. Spinning .

Obviously the idea becomes a story (unless the story just happens to happen), and the handling of it is dependent upon skill and technique. 

In Kate Kasten’s Home Fires, the concept is laden with potential:  In third person pov, the story of Hans begins with his boyhood in Germany during WWII, and points out that the family’s view of the war was so radically different than the reality of it.  Living out in the country in the vicinity of Buchenwald, they believed it to be merely a prison.  Hans fondly remembers picnics nearby.  He is fired up to grow up to be a soldier and fight in a war, inspired by the friendliness of an SS officer to a small German boy.  His parents are made aware of the situation when the Americans arrive in Germany, and they are changed forever by the knowledge.  They move to the American Midwest, and the story actually starts with Hans reading about Buchenwald in his high school textbook.

However, he doesn’t believe it.  This is where the author lost me.  Hans still insists on going into the service and finally sees action in the Vietnam War.  The concept was brilliant, but I don’t believe the story.  You can’t merely pooh-pooh away the facts.  All he had to do was ask his parents.  There was so much potential for this story, and while the narrative follows Hans around the jungle, broken and bleeding and close to death, there is feeling of war, but not enough (for me) depth to the character for me to care about him enough.  It’s still a lot of gore and pain, but without any realization of what war really means–which is what I would have expected him to finally understand.  Instead, he peacefully dies in the jungle, looking forward to "going home" to his childhood–and Germany represents that!

A bit implausible, and I would have liked to see the intensity of WW II, and Vietnam, more deeply affect the protagonist.

Recent discussions have led me to focus more on the show vs. tell that we all know about, but also often find it difficult to remember in our writing.  Another example from Julie Rose’s Pinhead in this issue of Glimmer Train:

The longer that I deferred the task the more unlikely it seemed that normal relations would be resumed without Philip insisting upon a huge probing discussion of what he would term ‘our issues.’  (…) What would a good, real father do?

That fall I wrote him a neutral little note on my fish stationery about seeing a black bear while out for my afternoon walk ‘at our family camp where I have now retired.’  I signed it Pops.

(…) I counted upon being able to find him when I wanted, park the car and look at his handiwork, see how the structure was coming.  I would idle the engine, light a cigar, and think what I might compliment him upon and what mild suggestions I might make–about where to put the chimney or what type of lawn seed to use in rocky soil–when we were speaking again.  One of the three new job sites is on Furnace Brook Road, near my cabin.  When I pass it, if I see a sloppy siding job or a poorly situated septic, I do not remark upon it even to myself.  "Criticism is meant to correct, not to condemn," I said in this month’s letter.  (p. 32)

While it may appear to be telling, what it indeed is showing is the father’s understanding of the problem between him and his son–his too often and bluntly shown disapproval since the boy was young–and the inability to truly let go of it:  "Criticism is meant to correct, etc."   Even though he was smart enough not to point out the particulars, he just couldn’t resist some mention.  In the second paragraph above, while the narrator tells us what he wrote in the letter to his son, it’s obvious that he is trying to be subtle about his retirement and likely offering his son some more of his time, but too stubborn to come out and say it.

Rose’s grasp of human nature and her understanding of the show versus tell technique is carried beyond imagery and action, and brings us more into revelation of character–and, in the character’s own words.  Nice.

A beautifully written story by Julie Rose, Pinhead tells in the first person pov of a father’s love for his estranged son, and his frustrated attempts to show his feeling while being stymied by the words to say it. 

But Rose knows how to say the words to show the feeling:

Winding down through the flanks of these mountains were the small, hardy trout streams and furnace brooks where I have always fished. In the land preserves where I’ve spent a lifetime hunting, stone walls lay like spines, half-buried in the parchment-colored winter fields, defining obsolete perimeters.  In the small, mossy graveyards cradled beside country roads, stones half-sunken beneath the land bore receding nscriptions of birtht and death and belovedness.  I tried, even though I knew better, to say how it felt to be out there driving on the dirt roads toward home through fields cloaked with snow, cold as it was, beautiful and glittering and ending as everything was.

"Another shitty day in paradise," I said. (p. 36)

The above is a scene where the narrator’s friend is driving him home from the hospital after an operation.  It so clearly shows that what the man feels and sees is something he cannot put into words when speaking with someone else.  There is that reticence of the danger of revealing, or of looking stupid, or simply of becoming too close. 

This is his problem with his relationship with his grown son.  So he spies on him, dreams of a confrontation or conflict that brings them together through need or deed to end the silence.

