The Hero and The Horror

This is my Halloween story.  I have written things of this nature before.  People seemed to have liked my werewolf piece from last year (A Pistol Full of Silver).  I hope you like this one.

Also, on Monday, my short novellette "The Astonishing Tale of Dr. Thaddeus Quentin and the Colossus" will be going live as part of Michael Stackpole's Chain Story.  You can learn more about it here.  Be sure to come back Monday to read it and spread the word.  It's a steampunk adventure and I think you'll all like it.

Be sure to check out my recent collections available on the Kindle. 

            "Order!  We will have order!" the town elder shouted over the din of his panicked townspeople.  They had gathered at the town's hall, an immense room with high echoing ceilings, thick beams, and a thatched roof.  In better times the town and it's people would have been celebrating their idyllic lifestyle, the kind a community of simple dairy farmers could do.  But now, a darkness had descended over them.

            "One at a time, one at a time," he shouted again.

            He pointed to one man, giving him permission to speak, "She's dead already.  Let's just finish it."

            A woman stood up, babe in arms, "But he said he'd kill us if we hurt her!"

            "All of us!"

            "But what do we do?"

            "What can we do?"

            "If we do nothing, this will go on forever and we'll live under his thumb."

            "He'll kill us all, one way or the other."

            "Cowards!" came one young voice.  It was full of steel and resolve and did a better job to silence the crowd than the elder could do.

            All eyes were on him.  The elder narrowed his gaze and invited the boy to explain further.  "And what should we do, young man?"

            "We fight.  We fight him and make a stand.  We fight him while there is still enough of us left to resist him."

            He dodged a piece of fruit thrown at him, "You're the coward!  You only say such things because it's still the day time and it's safe."

            "When the sun goes down, none of us will be safe!"

            The afflicted girls mother sobbed loudly and the hall broke out into shouting once again.  The village elder raised his hands, requesting quiet from the crowd.  A hush fell over the townsfolk as soon as they noticed their leader calling for that quiet.

            Slowly, he lowered his arms, timing the utterance from his lips for maximum dramatic impact, hoping that his words would resonate with his flock like a tuning fork.  "We will hire a vampire hunter."

            A few of the old maids gasped, but by and large, the audience sat in stunned silence.  A few more in the back muttered things like, "We can't," and, "No," and, "It'll be the death of us all!"  But they al knew that the elders word was the law and a hunter would be hired from community funds and it would have to happen quickly.  There were only two nights left before the girls turn would be complete and the villain would be back to collect her.  And now that an aggressive course of action had been decided on, every one lived on the edge of fear.

            It was never wise to draw the ire of a vampire, and the townsfolk didn't know if there were any familiars among their number loyal to the vampire, and they didn't know if they'd even be able to find a vampire hunter, let alone one knowledgeable enough to vanquish an immortal.

            The town spent the next night unable to sleep for fear of attack.  They were still uneasy from the last attack waged against them.  The moon was full and the night was crisp and cool with the approaching autumn.  It began as a low howling and a foul smell on the wind, and the howl turned into a shrill shriek through leafless tree branches.  And on the wind came the sound of leather wings flapping toward them in the night.

            The girl had been at the artesian well fetching water for her moth when the breeze turned foul.  The vampire ran her down on the cobblestone of the town's single road.  He ravaged and infected her, then deposited her at home, leaving his warning with her parents.  Since then, a tangible fear had grown in the air of the town.  It doubled itself with their commitment to fight.  If you focused hard enough, you could almost taste it.  It was coppery, like blood, almost enough to make one heave, but not quite.

            The boy who insisted they fight was given the task of finding a man suitable for the job and rode out of town immediately in search of a champion.  Half of the town thought he'd been sent on a fool's errand, the other half thought he'd really been sent to save them all.

            Perhaps both were true.

            Night fell once more on the village, and it was the night the girl would be ready, turned fully, and ready for the vampires inevitable and momentous return.  When the sun fell, the low wind returned, and one by one, each and every door was barricaded shut and every window shuttered.  Crosses were worn around as many necks as they had crucifixes for.

            It was anyone's guess if they would find the salvation they asked for in the prayers they all made.

            Over the soft howling of the wind came the evenly-paced clippity-clop of a shoed horse, alongside the slow shuffle of a man who's walked a long way. 

            Curious eyes peered through blinds and curtains, hoping to catch a glimpse of the arriving stranger.  They recognized the boy leading the horse right off, he must have accomplished his mission, because atop his horse rode a man.  He was dressed in all manner of straps and buckles with a striking red scarf that fluttered behind him.

            The instinct was to run out and greet the man who could be their saviour, but the uncertainty of their tormentor's time of arrival kept them all indoors.  The fear was understandable to the stranger.  He felt that way once, too.  Long ago, he didn't hold their ingratitude against them. 

            The boy led him straight to the village elder's house so that he might palaver with their leader.  Tea and biscuits were laid out, but the stranger paid them no mind.  He seemed to ask for the situation without speaking.  He meant business and you could tell from the resolve in his eyes and the slow, deliberate nature of his movement and posture.  He was like a great stonewall, which was somehow comforting and unsettling all at once.

            "A fortnight ago it first appeared.  It killed a boy, herding goats in the pastures.  Even though he was drained of blood, we thought for a while it was a wolf.  We assembled our brute squad and hounds, looking for it high and low, but we found no trace.  That's when we noticed the lights on the mountain.  We approached, but something attacked us.  We lost two men there.  Then three nights ago, he came for the girl, to turn her.

            "He left her with her parents, we don't know why.  He said he'd be back for her three days hence, tonight."

