Guess I Missed That Memo

Spent a couple of hours reading through the past several months of McSweeney's online. Plenty of experimentation going on, but I was disappointed that a lot of the pieces seemed half-baked; clever clever stuff that was picked and put into the pie before it was fully ripe. Sometimes it really pays to do one more revision than you think you need before you press send. Here's a couple of my favorites, but then I always appreciate faux corporate memos: Mike Richardson-Bryan's "Career Days" and Holley Korby's "Resignation of a Ringtone Designer." Both of these use a similar method: They set the stage and then riff on five or six examples. Tough genre to hit a home run in; the longer the piece the harder it is to sustain the idea's intensity and cleverness through to the last example. I think it's great that McSweeney's has a forum for this kind of experimentation. Lot of fertile minds out there working in non-traditional forms. I see a few submissions like this at Storyglossia and wouldn't mind a few more.

Ode to a Billion Urns

Over at FictionCraft, SD Byrd, commenting on my posts on Charles D'Ambrosio's "Her Real Name," writes: "...how many times have you seen stories about spreading some dead guy's (or gal's) ashes? Billions." Well, I'm guilty as charged, having written my own story about ashes leaving an urn. "Oxygen" is certainly a story I wouldn't attempt today for exactly the reason Byrd mentions. Fresh territory beckons so why repeatedly smash my head against the wall trying to breath life into a tired theme? When I wrote "Oxygen," however, I was younger, and more willing to write such a story just because some writing teacher said I couldn't. The story went through at least 30 revisions and is probably the most consciously crafted story I've ever done. I remember working especially hard on the nouns and verbs, going through the manuscript several times and highlighting every one and revising until I knew that every noun and verb was exactly the word my vision of the story required. The story's symbolism and image system developed organically, but once I saw what I had I went back and consciously revised and threaded it deeper into the story.

Despite—or perhaps because of— all the conscious revision, "Oxygen" was heavily and relentlessly rejected, more times than I revised it— although I never revised it after I started submitting the story—before finally winning honorable mention in the Waasmode contest and being published in Passages North (which has a new web site). The most frequent comment I received from editors in the rejection letters was something like "excellent story but we see too many stories about the death of family members," as Byrd suggests, "billions" most likely.

Anyway, "Oxygen" is my contribution to the billions.

tragically hip

Now for something completely different I offer you a blast from Storyglossia's past; curt duffy's "tragic metafiction volume one" from Issue 1. Discussing this piece kind of defeats the purpose, so I'll just say that back in the MFA days when Curt first floated this one around it wasn't too popular because the seriously literary ones thought it wasn't serious which only shows that they weren't really all that serious ("What is he talking about? Choosing which narrator to use?"). They also gave him a wide berth when passing him in the hallway. One of the keys to writing good metafiction—aside from being self-reflexive—is that much like satire you have to go over the top. Think SNL, Second City, and Mad TV skits (or Seattle fav Almost Live). Think DFW, T.C. Boyle, or any of the PoMo gods of the 60's and 70's: Barth, Gass, Barthelme, Coover, Borges. Although metafiction was ripped a new a.h. by John Gardner (see On Moral Fiction), and Raymond Carver, partially, if not wholly under Gardner's influence, crafted his stories as an antidote to the likes of Barth (who returned the favor many times over with his "minimalism" label that stuck), and was never popular outside of the circles where you had to study it, I do think (as David Foster Wallace's popularity and influence bears witness) it will find its true audience with the current and rising generations who have been heavily mediated and for whom deconstructing (at least in its kitsch and pastiche forms) and performing are second-nature. In some sense, how can traditional literary fiction be taken seriously by someone who is frenetically creating a new persona—narrator—for every performance? What form (even, will there be any?) will literary fiction take after we've all been reality (excuse me, "unscripted actors") TV stars? Does Modernism cycle back? Minimalism? Or do we quit writing and just crank out mixed-media DVDs and podcasts?

Metafiction appeals to my intellectual side—blame it on that philosophy degree—but you'll notice that I spend most of my time in this blog discussing the affective qualities of literary stories. That's their sweet spot at this point in time, it's what the best practicers of the form have learned how to do best. Will there be an audience—other than those who write it, which may in fact already be the only current audience—for such stories in the future? I doubt fiction writers will ever completely abandon that terrain to the poets, but their audience may be just as marginal. What's sexier now? To have written and published a short story? Or to have directed and produced a short film? With today's technology both take about the same amount of effort. What's a young auteur to do?

