Dear writer-friend,

Dear writer-friend [insert name here]:
I planned to go to your reading all week.
I even washed my hair this morning, but
it doesn’t look like I’m going to make it.
It’s too complicated to explain in an email,
and no matter what I say it will sound like
I’m just making excuses, but here goes:
I’ve got two deadlines at once this week.
And an absentee husband, on account of
there’s a high-end audio tradeshow in town.
I’ve got to walk the dog and I haven’t yet.
And then I’ve got to take something over
to someone who's inconveniently leaving
town tomorrow and needs this thing by then.
Stupidly, I haven't eaten anything all day.
It's almost 6:30 already in Mile End and
your reading starts at 7 downtown.

Sorry.

Good lick tonight. I mean good luck.
Some typos just have to be left in.

JR
. . . . .

The Very Short Story 101

So two fiction writers walk into a bar. That’s not the opening line of a joke, that’s just what fiction writers do. They walk into a bar. Now if they haven’t slept with each other yet they might engage in some witty flirting. If they have slept with each other already or are sleeping with a friend of a friend or secretly hate each other or each other’s writing or have written reviews of each other’s work, some awkward editorializing might be required. But basically, two fiction writers walk into a bar, they drink an alarming amount, there’s chemistry or there’s competition, and eventually one will turn to the other and ask: So, who have you been reading lately?

In January 2006 Mike Bryson, editor of the Toronto-based web journal The Danforth Review, asked 27 Canadian writers what curriculum they would bring to class, if they were asked to teach an introductory level course, The Short Story 101. I’ve never taken an introductory level course on the short story let alone taught one, so I don’t know what makes a good curriculum. Not all of the 27 lists listed on TDR read like curriculum. Some seem like maybe they were compiled to impress fiction writers in bars. But maybe that’s just me.

I used to hate to read short stories. Then I found out I write very short stories, which isn’t quite the same. Anyone signing up for "The Very Short Story 101" would probably be better off just reading poetry. Chances are I’ll never be an English teacher, not with that attitude. But the next time I walk into a bar with a fiction writer, here are some of the authors, stories, or groups of stories that I’ll try and squeeze into the conversation:

Franz Kafka, "The Metamorphoses"
Isaac Babel, "Red Calvary"
Gogol, "The Overcoat"
Chekov, "The Kiss"
James Joyce, "The Dead"
Angela Carter, "The Bloody Chamber"
Haruki Murakami, "The Elephant Vanishes"
Flannery O’Connor, "A Good Man is Hard to Find"
Grace Paley, "The Small Disturbances of Man"
Cynthia Ozick, "The Shawl"
Amy Hempel, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson is Buried"
Barbara Gowdy, "We so Seldom Look on Love"
Anne Carson, "Short Talks"
Lydia Davis, "Almost No Memory"
Mark Richard, "Strays"
Joy Williams, "Honored Guest"
Ron Carlson, "Towel Season"
Lisa Moore, "Open"
Greg Hollingshead, "The Roaring Girl"

So, who have you been reading lately?
. . . . .

365 x 3 + 1

Three years and a day after the second American invasion of Iraq and I’m still not shocked, still not awed. I knew it. We all knew it, though these days I’m less and less sure whom I mean when I say we.

"I told you so" being an insufficient response to this anniversary, and in an effort to be constructive, I recommend these books, both of which provide profound historical insight into the predictable patterns of America’s present predicament.

Feeling an ominous foreshadowing of the months leading up to the invasion I read Stanley Karnow’s Vietnam: A History, The First Complete Account of Vietnam at War (NY: Viking, 1983). Karnow was a foreign correspondent in Vietnam for two decades beginning in 1959 while the French were in Indochina. Here’s but one salient fact culled from Karnow’s brilliantly written 670 pages:

"During the thirteenth century, the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan invaded Vietnam, three times, pushing south to control the spice routes of the Indonesian archipelago. The Vietnamese, commanded by the illustrious Tran Hung Dao, repulsed each offensive. Like outnumbered Vietnamese officers before and since, he relied on mobile methods of warfare, abandoning the cities, avoiding frontal attacks. and harassing his enemies until, confused and exhausted, they were ripe for final attack. In the last great battle, which took place in the Red River valley in 1287, the Vietnamese routed three hundred thousand Mongol troops. In a victory poem, Vietnamese general affirmed that 'this ancient land shall liver forever.' Seven centuries later, the Vietminh commander Vo Nguyn Giap evoked Tran Hung Doa’s memory as he launched an operation against the French in the same area." (101)

America doesn’t do much research into the history of the nations it invades. Remember that surreal scene in Apocalypse Now where the American soldiers have dinner at the French colonist’s house? America would also do well to consider the failure-rates of previous invaders. In preparation for the invasion of Iraq a bit of reading up on the British Empire in the Middle East would have been wise.

I am quite sure that Donald Rumsfeld has read Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. All those military guys have to at some point. But Rumsfeld is old and America is young and neither is paying attention to patterns of history. Read the entire eight volumes of The Decline and Fall replacing the word Rome with the word America and tell me how many more years we are going to be marking this anniversary. Yes, I mean "we". Here are but a few passages:

"Against internal enemies, whose desperate insurrections had more than once reduced the republic to the brink of destruction, the most severe regulations and the most cruel treatment seemed almost justified by the great law of self-preservation." (63) [Read: Homeland Security]

"The long peace and uniform government of the Romans introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated… [The Citizens] received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign and trusted for their defence to a mercenary army… and sank into the languid indifference of private life." (82) [Read: Complacency]

"The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and as soon as time or accident had removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of its ruin is simple and obvious; and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed, we should rather be surprised that it had subsisted so long." (621) [Read: The bigger they are, the harder they fall]

"As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear without surprise of scandal that the introduction, or at least the abuse, of Christianity had some influence of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire." (622) [Read: The rise of the religions right]
. . . . .

Green Thoughts

Who better, on Saint Patrick’s Day,
than Andrew Marvell? Someone Irish
perhaps, but I’m not thinking
of ethnicity, only green with poetry.

"… the mind, from pleasures less,
Withdraws into its happiness:
The mind, that ocean where each kind
Does straight its own resemblance find,
Yet it creates, transcending these,
Far other worlds, and other seas,
Annihilating all that’s made
To a green through in a green shade."

Andrew Marvell, The Garden (excerpt)
. . . . .

Beware The Ides of March

Here is a mourning Rome, a dangerous Rome,
No Rome of safety for Octavius yet.

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

. . . . .

International Women’s Day

It’s International Women’s Day today.
I’m a woman every day, and try to be
as international as possible, budget permitting.

It’s the Chinese Year of the Dog.
My dog is a dog every dog year, though
the Year of the Dog doesn’t last seven years.

Even when Black History Month is over
black history keeps on happening,
at least it has in the past.

Now we’re in Pisces.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Some of my best friends are Pisces.

Soon it will be Passover,
which doesn’t happen around Easter.
It’s the other way around.

When was the Year of the Child?
I hope I missed it. I had about eight years
as a child, and that was too many.

I think it’s a sign of progress that,
though I feel in need of a holiday,
I could live without this one.
. . . . .