Lennon Loves Lists
I’ve long had a soft spot for books, music, and other art forms that take the form of lists and fragments. An early story of mine, “The Accursed Items,” is an example; it’s just a list of objects at the center of very short stories. “The Unsupported Circle” which appeared in my last collection, is another one; it comprises descriptions of short videos. I’m working on one for the next collection, too.
I don’t like ranked lists, though. The New York Times’s recent list of the century’s best books would be kryptonite to me even if I was on it. I love the democratic spirit of a box of oddments; my mind loves to generate methods of ordering it, then ordering it, then disordering it again. (If the Times had published a randomly selected list of 100 books published in the past 25 years, I would have been absolutely thrilled to read it. Imagine the triviality!) I spend as much time rearranging my home office as I do writing fiction in it, and I don’t think I could competently do the latter if I didn’t have the former to clear my mind. Most of my photography consists of serendipitous arrangements of human detritus; my ex once accurately called my pictures “a charmless scene with something off in the corner.” (That’s not why we split up.)
One of my just-a-list-of-stuff stories never made it into a collecton; it was too silly. It did, however, make it into EPOCH, the magazine I now edit. It’s in volume 58, number 1, if you’d like to read it in its entirety; but I have created a greatest-hits excerpt below. (Yes, I know, I should have selected random parts of it instead.) It’s a parody of my favorite section of any literary anthology, the authors’ notes at the end. And, by the way, there is a new issue of EPOCH, just published, that you can order from the site.
Finally, this week’s song is a ridiculous track I rediscovered while consolidating all my musical output a couple of months ago; I have no recollection of writing or recording it. I do remember reading the article that inspired it, though; or, rather, I remember the headline, which I borrowed for the chorus of the song: Cavemen Created Stylish Sandals. The song consists of a list of synonyms and antonyms of the word “stylish.”
The Year’s Best Fiction: The Authors Speak
Jim Burr, “Absence”
“Absence” is a reaction to the seemingly endless deluge of “reader-oriented” fiction constantly being published by the simpering, approval-seeking mass of semi-literate so-called “literary” magazines one finds one's libraries and bookstores hopelessly inundated with. One becomes horribly tired of the dreary conventions of the genre—plot, character, setting, &c—and wishes, once and for all, to not have one's hand held by some mush-mouthed mommy-like “author” smugly leading one down the well-worn paths of storied cliché. And so one attempts to create a work unburdened by the in-name-only “rules” and “conventions” of “literature” and eschews the supposed “traditional” crutches of “punctuation” and “grammar” and the tyranny of standardized spelling.
“Absence” was rejected by 172 self-described “magazines” whose “editors” complained that they “didn't get it” before Joao Hooten of Mumpsimus finally “got” that “getting it” wasn't the point.
One is grateful to Joao Hooten, to the editors of this anthology, and to one's dog, Bakhtin.
*
Jamie Springbottom, “Adrianna's Wedding”
It was while vacationing in Key West with my husband, the food photographer Merwin Fanks, and our two beautiful children, Gary (an animal rights lawyer) and Felicia (now a sophomore at Harvard), that it occurred to me that today's fiction, with its dreary glorification of death, misery, and hatred, was insufficiently expressive of the great beauty and joy that is all around us. And so, as I paddled back to shore (for at the time of this realization I was canoeing on the small lake we co-own with the architect Jeffers Paul and his wonderful family) I conceived of the most striking elements of “Adrianna's Wedding”—Adrianna's beautiful hairdo and gown; the way her bouquet, drifting through the air as though in slow motion, appears etched against the sky's pale blue; the look of deeply committed love in the eyes of Hunter, her husband-to-be; and her lovely and respectful relationship with her mother, Paulette, which has grown into more of a mutually satisfying friendship than a mere mother-daughter bond.
The story took about a week to write, as I did so using my great-grandfather's fountain pen, on pages handcrafted with a tabletop paper press by Jennifer, Gary's beautiful and thoughtful fiancé. I am grateful to the editors of the CanadAir in-flight magazine, Drift, for taking a chance with my story, and to the Good Earth Trading Company for their wonderful line of delicious and life-sustaining teas, which I sipped with delight as I composed.
