. Spinning .

Well I read The Open Door; I wish that anyone who’s read this and liked it will be kind enough to comment here.  The voice was terrific in the old storytelling way.  And supposedly we’re left wondering about the open door and a couple of things missing from the cabin.  But de Looze goes way back into the death of the man’s wife, the spreading of her ashes on the lake, throws in a couple of interesting local characters, goes on about fishing vs. hunting, and ends the story in a way that appears to be an attempt at being mystical.  So much for that.

For me, the stars of this issue were All of Me (Krouse), Footsteps(Chen), Sightseeing (Lapcharoensap),  and The Last Time I Saw Him (Wallace) for elements of story, character, imagery–and most importantly, new technique.

This final story, The Open Door by Laurence deLooze is an example of something that’s been bothering me lately in many instances of currently published contemporary short fiction; it often rambles on and on, flaunting all the rules of making every word count:

In a single thought, Bill wondered if Dunger was all right, and also realized that he had absolutely no idea how long the door had stood open.  He had no way to measure the open door against time.  Against sequentiality.  Maybe Dunger had been by numerous times, but the door had still been closed?  All he had to go by was his arrival.  How long, in fact, had the door been open before Bill arrived?  Was it a matter of days or of weeks?  Had the door somehow clicked open only minutes before he drove up—as though by some mysterious, impossible remote control?  Even as Bill tried to work logically through the possibilities, the lack of logic inherent in the puzzle itself defeated him again and again.  (p. 119)

Now this may be building up as a mystery story, but this paragraph is four pages into the story, long after he’s come up to his cabin to find the door open, and he’s been wondering about it since.  To me, the questions the author has the protagonist asking himself is what the reader is asking; so are we being asked to not think about it because the character is doing it all for us?

de Looze then goes into the background of the character, from his early geek/hippie days through his marriage and career.  Backstory all; told as if he were preparing a bio.

I almost put this down since it’s the last story to read in this issue, but flipping pages caught my eye that maybe this story is going somewhere, so I’ll continue on.  I’m also wondering if it’s not my current frame of mind; cramming everything that needs to be done into not enough hours but impatiently insistent.  Lord knows, I’m not one that requires any shouting action in the first few pages–nor even in the whole story.  I’ll give Mr. deLooze the benefit of the doubt.

This particular issue had a majority of good to excellent stories, well written, innovative and interesting.  But there were a couple not so great.

Men in Brown by Joan Connor is about a woman’s fantasies about her UPS man, and she gets to date him.  My first honest gut reaction?  YA.  To me, particularly after reading some real winning stories, this story seemed to be both for a fifteen year-old and written by one.  I’ve been through creative writing classes and this just rang back memories. 

Okay?  Okay?  Why doesn’t he go away and take that black licorice whip of hair with him?  But I am a sucker for sweets.  An all-day sucker, a sucker for succor.  "Fine," I say.  "Everything’s fine."  My voice sounds as thin as a spaghetti strap slipping from a shoulder.  (p. 198)

The story is loaded with food simile, too loaded.  The alliteration here is more pronounced than in other sections, but the cholately chocolate, browner than brown, three or four phrases spent to emphasize a statement sounds flippantly comic instead of the author taking the time to edit, and find the single best way to say something. Maybe the voice is consistent and strong, but for me it was obnoxiously annoying.  O’Connor, by the way, is weighty with credentials as prizewinner and teacher, so maybe it’s me.

Bartleby, by Anthony Farrington, is yet another divorced father with two small children trying to restart his life in a new neighborhood.  It involves a strange little boy next door, the boy’s stranger father, and even stranger yet, the boy’s mother who insists that the newcomers feed a dog that we’re not sure is real.  And bugs; lotsa bugs.  It was good writing, but the story just kind of was there without making any real impact.

There is one yet that I haven’t read.  It’s quite long and I will, tonight or tomorrow, go over it.

Both of these struck me not only for their story, but for noticeable fine technique.  Which, yeah, you’re not supposed to notice but as a writer–and I’m sure Francine Prose would agree–you do indeed notice and if you can, admire.

First up, Daniel Wallace’s The Last Time I Saw Him.  First person narrator, a son reminiscing about his father. 

Every now and then, between scenarios that move around in time and space (I’d have to go back and check if there is a backward or forward theme) there is a paragraph that begins with the title theme:

The last time I saw him he was in town for something, a business thing, and he had a little time before a meeting and said maybe we could meet in the hotel bar, have a drink, talk. (p. 89)

This reminds me a lot of a story I read back in a Contemporary Fiction class; I’m bringing this information with me:  The father has been derelict in his relationship with his son, and there is this trying too hard that accompanies his realization.  There’s still, however, the lack of knowing what to do beyond duty.

