Reading Around

 I decided to read around the literary magazines, looking at the stories published, and then I put it off, and now I am putting it back on. It is Christmas Day. Here are the results, if anyone reads this and then goes to read the original stories, I will think I have done them a service. If you want to leave a comment below, I will thank you now. I doubt this will happen, but I think a conversation about writing is a grand thing.

Ten Minutes – Tim Frank from The Cabinet of Heed.

Opening paragraph:

You wait until the sound of his footsteps fade from earshot and you slump into your chair, putting two fingers to your forehead. You pull the trigger.

All right, we know we're not in Oz. It is not "Call me Ishmael", but the curiosity is snagged and asks: Why the suicidal thoughts, right? This does what I want to do with my openings: get you to read on. 

The paragraphs vary in length, but there is energy here. I think KH would say that is what I lacked with the opening of "Best of Intentions." Here are the story's second through fourth paragraph.

You have ten minutes to decompress, get back to yourself, maybe put your inner child in a playful headlock, kick her in the shins, yank her pigtails.

And yet you still don’t know how to deal with your patient’s lingering impression. It’s like digesting a stale boiled egg. His cat litter funk still remains so you pull out an air freshener from your handbag – pomegranate and basil – and spray the room like you’re a shaman casting out voodoo spirits. You gag on the chemicals, blinking as the droplets of perfume settle on the bed and your trusted leather armchair (the things it’s seen.) You’d like to take a lie down, but sinking into the patient’s warm indentation fills you with dread.

Nine minutes.

The different size of paragraphs add to the energy generated by the sentences. Shortness may be even more important that we're all reading online. They set the tone as a bit off-kilter. From the dread increases to desperation. Ending with:

Back in your chair, in your room, you place your elbow on the armrest and your chin on two fingers, ready to interpret. Everything is at angles. Your head begins to slide as your patient knocks and enters. He lies down and starts to talk about his dog. He doesn’t notice you’re far gone, and neither do you.

Some fictions have ending that will make you want to read the story as much as the opening paragraph. I suggest this one might - how did the protagonist get "far gone"? 

I skimmed the other stories in the issue, I recommend them, but they do seem to share a similar style: energetic sentences, short paragraphs. As for my own stuff, I think nothing fits - which is why I looked up the magazine - and there is nothing I would not go back and read in full, if I had the time. (4000 words maximum. That leaves only "Colonel Tom.")

MIA by James Callan is from Drunk Monkeys. This is the opening paragraph:

Maybe it demonstrates I’ve had a blessed life even saying it, but I’ve known hell in the hours I’ve put in at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Maybe it shouts out loud I’ve had it too good if standing around doing nothing all day looking at masterful artwork is my idea of fire and brimstone. And sure, yeah, maybe I’m exaggerating a bit. Laying it on thick. But it really says something when the highlight of my day is going around in circles, a merry-go-round of careful driving in fresh and old snow, ice that won’t melt for another four months, feeling the beat of my heart that tells me I’m still alive when I finally find a tight space that just might work and I hold my breath to attempt the urban winter parallel park. When that’s the scene that lifts the heavy drapery of thick, cloying malaise up over my head and shoulders and allows to me go on taking in air for one more day that will be like climbing Everest and I’m not even into that mountain climbing shit, then you know you got yourself a job you don’t love. A life that doesn't exactly regale you with zest, with much of anything.

That is long, a bit dense, but still it has energy. Diction separates the speaker from the formality of an art museum. I am not so sure that it will make me read further - other than having started with it. Reading on, we learn he is a security guard. Then the writer starts working on green.

You’d stand, or pace, look at art you knew better than the back of your hand, than the stain on your clownish, clip-on bow tie that might’ve come from the nosebleed of the guy who last worked here and decided either to kill himself or quit. Maybe he got fired. And I bet if he did he left the building with worry in his gut that his wife was gonna give him hell but he left with a smile all the same, knowing he ain’t ever again going to lock eyes with that Seated Girl that stared back like she hated you and maybe she was sick too ‘cause for whatever reason Ernst Ludwig Kirchner painted her face green.

Maybe it meant something. They’re always telling me art is profound. So I guess choosing green on a whim wasn’t a likely story. Some profound meaning in that green. Green with envy? Green with youth? Maybe if I’d just read that placard it’d tell me why. Maybe it would explain she ate her split pea soup like a dog cause her dom got kicks out of treating her like a bitch. Just read the placard. I was bored, but I wasn’t that bored. Besides, if I read that thing I just might fall asleep on the spot and I can’t afford to lose this job even though I’d leave the building smiling. I just know it. 

Green, huh? Looked like the wicked witch of the west. I tapped my heels and hoped some benevolent spirit, or Glinda, the good witch of the north, would whisk me away. Anywhere would do. Hell, even the McDonald’s drive-thru I could just make out as I stared out the window, those yellow arches the only bit of color across a sprawl of homes draped in white, marred by black lightening bolts, dormant trees that looked as glum as me when I caught myself in the mirror. 