            The stranger broke his silence in a deep voice that commanded respect, but had a soft empathy to it that could only come from pain.  "He left her here to feed.  He'll not be able to feed her enough when the thirst hits her."

            "My god.  She could kill us all."

            "Mayhap.  Take me to her."

            They took him to the girls house by torchlight.  The village elder beat heavily on the door three times upon the door.  Her father, the cobbler, unbolted and opened the door, wary of the stranger and the looming threat in the dark beyond.  His somber countenance kept him from speaking as he led the three men to the slumbering corpse that was once his daughter.

            He opened the thick oaken door that led to her room.  Her mother hunched over her, crying.  The flickering gaslight gave the small room all the appearance of a haunted house, casting long, distorted shadows that moved in unnatural ways across the dark wood walls.

            The stranger put a firm but gentle hand on the mother's shoulder and spoke calmly.  "You should go."

            "I'm not leaving my little girl."

            "You don't want to see what happens next."

            "She's my baby," she sobbed, "I'm not going anywhere."

            "Suit yourself."

            The stranger startled everyone with the speed of his reaction.  In the space of a breath, he'd withdrawn a wooden dagger and plunged it deep and true into the young girls heart.

            Thick, mostly congealed blood splashed across them all upon the force of impact, what was left oozed out of the gaping wound.

             The girl was making a gurgling noise that was something like an angry cat under water.  That unsettling sound was barely audible though, over the wailing screams of the mother.  With great effort, the mother stood and beat her fists in the side of the stranger with all the force of a wooden arrow shot into a stone block.

            It was at that moment that a concussive force blew through the room, shattering the windows into tiny particles of glass, blasting the shutters off their hinges, and tearing the curtains down, blowing them across the room.  Everyone was knocked to the ground, save the stranger, who looked up, out the window, slowly and defiantly.  The sound of beating leather wings grew louder and louder until the vampire himself descended through the window.  He raised his hand symbolically, ending the torrent of wind and glass. 

            Silence.

            A deep, unnatural silence.

            The vampire, pale in complexion, dark in the eyes, and long in the tooth stood over the now completely dead girl.

            The stranger made no move or sound, giving the beast ample time to inspect his handiwork.  The vampire sniffed once sharply in the air and fingered the pinewood stake with a gnarled claw. 

            Finally, filled with pain, he broke the silence.  "She was to have been my Queen."

            The stranger said nothing.

            "I was quite clear with her parents what the consequences were for such insolence."

            Again, the stranger said nothing.  The vampire looked up with his black eyes.  They sparkled in the gaslight, giving the monster an unnatural charisma that felt unnerving.  Nothing that lethal should seem so reasonable, calm, and hurt.

            It was frightening to everyone. 

            Everyone save the stranger.

            In his arrogance, the vampire turned from the stranger and their audience and looked down sadly to regard the girl. "Such a pity.  You could have all been my slaves, the entire village.  Instead, you'll all have to die."

            "Think again."

            To all in the room, it seemed merely like the vampire had grabbed his face in agony apropos of nothing.  The stranger had made his move and no one had even noticed, least of all the vampire, too busy coddling his own hubris.  It was a vial of holy water and garlic cloves that smashed into the face of the vampire at incredible velocity.  It smashed into his face and had all the effect of an acid.  The vampire let out a deep roar of pain and revealed his true form.

            Long claws grew from his fingers and great leathery wings stretched and pulled through the fabric of his cloak.  His face, disfigured from the acid, transformed into something terrifying.  His brow swelled into an angry furrow, his eyes turned the yellow of a rotten egg yolk, his nose and teeth sharpened, and his skin took on all the pallor of the undead.  Sores and dripping pustules of mucous and liquid molted from his face, leftover from the sneak attack of the stranger.

            He howled a sick scream that had a reverberation to it that shook the very souls of those watching.  And with that, he lunged for the stranger.

            The stranger sidestepped and planted an elbow into the side of the vampires head, but it did little to deter his attack.  The vampire planted his palm into the stranger's chest, knocking the wind from him and sending him reeling against the back wall. 

            It was the first time the townsfolk had seen him falter.  If their hearts hadn't been filled with so much fright from the true form of the vampire, they'd be filled with despair.  If the stranger lost, the ramifications for their little village would be enormous.  They would all die in agony, torn apart limb from limb, their blood used as fuel and fodder for their tormenter.  It was not a happy prospect.

            The stranger stood, turning the situation to his advantage, smashing another vial of holy water into the vampire's face, obscuring his vision.  With one graceful movement, he got his footing back and swung his first hard into the vampire's left temple.

            "Arrogant knave!  You think you can stand against an immortal?"

            Ignoring the taunts, the stranger flicked garlic soaked, wooden shards at the beast to no effect. 

            "I've stood against better."

            And with that, the stranger charged.  He and the beast met in the center of the room, over the corpse of the girl. 

            They were locked together.  None of the spectators knew who would come out on top.  With the cloaks and folded wings, no one could see the damage they'd done to each other.  Had the stranger vanquished their unholy bane?  Or had the vampire came out on top, ending the life of their would-be protector?

            It was the gurgling sound of congealed blood dripping down to the floor that tipped them off that the monster might have been bested.

            The vampire held the face of the stranger tightly, digging his claws into his face, drawing blood.  "It's not over for you."

            With great strain, fighting it every step of the way, life escaped the vampire.  Slowly, the stranger lowered the miscreation to the floor so they could all see the wooden blade buried deeply in the monster's heart.

             A collective sigh of relief could be felt throughout the spectators in the room.  "You've done it," the boy exclaimed in disbelief.