The last time I saw him was on a Christmas afternoon.  My mother and I had opened our presents that morning, and cleaned up, and then she’d gone over to her boyfriend’s house. p. 92)

So our suspicions were correct.  The narrator is the product of a broken home.  The scenes also end with this enigmatic idea:

(…) and I went to sleep, and he left on his trip, and after that I never saw him again in my entire life.  (p. 96)

Beautifully done.  We’re getting the backstory served up as courses in a fine meal.  And the obvious yet mysterious:  Last time I saw him?  Is it merely the thought that was his at the time, or something more…something like seeing his father in different ways each time, so that truly, it was the last.  Excellent technique, excellent writing.

The next is a short story by Angela Pneuman called The Bell Ringer.  Third person omniscient, getting into the heads of two sisters and the husband of one of them.  One of the sisters is mentally disturbed, and here we see great insight into a jumbled mind trying to hold on to normalcy.  Her sister’s problems are seen through art classes she is taking, and the sister’s husband is having some minor crisises of his own.  All well presented in the interaction of the characters. Classic showing.

There was only one part that I would almost consider a missed opportunity to shine.  In the beginning, the mentally disturbed sister goes to stay with her married sister who has a six-year old daughter.  The daughter sleeps with her aunt, and notices:

Aunt Esther sleeps wearing a yellow smiley-face T-shirt and black bikini panties.  One morning Amy wakes before Aunt Esther and counts eleven purple and red lines the length of her little finger, one laid above the next like a train track climbing the white skin up out of the black panties.  (p. 165)

Well placed exposition; we know up to this point that Aunt Esther (who is 24) had been living down in Florida with a couple men.  We can only suspect what went on, as Amy sees the scars on her aunt’s back.  Unfortunately, Pneuman brings it up again too soon; without answering the question, she has everyone else in the house wondering about it along with us.  I felt it was too prominently referred to in the story and that wasn’t necessary; believe me, I hadn’t forgotten about it.  But the story is a good one, well defined characters and realistic imagery.  Nicely done. 

The next selection also has illness and death as themes.  Footsteps by Yunny Chen involves a relationship between a man and a woman; long-lived, married, and in the way of this, still secretive about feelings. 

There is a difference between the personalities that is made more intense by the difference in their religious faith, by the childlessness which burdened their marriage, by family disapproval, and yet, even though they met through a marriage broker, there is a developed strong bond of love.  The wife is dying of cancer, the husband is trying to cope.  There is the usual self-protective instincts that illness brings, and the softness of true caring that often only comes out on the bad days, the rough times. 

It’s a well written story of love and faith and what two people build together that keeps them together.  Nicely done without any overly dramatic scenarios.  Through some backstory vignettes, we see what they have overcome and how they’ve established their stand through compromise, the author giving us just enough to set the images of forty years to come to this time where the threat of separation is very real.  A good read.

All of Me, by Erika Krouse is a story about change, physical, mental and emotional.  A man is recuperating from a heart transplant operation.  A knock on his door one door bring with it a young woman who claims that the heart he has been given is that of her past lover.  The girl is everything the man is not; quirky, emotional, eccentric, open, loving.  She moves in with him, insisting that she has that right, and while it takes them a while, they become lovers.

The man is changed–one of those all important elements of story–but by what?  Is it truly the heart that lays out who we are, or is it a case o having been so close to the possibility of death.  The latter is certainly a common experience; the survivor gets a new lease on life and immediately mends his ways.  There is one thing that the man makes a decision on–the changes in personality (for the better) he accepts and is glad about–and that is to discontinue taking his medication that prevents rejection of the heart.  He feels that though the risk is there, he prefers to live without the sickness the meds bring with them.  What he feels also, is that the girl loves him, no longer with him for the old love’s heart, but for himself.

Very nicely written, very relative, very interesting story here.

Not reading this one in the traditional manner–front to back; skipping around to what appeals at the time.

Sightseeing, by Rattawut Lapcharoensap, is a short story that seems to contain all the necessary elements of method to make a story work.  There is a theme–sight; the story is about a young man (first person pov narrator) who is deciding to put off going off to college because of his mother’s impending blindness.  The plot is linear, with the timeline encompassing their departure on a "vacation" while the mother can still see, along with some minor backstory to enhance the relationship.  The conflicts are clear: the mother may lose her vision at any time, and the son is giving up his dreams of furthering his education.  The characters are portrayed in their relationship both by dialogue and by in particular, the mother’s dealings with a merchant when she purchases a pair of sunglasses along with her seasickness on a part of the journey.  I loved the easy way the story flowed with interesting characters, a dramatic event held to a low key approach, and an ending that keeps the reader thinking about the story.

