Blog Archives

New Yorker Fiction 2015

1/29/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill.
Barbara Tuchman
Born January 30, 1912

Soft Trajectory

Rodrigo Corral / June Park

February 2, 2015, Elizabeth Harrower, “Alice”: Alice, beautiful and adorned with two-toned red curls, must live her entire life in the shadow of two brothers, whom her mother favors over her. ¶ Set in the Depression years of Australia, this story traces Alice’s life: how she tries to please a mother presenting two faces to the world, one that ignores or berates little Alice, and one that performs for the world. Even as she marries a man named Eric, Alice remains as insignificant as a flea to her mother, and Alice begins to take on a few of her mother’s characteristics. ¶ When Eric persists on having “affairs with girls,” Alice divorces him, and she is married off again, this time to an older but well-off man. Alice’s only joy seems to be when a younger woman befriends her and invites Alice to her wedding. The ending, the resolution of this story, is a soft trajectory, Alice arriving at a certain realization about her life. The narrative seems to stand in a long line of pleasing, sophisticated New Yorker stories. A Day in the Country and Other Stories will be released by Text Publishing later this year.
Design by Rodrigo Corral and June Park

NEXT TIME: MY BOOK WORLD

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Engineer"

1/28/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
Thomas Paine
Born January 29, 1737

Engineering: a difficult science

Behind the Book is a weekly series in which I discuss the creative process it takes to write each of the fifteen narratives included in my latest collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Scroll to the bottom of the post to locate links to previous Behind the Book posts.

My father lived eighty-six more-or-less healthy years, and then during the last year of his life things fell apart. He experienced congestive heart failure, and along with it, kidney disease. We were so busy concentrating on these two issues that the fact he may have been suffering from dementia of some kind never received the attention it should have. It may be only one of the many failures to serve my father that I internalized over those four years he was in my care.

“Engineer” is a story I wrote immediately after my father died. Sadly, it is a cathartic effort to distill all the events, all the characters in our real life story: an adult son who, through no choice of his own, must manage this man’s life; a younger adult son, who seems to avoid accepting any responsibility at all for his father, other than the most superficial attention he can offer; a father, who when they were children favored one son over other. And a bitter sense of irony will tell you right away which son must extend himself to care for this irascible father in his last days.

This story may have been one of the most difficult ones I ever penned: how to express the suppressed rage I felt at the time—having the very start of my retirement stunted by the intrusion of this man into my life. Again. The sessions with a shrink where I grappled, as a man in my fifties, with how I’d been treated as a child—the many ways my father ignored or rejected me. Enraged at the times a brother showed up every six weeks to balance our father’s checking accounts, and then pop back to his home, thinking he’d done quite enough to help the father who’d spent so much time with that son as a child. How did I capture the rage without offending the reader? Perhaps with a biting sarcasm, the protagonist referring to his brother as “Blessed Prince.”

A PASSAGE FROM THE STORY:
Before the afternoon is over, I call my father and the Bellwood administrator and let them know I’m going to be gone. I reschedule his appointment. I call Uri and tell him he’ll have to cover for me if anything should happen. He grunts—as he always has if he doesn’t want to be held responsible. Blessed Prince once neglected to feed our spaniel because he was in a baseball tournament for three days. I thought it was Vinnie’s turn, he kept saying. I’m sure it was Vinnie’s turn. This is the same lad who wrote JFK in 1961 and asked for a photo. Could you also send one of Richard Nixon? Please (218).

Harvey Dunne's "Engineer"

The title “Engineer” comes from a Harvey Dunne drawing my father used to create a wooden sculpture (Dad called them carvings) of a World War I doughboy, who’s carrying at least sixty pounds of gear. My father adored those men, who perhaps motivated him to sign up to fight in World War II, when he was in his early twenties. I applied the title with a sense of irony, that this ex-military man, who’d fought with distinction (and fear, he admitted, in his journals), ends his days as a rather weak individual, unable, finally to care for himself at all. And more telling, “Engineer” was the last sculpture of a half dozen that he created. And unlike the story, my brother and I share these treasures equally, and he actually wound up with the unfinished one based on the drawing “Engineer.” A bit of hyperbole never hurts any story, especially when trying to create a villain brother!

Louis Jespers Carving of WWI Doughboys

I offer “Engineer” up to all adult children, who at one time or another will be forced to confront the demise of their parents, if they haven’t already been forced to do so at a younger age. It is sometimes a sad story, this larger one of letting go of our parents—or allowing them to release us—but it is like the musical form, variations on a theme: the story must be told over and over. And each narrative, no matter how repetitive, must serve to broaden the tale, to deepen it, until at last, as a human tribe we learn from it and understand.

