Orange Crush

Intellectually, I know the whole postmodernism argument and how realism is a sham, and then there's Gass' argument that it's all just words on a page that can't really be visualized anyway, so why bother with realism, and, besides, what's the use of scene-based stories because film does it much better?

But . . .

Take ten minutes right now and read Myfanwy Collins short story "Orange Crush," which is the newest addition to Issue 20.

Maybe I'm just a throwback because I still love to read short stories that aim for the emotional response via realism. "Orange Crush," with its scenic depiction of a fourteen year-old girl having her crush crushed, is just such a story. Yes, the movie version might have us crying in our seats, but this heartbreaking story of a fourteen year-old girl seeking to be liked and more is no less affecting for being words on the page.

"Orange Crush" consists of eight scenes, each of which uses actions and dialogue, along with exquisitely chosen interiority, to reveal Julie's needs amid an artfully blended welter of emotions.

The joy of such stories, if you give yourself over to them, is that despite all our differences, once again it is revealed that inside us all (psychopaths excepted) lives the same bundle of conflicted desires and fears.

Myfanwy Collins work has been published or is forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, Cream City Review, AGNI, The Jabberwock Review, Swivel, Caketrain, and other venues. She is an Assistant Editor at Narrative Magazine.

New Jack Palms Podcast Novel in 2 days!

You first met him last summer in the world's first crime/noir podcast novel Jack Wakes Up . . . yes Jack Palms is coming back in Seth Harwood's Jack Palms II: This is Life. The first episode goes live on June 3rd. So get on over to sethharwood.com and subscribe. Listen to the promo

Live Roundtable Podcast

I'll be on the Writers Talking live roundtable podcast tomorrow June 2nd at 2:00 pm (pacific)/5:00 pm (eastern). The topic is point of view, but I'm sure we'll cover other topics, particularly if listeners join in the conversation with questions.

Join the conversation or just listen.

She Meant It

Elizabeth Ellen's flash fiction piece "What Was Meant" is the latest addition to STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20." As those of you submitting flash fiction to STORYGLOSSIA know, I have been an extremely tough critic of the form lately. Ellen's story is the only flash piece I accepted for Issue 20.

What struck me first about "What Was Meant" was that the remark is never disclosed. As the saying goes, it's the thought that counts (more on this later). The words spoken aren't important because it's the feelings they provoke that matter. I was drawn into this piece by the way the tightly controlled language nevertheless reveals the wounds and distrust. Starkly honest expression; with a hint of danger ahead. After repeated readings I was impressed with how meaning continues to expand in this surprising progression of statements. And those eyes at the ending! Working both literally and metaphorically. Stellar and sticky.

An interesting bit of synchronicity is that when this submission came in I had been reading Lisa Zunshine's Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and The Novel, which is another of those dense, but fascinating theory of narrative texts on my shelf. (I'll save the review for another time.) The relevance to Ellen's piece, however, is that Zunshine discusses how one of the pleasures of reading, and as a corollary (although Zunshine does not say this), one of the pleasures of writing, is mind reading. So when I read in "What Was Meant:"

She didn't mean what she said. I'm fairly certain of that. Or, if she did mean what she said, she probably didn't mean for what she said to come out the way that she said it. Perhaps she didn't mean for it to come out at all. I remember she turned her head slightly to the left afterward (I was on her right), a gesture I interpreted at the time as regret, though it is possible, in hindsight, that she turned her head to the left to clear her view (she has very long hair, this woman) and the thought of regret never even entered her mind. I want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

I went ah ha! This is a far different form of the pleasure of the text than that meant by Barthes, but one that I thoroughly enjoy.

Elizabeth Ellen is the author of Before You She Was a Pit Bull (Future Tense Press). She lives in Ann Arbor. More links to her online publications can be found at her website.

STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20

Just a reminder that STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20 has started publishing with a new story coming out every 2-3 days. The first two stories are up now: Conor Robin Madigan's Timothy's Mother and Eileen Cordor's Ana.

Coming up tomorrow is new flash fiction by Elizabeth Ellen. And on Saturday it's a new short story by Myfanwy Collins. Followed over the next few weeks by stories from: Jocelyn Johnson, David Wolach, Marcela Fuentes, Mark Spencer, Shubha Venugopal, Jacquie Powers, Michael Wigdor, Sabrina Tom, Julee Newberger, and Priscilla Rhoades.

Check back here in the blog for publication announcements and commentary as each story publishes.

And don't forget, the STORYGLOSSIA Fiction Prize 2007 contest is now open for submissions. First prize is $1000.

Not Playing with Dolls

Next up in STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20 is "Ana" by Eileen Corder. Another example of literature as art in which traditional mimesis is given the heave ho. This is one of those stories that I knew I was accepting after the first read. Even when I didn't understand what I was reading, the power of the writing, the riveting voice, was unmistakable. And then the challenge of spending time lost in the words, creating meaning, building a reading. Take up that challenge. This is a short short that is deserving of more than one's short attention span.