            "Aye."

            It was then that he faltered to his knees.

            "What's wrong?" The boy leapt to the stranger's side.  "What did he mean it wasn't over?"

            The stranger revealed a deep gash across his neck, already infected with a necrotic blackness.  "It is finished."

            And he collapsed into the boy's arms.

            The dead girl's mother found her way into her husband's arms.  The village elder placed his hands on the boy's shoulder, deeply wounded emotionally by the loss of their hero.  If it hadn't been for all the bloodshed and loss, the scene might have been an idyllic painting in a museum. 

            At first light, the villagers burned in a massive pyre the corpses of the vampire and his hunter.  After the fires died, the townsfolk went back to their lives, trying as hard as they could to forget this episode in their towns history.

            But one of their number couldn't forget.

            Forged over the coals and embers of the funeral pyre of their hero and tormentor was the resolve of the boy.  Then and there he made a solemn vow to carry on the work of a vampire hunter.  Never would a village or town fall prey to the fancies of the unholy undead where he could help it.

            The village didn't understand his desire to fight in the first place, they certainly would not understand his desire to fight now.  And so he left the village without a single goodbye.

            His work was just beginning.

Alice Munro, "Corrie" New Yorker, Oct 11, 2010

Well, my friends, I will take “1 over 70” in preference to “20 under 40” any time, when the “1” is Alice Munro. Ms. Munro is seventy-nine and, thank heavens, still going strong. I have read her new story “Corrie” in the Oct 11, 2010 issue of the New Yorker three times now, and it gets better with each reading, which is one of my criteria for a great story. I thought too many of the “20 under 40” pieces in the New Yorker in the past months needed only a single reading. But that may have been because most of them were chapters from novels and therefore, by my definition, not as carefully written and tightly wound as short stories.

I have recently been in e-mail conversation with Ulrica, one of my readers, who has studied Munro extensively. She notes the frequent comment made by reviewers of Munro’s stories that they have the “complexity” of a novel and asks if I think that a comparison between a short story and a novel always must be aware of the genre difference. I think the genre difference is crucial and that the issue raised by reviewers’ judgment that a Munro story is “novelistic” settles on the meaning of the word “complexity.”

I tried to deal with the issue of novelistic vs. short story complexity a few years ago in an article on Alice Munro in the Canadian journal Wascana Review and would be happy to send a copy of the article to anyone who does not have access to that very fine journal. Ulrica’s question and the publication of Munro’s new story “Corrie” prompts me to visit that issue again. The very fact that “Corrie” covers a time period of over twenty years will probably raise the question for some reviewers, who may assume that the development of characters over time is a novelist notion.

However, after three, going on four, readings of the story, I would insist that ”Corrie” is a classic short story with all the virtues of that form subtly displayed. In this story there is no development over time, and that fact lies at the heart of what the story is about. I make no apologies for the following analysis being a plot “spoiler,” for, as I have said many times, the real reading of a story occurs the second or third time, not the first—which is merely an internalizing of the plot and character configuration to make the important second reading possible. “What happens next” is not so important in the short story. “What it means and how it means” is everything.

The two key words of the first sentence of “Corrie”—“money” and “family”--announces the theme of the story, but one does not know this until one comes to the end of the first reading. The first thing we notice about Corrie, who is 26 at the beginning of the story, is that she is always laughing or on the “verge of laughing.” The first thing we notice about Howard Ritchie, who is only a few years older, is that he is “already equipped with a wife and a young family.” The only thing we need to know about Corrie’s father is that he owns a shoe factory, has lots of money, and soon after has a stroke--all of which makes Corrie alone and available. Although Ritchie finds her somewhat “tiresome,” she has money, and he knows that “to some men that never became tiresome.”

Oh, one more thing about Corrie—she is slightly lame from a childhood bout with polio. Why is she lame? Well, for one thing, it makes possible this response from Ritchie, which announces the beginning of their affair: “He hadn’t been sure how he would react to the foot, in bed. But in some way it seemed more appealing, more unique, than the rest of her.” Ritchie has never had sex with anyone but his wife, and Corrie is a virgin, “a complicated half truth owing to the interference of a piano teacher when she was fifteen.” (We may or may not recall this detail later in the story when Ritchie begins taking piano lessons)

Ritchie is religious, but keeps it to himself because his wife, who is very left wing, would make a joke of it. Corrie already makes a joke of religion for herself, when she says she has never had time for God, “because her father was enough to cope with.”

Enter Sadie Wolfe, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, the serpent in the garden, or maybe the red herring. Hired to help care for Corrie’s invalid father, Corrie tells her she is too smart to do housekeeping and gives her money for typing lessons. However, (and here is where the point of view of the story is handled so slyly by Munro that we are kept more than a little off guard), Sadie takes another housekeeping job and, at a party, discovers that the man who has been coming to visit her previous employer, Corrie, has a wife. Ostensibly, Sadie sends Ritchie a blackmail letter, threatening to blow the whistle on him to his wife. When he tells Corrie about this, she agrees to pay the blackmail payment (we are not told how much money, for that would elicit an unnecessary judgment on our part—how much is it worth to keep an affair secret?), which she gives to Ritchie twice yearly, which he places in a P.O. box in Sadie’s name. Then, As Corrie expresses it when she gives the money to Ritchie twice a year, “How the time goes around.”

The reason Corrie pays the blackmail demand is not only that Ritchie does not have it, but that he would feel he is taking it away from his family. “Family. She should never have said that. Never have said that word.” Ritchie’s family is the unspoken factor of the affair.

