Exile on Ninth Street

New Year’ Eve 2011 update of Books Bought, Books Read (with commentary as warranted):

Books bought since Oct. 1, 2011:

• The Edge of Reason by Melinda Snodgrass (An excellent, fast-paced urban fantasy novel featuring a battle between magic and reason.)
• Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being by Andrew Weil, M.D. (Has a good exercise routine for us old farts.)
• Wild Cards, Volume One, edited by George R.R. Martin (A collaborative novel-in-stories about alien viruses, a foppish alien, jokers—and maybe some smoker and midnight tokers—and reluctant superheroes know as Aces. Currently reading this novel. Interesting that SF and fantasy novelists, as well as other genre novelists seem to collaborate and create. Something not often seen with “literary” fiction.)
• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (Who wouldn’t want to be as cool, well-fed and well traveled as Bourdain?)
• Forty Signs of Rain by Kim Stanley Robinson
• Metaphase by Vonda McIntyre (third in her Starfarers series)
• The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Twenty-fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois
• Year’s Best SF 9, edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer
• The Edge of Ruin by Melinda Snodgrass (second in her Edge series)
• Marsbound, Starbound and Earthbound by Joe Haldeman (a trilogy)
• Make a Scene: Crafting a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time by Jordan Rosenfeld
• World-Building: A Writer’s guide to constructing star systems and life-supporting planets by Stephen L. Gillett
• A Novel in a Year by Louise Doughty
• Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain

In the SF Masterworks series:

• Babel-17 by Samuel Delany (My first of Delany’s novels. A wild ride with hints of pre-cyberpunk. Also concerned with the nature of language, in this case a language that has to be understood in order to deal with a potential alien threat.)
• Gateway by Frederik Pohl
• Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (looking forward to reading this after reading the original short story)
• Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick
• The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson
• Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke

Books Read:

• The Accidental Time Machine by Joe Haldeman (Time keeps on slipping, slipping . . .)
• Healthy Aging: A Lifelong Guide to Your Well-Being by Andrew Weil, M.D. (Has a good exercise routine for us old farts.)
• The Edge of Reason by Melinda Snodgrass (An excellent, fast-paced urban fantasy novel featuring a battle between magic and reason.)
• Babel-17 by Samuel Delany (My first of Delany’s novels. A wild ride with hints of pre-cyberpunk. Also concerned with the nature of language, in this case a language that has to be understood in order to deal with a potential alien threat.)

In the early part of the twenty-first century there were people who believed we were being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s; those people were dismissed as loons, quacks who went out to New Mexico and watched for the Grays to emerge from Area 51.

At the time, I thought such people were at the very least misinformed, pretty damn weird, and probably sold jars of lime Gatorade to tourists believing they were buying alien urine. So it goes.

***

In my late forties I decided to begin taking a morning constitutional on the advice from the books of health gurus—to some these gurus are quacks as well—and on one of these walks, on a crisp cloudless October morning, in a quaint middle-class neighborhood west of my flat, I passed by a nice red-brick house of a family I knew only slightly, when I heard a slight rustling from their hedges.

I stopped and listened, thinking it was only a squirrel or a bird, or perhaps a lizard. But the sunlight dappling through the shade tree in the front yard revealed something else—an azure sparkle through the leaves. At first I dismissed it as perhaps some piece of trash, a beer can perhaps, caught in the leaves.

Later, after we knew the truth of the mattter, some who saw the pictures I took with my camera phone said they heard hissing in the night sky. Others heard nothing, but reported a mass of comets sho0ting through the sky,  an unusual enough phenomenon little reported by the media, which was too busy analyzing Kanye West’s decision to go into fashion design.

Anyhow, I started on my way once more, but then the rustling in the hedges erupted again. I stopped and turned and watched. Something was rising steadily above the leaves and limbs. I brought my camera into focus.

A glowing blue globe peeked from over the edge of the hedge. I trembled but felt compelled to approached, almost as if the Thing were laying some kind of Jedi-mindtrick on me.

The Thing rose silently. There were no visible means of propulsion. Clearly, a technology superior to any on Earth—as far a we know (who, after all, really knows just what the frak is going on at Area 51).

I moved closer. It hovered in place over the hedge. I saw no massive hole, no sign of impact whatsoever. It made no threatening moves, no sound, but I knew better. I knew from sci-fi flicks that nothing good could come of this.

I knew the invasion was on, and at the moment, was its only witness on this too quiet street . . .

Here is this week’s Booking Through Thursday:

Do you carry books with you when you’re out and about in the world?

And, do you ever try to hide the covers?

Yes, I carry books when I’m out and about. Of late, when I go to substitute teach, along with my lunch in my backpack, I carry Year’s Best SF 12 to read on my breaks.

