Lying in bed, I began to think about A Study of Short Stories. This was a class I took last Fall, before I knew I was going to move to a different state and thus pause my ever-continuing education. This one was at a college further away than the others I’d been attending. It required driving north on the 280 and exiting onto Skyline just before the arrival in Daly City. I drove this highway every week from August to December. That’s a big change. Warm summer to rainy winter. I was reading for that class, watching films for the film class, and listening to music for the music class. Each one was at a different college. I was going through a series of realizations about denial I’d been in and what I wanted from myself and others, which I had never stopped to consider until then. I had only one person who knew any of this, and she was someone I never met. It was a busy time. I began to think of the drive to that short story class. I thought of the long drive on empty roads at night, free of oncoming headlights and street lamps. I thought of my jeep’s radiator blowing up on the freeway and the cost of towing back to my apartment. I remembered driving by the San Bruno fires and seeing everyone at the college in a panic. I remembered Raymond Carver and Jindabyne. I remembered talking to students, people who were (somewhat) interested in literature and discussion of fictional works. I remembered the Russian gymnast with her aspirations to be a lawyer. During the course of all this thought, which mind you was a mere flash in time, my head started to stir. My chest tightened. I could not move for a minute or two until finally I stood and paced. I have space here—halls to tread, impatient, in the middle of the night. I mention this because before, during that busy time, I barely had room to sleep in. I still could not name the source of this feeling. It was not pain, nor confusion. It was an unfamiliar sensation. It was unease of the most unidentifiable kind, which, for someone like me, is the worst kind. An invisible aggressor, something inherent and profound enough to get me out of bed in the middle of the night. I don’t know what a panic attack is like, so thinking I had one is likely an overreaction. But it sure as hell was something. It might simply be that, finally, I miss the people and place I left behind.
Tag: reading
goals
I posted a list of the top one hundred novels. I’ve only read four of them. I’m holding up that many fingers on my left hand. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro. I have about twenty of them sitting on my book shelves. I’ve seen at least another ten of the novels as films. I’ve received general details about many more from friends or the Internet. This is not what a man who wants to write for a living should be doing. He, I, should be reading them. I speak passionately, sometimes frighteningly and confusingly, about writing, about creation and development and the birth of an idea. It’s usually the only thing I can be passionate about, that and the woman I’m with. I am a man of singular focus. It sometimes pains me, or angers me, or arouses me, especially when something I’ve written comes out better than I could have hoped. And yet, I don’t take time to read enough. Never enough. I focus too much on doing and speaking and not enough on paying attention.
Two of my goals this year are to read at least fifty books and get one short story published. Did you know it’s already the middle of May?
goals
I posted a list of the top one hundred novels. I’ve only read four of them. I’m holding up that many fingers on my left hand. Uno, dos, tres, cuatro. I have about twenty of them sitting on my book shelves. I’ve seen at least another ten of the novels as films. I’ve received general details about many more from friends or the Internet. This is not what a man who wants to write for a living should be doing. He, I, should be reading them. I speak passionately, sometimes frighteningly and confusingly, about writing, about creation and development and the birth of an idea. It’s usually the only thing I can be passionate about, that and the woman I’m with. I am a man of singular focus. It sometimes pains me, or angers me, or arouses me, especially when something I’ve written comes out better than I could have hoped. And yet, I don’t take time to read enough. Never enough. I focus too much on doing and speaking and not enough on paying attention.
Two of my goals this year are to read at least fifty books and get one short story published. Did you know it’s already the middle of May?
Showered up
Showered up, walking around naked, waiting for laundry to finish.
As good a time as any to finally read/ogle Nanoka. Japan is a lot more interesting now.
Showered up
Showered up, walking around naked, waiting for laundry to finish.
As good a time as any to finally read/ogle Nanoka. Japan is a lot more interesting now.
Powell’s Books is Following Me
I mean, I am not an excitable type. Not at all. But this is the best bookstore in Portland (the only one, c’mon), and possibly the universe, following the things I post. We’re talking about an entire city block, a lot of fucking space, full of books, and they’re following me.