After arrangements for this on-going blackmail payment is settled, the story shifts to focus on Corrie, whose father dies, after which the shoe factory is taken over by a large firm that promises to keep it running. When the company closes it, she decides to turn it into a museum in which she will exhibit shoe-making tools. When the company tears the building down, she decides to take over an old library in town, which she opens two days a week. These two ventures would seem to be mere plot elements or place keepers for the time that passes, if it were not for her remark to Ritchie when he comes back from Spain with his family, “You’d think my place were a shine the way you carry on.” This motif of places in which the past is enshrined—the museum and the library—is also emphasized by the fact that the most prominent business in the town is a furniture store “where the same tables and sofas sat forever in the windows, and the doors seemed never to be open.”

Time seems slowed down and dusty for Corrie, while off the scene Ritchie engages in activities with his family. They continue to make love, but with caution as they grow older because of a sore shoulder or a touchy knee. “They had always been conventional in that way, and remained so, congratulating themselves on not needing any fancy stimulation. That was for married people.”

This static relationship continues until there is an abrupt shift. In September, Corrie learns that Sadie Wolfe has died and that the funeral is scheduled for a church in the town near the library. When she goes to the reception following the service, she meets the woman for whom Sadie worked, who praises Sadie, telling Corrie how much the children and later the grandchildren loved her, and how she kept her illness (probably cancer) to herself. “She was absolutely not a person to make a fuss,” the woman says. The minister agrees, “Sadie was a rare person.” “All agreed. Corrie included.” This is a restrained reference to the fact that Corrie has never had children of her own and never will have. It also suggests that Sadie may not have been the kind of person to blackmail someone. But then, who knows?

It is at this point that Munro, in classic short story fashion, begins to tighten the tension, as Corrie slowly begins to come to discovery of a secret that has controlled her life for the past two decades. She begins to compose a letter to Ritchie about how the days of the blackmail are over. She wonders if he will hear about Sadie’s death before he gets her letter, but then thinks he will not, for “He hasn’t reached the age of checking obituaries yet.” The question she asks herself now is whether Ritchie had looked in the P. O. box to see if the August blackmail payment had been picked up before he went to a vacation cabin with his family, for she knows that Sadie would have been too ill to pick the money up.

When she awakes the next morning, “She knows something. She has found it in her sleep. There is no news to give him. No news, because there never was any. No news about Sadie, because Sadie doesn’t matter and she never did.” Corrie realizes there was never a post office box, that the money was kept by Ritchie for the trip to Spain and other family expenses. “People with families, summer cottages, children to educate, bills to pay—they don’t have to think about how to spend such an amount of money.” (Now we know why “family” and “money” are the two key words in the first sentence.)

Corrie now tries to get used to this “current reality” and is surprised to discover that she is capable of shaping another reality. If Ritchie doesn’t’ know that Sadie is dead he will “just expect things to go on as usual.” Corrie thinks she could say something that would destroy them, but she does not have to. She knows that what she and Ritchie have had—what they still have—demands payment” and that she is the one who can “afford to pay.”

The last paragraph of the story, after this realization is:

“When she goes down to the kitchen again she goes gingerly, making everything fit into its proper place.”

This seems to me a wonderfully self-reflexive ending to a story in which, indeed, as is appropriate for the short story form, everything does fit in its proper place.

If this were an actual real-life situation, or a novel about a real-life situation, then we might ask the following questions:

“Why does Corrie put up with Ritchie for all these years? What kind of experience do they have together? Why doesn’t Corrie find herself a good man? Why is Ritchie such a son-of-a-bitch?” But the story is not about such issues. Corrie is not a real person; she is a paradigm of a woman having an affair. The story is about the affair as a universal, classic phenomenon. Ritchie is not a real person; we know very little about him, about what he thinks. He is a paradigmatic married man having an affair.

And what paradigmatically characterizes an affair?
Well, for one thing, the “other woman” must be an object of desire to the man, but not necessarily an object of desire to all men. That’s why Corrie is both rich and crippled. She has something Ritchie wants, but is flawed by something that other men may not want. And what is Corrie like? We know nothing about her except that she does not take things too seriously—thus often on the verge of laughing—and that she accepts her responsibility in the affair to the extent that she is willing to pay for it. And what kind of life does Ritchie have? All we know is that it is a life with his family. We do not see Corrie crying about being left alone when he spends time with his family. For after all, this is what she has bought into. What is her life like during these years of the affair? We know nothing particular about it. We just know it is static, frozen in space—like an artifact in the museum or a book in a library, or the furniture in the window of the furniture store.

The complexity of Munro’s short story is nothing like the complexity of a novel. In a novel, we are interested in particular people in a particular situation at a particular time and place. We make judgments on those people, as if they were like real people who live down the street or that we know from school or work. If she were a character in a novel, we might say to Corrie, “Stupid woman, you are throwing your life away on that self-centered man, who will never leave his wife and come marry you.” We might say to Ritchie, “You worthless bastard. How could you ruin the life of this woman, while cheating on your wife?”

But this short story does not lead us to make those kinds of judgments. Instead, it allows us to contemplate not a particular affair, but rather the quintessential meaning of “affair.” This is what Chekhov does so brilliantly in “The Lady with the Pet Dog,” a story that Munro knows is the classic “affair” story. And “affair” is about secrecy, sacrifice, selfishness, retribution, stasis. This story does not embody a novelistic complexity about the evolution of experience over time, but rather short story complexity about the revelation of a secret that has sustained an intolerable situation for which someone always has to make payment. We don’t have to get inside the head of Ritchie to see him scheme, nor inside the head of Corrie to see her suffer. We only have to stand back a bit and watch this static universal drama reveal its dusty secrets.