Eileen Corder’s work has appeared in Nthposition, White Walls, Poetics Journal, Hills, and Street Spirit, among other publications. Throughout the Eighties she was co-director of Poets Theater San Francisco, and in the Nineties directed and performed with homeless groups including John Malpede and the Los Angeles Poverty Department. Currently she lives and works on a farm in Northern California.

Homefront

Be sure to checkout the audio blog that accompanies this post: Listen to the mp3 (5:52 mins, 4 mb) or grab the RSS feed.

I live a few miles from a naval air station and as I write this the A-6s are circling in a familiar pattern, looping around the islands, much lower tonight than usual, and paired, wing to wing. Sometimes it's just a pilot getting in flight time. Other times, though, it's not just the "sound of freedom," but a reminder that we're at war, as the flight patterns become frenetic, banking overhead every 3-4 minutes, turbines in full roar, and this activity goes on for hours, passed midnight, even though they're not supposed to fly that late. Here they come right now, drowning out the music I'm listening to.

Deployment.

A few weeks ago, spared longer than most, the first deaths. Three. It's a small town. Front-page headlines. Everything above the fold.

The local pub where I sometimes hang out is full of fly-boys and the day after the memorial service they are knocking back pints and shots, laughing and talking much louder than usual. It's something I notice, but what I wonder about as I drink my own pint is the effect those deaths must have had—are still having—on the wives, girlfriends, mothers, and other family members of those deployed. Four years without deaths. And now three. No longer immune. If they ever felt that way.

That my thoughts stray from the pilots to the loved ones waiting is a tribute to Kristen J. Tsetsi's novel Homefront, which is an intensely intimate and affecting story of Mia, who's stuck inside a tornado of worry after her boyfriend deploys to Iraq. If you were moved by Tsetsi's STORYGLOSSIA Fiction Prize 2006 winning story "They Three at Once Were One," which was also recently named to the notable list in the Million Writers Award, this novel will immerse you deeper into the untold war story of what those waiting on the homefront experience while their loved ones are deployed.

Immersive is one of the primary criterion by which I judge novels, and I was a 100 pages into Homefront before I looked up from the pages. The beginning is grabber with the conflicted relationship, the impending sense of doom, and the isolation of the narrator. Structurally, it is told in a psuedo-diary format, and that heightens the immersion in two ways. First, by creating the expectation of intimacy and then delivering. And secondly, through the use of compression. Parts of the story are left out—what the narrator knows but doesn't need to write to herself—which is a narrative strategy that creates participation as the reader tries to fill in the gaps. This missing information is also a correlative for what Mia is missing, as the reading experience takes on the same feeling of dislocation that Mia feels.

What I loved most about this novel is the way Tsetsi took risks with her portrayal of Mia, because throughout the novel Mia's behavior—at least from the outside looking in—seems shockingly inappropriate. She doesn't write to Jake. She doesn't send him the care packages he asks for. She doesn't answer the phone when he calls. Meanwhile, she hangs out with a crazed Vietnam vet. And then when she does write to Jake she tells him she hates his mother. This is not the saccharine portrait we are used to seeing in the media of supportive wives and girlfriends stiff upper-lipping their way through deployment. It has the feel, however, of the real war on the homefront.

Maybe someone in the Litblog Co-op will nominate this book for the fall readings, but even if they don't, I'm saying READ THIS! The war isn't just in Iraq, it's in the Homefront, too.

Literature is Art

First up in STORYGLOSSIA Issue 20 is Conor Robin Madigan's story "Timothy's Mother." This is Madigan's first published story and it is the kind of slush pile discovery that makes editing exciting. When I say that literature is art, "Timothy's Mother" is a perfect example of what I mean. The author knows the story, but instead of telling it to you he embeds it in the presentation and allows the story to emerge from the accumulation of details. You learn the story and its veiled meaning through interpretation. That is art.

I love this experiment with form. As you read on through the story it becomes apparent that you are reading one side of a transcript: the answers. The questions have been suppressed. As has the reason for the implied investigation. This narrative strategy establishes the ontological supremacy of the story and its interpretation over the telling.

Madigan's control of language in this story is superb. Notice how it modulates from section to section, and how it gives primacy to the voices. This is a far superior strategy for revealing the collective's opinion than simply adopting the first person plural. "We" is a limp artifice compared to this multi-voiced approach.

Character development. See how artfully the portraits of Timothy's mother, and Tim, and the town emerges? It's all in the details, the inflected voices, those tag-lined section headings.

Bravo, Conor Robin Madigan. Congratulations on your first published story! STORYGLOSSIA is thrilled to introduce you and "Timothy's Mother" to the literary world.

Conor Robin Madigan was born in Atlanta in 1982, he studied at Earlham College and received a B.A. in English. He pursues an MFA in writing at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, repairs guitars at Guitar Works in Evanston, and makes waffles masterfully. As well, he writes songs that have been reviewed by Jim Derogatis in the Chicago Sun Times.