Because he doesn’t know what to say.  But how wonderfully well the author says it all.

Deja vu all over again. (that, from Yogi Berra, I believe)

By Kevin Canty, the short story Sleeping Beauty features Andrew, a bachelor, holding a dinner party for two married couples who are all old college friends. 

There is that underlying sense of something wrong that you get in Facade‘s apartment of Grace and Trip.  Andrew is feeling the outsider as a single who has just broken up with his girlfriend, and we follow his mood as he attempts to maintain his control over the evening.  In the meantime, there appears to be something brewing among the two couples as well.  One of the women holds onto Andrew a bit too long in the kitchen while he is preparing the meal. He remains clueless.  (Facade:  Kiss, Kiss, Hug, Hug, either Trip or Grace, depending on your persona until you get tossed out on your ass.) 

This same woman faints, then under some rather awkward interaction (VERY much like when attempting to interact with Grace and Trip), it’s decided that after she goes in to lay down and recover, that she just stay put for the night since she fell asleep (we don’t really get out of the main room in Facade).  When she wakes, the secret that both couples knew but Andrew wasn’t privy to is revealed. 

The story isn’t great, but there is conflict and it’s written fairly well.   It reminds me of several movies that were along the same path of old friends getting together and finding out that nobody is really as happy as they appear.

But this never happened in Facade:  The visitor never ended up with Trip!

While enjoying the readings of this and other lit journals, I’m as well looking at the potentiality of submission and naturally where my writing style and story might possibly fit.  Well, I’m learning a lot.

One thing that surprises me after being trained to cut out every word that doesn’t progress or emphasize the story needfully, is the almost "blah, blah, blah" feeling I’m getting in reading many of the published works.  And good God no–I’m not say that the stories are boring!  At least not the majority of them.  But there is an awful lot of extraneous background and dialogue that have me flipping to note the last page of a story and how much longer it goes on.  Many of these are just nice little stories; warm and fuzzy, get to know the characters a bit and smile or whatever with them, and then they end.  Finally.  And I move on to the next one.

So what am I missing in my own writing and narrative abilities that are present in these stories?  It’s beginning to look like it would be the laying down of a base that holds the reader like flypaper for a while.  I can see that my character development could use some fleshing out, but dragging out a tale is different than creating depth.  Setting doesn’t seem overdone in these stories, although backstory setting can be ("my grandmother’s green overstuffed couch," etc.). 

I think from overgrown to severely pruned I’ve destroyed a full year’s blossoms.  Somehow it doesn’t seem right to fill in the sparseness with plastic flowers…

It is very hard for me to critique one of the particular stories in this issue because for one thing, the timing is bad–just got one of my best stories ever rejected by Glimmertrain today; the story I’m commenting upon won the Open Fiction Award which means best over anything without restriction submitted to this contest at Glimmertrain; it’s offensive to many to criticize a story about people and their pets; and, I’m beginning to wonder if I’m just living in a different dimension than the rest of the world and thus have no handle on what’s okay and what’s great in the literary market at all.

The story is The Death of Animals and it’s by R. Clifton Spargo who (surprise, surprise) also won Glimmertrain’s Award for New Writers three years prior (to this issue – Fall, 2004).  Again, I ask, what are the odds–out of thousands of stories, two by the same author?  But also again, it’s probably just sour grapes from me today.

The story is of a young woman who is grieving over the death of her dog.  The backstory is that the woman had been raped.  The tie-in is that the dog was born shortly after (a week, I think) though she didn’t take it in as  pet for a while later.

The good part of the story is the fresh approach: Third person pov and really, really, telling of the woman’s feelings for this animal.  The good and bad:  The third person narrator suddenly at the end of the story turns into first person, and we don’t know who it is or his/her relationship to the protagonist.  More good and bad:  The repetitive "my dog" stories are as annoying (for thirty pages) as any in-person pet lover’s would be and while that reiterates the desperation of the story, it also, as I said, is annoying.  Slightly cliche: the transference of the trauma of the rape and distrust of people to the love for an animal.  And this is made clear in case we didn’t see it ourselves by the revelation of this same theory voiced by other characters. 

Another good and bad:  The guilt she feels over the death of her pet and her questioning of herself in taking proper care of the animal is obviously metaphorically extended to her part in the rape–as victim is traditionally blamed by self or others. 