It’s a short story anthology from 2006 and includes Nancy Kress, Joe Haldeman, and Ian MacLeod.

Short stories are really good for the hour or so of planning period time I usually have available for myself. Much better than reading the same copy of Wired or Time or Newsweek found in the teacher’s lounge.

No, I don’t hide the covers of books I carry around, unless it’s a big stack in the shopping bag from the bookstore I’ve bought them from.

This week’s Booking Through Thursday:

What’s the first book that you ever read more than once? (I’m assuming there’s at least one.)

What book have you read the most times? And–how many?

Maybe, subconsciously, early in our lives we’re all re-readers. We want the same story read to us over and over because we somehow know we can’t read the same river twice.

And I’m sure the first rereading I did was probably a children’s book or books and certainly comic books which I ravenously reread. As I think about this topic,  images fill my mind of panels vaguely recalled of Disney’s version of Robin Hood (Robin and Maid Marian were foxes and the Prince was a fey lion) and in particular a story of Robin evading King Churl, a warthog. I liked Churl’s warthog minion, specifically because they carried crossbows and I have a fascination with crossbows even though I’ve never used one.

And I recall rereading Alan Dean Foster’s adaptation of Star Wars, because like so many in my generation, Star Wars was/is an obsession. (Foster’s byline was later usurped by George Lucas.)

As far as most reread: that honorific would probably not go to a specific book, but to Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants;”  it’s the first “literary” story I loved and led me to my lifelong obsession with Hemingway.

Of his novels I would have to say I’ve read and reread The Sun Also Rises the most. And then I’ve completely abused Kenneth Lynn’s biography of Hemingway, trying, at first embarrassingly enough, to seek out clues about how to be a writer, how to live like a writer.

Another favorite reread — and sometimes it’s just passages I reread — is Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys. I reread a few passages last night when I got stuck in my own writing. Chabon can make a hangover and throwing up from too much drinking seem elegant and morally revealing.

Of course, again, I think the pleasure of rereading is rediscovering a book or story, and realizing it’s never the same old story.

OK, decided to re-up a meme. The idea is pilfered from Nick Hornby’s wonderful book about the joys of reading and acquiring books The Pollysyllabic Spree.

Books Bought thru June 1–June 20, 2011

• Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury
• Minority Report by Philip K. Dick
• Embassytown by China Mieville
• The City & The City by China Mieville
• The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi
• Halting State by Charles Stross

Books Read, June 1–June 20, 2011

• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick’s kind of become an obsession. Also trying to read and collect the SF Masterworks  (the photo link is not my collection, but I wish it was ) put out by Gollancz (Oh, by the way, I have a birthday coming up in July. Hint, hint).

Also, I’m not being a good Buddhist at all (not that I’ve ever declared myself a Buddhist officially), given I’ve skipped meditation a few times lately, have imbibed some intoxicating drinks in recent days, and find myself too deeply attached to reading and acquiring books to ever renounce this particular form of sweet suffering.

Today, I finished a revision of a science fiction story “My World Is Not Your World“. It’s my first attempt at science fiction. I would love feedback on it. Chief concerns are plot and condensing the story—it’s really long. But take a look if you want; it’s in the PDF above.

Hello all! Below are links to PDFs of some recent writing I’ve been doing. They are science fiction story beginnings drawn from writing prompts by Joe Haldeman.  I am asking/begging/pleading/grovelling for any interested readers out there to give these “shitty” first drafts (as Anne Lamott might say) a look-see and give me feedback, especially to which beginnings you think have the greatest potential for a short story. Remember, these are drafts—I haven’t proofread them for errors.

Trial beginning 1

Trial beginning 2

Trial beginnings 3a and 3b

Last night was a movie night at home, and the late show was The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei. The film garnered Rourke a best actor Oscar nomination and Tomei a best supporting actress Oscar nomination, and has been hailed as Rourke’s comeback role, and Rourke’s performance certainly deserves the acclaim it received.

I had wanted to see it since seeing clips of it during the Oscars a year ago. From the clips I recognized the film’s literary roots: it has a Raymond Carver-esque tone and theme. It concerns Randy “The Ram” Robinson, a professional wrestler resembling some cross between Hulk Hogan and Dog the Bounty Hunter, who saw his heyday in the eighties, and now only wrestles on the weekends. His slide from fame has taken him from celebrity to working as a stocker and at the deli counter of a grocery store.

The movie has all the elements of a Carver short story. A bleak wintry setting. (I was never quite sure where the movie takes place, although apparently it’s Elizabeth, New Jersey.) Trailer parks. A working class bleakness as Randy struggles to get by with the money he makes at his job and weekend wrestling gigs. Familial estrangement. In this case between father and daughter. Randy tries to redeem his relationship with his estranged daughter after a heart attack ends, or should end, his wrestling career.

