Short-Story Month 2012: Day 26, The Daredevil's Wife by Tom Noyes

by Rebecca Partington,
Used under CC license

     "Otherwise a calm evening. No eleventh-hour ultimatums, no last-ditch begging. The daredevil and his wife stay home sip wine, channel-surf.
      The daredevil's wife is understandably anxious and distressed, but the daredevil knows, deep-down, she's on board."

Day 26.

National Short-Story Month.

In continuing the lighter of the dark stories from yesterday, she has to decided to continue the lighter of the dark with a dark story lightly told about a man bent on saving his wife, or himself.

"The Daredevil's Wife" 

by Tom Noyes

(scroll down the Eureka website to read)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 25, Show-and-Tell by George Singleton

by Taro Taylor,
Used under CC license

He held his arms wide open, as if I were a returning POW. "Did your teacher send back a note to me?"

I reached in my pocket and pulled out the letter from Héloise to Abelard. I handed it to him and said, "She made me quit reading."

"She made you quit reading? How far along did you get?"

I told him that I had only gotten to the part about "sugar-booger-baby." 

Six days remain of National Short Story Month, and so far, of the selected stories, none have been humorous.  And so, it's about time for some relief--a story about a boy whose father courts his teacher through a series of covert show-and-tells--by one of the United States' humorists, George Singleton. Of course, for humor to work there must be the bittersweet, too, and there is, there is.  

"Show-and-Tell" is from Singleton's collection The Half-Mammals of Dixie, which she remembers reading in the backyard on a blanket in San Marcos, Texas, having found the book at a library sale. 

"Show-and-Tell" 

by George Singleton

(2001)

Superb News! Pringle-Toungate 2012 Artist Trust Fellowship Recipient

A Washington arts foundation, Artist Trust has awarded Erin Pringle-Toungate a writing fellowship.  She is one of sixteen artists in Washington state to be awarded the honor, and one of eight in the literary arts category. Over 400 people applied for a fellowship.  Artist Trust is a not-for-profit arts organization that supports regional artists in their pursuits.  


"Fellowships award $7,500 to practicing professional artists of exceptional talent and demonstrated ability."  ~from the Artist Trust website


To read the list of other winning artists, please see the Artist Trust website or the press release in The Seattle Times.

***

Needless to say, she's very pleased and will be able to finish Midwest in Memoriam completely this summer and make a deep start into a new book.  A new book?  It's dazzling to consider.

Cheers!

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 24, The Lottery by Shirley Jackson

From original, in The New Yorker

"Mr. Summers spoke frequently to the villagers about making a new box, but no one liked to upset even as much tradition as was represented by the black box." 

Of course, long before Hunger Games, there was Shirley Jackson's short story, "The Lottery," which is today's selection.  "The Lottery" takes place on a day unlike any day for the reader, but a day the village has seen year after year, the day when a name is drawn and one villager wins. . .

"The Lottery" 

by Shirley Jackson

(1948)

(also in audio version)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 23, The Still Point of the Turning World by Patricia Highsmith

Cover of
Nothing That Meets the Eye

"There is a small park, hardly more than a square, far over on the West Side in the lower Thirties, that is almost always deserted. A low iron fence runs around it, setting it off from a used car lot, a big redstone public dispensary of some sort, and the plain gray backs of shabby apartment buildings that share the same block with it." 

From the author of Strangers on a Train, and The Talented Mr. Ripley, and other novels, comes today's selected story.  Any number of the stories that appear in Highsmith's uncollected works, Nothing That Meets the Eye, could be here.  Highsmith is a master story-writer, and it is a current shame that this collection hasn't yet won a major award.

 "The Still Point of the Turning World" is the story of two mothers who are strangers to each other and who bring their children to play at a park; the story follows the plot imagined by one mother about the other.  Highsmith takes a common situation and makes of it a masterpiece of assumption and despair.

"The Still Point of the Turning World" 

by Patricia Highsmith

(somewhere between 1938 and 1949)

Kore Press Finalist: How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble

A quick and lovely announcement:


Erin Pringle-Toungate's story, "How the Sun Burns Among Hills of Rock and Pebble", was awarded the honor of being a finalist in the 2012 Kore Press Short Fiction Chapbook Award.  The judge, Karen Brennan, had this to say about the story:


"What I most admire about this fine story is the author’s ability to render hyper-dramatic—almost gothic—material with a beautifully orchestrated lyricism that never over-reaches itself.  Indeed, the story of the young girl grieving for her murdered sister is made even more poignant for its distant, almost oracular point of view, a point of view that allows the reader to glimpse not only the protagonist’s confusion and sorrow, but also the indifferent, soulless landscape in which she wanders.  A little Cormac McCarthy, a little Carson McCullers, 'How the Sun Burns' is full of dense atmosphere, apocalyptic overtones and heart."

"Dark Pond" by Elliot Bennett, Used under CC license

The other two finalists were Carol Test and Rebecca Entel, and the winner was Mary Byrne, a writer originally from Ireland who now lives in France. Byrne will receive $1,000 and her story, "A Parallel Life" will be published in chapbook form by Kore Press.  Stay tuned to Kore Press (www.korepress.org) so you can be the first in line to read Byrne's story.  If you absolutely cannot wait, then you can also find her work in Best Paris Stories. 