“Engineer” won an award from a short fiction competition sponsored by The Ledge, a literary magazine out of Bellport, New York. The journal celebrated its thirtieth anniversary with the issue in which my story appeared.

Photograph of "Engineer": Karolevitz, Robert F. The Prairie is My Garden: The Story of Harvey Dunn, Artist. Aberdeen: North Plains Press, 1969.

Click here to buy a copy of My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories, where it is available at Amazon.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2015

CATCH UP WITH EARLIER POSTS OF BEHIND THE BOOK
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 -- "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"
01/22/15 — "Basketball Is Not a Drug"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

1/22/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
All the real things in Russia are done in the villages.
Ernest Poole
Born January 23, 1880

About that Inventor

Kinsella / Mortensen

January 26, 2015, Isaac Bashevis Singer*, “Inventions”: The narrator (as if he is the author himself) relates the story of Morris Krakower, who, in 1930s Warsaw, addresses a conference of leftist Communists and encounters a ghost keeping him awake much of the night before. ¶ Perhaps this story gives the twenty-first century reader a view through a couple of windows into the world of nearly a hundred years ago. One, how fiction is formed: the author who creates a narrator as if this story has happened to Singer himself. Two, the reader sees several sides of the political realities that people living in Communist countries faced. ¶ In the past I’ve been critical of the magazine for trotting out previously unpublished stories of deceased authors; it almost seems like a violation of the author’s person, his or her career. I suppose the editors have their reasons concerning this one, as well: is it a beat-you-to-the-punch stance of presenting something arcane, or do they wish to put forth a work with literary or historical value and ask the readers to consider its merits? Again, I have to wonder. Did Singer himself wish to have “Inventions” published in English? Could the piece have been rejected in the 1960s, when it was written? ¶ I have mixed feelings about the story. It seems like a simple tale, its metaphors perhaps a bit obvious. At the same time, the narrative must give the reader some insight into what it must have meant to be a Jew in Communist Poland, and that alone is a good reason to bring it before our eyes.

*Usually dependable online sources disagree on Singer’s birth date, so I leave it to the reader.

Edward Kinsella, Illustrator
Jens Mortensen, Photographer

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Basketball is not a Drug"

1/21/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
No man,
Til thirty, should perceive there's a
plain woman.
Lord Byron
Born January 22, 1788

The Comforting Qualities of Basketball

Behind the Book is a weekly series in which I discuss the creative process it takes to write each of the fifteen narratives included in my latest collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Scroll to the bottom of the post to locate links to previous Behind the Book posts.

I, like my protagonist Larry, in "Basketball Is Not a Drug," have experienced a number of physical ailments since my mid-forties: chronic pain from a back injury and subsequent surgery, and shortly after that an irregular heart beat, or atrial flutter (and its more serious cousin, atrial fibrillation), and after that an enlarged prostate. All of these maladies, and others less serious, are kept under control through a panoply of drugs—although I have to say that, through the help of a fine pain management doctor, I’ve managed to wean myself off two of the more serious painkillers. At any rate, one day the first sentences were delivered to my my consciousness—

A PASSAGE FROM THE STORY
“Tikosyn is a pale apricot capsule you take at ten a.m. In twelve hours you’ll take another twenty-five milligrams. This drug regulates the rhythm of your heart, since your organ, which is fifty-eight, can’t seem to regulate itself.”

—and I dutifully wrote them down in my trusty Moleskine. I scribbled page after page, until I realized I’d written the entire sequence in second person! Who does that? I’d once read a workshopped story written entirely in the second person. It had bored me, and I’d vowed I would never do that. Yet here it had arrived in my ear, channeled from somewhere, and I began to carry things over the top. I not only remained in the second person but I penned the entire story in the present tense, largely, I think, (because in the early stages of a story I’m often trusting my instincts, not the creative writing textbooks) I wished to convey that this man Larry’s wretched pain is stuck in the present. Past is prologue ad nauseam!