I would be most happy to hear from my readers about this story. There is much more to say about it, I think, but I have said enough. I look forward to hearing from you.

Ten Most Important Short Story Writers for 10-10-10

Since I'm a sucker for commemorative occasions and symbolic dates, how could I resist posting a list of “ten” to commemorate the tenth day of the tenth month of the tenth year of the century. We will never see another. So here is my list of the 10 most important short story writers in the history of the genre, with a brief note explaining why I think they are so important.

Giovanni Boccaccio
Because he transformed the oral tale into written literary art

Edgar Allan Poe
Because he recognized that pattern was more important than plot

Nathaniel Hawthorne
Because he populated symbolic romance stories with as-if-real characters

Anton Chekhov
Because he created “realistic” stories with symbolic significance

James Joyce
Because he recognized that short fiction was a spiritual “showing forth”

Eudora Welty
Because she created a world of mythic meaning out of common folk

Flannery O’Connor
Because she understood that true reality of short fiction was the realm of the sacred

Raymond Carver
Because he created haunting recognitions out of the most minimal of materials

William Trevor
Because he subtly suggests the secret lives of us all

Alice Munro
Because she’s Alice Munro


More on the divine Alice next week when I post an extended analysis of her new story in the Oct. 11 New Yorker, “Corrie.”

I welcome all suggestions of disagreements, deletions, or other alterations to this list, with justifications for the aforesaid. But that doesn't mean I will change my mind.

Flannery O'Connor at Library of America

The Library of America’s “Story of the Week” this week is Flannery O’Connor’s “The Train,” a story from her M.F.A. thesis at University of Iowa, which later became the basis of chapter one of her first novel Wise Blood. If you have not read it, you might be interested. You can sign up for the Library of America’s “Story of the Week” at loa.org

I am currently editing a collection of essays on Flannery O’Connor for the Critical Insight Series published by Ebsco/Salem Press. The book will contain four original essays that I contracted O’Connor scholars to write for the volume, as well as twelve previously published essays on O’Connor that focus on her two novellas and her two collections of short stories.

The volume also includes an essay I wrote on O’Connor’s contribution to the romance/short story tradition within which she created her work. You may recall that last year when the National Book Award Committee asked readers to vote for the Best of the National Book Award winners since the fiction Award began, the winner was Flannery O’Connor’s The Complete Stories. Given the fact that publishers are reluctant to take on short story collections, it is worth noting that four of the six books nominated—The Stories of John Cheever, Eudora Welty’s Collected Stories, Collected Stories of William Faulkner, and The Complete Stories of Flannery O’Connor—were short story collections. The only two novels to make the shortlist were Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow.

One of the many things I admire about O'Connor is how determined she was from the beginning of her career to write symbolic short fiction in the Hawthorne tradition rather than conventional realistic novels as her publishers continued to urge her to write. When she was working under contract to write Wise Blood, O’Connor was unhappy with the kind of editorial response she received from Holt Rinehart and asked to be released from her contract, complaining that a letter to her from the editor John Selby “was addressed to a slightly dim-witted Camp Fire Girl.” She wrote Selby: “I feel that whatever virtues the novel may have are very much connected with the limitations you mention. I am not writing a conventional novel, and I think that the quality of the novel I write will derive precisely from the peculiarity or aloneness, if you will, of the experience I write from.”

And she stuck to this insistence on writing symbolic short fiction rather than realist long fiction throughout her too short career. My essay in this new book tries to place O’Connor in the romance/short fiction tradition to which she belongs and discusses her unique contribution to that form.

If you read “The Train,” you might find it interesting to compare it with the first chapter of Wise Blood, in which Hazel (named Wickers here but changed to Motes later) is just out of the army and on the way home. The primary difference between the two versions are the additions O’Connor makes to Haze’s conversation with people on the train, and his remembrance of his preacher grandfather, all of which point to the religious themes which O’Connor later makes uniquely her own. Haze tells a woman in Wise Blood, “Do you think I believe in Jesus? Well I wouldn’t even if He existed. Even if He was on this train.” In thinking about his childhood, “He knew by the time he was twelve years old that he was going to be a preacher. Later he saw Jesus move from tree to tree in the back of his mind, a wild ragged figure…” The first chapter of Wise Blood ends with Haze feeling that the berth where he is sleeping is like a coffin, and he cries to the porter to let him out. “Jesus, Haze said, Jesus.” The porter only replies, “Jesus been a long time gone” in a sour triumphant voice.

If you have not read Flannery O’Connor in a while, she is worth reading again. In preparation for editing this book, I just finished reading all of her fiction and nonfiction. If you like her work, you might want to read the collection of essays and talks entitled Mystery and Manners and the wonderful big collection of her letters entitled Habit of Being. She was a wise and witty woman.

The book I am editing won’t be out for a while. I am currently writing the introduction and compiling the bibliography. But I will let you know when it is published. There is no doubt that Flannery O’Connor is one of the great short story writers of the twentieth century. I admire her dedication to that underrated form. I would be happy to hear your own opinion of O’Connor.

James Lasdun's It's Beginning to Hurt

It’s a great pleasure when I discover a writer who makes me smile knowingly, nod my head vigorously, and exult out loud, “that’s wonderful, that’s just right, that’s brilliant.” I have just finished reading, for the second time, James Lasdun’s latest short story collection, It’s Beginning to Hurt (2009). ” I first read him in the 2010 O. Henry Award collection, which included his story “O Death.” This is his third collection. Based on this reading, I have just ordered his first two, The Silver Age (1985) and Three Evenings (1992). I’m embarrassed that I have somehow missed his work up till now. I think he is an excellent short story writer. I recommend him to you very highly.

