Short Fiction – Page 13

Short Fiction: Forager

August 19, 2008 by John 6 Comments

One of the shortest stories I’ve ever written clocks in at under 1500 words — a miracle, for me.

It’s based on a true story from some years ago, maybe the early to mid-’90s, the details of which I no longer remember. I do remember that the true story, too, took place in New York City. And without any hesitation at all, I can say I never forgot the most surprising ingredient in the story; that was part of the true story, as well.

Forager

Clay was lost that night somewhere way the hell out in the West 50s. Wind-blown, tacking erratically from one side to the other of the narrow cross streets, holding himself erect in painstaking dignity as he traversed the broad avenues. Muttering. Cursing the drivers of the rare passing cars. Enjoying but at the same time trying like hell to walk off the effects of the nearly full bottle of MD 20/20 that the teenage couple had left behind in the park when they fled, yelling, from his ragged bearded countenance suddenly rising up out of the bushes, fumbling with his stubborn, twisted zipper.

Shutting his eyes a moment, still in motion, he collided, kaboom, smack in the bull’s-eye of his goddam crotch with one of those goddam standpipes, and lurched, doubled over, around the corner of a building and into an alley. That’s when he saw it.

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First Lines, Last Lines

August 9, 2008 by John 2 Comments

Short version: As an exercise, start a story with one “found” sentence, and end it with another:

First sentence:

I ask your forgiveness.

Last sentence:

I am a mountain tiger.

Note: The italics as presented above don’t have any significance; they aren’t meant to emphasize the text, nor do they indicate that these lines are spoken by someone.

Extra credit: Involve in the story, in some way, the image of the woman at the left. She may be a character in the story (either the “I” in the first and last lines or someone else), perhaps the story will be about the work of art itself.

Report back sometime before Labor Day.

Long version:

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The “Sing, Sing, Sing” Triptych

August 7, 2008 by John 2 Comments

A couple of months ago here, I posted a long short story I wrote some years back, called “Sing, Sing, Sing.” Whatever else that post might have accomplished, it’s managed to get a certain amount of attention from Googlers. Among other variations, hits have come to the post from searching on these phrases:

sing sing sing
sing sing sing arrangement
carnegie goodman sing sing sing

and my favorite:

words of sing sing sing by benny goodman

(Hint: The Goodman version of “Sing, Sing, Sing” — despite its title — has no words. Straight instrumental.)

In the interest of serving those who might really be searching for information about or analyses of the piece (surely one of the most famous recordings in jazz history), I thought I’d elaborate some about it, using excerpts from my story.

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The Webster Stories

August 5, 2008 by John 2 Comments

dither (definition) Starting sometime in the mid-1980s, I wrote a series of short stories featuring the same protagonist, known only as Webster.

(It was never made explicit whether that was his first or last name, although I always thought of it, oddly, as his first. And the mid-’80s TV show of the same name? Forget it. Never saw it. My Webster was not that Webster, trust me.)

I’ve written about Webster before, in the first post which talked about David Gerrold’s 1990 writing workshop. (Webster was the character I “met” and subsequently talked with in the darkened-room exercise.) In my mind’s eye, he was tall, a little stoop-shouldered (as if to deny his height), wore his brown hair long enough to part (on the left) but not long, and had a strong, classic Roman nose. Invariably, at some point in each story, he appeared in a two-piece suit (even if the story never said so explicitly). It was gray, and it was undistinguished.

Which was the effect Webster wanted to achieve: invisibility, to the extent possible. He hated attention. He hated it so much, indeed, that he was constantly floundering around, forward and back, in an effort to avoid it — with the result, naturally, that he drew attention, further embarrassing himself. He could seldom decide on the best course of action to achieve maximum noticeability; when he did decide, it was reliably among the worst possible choices. (But I’ll hand it to him: his choices were never the obvious ones, either.)

Aside from Webster himself and the outlandish situations in which he constantly found himself (and without fail made worse), his stories had one other thing in common: their titles. Each title was a two-word phrase, the first word of which was “the.”

Here’s an overview of some of them:

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On Writing Long: Edith Wharton

July 24, 2008 by John Leave a Comment

Time change - tastes change - *I've* changed! Back in May — the 26th, to be exact — Steve King’s invaluable and always entertaining Today in Literature newsletter informed us that on that day in 1891, Edith Wharton’s first story was accepted for publication, by Scribner’s Magazine. The story was called “Mrs. Manstey’s View.”

(Yes, by the way: that’s accepted for publication — not actually published. I can’t imagine how Mr. King manages to keep all these dates organized or, for that matter, how he learns of them in the first place.)

I confess, with some embarrassment, that I have never read any of Edith Wharton’s books. (Now that I’ve written that, I guess I should commit to filling that gap in my education.) Yet I do have a few connections with her.

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Sing, Sing, Sing

June 13, 2008 by John Leave a Comment

Happy Father's Day This Sunday is Father’s Day in the US. Last week, 20 years ago, my Dad died. I thought a fitting tribute to both of these occasions would be to post here a short story which was, in many ways, a story of my Dad (although none of the actual events described in it occurred to him). That’s Dad in the photo at the left, circa 1943-44, when he was in training for a while at Texas A&M.

Below, I’ll excerpt the first couple-three pages of the quite old-fashioned story, whose title is “Sing, Sing, Sing.” It’s gone through many versions by now, the earliest written in the autumn of that year of 1988. The version which appears here is simply the most recent.

If you like that much of the story, feel free to download the complete version, in PDF form (146KB); a link to that appears at the end of the excerpt.

(Note: For what it’s worth, there has never to my knowledge been a newspaper named the New York Messenger. Should you go on to read the whole story, there’s never been a book called The Big Hall: The Good Times of Benny Goodman, either, or an author named Robert G. Ehling.)

Update (2008-08-07): I’ve done a more complete breakdown of the “Sing, Sing, Sing” performance, including full-length clips of the three main segments (which together make up a “triptych,” as the fictional Big Hall calls it).

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