The movie’s most noticeable literary element, though, is the “dying fall” that ends the movie. As the narrative moves along in the film it seems to be moving toward a Rocky-for-pro-wrasslin’ resolution, the sports hero/entertainer making a comeback when Randy quits his grocery store job and goes back into the ring for a triumphant bout. Tomei’s character even follows the wrestler to the ring. Tension builds. Will he go through with it though it may kill him? Or will he throw in the towel? Randy enters the ring. He battles his nemesis. He begins to clutch at his chest. He climbs the ropes. He leaps to finish off his opponent. Fade to black.

The dying fall, I understand, comes from music — it’s an abrupt fade out of sound. And it has been adapted to literary forms, including film.

My favorite fade to black is from Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in which the wounded hero Robert Jordan awaits his fate:

“Robert Jordan lay behind the tree, holding onto himself very carefully and delicately to keep his steady. He was waiting until the officer reached the sunlit place where the first trees of the pine forest joined the green slope of the meadow. He could feel his heart beating against the pine needle floor of the forest.”

The novel ends. Just like this blog post . . .

Found this interesting list (via Bookslut) of why short stories are rejected.

While the list itself is tongue-in-cheek, I find myself annoyed more and more by the “show don’t tell” advice. It crops up here in number 20 on the list.

20. Summation. “All in the past” syndrome. This is a problem sometimes characterised as “undepicted action” or “telling instead of showing.” Most writers seem to have a grasp of the need to get attention at the beginning, but an astonishing number by the middle of page two have started to tell us all about some ancient family history. All sense of immediacy and story is lost and instead we’re having summaries of complex events that happened, one sentence each, like a dry and tedious history book.

While great short stories are often great simply because of their use of full scenes (sometimes the whole story), I can think of several short story writers — Andre Dubus, John Cheever — who use summary so effectively, and almost exclusively in some stories, that it blows apart the “show don’t tell” mantra. Sometimes good stories function best when they’re told and not shown, and writers need to consider when to show and when to tell. Not every action or scene has to be depicted.

Be warned, a smug statement follows: I’m a published writer.

But now that I’ve wiped the smug off my face . . . when you’ve spent a significant portion of your life writing with the hope (no matter how much or in what way a writer denies it, publication is a goal) of publication, it means a lot to say you’ve published. And I want to think it’s significant to publish, though anyone with access to the Internet can publish and publish for free — a wonderful thing in a democratic society.

I’ve recently published freelance journalism, and I spent nine years at a daily newspaper where I published at least once a week, but the most meaningful publications so far have been the two short stories I’ve published online at Pindeldyboz. (You can read those stories; I’ve posted them here under the heading Short Stories.) A recent post at Lisa Romeo’s writing blog about publication in the New York Times, and the process a 4,000-word piece went through to become an 1,100-word piece, had me thinking about my own longing to see my fiction published, and the process it took to get the stories published.

I didn’t start writing fiction seriously until I was about 20, closer to 21, and it took me almost 15 years to get a story published. The Arc of the Cosmos is a very short story, about four pages in manuscript, and when I finished writing it, I had a sense it would be published.

I first sent it out to Glimmer Train, before sending it to Pindeldyboz. I imagined the story on Glimmer Train‘s slick paper, but they decided not to publish it.

I had seen an ad in the back of Paris Review for Pindeldyboz, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a little literary magazine advertise both a printed version and an online version. I checked the site out, read through some stories, and submitted The Arc of the Cosmos (it wasn’t my first submission; I’d sent a longer metafictional story that was rejected because the editors didn’t like stories within stories).

Some time later, I received an e-mail saying my story had been accepted (I had submitted the story via e-mail too. Oh the wonders of the electronic age!). I was a published fiction writer.

I had tried something different with that story. After I’d finished my second draft (mostly copy editing), I read the story into a tape recorder, and listened to it, and revised as I listened. (I hate the sound of my recorded voice, so it was something a painful experience.) The technique I derived from Susan Power’s essay “The Wise Fool” in The Eleventh Draft.

I think hearing the story read aloud, even if it was me reading it, helped in the revision. Many writers suggest reading your manuscripts aloud, and I don’t quite understand why it seems to work, but it does.

But that was the process my first published short story went through before the rest of the world got a chance to read it. A year later I published my second story The Short, Unknowable Life of Frances Beachcomber, and getting it published was even more satisfying than my first. Of the stories I’ve written, published and unpublished, it’s one of my personal favorites.

I haven’t published a short story in four years, though I’ve submitted them. Successful publication brings hope, and humbles you, once you realize the rest of the world can read what you’ve written and can love it, hate it, or completely ignore it. And rejection still stings. But, I’ll keep submitting, and I’ll keep writing, because that’s what a writer does.