Goodwill Gestures by Leo Hwang is fairly interesting in story, but for me, fell short in that the timelines hopped around (fine, I can handle that) without leaving the reader with a full sense of the characters.  Too many characters involved in a simple story.

David Cates’ Things You Cannot Know was well enough written, yet I never felt a connection with the first person POV narrator nor cared about her problems.  Again here, a few too many rambling histories of secondary characters.  The ending was unsatisfying in what the protagonist has actually come around to thinking, despite a final scene where a shower might have had some meaning deeper than just thinking time.

As a backup to my previous posting about submissions, Glimmer Train (one of my favorite publications, by the way, because they’re devoted to short story form) Issue #54:  Of the 12 published authors in this issue, 5 of them appear to have been published in Glimmer Train before; one actually having been in 4 times prior.  Of the 5, there appears to be a total of 12 repeats.  This would come out to an entire issue having no new writers. 

Now I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this; but the knowledge should serve as simply a more realistic picture for the writer new to the submission process.

When these journals are receiving a thousand submissions a month sometimes, and at the least, a hundred, it just seems weird that one single author was selected from all these thousands twice–never mind 5 times (four prior, and in the current issue).

Of the total 12 in this issue, 9 have been published elsewhere as well, 2 others have novels under their belt, many are professors and teach writing, have come from MFA programs, or have gained grants or prizes.

Maybe that’s what makes Glimmer Train so hard to break into; and why I can’t help but make it my first choice.

Strange title–Night Slides Falling to Light–for this wonderfully written story by Thomas O’Malley.  Within six pages, two murders, setting that you can feel, characters that strike an immediate chord, and a story that is beautifully woven.  One of my favorites.

Making a Kite, by Miriam Novogrodsky is yet another divorced father coping with kids and life after the split–what is it with the proliferation of this theme lately?  But it is interesting and well written.  Most of these stories are showing the father’s side, and the love he still feels for his ex-wife and the spite he is capable of during recovery.  Sort of a twist on the old scorned woman story.

That’s it for this issue, I think.  There’s one I just couldn’t make myself plod through, and I admittedly didn’t read the first long story so I may go back to that.

I’m getting old and losing patience with any waste of time.  I’ve overcome my innate need to finish what I start and so (with a bit of guilt) have learned that if a story is not enjoyable, read a bit more.  If it is also not teaching me something about writing and sense of story and style, then quit reading. 

So that’s what I’ve done with a couple stories in this issue.

However, in View From the Pines, author George Fahey presents a wonderful character study (Lucille, a lady who, like me, likes to take her coffee outside and ponder the back yard–and of course, she likes Willie so she’s A-okay in my book) of a woman without giving an overdose of backstory.  We see great imagery in the backyard where she thinks she sees something, and the bit of history has us speculating exactly what it might be that she may see.  I loved it.

Lex Williford’s Beck’s Girls is a coming of age theme but with a nice twist of having a rather peculiar antagonist that keeps us wondering about the character and her allure to the first person narrator/protagonist.  What keeps us from questioning it is the fact that the protagonist is a fifteen year-old boy, and his interest is a wispy yet intrigueing twelve-year old girl. We’re also given a dramatic situation, and an unanswered question that hangs in the back of our minds at story’s end. Good stuff.  

Unfortunately, not as a published author, but as a character:

Lucille used to look on the pines, watch them turn black against the horizon as the earth turned away from the sun, one cigarette after another, coffee making her hands shake or gin inviting her to hum Willie Nelson tunes before the spectacle.  (p. 158)

If you’ve been with me here at Spinning for the last three years, you’ll surely recognize the similarities.

Only my name’s not Lucille.

The next two stories do have that in common; they are more literary in that one can relate to the more character, human event nature of the storylines.

Although it’s one more "divorced father coping with raising a kid minus a mother" stories, Ray, Like Sunshine by Paul Rawlins does carry the reader through on a likeable dad who’s not as sorry a picture as most in these stories.  The protagonist naturally is still hung up a bit on his ex-wife, takes his son to a ballgame where he meets the mother of another player, and fantasizes a bit about them being together.  Same old, same old.  But there’s no bitter confrontation here that forces a decision.  It’s more reality: realization comes simply that life goes on.  He’s acknowledging that he still wants his ex-wife, and it’s going to take time to get over it.  Nicely written.