Pedal to the Metal

Here's another hot piece of flash fiction from SmokeLong, Scott Ford's "Axl Rose Is My Dog." This story lit up my sick funny-bone, and not just the pun in the title (ah, the temptation to use a different last word must have been intense). Two things about the way Ford handled the ending caught my attention. The surprise to find out that stinky dude was giving a gift that he knew would be refused. Clever that, because the tension builds and then is released in an unexpected way. And secondly, jamming on the gas with a smokey in pursuit as the story ends is a great exit that resists closure. Like an athlete retiring at the top of their game—and just as rare—this story is still picking up speed when Ford typed that final period. Have to love it when a writer leaves you wanting more.

Scott, if you are out there reading this, send a submission my way.

Elevate Your Slice

Not too long ago I read an article in Harper's by Frederick Kaufman—"Debbie Does Salad: The Food Network at the Frontiers of Pornography"—where he compared the production techniques of the Food Network to porn video production techniques. He even had a porn director/producer watch the Food Network and evaluate it as if it were porn. Pretty darn funny. What brings this up is Steve Almond's short story "Pornography" in smokeLong, whose subject is a violent fist fight between two women. Just as Almond's great non-fiction book Candyfreak is porn for chocoholics, Almond, with this story's title, is making the explicit analogy that violence has the same riveting effect as porn. And indeed, there is a subtle bit of implicit social commentary here; we've all heard the arguments that the level of violence in (American) media far exceeds the sex quotient, yet our puritan heritage has us panicking over porn but not violence. So my first point on Almond's cool story is: notice how he makes the political statement without explicitly expressing it. For those of you who are activist orientated, this story and it's title are a great example of how to generate attention off topic (doubt me? just think how much traffic will be driven to this blog by the mention of "pornography" and "porn" and "sex"—I guarantee you that this post will bring in thousands of google search hits; and who knows, maybe some of them will read Almond's story and be affected in the way the author intends.)

What I really like about this story is the way that Almond makes this slice-of-life incident expand far beyond the incident itself. (Contest Alert: Later this year Storyglossia will be the locus for a slice-of-life contest—a cash paying contest, I might add—so pay heed to all my posts on the topic (search the blog to find them) because that will be the criteria for selecting the finalists.) In "Pornography" Almond accomplishes in a piece of flash fiction not only what most writers of flash fiction can't manage, but what many full-length stories can't accomplish. Part of that is technique: Almond knows that the incident itself is not enough to elevate his story above the thousands of others who crank out intense 750-word pieces. What separates, Almond (among others), however, is vision. He's intelligent, has a world view, is not afraid to express it, and above all, focuses his craft in the time-honored way to meld form and function.

Rather than point out every instance in the story where Almond reaches beyond the incident, what I'm going to do instead is challenge you would be contest-entrants to do the homework yourself. "Pornography" is short piece. Do what I do when I'm serious about learning how another writer achieves their effects: I print out the story and use a highlighter (you could do this online, but there's something about dragging ink over the words that makes things stick) to mark all the relevant passages for whatever I'm trying to learn. In this case, where is Almond not simply describing the action of the fistfight? When does he intimate that the observers—don't just focus on the narrator—are perceiving or affected in a way that transcends the brutality they are witnessing? Because that's what you want to do. In flash fiction, or short-shorts, whatever you want to call it, you have precious few words to make yourself felt. Some like to wow with language, prose poems in disguise. Others like to blow you away with images, or an arresting action sequence. Or maybe—and this is my least favorite as an editor—they will punctuate some plot with a punchline ending. But to my mind, what separates great literature from the so-so is that it bridges the gap between an individual's experience and the (somewhat) universal experience of others. How is what your narrator or focal point character experiencing relevant to anyone else? What do they feel that anyone else could identify with? And as a writer, how does your form of self-expression make contact with the rest of us, your readers? Most flash fiction I read does not bridge that gulf between writer and (many) readers. Oh, the writing might be hot, but no connection is made.

What I will be looking for is what Almond achieves in this story. No matter how strong the concrete description of the fistfight is, what sets this story apart is that the author is reaching beyond the incident; he's asking you to experience it vicariously (the powerful descriptive writing certainly takes you there), but more than that he's asking you to connect with the experience emotionally. He's asking you to imagine what you'd feel—a "damp buzz in my knuckles, the clench around my groin,"—perhaps? or something else? Just as the title engages you—antithetically—the prose itself asks you not only to participate in the spectacle, but to evaluate your emotional response to the punches and kicks. This is what literature is supposed to do. If you want to elevate your flash fiction from the ordinary, Almond's "Pornography" is an excellent example of how to get over the high bar.