Now for the other strand of the story: The one activity that this family man enjoys is attending the basketball games of the team in his university town, a team that is a member of a large NCAA conference. Larry reminisces about the days when he and his wife, both cheerleaders, yell their lungs out for their team. At each game he can cite the stats of each player on the floor, both home and opposing. He can describe the old coliseum, which is now defunct, his love of the new venue in town, Spirit Temple Arena. Back and forth I weave these two strands: this man’s drug-controlled life and a game that he secretly admits he loves more than God. Yes, this man describes to the reader every drug that he must take to keep his life together, its benefits, the symptoms it’s trying to quell, its costs, its co-pays, its generic versions. But he also describes the fulsomeness of his love for basketball, how, when the local team suddenly has an opportunity to beat the number one team in the country at home, he hardly feels the pain in his life.

This story, along with verbiage that I borrow from medical literature and imitate (Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects), seems to come out of nowhere, but clearly the issue is something that had been nagging me for years. The sardonic yet droll tone of the narrator helps to mitigate the seriousness of the topic over the space of 13,000 words—so much so that Blackbird, the literary magazine out of Virginia Commonwealth University not only published it in their distinguished online journal but sent it onto the editors of the premier edition of Best of the Web, in which “Basketball Is Not a Drug” also appeared in 2008. It is my hope that you will buy my collection and that this story, along with the other fourteen, will provide you with a laugh or two.

Click here to buy a copy of My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories, where it is available at Amazon.

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION 2015

CATCH UP WITH EARLIER POSTS OF BEHIND THE BOOK

11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 -- "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/09/15 — "Tales of the Millerettes"
01/15/15 — "Men at Sea"

New Yorker Fiction 2015

1/15/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
If you find something to tell, tell it to your truest, though that make little to tell; the truer you speak, the more you will know to tell.
Laura Riding
Born January 16, 1901

It's the Bread, Man

Doyle / Cornett

January 19, 2015, J. Robert Lennon, “Breadman”: Samuel, as an agent of his wife, enters a sidewalk queue at a tchotchke shop to buy the Bread, in particular, loaves of focaccia. ¶ In a strange way this story may be about fidelity, not merely the fidelity between Samuel and his wife, but fidelity to traditions that are carved out by our capitalistic culture. Samuel must enter the line to buy bread from the Breadman in a certain manner and with a certain reverence for his wife's hallowed spot. Samuel must know her account number—51093—and sign in. He must schmooze with the Breadman, ask about his children and pets. And Samuel must be understanding when the old man who crowds in front of him snatches up the last loaves of focaccia. Samuel must believe that the same wife, Kathy, who has dispatched him on this errand, would graciously “understand,” as the Breadman suggests to an enraged Samuel, after waiting in line forever. The story is reminiscent of the “Soup Nazi” episode of Seinfeld (Google it if you’ve never seen it, all three of you). See You in Paradise is Lennon’s most recent publication.
Stephen Doyle, Illustration
Grant Cornett, Photograph

NEXT TIME: MY BOOK WORLD [If I finish the book!]

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Men at Sea"

1/14/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The magnificent houses, the three old-money brick houses, each with a small turret and a wraparound porch, had been built uptown near the churches when the town was younger and smaller, before the Great War. The wraparound porches were there to hold rainy-day children and morning tea carts and quiet late-evening conversation, cosy, discreet conversation which could not easily take place in front rooms or kitchens or bedrooms, certainly not on the street.
Bonnie Burnard, from her novel, A Good House
Born January 15, 1945

Regarding Men at Sea

Behind the Book is a weekly series in which I discuss the creative process it takes to write each of the fifteen narratives included in my latest collection, My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories. Scroll to the bottom of the post to locate links to previous Behind the Book posts.

Author and Ken Dixon

This story I believe I wrote for fun.

In 1996, Ken and I celebrated our twentieth year together by taking a cruise that sailed among the Hawaiian islands (neither one of us is a photo hound). The ship that was our home for ten days was the SS Independence, which had been launched in 1951. It and its sister ship, the SS Constitution, had originally sailed the Atlantic in the 1950s, that heyday leading up to the era of jet travel, when thousands of people made their way to Europe by way of these luxurious ships. Now, forty years later, having been refitted, those two vessels were serving passengers who wished to enjoy the peaceful waters of the Pacific. Our anniversary trip was my first cruise, and it was heaven. Your luggage magically appeared at your door. At each port, there were fun excursions to take, or you could even stay on board and enjoy the amenities there. And there was food, food, food! I began to wonder what it would have been like to sail the Atlantic.

