Eight Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon is a series of eight vignettes, each telling a short short story (flash fiction) of an episode in the narrator’s home town (only tip-off to first person POV is usually "our") that are otherwise unrelated. Each is a complete story within itself, with all the necessary elements of arc and conflict and resolution, and each is a very well organized look into human nature that is self-referential and often disturbing.
This is my favorite story so far, and I’m intrigued by the concept. I have myself written a series that was posted on Spinning a while ago that was tied into the Seven Deadly Sins (I actually composed eight–one for food gluttony since it’s such a personally precious part of my life), and have just recently been thinking of putting some effort into rewriting them as some are more fairy-tale oriented while some are more contemporary and wanted closer relevance.
Each of the numbered segments in this work builds up to the final story, and each displays a part of humanity that leaves one wondering. In the first episode, two rival high schools are defined by their football teams and more clearly by their social and economic status. Pranks between the two build up each year until due to a lowered population, the two are melded into a single new school. The question then becomes who to go to war with and a neighboring town is selected and the cycle begins again.
Story #2 is about a poet’s unpublished manuscript that becomes police property and the legal battle over rights turns a policeman into a poet and a fraud. Story #3 is your mailbox bashing and lawsuits that it entails. Story #4 is a mis-identity of a pet cat and the misinformation given to its rightful owner. Story #5 is superstition over a road sign. Story #6 is a wonderful four paragraphs of story that starts with a group of children in a school play and ends in their traumatic futures based on that play (this was just wonderful!). Story #7 is of a professor speaking to a group and making fools of them, with the twist of joke coming back to haunt him. Story #8 is of a local novelist writing a 1000-page story that after required cuts, came down to a single haiku.
Lennon is brilliant. I’ve got to look him up and locate more of his work if possible.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
I agree about Eight Pieces. Unique, fascinating, evocative in a dark way. I also agree that the best of the pieces is #6. And somehow Lennon makes these disparate episodes form a whole.
But the next story, “Stone Animals” by Kelly Link. Forty-two pages long! I have thought up a diabolical punishment for the people who brought it to the pages of BASS. Bradford Morrow (the editor of Conjunctions), Katrina Kennison (if indeed she exists), and Michael Chabon will be put into cell-like rooms (cot, sink/toilet, desk); there can be no communication between them. They will have a copy of BASS, and they must count how many times each of the following words (or any form of them) appear in “Stone Animals”: rabbits, painting, haunted. When they all come up with three identical numbers, they will be released. Maybe, at the end of their ordeal (which could take months), they will realize what a foolish, ugly, boring mess they have subjected readers to.
Or, at least this reader. (I had to read the thing for a discussion group I belong to.)
That story, Stone Animals, was probably among my least favorites, and I did a review of it on January 17th, 2006, though I was rather gentle. My favorite three were: Hart & Boot, 8 Pieces, and Shiva Ravna Murthey (can’t recall the exact titles now). If you check my post on Stone Animals, I mention that it was so similar to Stephen King’s The Shining in its haunted takeover that I really couldn’t get excited about it. And, the title of my posting questions particularly the story’s length.
I am enthusiastic about something excellent, but also “enthusiastic” about something bad.
The discussion group I’m in met last night, and we did two stories from BASS — “Eight Pieces” and “Stone Rabbits.” (I know, wrong title, but one of the people in the group called it that, in all innocence.) I loved the response. Everybody thought the Lennon story was wonderful, most hated the Link one. Thought it was worthless, and wondered how it got picked as “best” anything. One person commented that Link didn’t have any idea what she was doing — just strung bizarre ideas along endlessly, and they add up to nothing. A few group members thought it was an OK read.
As you could tell from my previous posting, I was angry — because I’m a writer, and if I don’t have a dozen unpublished stories better than “Stone Rabbits” I need to check into a mental institution. I can wander the halls in my robe and slippers, muttering “Le mot juste.”
I believe people should be angry, when it’s justified. Anger, though, gets one in trouble, especially if you’re a writer. You need to cultivate, not alienate.
Oddly enough, one of the lit blogs just mentioned a new lit journal that he was drawn to because of Link’s name. Personally, I’m becoming highly suspicious of many of the lit journals who are well placed, and yet seem to choose their selections based on other than fine writing.
Get angry and channel it into your writing. Do you belong to a writers group as well as this readers circle?
I think there needs to be is a place for dissent in the literary world. A blog where it could be pointed out that the Emperor has no clothes.
Does one exist?
I know that foetry ruffled a lot of feathers by exposing how poetry contests work. But I’m not a poet.
I also know that dissent is not your purpose in this blog and won’t, with my subsequent entries, dwell upon the unfairness of it all.
Muriel Spark (Dame Muriel!) wrote an autobiographical novel describing the time she was employed as a junior editor in a prestigious London publishing firm. I remember a line: if you weren’t a Name you were sending your manuscript “to sea in a sieve.”
I’ve had a total of 2 semesters of creative writing classes in my life. Both given at night, and separated by many years.
At least 95% of the writers published in BASS have MFA’s (as does Kelly Link).
People tell me to write solely for the pleasure it gives me. Sadly, I agree with what Katherine Anne Porter wrote: “What any artist most longs for — to be read, and remembered.”
I enjoyed your essay on Lolita.
Paul, I did send you an e-mail, but I’ll copy it here in case you did not receive it:
Hi there, Paul. Hey, do you keep a weblog? If so, do I know about it?
I completely understand your frustration. Don’t know if you read one of my posts on the BASS compared to the BAMS (Best American Mystery Stories) of 2005 wherein I noted that it seemed mighty peculiar to me that out of hundreds of stories published each year, and only twenty picked for each of these two separate annuals, about three (I think, at least) stories were chosen for both issues. Now, c’mon…what are the odds. So believe me, I know that something’s not quite above board in the lit journal world.
It also occurred to me, mainly because I was catching up on a couple years’ worth of four major journals (Glimmer Train, Confrontation, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner) that many of the same authors had stories several times in these magazines. Again, with thousands of submissions, and somewhere between 5 and 12 stories in each, quarterly issues a most, how’d these same authors get picked.
I did have the guts to publish that post on the MetaxuCafe website as well, but no one dared comment.
I think you may have stirred me up to a posting on this subject fairly soon.
No, don’t write just to please yourself. Write with the full intention of needing to share your stories with others. The rejections, and I’m gearing up to send a couple stories out right now to the first tier of journals, will come, I’m sure. But a writer can always fall back on what the fuck do they know.
Best,
Susan