Up around 3:30 thanks to the hip. Ninety minutes later, and I am waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in. Do I go to work or not? I am not expected there, but I need the money and have little to do today. Well, the story is done. I do have plenty enough paper to get typed. I have another half hour to make my decision - or to admit a decision has already been made!
Overnight, "Problem Solving" was rejected again:
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read and consider "Problem Solving." Unfortunately, your submission is not the right fit for our journal at this time. We appreciate your interest in New Delta Review and wish you the best of luck placing this work elsewhere.
Sincerely,
The Editors
New Delta Review
ndrmag.org
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To an amazing writer,
Thank you for your submission to Defunkt Magazine. Although we must decline your submission this time, we appreciated the chance to consider it. We hope you'll keep us in mind in the future when you send out your work.
Sincerely,
Kaunain Khan
Associate Prose Editor of Defunkt Magazine
9:37 am.
Yep, I kept my day off. I started off to Target about an hour ago, only to remember it does not open until 9 or 10. I went, instead, to McClure's for a bottle of Coke. The knee hurts. The hip does not.
Did I mention I spoke with KH last night? I did. Not a peep out of any else but E.
I read Between Two Worlds, a review of a James Hogg biography, by Michael Lister. That was from Textualities, a Scottish site.
Not a critical biography, James Hogg: A Life, is minutely researched and locates the writer in the social, economic and cultural contexts of his time. Its defining characteristic is in the particularity of detail that Hughes provides about the publication and reception of Hogg’s works, from ‘Jamie the poeter’s’ first published poem, which appeared in the Scots Magazine when Hogg was in his early twenties, to the last pieces he contributed to Fraser’s Magazine, shortly before his death in 1835. Hughes throws remarkable light on the Edinburgh and London publishing scenes of the time, and on the new age of periodical literature that swept across Britain and North America (where several of Hogg’s works were published, though not to his pecuniary advantage, as they appeared in pirated editions that UK copyright could not protect).
Following my Scottish theme, I went over to The Bottle Imp for Scottish Short Stories
by Carl MacDougall.
I thought this sounded close to home:
Scottish short stories come from a tradition where stories were told to entertain and inform. They carried fear, risk, menace and warnings; they established boundaries and ensured continuity, especially informing young women on the dangers of men and young men on the dangers of women. And even though they could be dour and a wee bit thrawn, they were used to enhance what were seen as traditional Scottish values of acceptance and neighbourliness, and while danger was usually on the other side of the hill, they carried life in all its variances with our twin identities of voice and place.
It’s worth remembering that these social priorities arose in the predominately rural society that existed in Scotland for millennia before cities arrived, and in many cases these priorities prevailed in cities through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
I grew up listening to stories told by my older relatives. Log ago, I was told if I could write as I talked, I would have something. Still working on that suggestion without much success - so far.
These stories linked contemporary readers with Scotland’s oral tradition and often combined straightforward historical fact with plain storytelling, putting us in touch with our common heritage that reaches beyond more formal records. Their humanity and straightforward storytelling often obscure where one ends and the other begins.
And travellers were profligate in their telling. Like true custodians they enjoy nothing better than to share these stories, as much as they shared the songs.
It’s important to understand that these origins are anything but literary. The stories were memorised and orally transmitted; they kept the past alive and restored it to contemporary audiences. Duncan Williamson maintained these stories, especially those you hear in childhood, remain with you, so that both the story and the teller are never forgotten.
I have not been writing my short stories in the first-person. Why this is, I have no explanation other than decades spent doing formal writing.
I have written elsewhere that the short story is a very subversive form:
“Images have to be sharp and characters must arrive fully formed rather than be given time to develop. This precision … (is) imposed by the form. Most of the craft of short story writing is hidden; if you see it, it hasn’t worked, but as with any literary form, the craft and mechanics are on display if one is willing to look.”12
It is difficult to read a collection of Scottish stories without becoming aware of the spoken voice and the power of first-person narration. It is absolutely crucial. It establishes the tone and direction of the story by forming an immediate and firm pact with the reader, appearing in every instance to take him or her into the writer’s confidence. Not surprisingly, it is the first decision a writer takes and one he is often not aware of making, since its influence is often instinctive.
###
Of course, the first-person narrator is a direct link to the oral tradition, offering more than just a method of sharpening a story’s range and power. A third person narrator cannot make characters say more than the scope of the action permits. On the other hand it is entirely legitimate for first-person characters to give themselves over to reflection, reasoning, political opinion, philosophical meanderings and so on.