I suppose I also place a character somewhat like myself in this story, a ten-year-old boy, who’s never experienced such splendor, a young boy named Dane Adriane, who probably plays the piano better than I did at that age, a boy who is perhaps more intelligent and curious than I was. Again, a bit of wish fulfillment helps to create narrative! Little Dane’s single mother supports him and his sister by working as a waitress back in Dallas. To take a momentous trip like this in 1958, to be dressed up like a little doll by his doting Uncle T. Rex, both pleases and puzzles Dane. Then when he begins to intuit that his uncle has interests aboard the ship that do not include him, he feels a bit insecure. His attempt to maintain his equilibrium, both physical and emotional, on this ship during a squall (I must say) is heartbreaking. The climax may provide a surprise for the reader, but the last paragraph certainly puts the entire story into perspective:

A PASSAGE FROM THE STORY
“At the same time, I realized I might never again experience the listless inertia of an afternoon spent with the two old men or Mrs. Boatwright’s kind attention or cavorting with Olympic swimmers or joking with my uncle, when he was free, of course. If he had suddenly changed his mind about flying, I would have been delighted, for there was something about the sea that would forever make me wonder, when I sailed, if I might not at all wind up where I had begun" (154).

This story first appeared in Green Hills Literary Lantern, an online journal out of Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri.

Click here to buy a copy of My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories, where it is available at Amazon.

NEXT TIME: New Yorker Fiction 2015

CATCH UP WITH EARLIER POSTS OF BEHIND THE BOOK:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 -- "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/09/15 — “Tales of the Millerettes”

New Yorker Fiction 2015

1/9/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The greatest beauty is organic wholeness, the wholeness of life and things, the divine beauty of the universe.
Robinson Jeffers
Born January 10, 1887

Fabulous?

Edel Rodriguez

January 12, 2015, Robert Coover, “The Crabapple Tree”: This is the tale of three people who are buried under a crabapple tree located next to a farmhouse. ¶ I realize Coover’s important position in contemporary literature, but if you take this story on its face value, it must seem a rather weak version of his earlier work. You have a difficult time caring about any of the characters, none of whom seem developed, more like explained to the reader. If a male writer is going to create a female first-person narrator, her voice ought somehow to sound as if it is a female voice (in its multifaceted portrayal). Who is the narrator? She’s telling the tale from such a distance (friend of the wife buried under the tree because she’s died in childbirth) that we have a hard time caring. ¶ Coover’s seems to be a sad, wandering tale that tells more than it shows.
Edel Rodriguez, Illustrator

NEXT TIME: Behind the Book—MLPR, "Men at Sea"

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Tales of the Millerettes"

1/8/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.
Lascelles Abercrombie
Born January 9, 1881

"Tales of the Millerettes," About a Theater

This 21,000-word story took me almost five years to complete. It began primarily with my love for a revered old building once erected in Wichita, Kansas—the city where I grew up. In 1922 a man named Miller (different, by the way, than the Mr. Miller in my story) had opened a 2,000-seat theater named after himself. In the early days it was the largest auditorium in the city, and the air-conditioned venue was used for more than merely cinema. Scores of famous figures orated there; dramatic productions were staged. Hundreds of theaters like the Miller were built all across our country, and yet few of them remain today, cities having succumbed to the mall theory of cinema viewing.

In 1963, when I was in ninth grade, I went to see West Side Story at the Miller Theater, or I should say I went to see the beginning of the film. In a way that only junior high kids can concoct, my date and I got hornswoggled (a word that seems so Kansas) into attending a party shortly after the film had begun. Part of me was furious. I’d wanted to attend that movie for the longest time, and I’d paid a good bit of money to see that my date and I gained entrance for a Saturday night showing. But part of me felt deliciously wicked when we all scooted across town (on foot?) to a soiree where my date and I could make out. How this was all explained to my parents I can’t quite recall. At any rate, this fragment of history became the frame for “1970,” the third segment of my long story. I didn’t see the film again until I was well into my thirties.

To conduct research for the first third of the story, “1922,” I contacted the Wichita Public Library, and a very kind woman sent me a file folder of clippings about the Miller Theater—some from its opening week in 1922, and some from later years, 1972, when it was threatened with destruction. Fourth National Bank ultimately bought the theater and demolished it in order to erect a parking lot—a f%#@ing parking lot! The rancorous uproar that it caused may have saved its neighboring and equally venerable venue, the Orpheum, just up the street, from being destroyed. I kept rereading the clippings until this matriarchal family, the Bernards, seemed to arrive at my doorstep. Each Bernard woman is influenced by her work or involvement with the Miller Theater, her love for drama.

