are mostly a visual thing, so the interest isn't so strong but I'd be more than happy if a very visual director wanted to turn Drunk On The Moon into a film. Guns Of Brixton would make a great, sweary, modern Ealing Comedy, actually.
Theatre is of no interest to me in any form. I've been to the theatre less than five times in my life and it wasn't a particularly enjoyable experience. A bit embarrassing, really. Although, I do enjoy going the opera so maybe I could write a musical like Guys and Dolls!
KLH: How about, Guns and Dames, that has ring. How much research goes into each book?
PDB -Very little. It's the world as seen through my bleary eyes.It's not journalism.
KLH: Me neithier, I fake it. What about the web- how useful or important are social media for you as a writer?
PDB -I have no real idea if they are useful or important but they certainly eat time. I suspect their importance could be an Emperor's new clothes situation. It could just be a bunch of C and D list writers promoting their stuff to other C and D list writers. But it costs nothing and, for me, if I didn't waste time on them, I'd waste it doing something even more useless, I'm sure.
KLH: What’s on the cards in 2012?
PDB -My novella Guns Of Brixton will be published by Pulp Press early this year.
Snapshots, a flash fiction/short story collection, will come out through Pulp Metal Fiction.
An anthology of Drunk On The Moon stories will be published by Dark Valentine Press.
And a couple of other things are hovering and waiting to strike, too!
KLH: Ok that’s a lot. I feel positively blocked. Now drink up mate, thanks for stopping by
Paul D Brazill can be found at his blog You Would Say That, Wouldn't You?
January 29, 2012
January 21, 2012
Shakespeare Was A Genre Writer- Guest Blog with Proffesor Josh Mark on genre vs literary
Author and Proffessor Josh Mark stopped in The Write Room Cafe, Sunday morning for a cup and a dark corner to contemplate the boundries of writing fiction."Morning Josh, what's on your mind?"
`Shakespeare Was A Genre Writer'
"Yes, of course, I'll be right back that for ya."
There is this wonderful passage in the Cornell Woolrich novel, I Married A Dead Man, which I believe refutes the bigoted `literary' claim that genre fiction is not truly `literature'. For those who don't know, Cornell Woolrich (who also wrote under the name William Irish) was a well-known and highly successful writer of `genre fiction', crime novels in the 1940's and beyond. His story, It Had To Be Murder, was the basis for the famous Alfred Hitchcock film Rear Window and many of his stories, or plots derived from them, have served to provide writers with ideas from 1938 to the present. It would seem, then, that Woolrich should be regarded as a `writer' and not as a `genre writer' and, further, neither should `genre writing' be counted as less than `literature'. As a human who has spent much of his life in the academic world, I have heard from fellow professors, countless times, that there is a definite distinction between `literature' and `fiction' with particular disdain accorded to `genre fiction'. Yet, when pressed on the question of what makes one piece `fiction' and another piece `literature' I have never received a satisfactory answer from any of these professionals. Cornell Woolrich's work was, then, and is, today, considered `genre fiction' as it falls into the category of `noir crime fiction' but it is so much more than any label can hope to define. This is true of so much `crime fiction' or `YA fiction' or `horror fiction' that I think it's time we re-evaluated these tags we give to pieces of writing and try to approach them honestly and without labels. The whole of this Woolrich novel is brilliant but this one passage stopped me cold when I first read it and I had to stare into space for a while thinking on it in the exact same way I have done when reading Shakespeare or Plato or any of the other greats. It goes like this:
"What makes you stop, when you have stopped, just where you have stopped? What is it, what? Is it something, or is it nothing? Why not a yard short, why not a yard more? Why just there where you are, and nowhere else?
Some say: It's just blind chance, and if you hadn't stopped there, you would have stopped at the next place. Your story would have been different then. You weave your own story as you go along.
But others say: You could not have stopped any place else but this even if you had wanted to. It was decreed, it was ordered, you were meant to stop at this spot and no other. Your story is there waiting for you, it has been waiting for you there a hundred years, long before you were born, and you cannot change a comma of it. Everything you do, you have to do. You are the twig, and the water you float on swept you here. You are the leaf and the breeze you were borne on blew you here. This is your story, and you cannot escape it; you are only the player, not the stage manager. Or so some say."
Not only is the passage beautifully written, it asks a central truth about human existence: Do we have control over our choices or are those choices dictated for us by some higher power? Whether that `power' is Fate or God or simply the sum total of all of our other choices or our upbringing, are we really free, in any given moment, to choose to turn right instead of left? Did we actually choose to become who we are today or was that choice dictated long before this moment by some factor far removed from our own freewill?
In the novel I Married A Dead Man, just before Woolrich writes this passage, the scene is this: A young girl has been deserted by her lover in a strange city. She's pregnant, which is why he's left her, and all she has is something like seventeen cents in her pocket and the train ticket back to her home town he bought for her. She gets on the train, tired and depressed, hopeless because she's returning home in disgrace, and lugs her suitcase down the aisle of the car. Worn out, she finally just stops, puts down the suitcase, and sits on it directly across from a young couple. That moment, when she stops there, defines the rest of her life.
Isn't this true for all of us at one point or another? It's the simplest thing, or seemingly the simplest, which leads to the greatest and most important times of our lives and which, actually, can come to define us. Who is to say, then, that genre fiction is not `literature'? What is literature but the story of what it means to be a human being? However one chooses to tell that story, it is a story we all need to hear repeated from time to time. It lets us know that we're not alone. I don't believe there should be any such designations as `crime fiction' or `noir fiction' or `YA fiction' if, by so designating a piece of work, one may then smugly dismiss it as `not literature' and, therefore, not worth reading. The poets of today speak to us through the radio and off CDs in our stereos and, just because Springsteen or Gerard Way are not included in a college literature book, does not make the impact of their work any less. We should expand our understanding, and definition, of `literature' to include the totality of what goes to helping us all be more human and stop defining and trying to devalue those works which don't neatly fit the accepted understanding of what is `literary' work. Before he became `Shakespeare', Will was just a guy who wrote plays to entertain and, along the way, enlightened people to what it is to be a human being. So called `genre fiction' provides us with precisely the same experience.
January 20, 2012
My Muse Plays Hard To Get, by Kevin Lynn Helmick, Pulp Metal Magazine
Piece a flash? from a few years ago in Pulp Metal Magazine
http://pulpmetalmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/my-muse-plays-hard-to-get-by-kevin-lynn-helmicks/http://pulpmetalmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/my-muse-plays-hard-to-get-by-kevin-lynn-helmicks/
http://pulpmetalmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/my-muse-plays-hard-to-get-by-kevin-lynn-helmicks/http://pulpmetalmagazine.wordpress.com/2010/07/20/my-muse-plays-hard-to-get-by-kevin-lynn-helmicks/
Donna Crocker's Blog: Guest Blogger Kevin Lynn Helmick
Donna Crocker's Blog: Guest Blogger Kevin Lynn Helmick: Welcome Kevin , For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge A Guest Blog By Kevin Lynn Helmick Hello one and all. I’ll spare the introductions...