Green, huh? Green just made me bitter. Made me think of the green I didn’t have. The green my wages didn’t allow me to save up. The green that had turned brown around October and now will remain under snow until about as many more months as I have fingers on the hand that hurts like hell cause I punched a wall this morning. Did it to stop myself from crying. The sobbing had gone on all too long and the snot dribbling down my chin wasn’t something I wanted to freeze to my face as I scraped the hard snow off my windshield. Green, huh? Green just made me think of how the grass is greener. On the other side of these walls decked with magnificent artful treasures.

Malaise getting unwrapped as something more intense. It is a low, throbbing build up. Something played on the bass comes to mind. Probably the throbbing feel.

But I don’t mind the drive. Those three hours. I got the radio playing baseball, which is weird ‘cause it’s winter and then I realize the radio is off but I’m hearing all about pitching prospects, home runs, and stolen bases just the same. It’ll give me some chit-chat ammo for Rembrandt, or Lucretia if she’s still only in her death throes and not yet dead. Those three hours went by like three minutes. The Cheeseburger Hot Pockets from out of the microwave tasted like fine dining. Everything was a little brighter. A little greener. Even if everything was white. White until two weeks after the May Day parade, and it was hardly December. 

Everything was better. Much, much better. ‘Cause I was home, or more pointedly, I wasn’t at the Minneapolis Institute of Art. I was home, soon to be drunk. I’d drink until the haze hid the reality that tomorrow would be another day. I’d drink with maybe an old rerun of Seinfeld on and I’d take it in with blurry vision and only remember it ‘cause I’ve seen it ten times before. I’d drink until everything was oblivion. Like an imploded star. I’d drink till my mind went blank, till my mind went MIA. 

High art meets working class life. The dull job that only functions to keep one alive facing creative genius. Closer to my way of writing, but I do not do much with first person. Well, not yet. First person feels a bit uncomfortable, still. I think it is a carry over from my lawyer days - much easier to analyze from the third person, much more comfortable presenting a case study than being the case study.

I decide to check out another story from Drunk Monkey, Universe is So Amazing by Laura Goodman. Another first-person narrator, but with an opening that operates a little differently. This one states its case in a longer paragraph, but also with energy.

 

Why in the world my mother wants to marry this guy is beyond me. I don’t like him and I don’t trust him. Just looking at him makes me want to throw up. I mean, you can see little hairs waving in his nose when he breathes – yuck, and he wears those glasses that when you look at him, his eyes look way bigger than they’re supposed to. It’s a little scary actually. He’s tall, but not in that good, hunky way. His kind of tall makes him – what’s the word? A vocab word from last week? Oh yeah: loom, that’s it. The guy’s always around, looming, and it’s creepy. He’s just creepy. And boring. OMG he is so boring! For example, take running. He talks about it all the time and the “bennies” of it. He actually said that once, “bennies”, like trying to be cool. Not! God, just say “benefit”, dude. Then last night, he started talking about his running shoes. The man is possessed. We were having dinner – if you can call it that, my mom’s not the greatest cook – and old blabber mouth went on and on about how it took him forever to find his perfect ones. Like I could care about his stupid shoes, like anybody could. Then, bingo, just like every time he talks about running, he started going on about eating only foods that promote a strong body and mind. Mrs. Sparn’s health class is more interesting than that, and she’s an idiot. 

So, this morning I’d like him to drink one last disgusting glass of his puke-colored smoothies, then lace up his precious pink and yellow Nikes and run. Away. Leaving me and my mom to ourselves. I mean, aren’t we fine the way we’ve been for the last twelve years – tight, just the two of us? Come on, don’t people even say how much we look alike? I know she likes that. Just the other day in Forever 21 when she was paying for that dope jacket with the fringe –which I know she’ll totally borrow – didn’t the salesperson say I looked just like a smaller version of her? It’s not such a stretch really to think that either, because my dear ole mama’s not that much older than me since she had me the day before her seventeenth birthday. We celebrate together.

This sounds like people I might know. Then Mom gets to put in her say:

My daughter is mad at me, spitting mad, and I don’t know what to do. Sure, we’ve had little disagreements before, but this one is not little. It’s about as big as it gets. My Hailey has never been good about sharing and now that she’s having to share me, she’s turned ugly. And it’s really messing up our lives. It’s just been the two of us since she was born, but now that I have Art in my life – thank the Lord or whatever’s up there – she has him in hers too and, man, she is fighting it. Being a single mom is no easy thing, but I’ve tried, done the best I could, but sure, I’ve made mistakes. Maybe, yeah, I see now one of the biggies was how I let us be friends and just wanted us to have fun together. I read the article Art gave me from the New York Times – he’s always pointing out things for me to read – about how mothers should stay mothers, that their daughters need that more than they need another friend. Okay, fine, I get it. Guilty as charged. So now that I’ve finally got this terrific man in my life, all that’s biting me in the butt.  

Nicely done, completely different voices, the conflict is set out. The third section, the resolution such as it is, goes in a different, objective direction. Nope, not going to say what it is, You have to read it. It is not what I expected; it is much more fun than that.

Here I will end for now. I may do this again if there is interest from out there, or if the spirit moves me.

I submitted "Colonel Tom" this morning. This was done between Ten Minutes and MIA. I broke up the opening paragraphs; changed a few sentences. That was the first result of this morning's readings.

sch 12/25/22