*
Rupert G. B. Schipp, “The Assistant Lion Tamer's Wife”
Whence this shimmering urge, this shuddering desire, this longing? What makes us write? For me, it is the feeling of the revealing of truth—not the mere truth of saying what is so, but the truer truth of invention. This story was inspired by a trip to the circus, where I witnessed the profound vision of a lion tamer plying his risky art, and I imagined that he had an assistant, and that assistant was married, and the lion ate the assistant, and his wife was bereft. What, then, of the assistant's wife? Is she doomed to loneliness and grief? And what of their child, still unborn and quickening beneath the flawless creamy flesh of her belly? And of her soft, round, full breasts, yet unsuckled by the rosy lips of her incipient offspring? What of they?
It is the undeniable reality of such questions, conceived by chance, birthed by the imagination, for which I took pen in hand and scried the glittering crystals of the unseen mind.
*
Frederick Paine Paulus, “Three Scenes: Nova Scotia 1934”
Mr. Paulus declines to comment.
*
M. Spackman Cone, “The Frosted Glass Widower”
As always, I am reluctant to demystify my art with one of these notes, but upon this, my eleventh appearance in these pages (starting in 1958 with “Why Harold Parks Rakes Leaves”), I feel duty-bound to extend to you, dear reader, the small gift of my comments.
I do so, then, in the form of a personal anecdote. Late last year, I found myself delivering a lecture at a certain institute of higher learning (it shall remain nameless, but it is one whose reputation has been sullied, of late, by its association with a certain reluctant world leader and failed businessman), and afterward, at an exhausting wine-and-cheese affair of the sort invariably appended to such events, I was accosted by a bright-eyed young person of writerly ambitions. “Mister Cone,” he said to me, “my writing teacher gave my story a C-minus, because I used dashes for dialogue instead of quotes. But Mister Cone, James Joyce used dashes instead of quotes, and he is one of the most celebrated authors in history! Why can James Joyce use dashes, but not me?”
“My dear boy,” I replied with a chuckle, “because he's James Joyce, and you're not!”
The poor child nearly choked on his braised pork medallion!
*
Mister Chimpers, “Black Banana Bad”
Mister Chimpers sad he not publish story. Then story appear in Compunction 34! Doctor Patterson show Mister Chimpers Compunction 34. Mister Chimpers delighted! Now Doctor Patterson say story in anthology. Mister Chimpers famous! Mister Chimpers show world chimpanzees people too! Vivisection terrible crime! It kill Mister Chimpers' friend Mango! It very bad!
Mister Chimpers prove Doctor Patterson brilliant cognitive researcher! Now maybe she get grant! Also Doctor Patterson very attractive and single! Now she find mate like Mister Chimpers did! Mister Chimpers love Luella, aka Mrs. Chimpers!
Story inspired by experience in jungle before capture. Mister Chimpers can still taste terrible banana. Mister Chimpers grateful to Doctor Patterson for translation!
Author's note interpreted by Doctor Gertrude Patterson, PhD.
*
Jack Root, “Feast of Blood”
When I found out my story was accepted into this anthology, my instinct was to tell them to go to hell. I didn't become “The Modern Master of Terror” by falling to my knees before the literary kingmakers, that's for sure—I did it by writing my hairy working-class behind off. But my wife told me it would be stingy not to accept, and that the sales of this anthology were probably crap and why not be generous and let them put my name on the cover, so I said okay.
I don't have anything to say about “Feast of Blood,” because any idiot can understand it, unless they have an ivy league education and start looking for allegories and metaphors and what have you. Hey Princeton, guess what: there aren't any. It's a story, not a dissertation.
I do want to say something about fear, though, which is my stock in trade. Let me make it clear, this isn't a scary story. Here's a scary story: a soccer mom drops her kids off at violin practice, then goes home and cleans the kitchen so her dentist husband won't be mad. Or how about this: a guy wakes up, puts on a suit and tie, drives to work, has some meetings, makes a bunch of cell phone calls, then goes back to his suburban house and watches the Home and Garden Channel. That's terror, America: your lazy selves, being controlled by the Yale-educated mass media. Compared to that, my stuff is a walk in the park.
Anyway, don't be embarrassed if my story is the only one in this book that you read. Be proud! And tonight...sleep tight, my pretties.