Pringle-Toungate's story will be in her next book, Midwest in Memoriam. You'll also be able to read the story in the Spring 2013 issue of minnesota review.

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 22, The Things They Left Behind by Stephen King

"The things I want to tell you about--

the ones they left behind--showed up 

in my apartment in August 2002. I'm sure

 of that, because I found most of them 

not long after I helped Paula Robeson 

with her air conditioner. Memory always 

needs a marker, and that's mine."

It would be a total fault not to include Stephen King in a celebration of National Short Story Month since he is one of the working masters of the short story.  Any number of his stories could be selected, but the reasoning for the selection of his story "The Things They Left Behind" are these: 1) It's one of King's more recent works, and she thinks, shows more his abilities than some of his recent longer works; and 2) it's one of the few creative works to deal with 9/11 in a smart and cathartic manner.

As with any of King's work, it is difficult if not impossible to find online; even when magazines publish King, his work is available only to those who have paying subscriptions to that magazine (and as well it should be, regardless of who the writer is).  "The Things They Left Behind" is from King's collection Just After Sunset, and the title links to the story via the Google Preview for the collection.

"The Things They Left Behind" 

by Stephen King

(2008)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 21, The Red House by Ian T. MacMillan

Red House by Mike Klein,
Used under CC license

She discovered today's story, "The Red House", in the 1997 edition of the O'Henry Prize Stories which was assigned in one of her college classes (this is also the book where she first read Carol Shields).  She thinks she even wrote an essay about "The Red House", regarding its ending especially, which is fantastic in its brevity and poetry.  The story follows a quiet boy who lives in an isolated family with a strange father (this is totally based on her memory).

There is no excerpt because her copy of the prize stories was eaten her dog Gretta, then a puppy.  

For years, she has hunted for this writer while the story haunted her.  But he was difficult to find; perhaps because his last name has a typo on the Random House website ("MacMillian"), or perhaps because the story's title isn't listed in anywhere but three places online. But after some sleuthing, she has found out these important details: "The Red House" originally appeared in The Gettysburg Review; it appears in MacMillan's book Our People: Stories (2008), which has a publication year one year after his death; and in an interview with Karen I. Johnson, MacMillan had this to say about "The Red House": 

[Question by Johnson]

Two of these stories, “A Story of Water You Could Never Tell” 

and “The Red House” are not what I would consider traditional 

narratives.    How would you describe the style of these two stories 

and what led you to write in this style? 

[MacMillan's Response]

“The Red House” was an experiment in the use of second 

person (you).  It felt right, until I read some draft and saw 

the word ‘you’ too many times, so I began crossing them 

out, in effect crossing out subjects and verbs of a lot of 

sentences, which gave the narrative a kind of stream of 

consciousness quality.  The result enhances the tangibility 

of the experience, I think, and “A Story of Water You 

Could Never Tell” was a further exercise in the use of this 

approach.  

*

Needless to say, this story is high up on her list of excellent stories, and thanks to National Short Story month and choosing a story a day, she has found its book and has ordered her copy. She hopes you will, too.

"The Red House" 

by Ian T. MacMillan,

(1996)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 20, Bartleby, the Scrivener by Herman Melville

First page of Bartleby, from here

“Why do you refuse?”

“I would prefer not to.” And for Day 20 of National Short-story month, we turn to one of the great American writers whose work serves as a foundation for all that happens this day, Herman Melville.   Today's selection is his story "Bartleby", the tale of the disenchantment of bureaucracy and the waste of human life when stamped into the system.  If you enjoy this story, you'll likely find a similar experience in Nikolai Gogol's story, "The Overcoat."

"Bartleby, the Scrivener" 

by Herman Melville 

(1853)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 19, The Babysitter by Robert Coover

Photograph by Kelly Teague,
Used under CC license

"She arrives at 7:40, ten minutes late, but the children, Jimmy and Bitsy, are eating supper, and their parents are not ready to go yet.   From other rooms come the sounds of a baby screaming, water running,  a television musical (no words: probably a dance number--patterns of gliding figures come to mind)." 

It's Day 19 of National Short-Story month.  Today's selection is Robert Coover's story, "The Babysitter" from his collection Pricksongs & Descants (1969) .  If the story were a piano piece, it would be likely subtitled Variations on a Theme.

Like the composer who shows his or her skill by performing a piece in varying styles, Coover demonstrates his skill as a storyteller-writer in "The Babysitter" by creating a larger experience of plot through weaving (or unweaving) the possibilities that arise from the well-known urban legend typically known as The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs, its several variants, and the imaginative mind-space of the characters.  

"The Babysitter" 

by Robert Coover

(1969)

Coover won the 1987 Rea award, and the jury had this to say of his work:


"For taking the dross of the ordinary and spinning it into the treasure of myth Robert Coover [is] a writer who has managed, willfully and even perversely, to remain his own man while offering his generous vision and versions of America."