I would like to tell you why I think he is so good, but it is of course easier to explain why you think a writer is weak than it is to explain why he is so strong. I like most all the stories in this collection. I would like to sit down beside you and point to each one in turn, saying “read this, read this.” I would like to watch your face as you read and say, “See, see, what did I tell you?” Isn’t he great?” But hell, that’s no good. It’s like when I was a teenager and really liked a new song I heard on the radio and wanted so badly to share it with someone, preferably a pretty girl, and watch her face while she listened, knowing that she felt exactly the same way that I did. But that never happened. So I will lamely try to convey why I think Lasdun is so damned good. I will just comment on two of the stories. But you gotta promise you will read them all.

The title story is only about 500 words or so. If you Google Lasdun’s name under the video category, you can find a short film of his reading it. Here’s what happens in the story: A guy’s wife calls him at work to tell him to pick up a salmon for dinner. He has been at a funeral of a woman who had been his mistress seven years earlier. The salmon is too long for the office fridge, so he goes to the stock room, where it is cooler than in his office, and puts it in a filing cabinet. But he forgets it, and when he gets home and tells his wife, the last line of the story has her say: “You’re a fool. You’re a complete bloody fool.”

That’s it. That’s the whole plot line. But the story has many complex implications that it is not easy to explain. The one paragraph remembrance of the dead woman on the train ride home is sufficient to convey what the man has lost. He is in real estate, and since he and his mistress cannot afford hotels they pretended she is a client and made love in a number of the houses he represented. They could pretend they were bohemian students, or rich socialites. He felt he was the happiest man alive, for she did not ask him to leave his family. Then she ended it abruptly by saying: “I’m in love with you, and it’s beginning to hurt.”

I like the choices Lasdun has made in this story. It’s just right that the central metaphor is that oversized salmon turning rank in a filing cabinet drawer, where things are filed away to be forgotten. It’s just right that he and his lover have made love in many different transitory houses, for that not only communicates the temporary nature of the relationship but also the fantasy nature of it. All is well, until that fateful day when matter-of-factly, she tells him that because she loves him, “it’s beginning to hurt.” A perfectly apt and irresistible one line! When he goes home, it is just right that his wife calls him a bloody fool. For that not only justifies the happy affair he has had and reminds us that he was a bloody fool for giving up a woman who loved him, it also reminds him. The poor son of a bitch! You can judge him, but you have to sympathize with him. This final reader situation of being torn between sympathy and judgment is what the short story does so well.

“The Anxious Man” won the first UK National Short Story Prize in 2006, beating out one of my top three favorite short-story writers, William Trevor. Here’s what happens in the story: Joseph Nagel is on vacation with his wife, Elise, and daughter on Cape Cod, but he is not having a relaxing time. He is a dealer in antique prints and furniture, and his wife does web design, making them modestly comfortable. However, his wife has inherited some money—a little under a quarter million after estate taxes—and for the first time they have some capital. He now feels a sense of responsibility he has never felt before; desirable things now seem necessities to him. He and his wife go to a Wall Street money manager. Joseph is enthusiastic; but Elise thinks the man is a creep. Joseph comes to agree and urges Elise to invest the money herself. At first, things go well and the stock goes up, but then it goes down just as rapidly. Watching the market exhausts Joseph, and he feels that by investing the money his wife has “unwittingly attached him by invisible filaments to some vast, seeing, collective psyche that never rested.”

The stock market comes to represent some uncontrollable reality that torments him. It is a “nightmarish discovery” that when you get in you cannot get out—can’t sell when you are ahead because you might miss getting further ahead, can’t sell when you are down because the market might come back. “Whatever you did, it seemed you were bound to regret doing it, or not having done it sooner…It was as though some malicious higher power, having inspected the workings of the human mind, had calibrated a torment for it based on precisely the instincts of desire and caution that were supposed to enable it to survive.”

Joseph goes into a market to buy scallops and witnesses an incident in which a woman first in line to buy the last two lobsters is distracted for a moment, allowing another smartly dressed woman confidently to claim them. He feels ashamed that he did nothing to correct the matter. When he gets back to the house where they are staying, his wife and daughter are not there and he begins to worry. He swims across a quarter-mile lake worrying all the while, falling into a superstitious mode in which he thinks on the swim back, “If I close my eyes and hold my breath for seventeen strokes, Elise and Darcy will be there on the jetty.” When he gets back, they are standing there and he cannot resist the joyful relief he feels. “A surge of love came into him, and with it a feeling of shame. How crazily out of perspective he had let things get, to have allowed money to loom larger in his mind than his own daughter!”

The daughter has found a young friend who she is visiting next door, and when Joseph and Elise got to get her, he discovers that the wife is the imperious woman who claimed the lobsters. They agree to have a cook-out with them, and Joseph goes home to get the scallops to go along with the lobster. The husband has made successful investments on Wall Street and Joseph experiences a new feeling of well being at the possibilities the market will rebound. He even thinks the wife has eyes for him. He feels too good and drinks too much.

Elise becomes very angry with Joseph when he agrees to let their daughter spend the night. The situation worsens next morning when Elise goes to get the girl and there is no one at the house. They become panicked and Joseph wonders if this catastrophe is what he has felt preparing itself inside him. ‘His obscure, abiding sense of himself as a flawed and fallen human being seemed suddenly clarified: he was guilty and he was being punished.” He thinks of ways he can propitiate, thinking if his daughter will return, he will sacrifice something valuable. He will devote himself to the poor and needy, and this makes him feel a joyous calm. He feels full of faith and hope. When the daughter does return and all is well, he feels that his panic was absurd and shameful. The story ends with him listening to the Marketplace morning report. “Lifting a watermelon from the fridge, he set it on the counter and cut himself a thick slice. He ate it nervously while he listened.”