For the second segment of the story, “1944-48,” I used my imaginative wits to come up with a plausible narrative for the Bernard woman who actually makes the train ride to Los Angeles and builds a short career in film for herself until, like her mother, she becomes ensnared in a relationship with a man.

The greatest delight I took in writing this story may have been in recreating the Miller Theater in such a way that it almost becomes another character, like Carson McCullers’s restaurant in her novella, Ballad of the Sad Café. Not that I would rank myself next to her as a writer, but it was my honest attempt to use a sense of place to create character. And it wasn’t easy. Many a time I would put this story away, and then like a sorry garment you’re trying stitch together, I would drag the pieces out again.

Then I finally workshopped it with my writing group. Members found all kinds of problems: problems with chronology, problems with historical details, and more. So I revised it and put it away. Again. When I pulled it out for the last time, the pieces seemed to fall into place; I was finally satisfied that it might be a decent story. I sent it out—also a problem, because how many journals want to publish such a long story? But finally, the editor at Eclectica, an online journal, whose pages are endless in cyberspace, contacted me to say that he wanted it. It may be the placement that pleased me most. If you buy My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories, I hope you enjoy reading “Tales of the Millerettes” as much as I enjoyed writing it. Just be sure and set aside enough time!

READ A PASSAGE FROM THE STORY:
Opening night Mr. Miller had gathered his Millerettes on the draperied mezzanine and pointed down to the crowd queued up outside; Velma heard the murmur of voices growing. She saw one boxy limousine after another drop off yet another privileged party (the mayor and such), who were ushered in early. Those less fortunate hoofed it to the end of the line, which snaked its way around two blocks (ten thousand customers had competed for only two thousand seats). As the place opened, she watched footmen open doors to carriages, Cadillacs, and Packards. Doormen greeted theatergoers, and directors showed customers to the aisle, where she and other Millerettes would escort them to their seats. The console of an eleven-rank Wurlitzer was sunken in the orchestra pit, the squalling pipes located three stories up behind two decorative grilles. A funny little man named Shelly Hand was playing “Ain’t We Got Fun?” and it quickened Velma’s step. Mr. Hand received a score for every film and was paid to make sure he ended when the movie did. When the showing was over, he would sometimes bow to great applause (84-5).

This story was first published by Eclectica, an online journal, whose geographical home may be Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Click here to buy a copy of My Long-Playing Records and Other Stories, where it is available at Amazon.

NEXT TIME: Behind the Book—MLPR, "Men at Sea"

CATCH UP WITH EARLIER POSTS OF BEHIND THE BOOK:
11/13/14 — Introduction to My Long-Playing Records
11/20/14 — "My Long-Playing Records" — The Story
11/27/14 — "A Certain Kind of Mischief"
12/04/14 — "Ghost Riders"
12/11/14 — "The Best Mud"
12/18/14 — "Handy to Some"
12/25/14 — "Blight"
01/01/15 — "A Gambler's Debt"

The New Yorker Project—4, Stories Least Liked & Why

1/7/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The world does not end tonight
And the fruit that we will pick tomorrow
Await us, weighing the unstripped bough.
Charles Tomlinson, New Collected Poems
Born January 8, 1927

Scroll down if you missed the first three posts in this series: the Introduction, Crème de la Crème, and The Big Middle. In this post, I list The New Yorker stories from 2014 that I feel are least effective as narrative and why. I may be way off the mark. My prejudices concerning literature may raise their ugly heads. I may not convince anyone, but I'm still going to list them. By clicking on the title, you will be taken to the original post profiling the story. More important, follow the links to the stories and decide for yourselves!

The Least Shall Be Last

40. January 13, 2014, Dinaw Mengestu, “The Paper Revolution”
41. January 27, 2014, Robert Coover, “The Frog Prince”
42. February 17 & 24, 2014, Karl Ove Knausgaard, “Come Together”
43. April 28, 2014, Shirley Jackson, “The Man in the Woods”

44. May 19, 2014, Robert Coover, “The Waitress”
45. June 2, 2014, Thomas Pierce, “Ba Baboon”
46. June 9 & 16, 2014, Ramona Ausubel, “You Can Find Love Now”
47. August 11 & 18, 2014, César Aira, “Picasso”

48. September 1, 2014, Joseph O’Neill, “The Referees”
49. September 15, 2014, Danielle McLaughlin, “Dinosaurs on Other Planets”
50. October 27, 2014, Tom Hanks, “Alan Bean Plus Four”

NEXT TIME: Behind the Book—MLPR, "Tales of the Millerettes"

The New Yorker Project 4—The Big Middle

1/6/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Children are born optimists and we slowly educate them out of their heresy.
Louise Imogen Guiney
Born January 7, 1861

The Big Middle

Scroll down if you missed the first two posts in this series: the Introduction and Crème de la Crème. In this post, The Big Middle, I list what I feel are well written but not extraordinary stories in 2014's The New Yorker, listed in chronological order. By clicking on the title, you will be taken to the original post profiling the story.

