Short-Story Month: Day 30, The River by Flannery O'Connor

"It occurred to him that he was lucky this time that they had found Mrs. Connin who would take you away for the day instead of an ordinary sitter who only sat where you lived or went to the park. You found out more when you left where you lived. He had found out already this morning that he had been made by a carpenter named Jesus Christ. Before he had thought it had been a doctor named Sladewell, a fat man with a yellow mustache who gave him shots and thought his name was Herbert, but this must have been a joke."

"North Georgia River" by Melissa,

Used under CC license

We're drawing toward the end of National Short Story Month, and have yet to feature a story by one of the best American writers, Flannery O'Connor.  

And, so, today's selection is her story "The River". "The River" follows a boy whose parents have hired a Southern fundamentalist--perhaps by mistake, as it seems--to watch him for the day.  She ends up taking the boy to a river baptism, a new experience for the boy who later returns to the river alone.  

Like nearly all of O'Connor's stories, although her own religiosity and tendency toward trying to save her readers through careful allegorical imagery and grotesque images, "The River" defies O'Connor's religious wish in the story and shows us complex characters in the strange situations that religion itself stages time and again.  Regardless of O'Connor's intentions, "The River" is an excellent story of the way humans try to control their own lives by controlling each other's and the terrible fiasco that comes from such behavior.  And the main character, "Bevel", is hilarious, too.  And he knows it.

"The River" by

Flannery O'Connor

(link goes to a nearly full "preview" 

of the story on GoogleBooks)

Short-Story Month: Day 29, Inland Sea by Stuart Dybek

by Shirl, used under CC license

Today's selected story is two sentences long.  And the sentences are made to work so hard, but with a seeming lack of effort, that certainly one should wonder if this is poetry or prose.  Right now, it's categorized as flash fiction, but seems more of the imagist camp, of the William Carlos Williams club.  Regardless.

Were every sentence in fiction so well built, like the architecture of a ballerina's extended leg, well, then, that would be lovely. 

The story also was selected as part of the annual Wigleaf series, which is aimed at collecting the best flash fiction published in a given year, and where she discovered this.

"Inland Sea" by

Stuart Dybek

(2011)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 28, Speaking of Courage by Tim O'Brien

by z0xx Under CC license

"The town seemed remote somehow. Sally was married and Max was drowned and his father was at home watching baseball on national TV."


Today's selection is a war story that follows the character Norman Bowker who, having returned from war, finds himself driving circles around a lake in his father's truck, and in his memory.

"Speaking of Courage" 

by Tim O'Brien

(1990)

Short-Story Month 2012: Day 27, Story About The Body by Robert Hass

by Charlotte Nordahl, CC license

"The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week."

Embedded within a newspaper article by poet Robert Pinksy is Robert Hass's prose poem "Story About the Body".  Or not poem, one might argue, but flash fiction piece.  Or one might argue, not flash fiction but a very short story.  What's the difference?  Good question.

For today, the work will be a short story and one that definitely, in its writing and reading, is a celebration of the form--since, of course, the title itself draws attention to the form.  So, without further ado, here is the story for Day 27 of National Short-Story Month, from his collection Human Wishes,

  

"Story About the Body" 

by Robert Hass

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.