As is usual with a great short story, a plot summary is totally inadequate to explain what makes it a great short story. What Lasdun does so brilliantly here is put a man in a situation in which he knows he has no control—either over the world around him or within himself. He bounces back and forth between anxiety and relief, between being in his wife’s good graces and being out of favor with her, between feeling confident and feeling inadequate. I like how Lasdun captures that familiar feeling we all have when we make promises to some invisible and impossible power outside ourselves, saying, “please, if you will only give me this, I promise I will do that.” There is always that sense that there is something out there or in me that I cannot control, no matter how hard I try. I want to be strong, but I am often weak. I want to be honest with myself, but sometimes I do not see myself clearly. I don’t believe in mysterious ominous forces in the world, but sometimes there seems no other explanation.

“An Anxious Man,” like all of Lasdun’s stories, reaffirms my long-held conviction that short stories are not about specific events, social movements, concepts, ideas, themes, etc., but rather about some ineffable, complex, universal, human experience. What is this story about? It’s about anxiety, an anxious man. At the end when he is sitting there eating that thick slice of watermelon, it is just right that he is eating it “nervously.” He has a right to be nervous. Who knows what’s going to happen next? Damn. Who knows if I can handle it or if it will have its way with me. What do I do now?

Well, what I’m going to do now is to read more James Lasdun’s short stories. I hope you will too. If you do, let me know what you think. You’ll see what I mean. I’m telling you, the guy is great.

In the Late Morning

I said there'd be at least one more short story this month, and I was right.  Though this isn't the one I planned on.  This one just sort of came out over coffee this morning.

Be sure to check out all of the stories on the site by clicking on the complete list.  I'm still waiting on final approval to post my Chain Story as well. 



Be sure to check out my recent collections available on the Kindle. 

            She smiled and added a deep love and care to her voice, "I love you."

            I smiled back and laughed.  "I love you, too."

            "What's so funny?"

            "I'm not laughing because of anything funny."

            "What then?"

            "It's just been a while, is all."

            I ran my hand across her cheek and down her neck, pulling the sheet down to her waist and pressing her bare chest up against mine.  Then, I kissed her quickly, trying to catch her before she clenched her lips together in an effort to keep her morning breath in.

            She shooed me away.  "I haven't brushed my teeth yet."

            "I don't care.  Love isn't just blind, it doesn't have a sense of smell or taste, either.  Doubly so before it's gotten out of bed."

            She giggled and covered her face over with the sheet.  "Don't look at me.  I'm not cute in the mornings."

            "Says who?"

            "Says me.  I'm not showered, I'm exhausted, I've got bags under my eyes, I'm just...ugh."

            "You are a beautiful, shimmering angel."

            "You're really laying it on thick today, aren't you?"

            "Isn't it my right as a doting boyfriend?"

            She smiled again, this time unconsciously flashing her teeth and brightening her almond colored eyes with love.

            "I love how smiley you are this morning."

            "Aren't I always this full of sunshine?"

            "Only when we sleep in."

            "Ha."  She laughed. "Maybe."

            The cool gray of a clouded morning slowly gave way to the orange and yellow of the sun peeking out from the clouds, bright and fresh as though the clouds had let the sun sleep in, too.

            We both laid there, considering each other deeply.  I wondered what this morning would have been like without her at my side and decided I didn't like any of the options my imagination came up with.

            "What did you mean before?"

            "What did I mean before about what?"

            "About it being a while. What was that supposed to mean?"

            "Oh, I don't know.  Nothing?"

            "Don't do that."

            "I don't know..."  I knew.  I just didn't have the right words.  As people often do, I knew exactly what I meant and how I felt, but felt too embarrassed and foolish to say it out loud.  Somehow, the feeling had crystallized in my brain and it was beyond words, and now that I tried forming words to describe it, I was failing miserable.  It's virtually impossible to describe a feeling that complex.  Maybe things would be easier if we could just touch each other and share the exact sentiment we're trying to get across.  Maybe one day humans will find it necessary for survival, but I didn't have that luxury. 

            "Well, you know.  Things haven't been rainbows and lollypops all the time.  And we've both been working ourselves stupid.  And...  you know...  I can be an insensitive, insufferable son of a bitch..."

            "I know.  You've been better lately, though."

            "It's because for a while it didn't feel like you meant it when you said, 'I love you.'"

            "I wouldn't say it if I didn't mean it."

            "Deep down I suppose I knew you meant it, but it was like the scattered embers of a once raging fire."

            "Were you writing bad poetry in your dreams?"

            "Always."

            I forced a smile and carried on.  "I felt like I was losing you.  And I've been trying.  I've been trying to be sweeter, to make less of a big deal of things, trying to recapture that newness of our love.  I'm trying to fix, at least in small ways, the things I know bug you the most."

            She grew serious, laying there, watching me talk with a measure of solemnity carefully added to her features.

            "When you said it this morning, you had that warmth, that fire back in your voice.  I could feel it, in my heart, as a thrill up my spine, and it all shook out as a smile on my face.  It felt like the first time in a long time that you meant it like you used to, and it was the best thing I could ask for."

            She took a moment to think over what she was going to say, then she leaned in close, whispering into my ear, adding to those excited chills of love, "Of course I love you.  And sure, things were rough, but I love and care deeply about you.  And I'm not going anywhere."