Scottish writers have become especially adept in employing the intimacy of first-person narration in a third-person narrative. Stream of consciousness is common, especially when dealing with the young mind or in establishing the problems of identity. And though further study is obviously needed, this device, as well as first-person narration, has been used by writers as diverse as Margaret Oliphant and Muriel Spark, who use details to build an atmosphere, which they just as tellingly deconstruct, or allow to crumble. It has been employed by male writers such as Grassic Gibbon when writing about women, by writers as distinct as Virginia Woolf and James Joyce and generations of children’s, crime and romantic novelists.
And I think there are lessons there for us in Indiana, in the Midwest, and maybe across the United States. It feels like a kick to do more first-person stories.
I think this aligns with some of what KH and I have been talking about, especially last night, about what I am seeing in the stories I have been reading lately. Or a lack, to be more precise.
But where are their voices? Where are the people who danced in George Square? Have the fat bullies who kicked food around the Square the evening after the Referendum result won? Where are the voices of protest against the status quo? We have plenty descriptions of urban poverty, of intellectual poverty, of poverty induced by crippling want that is often induced by alcohol or drugs. We know what these things are like, but where are the radicals who do more than point these things out and whine about their condition? We still have folk telling us what’s good for us. We need to tell ourselves what’s good for us and to act on it. For all of this and much more the short story is the perfect vehicle. Scottish stories now take on the world’s confusions stretching from politics of gender through politics of war and landing back home with the politics of domesticity.
And here is another rejection for a different story:
Dear Samuel,
Thank you for the opportunity to read "Exemplary Employee." Unfortunately, your story isn't quite what we're looking for right now.
In the past, we've provided detailed feedback on our rejections, but I'm afraid that due to time considerations, we're no longer able to offer that service. I appreciate your interest in Clarkesworld Magazine and hope that you'll keep us in mind in the future.
Take care,
Neil Clarke
Publisher/Editor
Clarkesworld Magazine
www.clarkesworldmagazine.com
That came a few days earlier than I expected.
The Drift published Controlled | Annie Ernaux and the Millennial Sex Novel. Frankly, what I read of the new novels leaves me disinterested in them. Which will surprise some people who might think this subject is on my mind. Why not? Well, in the words of Graham Parker, passion is no ordinary word. They also seem to violate the rule of Dorothy L. Sayers: The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless. I would like to read Annie Ernaux, though.
Meanwhile, Gabor Maté Wants to Overhaul Society:
Isolation and loneliness are so prevalent in our society today. A fundamental argument in your book is that this is toxic, leaving us traumatized, disconnected, and ashamed, which you have long claimed is the root cause of most chronic illnesses.
We’ve evolved in communal settings for millions of years. Our prehominid and our hominid ancestors and our species lived in a community in close, cooperative, collaborative contact with others. The hypercapitalist ideology of people being competitive, aggressive, selfish, individualistic creatures is almost guaranteed to isolate people.
In the UK, they had to appoint a minister of loneliness. Loneliness is as much of a health risk as smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, and the number of lonely people is going up all the time, significantly in the last several decades, particularly under neoliberalism. So, when I talk about society being toxic, I literally mean that it actually undermines human health by the very assumptions that it makes about what’s necessary for human life.
How is the nature of our current system connected to rates of illness in our society?
If you look at the research on stress, the commonest triggers for stress response are lack of information, uncertainty, loss of control, and conflict. There is uncertainty, with an 8 percent inflation rate in a relatively rich country like Canada. What control do you have when some corporations thousands of miles away decide your fate or politicians far away decide your fate?
Inequality creates stresses on people, and the more the burden of inequality on somebody, the greater the risk of illness. That’s why Indigenous women face much more stress than the average person. Inequality itself is a stress because, in a society that values people according to economic achievement, those with less are made to feel inferior. Even if people who are making an adequate living feel themselves to be inferior, that’s a stress in itself. Then there is the totally unresolved issue of racism in our society, of which the health impacts are tremendous. Then there’s the gender gap; women account for 80 percent of autoimmune disease diagnoses. Stress isn’t just an abstract psychological event; it translates into physiology in the endocrine system, which organizes the hormonal apparatus, burdens the nervous system, taxes the heart.
Toxic societies kill us. Makes sense to me. Then, too, I managed to survive through my own craziness where I felt cut off from family and friends, and that became in my mind their dislike for me.
Interested in a different kind of novel? Check out A Romanian Daedalus’ Surrealist Labyrinth: On Mircea Cărtărescu’s “Solenoid” by Ben Hooyman.
Merriam-Webster has its Word of the Year: Gaslighting.
It is 11:54, and almost the end of the morning.
Dear Sam,Please accept our apologies for the delayed response. We thank you for the opportunity to review your work. After careful reading and consideration, we did not select it for publication. We wish you luck in finding the right place for this piece. In the meantime, please take a look at our current issue.Best,The Editors
Target later. Placing stories now. Work, of a sort.
sch
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