I’m not sure if this is a good replay of a relevant part of human nature and the response to trauma, or if it is just an overblown version.  On the one hand, it all just seems too obvious, and on the other, the layers are there.  But all in all, I do think that the story could have been much, much shortened–despite the possibility that this very fact of its length may indeed reflect the natural reaction in grief and in healing.

Like I said:  what do I know?

Rafael’s father started to die in March.  By summer, it was nearly complete.  (p. 99)

That’s the opening of Daniel Alarcon’s A Strong Dead Man, and the story that follows is very simple–a boy’s (Rafael’s) father is dying and his relatives gather to support them emotionally.  But it is the language:

Mario had bought them both sodas and the games slid by as they sipped from straws, their plastic bottles pimpled with condensation.

as well as pace and tone that make this story outstanding.  The conflict is there, in Rafael’s reluctant acceptance of the likely death of his father, and it is tied in in his mind with a previous experience of seeing a dead body, and reaffirmed by his older cousin Mario’s story of literally being hit by one falling out of a window.  Mario is the only one who is willing to listen to a young boy’s feelings while the elders are trying to shield him, as if he wouldn’t realize what is going on around him.  The final lines:

He thought of bodies falling from the skies.  He wished he had been there to see the body fall.  He wished he could have been there to catch him.  To hold him up.  To look him in the face and say, "Live!  Live!  Live!"

There is something else going on here too, and this is what makes the story so powerful, Rafael’s understanding and acceptance of the helplessness in the face of death.  He doesn’t wish as a boy, but as each and every one of us, regardless of age.  Nice story, great telling of it.

Finished Confrontations (a very good issue that was, too) and moved onto this Glimmertrain.  I’m a third of the way through and have come upon a real winner–of the Very Short Fiction Award.  Now I’m usually woefully lost as to why some of these become the creme de la creme, but on this one, I have nothing but admiration for this writer.

The name of the story is A History of Everything, Including You and it’s by Jenny Kennedy and despite her MFA in CW, this is her first published story.  I’m sure it will not be her last.  It is written in first person pov, and it starts out like this:

First there was God or gods or nothing, then synthesis, space, the expanse, explosions, implosions, particles, objects, combustion, and fusion.  Out of the chaos came order.  Stars were born and shone and died.  Planets rolled across their galaxies on invisible ellipses and the elements combined and became.  (p. 73)

In the next two paragraphs the narrative brings the world up to include man’s evolution:

We fell in love.  We talked about God and banged stones together, made sparks and called them fire.  We got warmer and the food got better.

And onward:

We got married.  We had some children.  They cried and crawled and grew.  (…) We got sick and searched for cures.  We invented lipstick, vaccines, (etc.)

And in a brilliant move, it becomes personal:

You were born.  You learned to walk and went to school and played sports and lost your virginity and got into a decent college (etc.)

Then the relationship between the "you" and the narrator becomes established, and we fly through a marriage of ups and downs in the next page.  And then, the death of the partner.

It’s a beautifully drawn image, concise, relative, and loaded with emotional depth even in its brevity.

I wish Jenny Kennedy a very successful writing career–she’s obviously got what it takes.

Finished this issue; of the last five stories, three are first person pov, two are in third.  The stories:  A man in his early sixties plans to leave his wife who has advanced Alzheimers and take off with a younger woman, but at the last minute changes his mind (we don’t know why); a young man whose wife and young son died in a boating accident while he survived invites a fifteen year-old girl into his room (?); a med student can’t make up his mind if he wants to apply for a surgical residency and feels he needs a woman to help him make the decision; a man cycles his way through the streets of his village in China ferrying passengers; a woman’s father is aging and threatened with death and creates within her own story that of a woman she meets who is going home for the funeral of her own mother.

In three of the thirteen stories, sausage is used as a metaphor–for fingers or cushions–so sausage is a biggie (although I would think rather cliche’). 

I don’t know what I’ve learned from reading this issue; certainly that nostalgia and feelings are what count in creating a story that these readers are interested in.  Self-reflection seems to be a common theme.  Lots and lots of detail akin to the idea of that lamp in your grandmother’s house that you’ll always remember.    I think what I’ve learned is why I’ll probably never have a story included here.

Good writing voices, some very good narrative structure and imagery, but what I’ve had drummed into me for five years I can’t help but repeat:  What is the story?

Eight stories read out of thirteen.  Four first person pov, four third. 