            My excitement turned elsewhere.  She noticed and bit her lip coyly.

            "You are so effing adorable."

            She cocked an eyebrow and grinned crookedly, "You better believe it."

GUEST STORY: The Man in the Box

We have another Guest Story from my brother, Jason Young.   These are excerpts from his second novel that read as short stories.  Be sure to check out all of the stories on the site, including Jason's by clicking on the complete list.  I'm still waiting on final approval to post my Chain Story as well.  I'll have another story this month also, to make up for last month.



Be sure to check out my recent collections available on the Kindle.  You can check out Jason's Kindle offerings here.





     I had a dream of a stone prison…

     I didn’t know where I was, because I could see the world outside myself. There was a transport that traveled an endless desert. It rolled across the golden sand with its deep iron tread. It lifted the sand and dropped it back onto itself like a water wheel. It would move as long as there was sand in the desert. I tried to point my focus to the burning sky, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t comprehend its dimensions. There was a pilot steering the craft in a straight line. I couldn’t be sure if the pilot was also the architect of the craft. All I know is that the pilot appeared the same as the distorted sky, and I couldn’t tell if it was a he or a she. I couldn’t even see if it was a human being, but my imagination told me that that was the only thing that it could be.

     The transport carried two heavy stone slabs, moored to the back with gilded chains. The stones were the shape of a box and they were held tightly together so that not even a single ray of light could pass through their divide.

     The transport moved on and on, and everything was the same so that there was no reason to differentiate one moment from the next. Every aspect of the world was a constant and because of its consistency it felt like death. After a long time, what felt like an eternity, the transport came to a stop.    

     The golden chains that were bored through the stone began to fall into the sand. As the chains fell, the stones were pulled apart, slowly grating across the transports metal surface. The sound was so loud, that the whole world began to shake and I couldn’t see anything clearly until the chains sat in piles in the sand and the stones came to a halt. I looked into the gap between the stones where there were shapes etched out of both sides in the exact dimensions of a man. In the recess of the stone was a man, finally liberated from the box. Though he was free from his prison, he was still held to the stone with a leather strap around his throat. He remained still and silent, but I could see his chest moving in and out and I wondered how he had survived inside the box for so long.

     I imagined what it would feel like to be trapped inside the box myself, the darkness, the isolation, the fear. the stones pressed so tight that I couldn’t fill my lungs with air. I imagined the torture of being buried alive, but this was somehow worse. I lost the will to live. I imagined an eternity of suffering, and wishing I could die. Praying for the release that is an iron maiden. No sight, no sound, the darkness. I wanted to call out to the man and tell him to break free. I could think of no better pleasure than to see the man stretch out his ancient arms, and hear the crack of his idle bones.

     But he didn’t move, and the chains pulled themselves back into the stone. And the stones came together. And the man was entombed in the stone again. And the transport went on until the desert ran out of sand. And I was the man. And I would do anything to die, anything to not exist, but I couldn’t, and the desert was endless.



Aegis’ Dream



     I dreamt of eternal night. I was trapped but I didn’t know where. I couldn’t hear a sound, and though I understood that I had a body, I had no control over it. The only part of me that was at liberty was my mind, which I used to put the fathoms of darkness behind me.

     The day came that I heard a sound, chains cutting into stone. And then there was light. Only then could I see that I was entombed between two great stones that were sitting upon a mechanized transport. I could feel my body for the first time, and the heat of the sun. I suddenly felt the fear of the stone prison. A fear that wasn’t possible until I understood the horror that I was forced to endure. I got off the transport and saw only scorched ground in every direction. A wind blew over the barren landscape and lifted the last of the deserts sand from the cracks in the surface. I went to the driver’s compartment, but there was no one to be found, and no sign that there ever was a driver. The unit was completely robotic. It had no steering wheel or pedals, just a vial lying on its side filled with a murky liquid. I took the vial in my hand, and I can’t explain how, but it told me that I would have to go on a journey. It told me that I would have to walk the desert until I grew old, the direction didn’t matter. I stepped away from the vehicle that had no driver, and I looked to the sky that had no clouds. I could see so far that the sky was ripped in half. On one side there were the nights dark stars. And on the other side, the night's adversary, the burning sun. When I started walking I was a young man and once I started I couldn’t stop, but I kept walking until I was old and approaching dark death. My feet were worn and calloused. My back was spindly and bent. I had a grey beard that reached the Earth, and my eyes were buried beneath my wrinkled skin. I held the vial still; my hand was swollen around it. I arrived at my destination. It was nowhere in particular, just the place my feet wouldn’t carry me beyond. I bend my weary back to the ground, and I poured the contents of the vial into a scar in the surface. The scar was bottomless, as if the entire universe lied directly beneath. By the time I lifted myself back up, I could see that all around me the land was covered with green life. The ground was soft, and it took the pain from my crooked toes, giving me the life to walk a little further. I walked into the forest until I came to a throne, and I knew that it was mine because I was the father of the forest. I sat down for the first time since my journey began, and the years melted from my face. I thought my youth was being returned to me. Through the trees I could see the sun reverse direction, and like a curtain it pulled the sky behind it. I was already a young man, but the stars kept passing over my head going the wrong direction. The sun dropped until it was dawn, and the stars dwindled until there was none left. I lied in my throne an infant, but the sky kept pulling itself back until it was a white nothing, and the throne was empty because the infant was never born, but the throne remained. And though I was a nothing, I could see the white light. And I would do anything to be born again.

     I would do anything to live.