21. January 6, 2013, Antonya Nelson, “First Husband”
22. February 10, 2014, Zadie Smith, “Moonlit Landscape with Bridge”
23. March 10, 2014, Yiyun Li, “A Sheltered Woman”
24. March 17, 2014, T. Coraghessan Boyle, “The Relive Box”

25. March 31, 2014, Louise Erdrich, “The Big Cat”
26. April 14, 2014, Roddy Doyle, “Box Sets”
27. May 12, 2014, Lyudmila Ulitskaya, “The Fugitive”
28. June 9 & 16, 2014, Haruki Murakami, “Yesterday”

29. July 21, 2014, Greg Jackson, “Wagner in the Desert”
30. July 28, 2014, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, “Last Meal at Whole Foods”
31. August 4, 2014, Paul Theroux, “Action”
32. August 25, 2014, Tessa Hadley, “One Saturday Morning”

33. September 8, 2014, Thomas McGuane, “Motherlode”
34. September 29, 2014, Paul La Farge, “Rosendale”
35. October 6, 2014, Kevin Canty, “Story, with Bird”
36. November 24, 2014, Brad Watson, “Eykelboom”
37. December 1, 2014, Etgar Keret, “One Gram Short”
38. December 15, 2014, Elizabeth McKenzie, “Savage Breast”
39. December 22 & 29, 2014, Nuruddin Farah, “The Start of the Affair”

NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER PROJECT 4—LEAST LIKED STORIES

The New Yorker Project 4— Crème de La Crème

1/5/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Time is a great teacher.
Carl Sandburg
Born January 6, 1878

Crème de La Crème

Scroll down if you missed yesterday's introduction. In today's post I list what I feel are the top short stories in 2014's The New Yorker, listed in chronological order. These stories knock my socks off, are so skillfully written I can’t deny them their due recognition. Click on the title to activate a link to the original post profiling the story. Then read the story!

1. January 20, 2014, Akhil Sharma, “A Mistake”
2. February 3, 2014, Donald Antrim, “The Emerald Light in the Air”
3. March 3, 2014, Denis Johnson, “The Largesse of the Sea Maiden”
4. March 24, 2014, Tessa Hadley, “Under the Sign of the Moon”

5. April 7, 2014, Jonathan Lethem, “Pending Vegan”
6. April 28, 2014, Thomas McGuane, “Hubcaps”
7. May 5, 2014, Sam Lipsyte, “The Naturals”
8. May 26, 2014, Alejandro Zambra, “Camilo”

9. June 9 & 16, 2014, David Gilbert, “Here’s the Story”
10. June 9 & 16, 2014, Karen Russell, “The Bad Graft”
11. June 23, 2014, Maile Meloy, “Madame Lazarus”
12. June 30, 2014, Rebecca Curtis, “The Pink House”

13. July 7, 2014, Allegra Goodman, “Apple Cake”
14. September 22, 2014, Victor Lodato, “Jack, July”
15. October 13, 2014, Haruki Murakami, “Scheherazade”
16. October 20, 2014, Kirstin Valdez Quade, “Ordinary Sins”

17. November 3, 2014, Jess Row, “The Empties”
18. November 10, 2014, Antonya Nelson, “Primum Non Nocere”
19. November 17, 2014, Dave Eggers, “Alaska of Giants and Gods”
20. December 8, 2014, Tim Parks, “Reverend”

NEXT TIME: THE NEW YORKER PROJECT 4—The Big Middle

The New Yorker Project 4—Intro

1/4/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
The more human beings proceed by plan the more effectively they may hit by accident.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Born January 5, 1921

A Bit of History

This is the fourth consecutive year that I’ve made a close reading of every story in The New Yorker. Before beginning my first post in this series I decided to read a New Yorker story from the past and removed from my shelf a collection of stories published in the magazine between 1925 to 1940, a used-book-store find I made a number of years ago. I want to share the opening paragraph from a Dorothy Parker story, “Soldiers of the Republic,” from the February 5, 1938 issue:

“That Sunday afternoon we sat with the Swedish girl in the big café in Valencia. We had vermouth in thick goblets, each with a cube of honeycombed gray ice in it. The waiter was so proud of that ice he could hardly bear to leave the glasses on the table, and thus part from it forever. He went to his duty—all over the room they were clapping their hands and hissing to draw his attention—but he looked back over his shoulder” (15).