A man getting over the death of his wife; a middle-aged woman anxious to make somebody aware of what she did as a kid; a man with marital problems wonders if he’s gay and why he’s never been honest; a neighbor’s noisy bird flies away, is missed, and comes back; a divorced dad spites his ex-wife, grabs the kids and leaves the state; a resentful young woman starts fires whenever someone pisses her off; a young Russian writer leaves home and stays with a friend in NYC and goes to a free play instead of his friend’s party; a man reflects on his childhood and his uncle who builds a beach and takes it away again.

Almost all of these stories are very heavy into backstory, the "I am the way I am because this, this and this happened when I was a kid" ruminations of either the old or the young who want to blame somebody.  I am surprised at the lack of action, the words spent on what would seem to be a rather boring background conversation over wine between a couple in the beginning stages of a relationship.  Depth of character is one thing, but even my friends don’t feel the need to tell me all this shit.  I’m also not looking for slash and crash action, but something that is the impetus for the thinking, the reflection.  It could be a broken finger nail an hour out of the salon, but there should be something that initiates it, no?  Some of these just seem purposeless.

The amount of detail within these stories are more suited, I would think, to a novel.  And yes, I admit I’m starting to skip through them, no longer obligated to read every repetitious dragged-out sentence.

All set to complain again; after three good stories, I thought I’d found a stinker.  And, to find out that To A Stranger by Daniel Villasenor was the top prizewinner of their Fiction Open made me doubly frustrated (as a writer–although reader too, I suppose).

But then, a few pages into it (stalling and putting it down several times, as it went on and on about good God of all things—thoughts and feelings!) some action took hold of the story, very subtle, just another few pages of interaction between two men in a locker room, but the story arose.

Written in third person pov–which by the way was an excellent choice because I would have dumped this story as rambling thoughts of ego if in first person–the story unfolds as a man is on his way downtown, thinking of his relationship with his wife, bemoaning the loss of closeness and wondering how and why.  In this depressed state, he sees the people around him in a very condescending and sardonic way:

That morning, looking at all the faces in the subway, he could see that there was not a spark of originality or intelligence on any face, that not a one had what could be called an internal life; a respectful conversation with oneself; that they stared blankly in stupefied un-wonder at their feet or each other or their own alienated jostling images in the darkly teeming glass;  (etc.) (Glimmertrain #50, p. 66)

At this point, I didn’t like the character (Peter) as much as I wouldn’t like him in real life.  But then, after a swim at a gym and sitting naked in the locker room, another man walks in, also naked (nah, this didn’t make me like the story yet, but I was getting more interested) asks Peter to help him clasp a braclet on his wrist. 

The action here is slow motion, as Peter tries while he’s still thinking his own thoughts as well as dissecting his reaction to this soft-spoken man.  He feels a connection of sorts, an attraction that is clearly sexual as well as a silent communication between two people.  The man thanks him, dresses and just as Peter leaves, the man hands him a poem that clearly shows the connection between strangers that almost always remains unspoken. 

On the ride home, his view of those around him:

And he thought that behind each window someone must be mulling over sentences, words in the mind that he or she was trying to shave closer and closer to the truth, so that they might thereby untrouble themselves; that people everywhere, this very minute, were answering the terrible summons of their souls, together or privately, performing small acts of bravery which would release them from the prison of their fears.  (p. 74)

So Peter is facing himself through the honesty of the man he has met.  He goes home to further attempt to be honest with his wife and with himself. 

So I ended up liking this story, although it did get tedious in the beginning, and I had to keep my "you think you got problems, you pompous ass" attitude in check.

As is my habit, I then go to check out the photo and short bio or thoughts of the author as Glimmertrain so neatly supplies.  Mr. Villasensor looks like a raven-haired Fabio.  Then I liked the story even more.

Check out Bud Parr’s post on New Companions to Literature which does address the question of historical background of both author and era of a story. 

Pressured by the lack of space on my hearth, I decided to try to play catchup once more with the lit journals and so selected the earliest Glimmer Train, that being (blush) Spring 2004.  Making my mind up beforehand to skip through those stories that didn’t do it for me, as I’ve groused here before about quality, I was happily surprised to be pulled into the first three of this issue.

But something surprised me; after noting Plot is all–according to Aristotle, these stories had very simple plots:  one is based on a man’s returning to dating after the death of his wife; one is the resolution of a childhood memory of the protagonist’s possible responsibility in the death of her mother’s lover; the last, a pet bird flies off and returns and brings back meaning to two people.

