{"id":13292,"date":"2013-05-01T12:29:25","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T16:29:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?page_id=13292"},"modified":"2015-03-10T11:38:00","modified_gmt":"2015-03-10T15:38:00","slug":"story-up-my-sleeve-the-background","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/story-up-my-sleeve-the-background\/","title":{"rendered":"Story Up My Sleeve: The Background"},"content":{"rendered":"

I<\/span>t’s simple, really: every day in May (at least in 2013, we’ll see about future years), here at RAMH<\/em>\u00a0I’ll post<\/del> I posted an excerpt from a different short story. Each story may be a famous one or one you’ve never heard of; they’ll come from all sorts of genres and time periods (although, my own cultural illiteracy being what it is, they’ll all be in English). I may include scraps of stories by myself; not sure about that yet.<\/del> Some scraps I expect to be only a couple sentences long; others, several paragraphs. The only thing the stories will have in common is that I will have read and remembered something about all of them, sometimes even decades later.<\/p>\n

And yes, whenever possible I will also include a link to some online source where you can read the whole story (or at least see where I<\/i> found it).<\/p>\n

The featured stories (to date):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
RAMH Date
\n(May, 2013)<\/th>\n		Title<\/th>\nAuthor<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nFarewell, My Lovely Appetizer<\/a><\/td>\nS.J. Perelman<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nDrunk With Love<\/a><\/td>\nEllen Gilchrist<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nMy Kinsman, Major Mollineux<\/a><\/td>\nNathaniel Hawthorne<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nThe Killion<\/a><\/td>\nIan Frazier<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nBig Blonde<\/a><\/td>\nDorothy Parker<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
6<\/td>\nEntropy<\/a><\/td>\nThomas Pynchon<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
7<\/td>\nThe Jockey<\/a><\/td>\nCarson McCullers<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
8<\/td>\nThe Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald<\/a><\/td>\nGordon Lightfoot<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
9<\/td>\nBabel II<\/a><\/td>\nDamon Knight<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
10<\/td>\nBlue Moon<\/a><\/td>\nJayne Anne Phillips<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
11<\/td>\nThe Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg<\/a><\/td>\nMark Twain<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
12<\/td>\nTam O’Shanter<\/a><\/td>\nDonna Tartt<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
13<\/td>\nA Toy for Juliette<\/a><\/td>\nRobert Bloch<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
14<\/td>\nThe Burning<\/a><\/td>\nEudora Welty<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
15<\/td>\nCell Block Tango<\/a><\/td>\nJohn Kander and Fred Ebb<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
16<\/td>\nA Clean, Well-Lighted Place<\/a><\/td>\nErnest Hemingway<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
17<\/td>\nAbominable<\/a><\/td>\nCarol Emshwiller<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
18<\/td>\nJeffty Is Five<\/a><\/td>\nHarlan Ellison<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
19<\/td>\nEverything That Rises Must Converge<\/a><\/td>\nFlannery O’Connor<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
20<\/td>\nJeeves and the Unbidden Guest<\/a><\/td>\nP.G. Wodehouse<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
21<\/td>\nMirror Games<\/a><\/td>\nColette<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
22<\/td>\nStan<\/a><\/td>\nEminem<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
23<\/td>\nThe Heirs<\/a><\/td>\nBobbie Ann Mason<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
24<\/td>\nThe Secret Miracle<\/a><\/td>\nJorge Luis Borges<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
25<\/td>\nThe Duchess and the Jeweller<\/a><\/td>\nVirginia Woolf<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
26<\/td>\nGame<\/a><\/td>\nDonald Barthelme<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
27<\/td>\nFaithless<\/a><\/td>\nJoyce Carol Oates<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
28<\/td>\nThe Enormous Radio<\/a><\/td>\nJohn Cheever<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
29<\/td>\nGolden Ring<\/a><\/td>\nTammy Wynette and George Jones<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
30<\/td>\nThe Catbird Seat<\/a><\/td>\nJames Thurber<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
31<\/td>\nFirst Sale<\/a><\/td>\nJessica Francis Kane<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

—<\/p>\n

Deeper background, for information hounds:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m afraid I don’t know the author Jessica Francis Kane<\/a>, but I follow her publisher, Graywolf Press, on Twitter. Graywolf, in turn, follows Kane. And a few weeks ago she posted a tweet (retweeted by Graywolf — are you following this???) which said:<\/p>\n

National Poetry Month has “Poem in Your Pocket” Day. What could Short Story Month have? Twitter, this is our calling.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(The “Poem in Your Pocket” thing is an initiative<\/a> sponsored by the Academy of American Poets poets.org site. On that day — which was April 18 this year — “people throughout the United States select a poem, carry it with them, and share it with others throughout the day.”)<\/p>\n

Well, I thought about Kane’s question for a handful of minutes. And then — I almost never do this with strangers — I replied to her tweet:<\/p>\n

Short Story Up Your Sleeve Day?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She liked it enough to say so publicly, and after my initial excitement (Twitter can do that) I, uh… well, I forgot all about it. (And as far as I know, so did the rest of the Internet.)<\/p>\n

Scroll the calendar ahead a couple of weeks. Suddenly (or so it seemed) I started to see references to one of those periodic mass writing-exercise social-networking things which sweep the Internet every now and then. This one is called Story a Day<\/a>: the idea is, you commit to write a (probably short-short) story every single day for the month of May. An interesting idea, and if I didn’t have a day job and other writing projects already I’m pretty sure I’d take them up on the challenge.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0then<\/em> I remembered the Short Story Up Your Sleeve thing. Maybe I couldn’t write<\/em> a story a day… but I sure could\u00a0share<\/em> a story a day.<\/p>\n

So that’s what this month-long series will do.<\/p>\n

If I’m feeling ambitious later, I may come up with some way to make these things easier for\u00a0you<\/em> to share, too. I noticed, for example, that the Poet in Your Pocket thing included a page of pocket-sized PDFs<\/a>, pre-preprinted with poems. Maybe I’ll do something like that. Who knows.<\/p>\n

Anyhow, please enjoy the samples. And — if you get a chance, and are so inclined — sometime this month, toast their authors, or just the simple notion that people continue to write and share short stories in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s simple, really: every day in May (at least in 2013, we’ll see about future years), here at RAMH\u00a0I’ll post I posted an excerpt from a different short story. Each story may be a famous one or one you’ve never heard of; they’ll come from all sorts of genres and time periods (although, my own […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-13292","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","5":"entry"},"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P6kZSG-3so","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13292"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16537,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/13292\/revisions\/16537"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}