This opening is quite simple, really, but how much information the author dispenses: day of week and time, setting including the city and country (by inference), the scarcity and kind of ice cubes, the tone, which is established by a slightly elevated diction. Who is telling this story in the first person? we ask ourselves. What’s going to happen? Do we care? The story can’t be more than two thousand words, far shorter than most New Yorker stories published today, but this narrative set in a time of war is dazzling. This literary history is part of the reason why I continue to read every story in the magazine. Will someone dazzle us with his or her word choice, his or her setting, his or her narrative that no one else could have possibly written? I hope so.

It may be that this magazine is the one large-circulation American journal that also distributes the largest number of short stories per year—making it a challenge to any writer to have a story accepted. Each year that I proceed farther into this project the more I appreciate the broad spectrum of fiction being written by writers of English throughout the world. The seven translated stories compel the reader to understand cultural aspects of other cultures, as well. I will continue the practice of posting a profile of the story a week before it hits the stands and then summarizing the year’s fiction at the end of 2015.

The reader can access previous annual posts by going to the side bar and clicking on “January 2011,” “January 2012,” or “ January 2013” and searching for "New Yorker Project."

The Stats for 2014

Average length of a New Yorker story in 2014: 8,870 words
Change from 2013: +120 words
Percentage of male authors: 67% (66% including writers with multiple stories)
Change from 2013: +18% points

Percentage of female authors: 33% (34% including writers with multiple stories)
Change from 2013: –2% points
Average age of a New Yorker fiction author: 52
Change from 2013: –2 years
Percentage of lead characters who are male: 68%
Change from 2013: +11% points
Number of lead characters who are female: 32%
Change from 2013: –11% points
Number of lead characters who are apparently heterosexual: 90%
Change from 2013: –8% points
Number of lead characters who are apparently LGBT*: 4%
Change from 2013: +2% (up from one story to two)
Percentage of lead characters who are apparently Caucasian: 76%
Change from 2013: +12% points
Percentage of lead characters who are apparently “minority” or foreign: 22%
Change from 2013: –4% points
Percentage of lead characters who are apparently Jewish or Israeli: 2%
Change from 2013: –8% points
Stories that seem to be set in the 1950s: 1
Stories that seem to be set in the 1960s: 3
Stories that seem to be set in the 1970s: 4
Stories that seem to be set in the 1980s: 1
Stories that seem to be set in the 1990s: 1
Stories that seem to be set in the 2000s: 2
Stories that seem to be set in the 2010s: 31
Stories that seem to be set in the future: 1 (2015)
Stories set in the United States: 52% — AK-1, AZ-1, CA-7, GA-1, MA-3, MN-1, MS-1, MT-2, NJ-1, NM-3, NY-4, VA-1
Change from 2013: +15% points
Percentage of stories set in foreign countries: 30% CHILE-1,ENGLAND-3, FRANCE-1, IRELAND-2, ISRAEL-1, JAPAN-2, NORWAY-1, SOUTH AFRICA-1, SOVIET RUSSIA-1, SPAIN-1, UGANDA-1
Change from 2013: –19% points
Percentage of stories in which there is no apparent setting: 14%
Percentage of stories set in cyberspace/outer space: 4% [new category]
Percentage of stories set in urban/suburban areas: 70%
Percentage of stories set in rural/pastoral areas: 16%
Percentage of stories set in urban and rural areas: 14%
Authors publishing more than one story: Robert Coover-2, Tessa Hadley-2, Thomas McGuane-2, Haruki Murakami-2, Antonya Nelson-2
Percentage of authors who appear to use English in a traditional manner: 98%
Percentage of authors who appear to use English in an experimental manner: 2%
Percentage of authors who appear to use English both ways: 0
Percentage of authors who employ the first-person POV: 34% (up 3%)
Percentage of authors who employ the second-person POV: less than 2%
Percentage of authors who employ the third-person POV: 64% (down 3% points)
Percentage of authors who primarily employ the past tense: 86% (down 2% points)
Percentage of authors who primarily employ the present tense: 14% (up 2% points)

*While it was great that the number of central characters who were apparently gay rose from one story to two, both narratives were written by apparently straight writers! Nothing by Edmund White or a host of other fine LGBT writers of various ages?