In Bluefish, South of Plymouth, R. Clifton Spargo acknowledges the similarity by opening paragraph 2 with: Pete and I were on a suburbanized version of a Kerouac road trip,…  And frankly, I would have liked to have seem some of Spargo’s insight into character and giving them life in Kerouac’s novel.  It’s a very simple story where two young men take a short trip back to the first person narrator’s home town and stay with an elderly man who’s been a friend of the family.  There is a special excitement yet pathos around this character, and there is a gentle understanding that develops around past, present and future and the viewpoints of the young versus the old.  The only thing that was a bit too pat was the mention of the man’s dead wife’s ashes likely being in a coffee can, and the closing scene of him scattering those ashes on the sea as the two young men depart.  A bit forced, it seemed.  And too, the sudden appearance of the running of the blues (bluefish) in a frenzied cannibalistic act as they come just at that moment.  Then too, it could be just imagination and not a reality, put together by the narrator as a more fitting ending to the tale.  Even so, nothing to that point of story led me in that direction (unless I missed the whole point of "being a believer" of the old man’s stories) and my natural sense of "oh, come on" tainted my full enjoyment of this well written short story.

Hmmph.  I just got done reading a 38-page story in this issue that made me reconsider some things I thought I knew and practiced in just the last couple of days.

Creed of Whispers by Joseph Flanagan is, oddly enough, set in New England of the 1880s.  It starts and ends at the funeral of a rather odd local character, with the main story centering around one of the mourners, a young single woman who we find had been raped, had an abortion, and along with her mother–whose husband has abandoned them–maintain some measure of social status as best they can amid the lack of income and wealth of disgrace.  It’s rather well written, and it does have a very interesting story line with such activity and drama, and there is a relationship between the young woman and the recently deceased that somehow offers hope. 

The 38-pager is a story by Andre Dubus III called Marla.  The protagonist is a 29 year old single woman who might best be described as ordinary to dumpy with a job as a bank teller and no circle of friends beyond her co-workers.  No boyfriend either, and still a virgin.  She starts dating a customer, moves in with him, and we follow the relationship through the natural progression from elation to revelation.  After living with him a while, she starts seeing all the things that she doesn’t like and realizes that she probably has given up her life to put up with something just because she doesn’t want to be lonely. 

Marla is well written in voice, and yet it seemed to be an awful lot of telling for a story where the main thrust is the emotions of a relationship.  We’re constantly told of how Marla feels.  We’re reminded continually of her low self-esteem.  The other characters are defined a bit by dialogue, but mostly by what the third person narrator tells us they’re like.  I was a bit surprised at the quality of the story–though it reads easily enough–upon seeing Dubus III’s credits.

But what do I know.

I thought it’d be a good idea to catch up on some of my short story reading backlog of lit journals, especially at a time when I myself am submitting and seeking that magic key.

While I usually start in at the beginning and read straight through, I skipped (and will go back to) the first story because it was unusally long.

Do The Math by Lucia Nevai was in my opinion good writing, the voice strong and compelling, yet I wasn’t excited or awed by the story.  To me, it seemed just another adult looking back at a rather sexually experimental period of time, the first person narrator’s memory being jogged by a letter from an old friend.  The narrator may become more aware of herself, find herself so to speak, but in my book she wasn’t a character that I liked in the beginning, and disliked even more at the end.  The voice was, as I say, strong; strong enough to overcome my own problems with the type of character speaking.

Blessed Are The Meek by Sandra Hunter was the first place winner in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction contest.  It’s good.  Very good.  It’s got characters who, with little real detail, become nonetheless very real through the third person narrator’s well planned insight.  The story is just a brief scenario, a small episode in the life of an elderly married couple (this brings to mind another one I read recently that had that same ability to touch the human emotion through its very realism) and their interaction.  It’s nice to see good writing and a fine literary style be so acknowledged.

These two stories have one thing in common that would strike me as notable:  Voice.

Finished this issue, and the last story is worth remarking upon.  Properties of Storm for Healing by Doug Crandall is another take on the father/son relationship–oddly there are at least three of them in this issue–that employs good writing, action, and character development. 

The base is the same, loving fathers who cannot communicate with their children.  And the opening of the son coming home for his father’s funeral and leaving with a new level of understanding is certainly not original, but the handling of it made the story a page-turner.  A tornado, a dopey hound dog, a change in gravesite, an old man missing his nose, add interest and action.  The realization of the relationship comes not merely through the cliched photos on the wall of him as a child, but through the discovery of his father’s cabin; he has proudly built himself one just like it in another state without ever knowing of his father’s.  And, through a dog that easily transfers his loyalties to his dead master’s son.

There is a subtlety that tells us that there is good in everyone, that there are things shared that become common ground.  A fine story to end this anthology.