Just.
Powell’s Books is Following Me
I mean, I am not an excitable type. Not at all. But this is the best bookstore in Portland (the only one, c’mon), and possibly the universe, following the things I post. We’re talking about an entire city block, a lot of fucking space, full of books, and they’re following me.
Just.
modern short fiction
I have a love/hate relationship with modern short fiction.
I love that there’s so much of it, that one can find and read great short stories from all corners of the print and web worlds, including Tumblr. I love that a short story gets to the point, states what needs to be stated and resolves the matter (or not, depending) succinctly. I love that I can feel like shit and have my mood completely turned around by one good short story.
I hate that there are so many short stories in the world, more than I will ever get to read. I hate that short stories capture a snapshot and leave the reader with the feeling of finding an incomplete album whose photographs tell something but not everything. I hate that short stories are reflective of my probable short attention span.
So, yea. Some of my favorite short fiction authors are Russell Banks, JC Oates, Raymond Carver, Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, Stuart Dybek, Woody Allen, Atwood, Carlos Fuentes, Gogol, Hemingway, Kafka, James Joyce, Kermit Moyer, Flannery O’Connor, Poe, Sontag, Updike, Maria Teresa (she only published the one but I really liked it), Borges, Niaz Zaman, Welty, and I could probably go on for hours so I’ll stop here.
What do you like to read, Anon?
modern short fiction
I have a love/hate relationship with modern short fiction.
I love that there’s so much of it, that one can find and read great short stories from all corners of the print and web worlds, including Tumblr. I love that a short story gets to the point, states what needs to be stated and resolves the matter (or not, depending) succinctly. I love that I can feel like shit and have my mood completely turned around by one good short story.
I hate that there are so many short stories in the world, more than I will ever get to read. I hate that short stories capture a snapshot and leave the reader with the feeling of finding an incomplete album whose photographs tell something but not everything. I hate that short stories are reflective of my probable short attention span.
So, yea. Some of my favorite short fiction authors are Russell Banks, JC Oates, Raymond Carver, Donald Barthelme, Lorrie Moore, Stuart Dybek, Woody Allen, Atwood, Carlos Fuentes, Gogol, Hemingway, Kafka, James Joyce, Kermit Moyer, Flannery O’Connor, Poe, Sontag, Updike, Maria Teresa (she only published the one but I really liked it), Borges, Niaz Zaman, Welty, and I could probably go on for hours so I’ll stop here.
What do you like to read, Anon?
By the way the short story in this week’s New Yorker, “Blue Roses”
By the way the short story in this week’s New Yorker, “Blue Roses” by Frances Hwang, is really good. (It is not online. Buy the magazine.) It is about friendship and family and being a foreigner with American children and getting old. And dreams. Here is a little bit of it:
My friendship with Wang Peisan is strange, I know. She makes everyone around her crazy. Ever since she was a child, she has been indulged, her life as delicate as a teacup. She had weak lungs, and her parents didn’t expect her to live. They bought her larger and larger coffins as she grew. In one of her dreams, Wang Peisan wanders lost in a museum, room after room filled with coffins no bigger than a tissue box. She opens one after another—like Goldilocks, she says—and it exasperates her that she won’t be able to fit into any of them. What can you do with a person who has dreams like this?
I was just about to post about this! The narrator is a terrific character, one of the most fully-realized I’ve read in a long time. I rarely laugh out loud at short stories.
The New Yorker has made the last three stories that I really liked subscriber-only…
The New Yorker is something I used to peruse at the dentist’s office when there were no National Geographic or travel magazines to ogle. I also knew it was chock full of dry cartoons because there was a Seinfeld episode about it. Most recently, I discovered the magazine features good fiction and good writing in general, which I occasionally catch up on when browsing the website.
A few days ago, at the bookstore, I decided to finally buy one. See what the fuss is about. I skipped straight to the fiction and it was “Blue Roses.” I stood in Periodicals and read some of the story while a guitarist strummed in the cafe. The story played, the guitar accompanied, and all I could think was: yea.