Theme

As in the three previous years, I’ve challenged myself to distill the theme of each story to one word or phrase if I could. I made up my mind quickly—believing that, like selecting a character’s name or looking at Rorschach inkblots—first thoughts are the most honest psychologically (those in bold face were also listed in last year’s themes): ABUSE–2%, ADVENTURE–2%, ALIENATION–6%, COMING-OF-AGE–6%, DEATH–8%, EVANESCENCE OF YOUTH–2%, EVIL–2%, FRIENDSHIP–2%, GREED–2%, INSANITY–2%, LONELINESS–10%, LOSS–10%, LOVE-–10%, MYTHS/TALES–12%, POLITICAL REPRESSION–4%, POST-APOCALYPTIC–2%, RECAPTURING THE PAST–2%, RECONCILIATION/HEALING–6%, REDEMPTION–2%, ROLE OF MAGIC–2%, REVOLUTION–2%, SUPERFICIALITY OF MODERN LIFE–2%, UNRESOLVED CHILDHOOD–2%

Unlike the last three years, in which I was fairly certain what a New Yorker story is supposed to be—urbane, sophisticated, yet accessible—this year I’m not so sure. The editorial staff selected a broad range of stories, some of which were not that urbane or that sophisticated. Themes seemed to be quite varied. One isn’t quite sure where The New Yorker short story is headed. More younger writers? Writers from more diverse backgrounds? More or fewer translations? Stretching the genre? Only 2015 will tell.

Bad Circulation?

The gods at Circulation must have heard me cursing last year (and the year before). Many more of my hard copies have arrived before the cover date than those that have not (again, two failed to make it to my door at all). My digital copy arrives each week without fail on a Sunday night while reading in bed! I heap great thanks upon the Digital Gods for this advantage; also being able to access every issue at the magazine's archives. Truly a gift in exchange for a measly subscription price.

In the next three days I shall set up links to my profiles of all fifty-one stories found in the 2014 issues and rank them in three categories: Tuesday, Crème de La Crème (1-20); Wednesday, The Big Middle (21-39); and Thursday, The Stories I Least Liked and Why (40-50). I urge you to peruse my profiles, but most of all, the stories.

NEXT TIME: The New Yorker Project 4, Crème de La Crème

New Yorker Fiction 2015

1/3/2015

A WRITER'S WIT
Cut off a person from all contact with tales and he will assuredly begin to invent some—probably about himself.
A. E. Coppard
Born January 4, 1878

Parping Cloudlets!

Doug Dubois

January 5, 2014, Colin Barrett, “The Ways”: Pell, sixteen, must retrieve her younger brother Gerry from school in this Irish town, because he’s been suspended after a fight. ¶ This story seems to be what we’re all taught a short story should be: a tiny sliver of time or life. We learn that Pell has dropped out of school after her parents’ death from cancer, two summers apart. Pell’s older brother Nick, twenty-five, is working in a hotel, attempting to hold the family together. Gerry likes to play a video game called Blood Dusk 2 set in North America; he’s memorized and explored two hundred square miles: Indian graves, buffalo, other wildlife—things he may never see in his own life. The pain of these three children, their loss, is always just beneath the surface of their talk, their lives. The language is raw, strange to American eyes and ears:

“Besides, Gerry would go spare if Swanlon’s rusting wreck of a car, parping cloudlets of straw and dung out the exhaust, came up the school drive to collect him” (55).

Raw but beautiful. Beautiful.
Barrett has written Young Skins.
Photograph, Doug Dubois
NEXT TIME: THE NEW YORKER PROJECT 4—INTRO

New Yorker Fiction 2015

Soft Trajectory

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Engineer"

Engineering: a difficult science

New Yorker Fiction 2015

About that Inventor

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Basketball is not a Drug"

The Comforting Qualities of Basketball

New Yorker Fiction 2015

It's the Bread, Man

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Men at Sea"

Regarding Men at Sea

New Yorker Fiction 2015

Fabulous?

Behind the Book—MLPR, "Tales of the Millerettes"

"Tales of the Millerettes," About a Theater

The New Yorker Project—4, Stories Least Liked & Why

The Least Shall Be Last

The New Yorker Project 4—The Big Middle

The Big Middle

The New Yorker Project 4— Crème de La Crème

Crème de La Crème

The New Yorker Project 4—Intro

A Bit of History

The Stats for 2014

Theme

Bad Circulation?

New Yorker Fiction 2015

Parping Cloudlets!

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