These are reactions displaying Thought and Character, made the point of the stories.  They are relative, moving, enjoyable to read.  All three stories are well written (according to my own standards, anyway), and I think that was what drew me in.  Nothing outstanding or heavy with lesson or meaning, nothing really new or surprising in delivery or outcome.  Except for the prizewinning story, Victor’s Bird, by N. Nye, which was more metaphoric–or can be taken that way to elicit some afterthought at least.  This particular story did have the elements of imagery, a bit of tension, although Plot was weak as it was simply a glimpse into the lives of two people and how the bird’s absence and return affected them.  But, as I said, the writing style and voice was excellent.

So here am I, ready to put together a cover letter for one (maybe two) short stories I’ve completed (maybe) and realize they center on Plot.  There is much less of my character study into them, must less stringing out of drama of emotion rather than action.  I’m not only measuring mine against what has been published (I just can’t get myself out of that mode) but measuring instead my own reaction.  If I liked these three stories, would I like my own?

Oh, I know.  Don’t believe anything I say; I haven’t yet turned away from the Glimmertrains since there were about a dozen of them to go through.  But I’m into the idea of mixed genres and fiction together with non-fiction and not above throwing in a video novel at the same time.

While I really should have brought up some points on the prior issue, I don’t feel like going back through the book and instead have made a promise to myself to write when something strikes me.  Then I can freely move on ahead.  In this issue #49, there is a short story, "Re-construction", written by Mandy Dawn Kuntz that attracted me to the voice and style, in that perhaps it is just a bit similar to mine (or mine to hers?  What would be proper:  she’s published in a lit mag, I’m not, but then I’m much older than her, and age before…?)  The story is multiple POV, first person in each case, of a widow who married young, lost her husband, is childless, and living alone in the hills where she finds and adopts a three-year old boy.  The second narrator is the boy.  The narrative structure is both linear as well as segmented by the alternating narrator’s ongoing story of their life together.  It is a story of love, lost by both, found in each other, and of life and death, leaving behind and looking ahead.  It is lovely, the way they each carry their pasts apart from each other, while their new life together grows entwined, yet is bound to separate them.

The writing is nicely done in fragments of sentences, feelings expressed by the poetic language.  The only problem I had with the story was that the two narrators differed very little in their voice.  While it made the transitioning easier, especially with the characters’ names heading each short section, it was almost as if, had you taken out these notations, it would have been impossible to follow because though the viewpoints were different, the voices were not.

Well enough done, though, and something that has struck me with its lesson in writing technique.

I cannot leave a book unfinished, unless it’s really bad.  I have my textbooks, which are compilations of classic and contemporary works including poetry, safely in their place in line upon my hearth.  Because there are good stories in them.  Because there is a wealth of knowledge that could not be covered in a semester of Introduction to Literature or Contemporary Fiction.  Because they have the terminology, the guidelines, the quick and simple get your toes wet information that is a stone along the path.

This issue of Glimmertrain that I have been reading the past couple of days started out a bit slowly, perhaps the issue after issue after issue made me too aware of a trend and I was tired of reading stories of people of Malaysia, Korea, India or China.  Or of tourists and their adventure  on the foreign soils of Malaysia, Korea, India or China.  This world is just too large for that.

But the world of writing opened up in the latter half of the anthology.  Talented writers, compelling plots, engaging characters, hard-hitting or sneak-up-on-you stories, meaningful themes, clever structuring.  I wish I could do reviews on each; I may select a special one and do so, even though there is no real way to discuss them unless you too have read the story.  I can, I suppose, focus on a paragraph, a phrase or two.

As a reader, I read and came out with something from each one.

"Lists" by Mika Tanner is a story about a couple undergoing a divorce, and the wife’s visit back to their apartment to go through their material possessions to equitably dispose of them.  It is very well written, first person pov (the husband’s), and the theme is one of changes and seeking happiness.

In my "editorial" mode, I find only this:  the over-dependence upon adverbs that writers warn us about, and in fact, Ms. Tanner doesn’t need to use at all because her dialogues are right-on with setting the moods and revealing the characters, as well as action verbs such as "snaps" instead of the simple "said."

"So," she says softly.

Then she says sharply, "…"

"Hey Yumi," I say softly.

"You’re right," she snaps.

"Of course," she’d snap.

Then softly, more wistfully, "Please, Minoru, please think about it."

"Move on to what?" I snap.

"Yumi," I say sternly.

Because Ms. Tanner has set up the delicate nature of this relationship and the thing they must do as part of their separating, the emphasis on the verbs of conversation are not at all necessary.  A minor thing, but something that did distract me from the reading.