So Bookriot didn’t pick me to write for them

Back in March, my friend Sheri, who introduced me to Bookriot, sent me a link – the website was taking applications for writers and she thought I might be interested. They were, it said, searching for people to write about books and reading, writers who could be articulate, entertaining and humorous.  To apply, one had to indicate the genres one prefers, include a blog link (if applicable), and submit two writing samples.  The application referred you to the contributed posts on the site as models, stressing that you should not send book reviews as Bookriot is not in the business of reviews (a claim I have since decided is not entirely true).  You could not send any writing that had been previously published, so nothing from my blog, despite its minimal readership.  The deadline was only a few days away, so I had to think and write fast.  I ended up submitting a rather humorous piece about my previous book group and a shorter piece about why I still patronize brick and mortar book stores (actually posted here after it became clear that Bookriot would not be using it).

When the announcement date (April 19) came and went without word from the site, I logged on and perused.  No mention of decisions then or in subsequent days.  I was mildly disappointed but when I looked at the pieces that have been most recently posted, it was clear why I wasn’t selected and,actually, also a huge relief.  Some of the posts suggest to me way more research than I would like to do:  “100 Must-Read Latin American Books” (Now, has that writer actually read all of those books?), “Making the Most of Your Library of Congress Experience,” (again, a field trip plus conversations with librarians needed) and “The 35 Best Lines From Jane Eyre” (How many times would you have to read the novel to come up with that?)  Other posts demonstrate a creative stretch that, to be honest, I probably couldn’t make:  “When Books Inform Lipstick Choices,” (The writer briefly summarized novels and then shared the lipstick color she would select for the character.), “What Happens When You Name Your Cat Hemingway,” and “Anatomy of a Scene:  Before and After the Book-Burning in Little Women” (a comparison of film versions). 

Selected Bookriot contributors must post at least twice a month; while I try to update my blog every week to ten days, coming up with new ideas is tough.  One of the things that this experience has taught me is to look a little further outside of myself for subject matter such as, for example, the news.  As with books I wish I had written, here’s a very topical Bookriot post I wish I had submitted: “Fictional Women We’d Totally Put on the $20 Bill.”  Now that would be fun to write!

Why I Sometimes Pay Full Price

I like to think that I was one of Amazon’s first customers.  Certainly that first Christmas after they opened for business would suggest as much when I received a post-it note pad and travel coffee mug with the now familiar curved arrow logo to thank me for supporting their business. That was back when Amazon was just books; of course now there isn’t much you could want to purchase that can’t be had with one-click shopping.  Still, probably 80% of my orders are books that can be on my doorstep in 48 hours or Kindle purchases that provide instantaneous gratification.  For all my love for Amazon, however, this isn’t about online shopping; rather, it is about brick and mortar bookstores and why I occasionally still pay full price.

Amazon can provide webcasts of interviews with authors but it isn’t the same as hearing the writers in person read from their books and talk about what inspired them.  In the Washington metro area we have not only Barnes and Noble and Books A Million, but also several independent bookstores that are, surprisingly (or not) thriving.  Famous authors like John Grisham and Elizabeth Strout as well as lesser-known poets and memoirists make weekly appearances at these stores, and buying their books at full cover price is, well,  the price of this experience.  I recently attended a reading by two poets who have each published several volumes and whose readings were more like performances that fed off of the audience’s clear appreciation.  It was a fabulous evening and I very much doubt I would have enjoyed the same reading via video nearly as much, much less even tuned in.

My daughter moved to Denver last summer and on each of my four visits out there, I have delighted in the fact that Denver’s independent bookstore, The Tattered Cover, is 3 blocks from her apartment.  The store is large with comfortable armchairs and sofas spaced around in nooks and crannies, perfect for curling up while you peruse the featured books on the coffee table in front of you. An in-house café sells coffee drinks and fattening muffins that you can sip and munch as you walk around the store.  They have the best card selection I have ever seen anywhere as well as all sorts of products for the true bibliophile.  As featured on their website, “We are a Denver institution, a community gathering place, and an experience you can't download.”  True that. 

The Washington Post, New York Times and Time Magazine reviews, as well as the latest featured books on goodreads and bookriot are my main source for my “to read” list, and I am sometimes snared by Amazon’s clever algorithm that recommends titles based on my browsing and purchase history.  But what about those great novels that haven’t rocketed to the level of bestseller or been lucky enough to be reviewed?  Again, another thing I love about visiting bookstores – magical finds that may or may not reach stardom.  On my most recent visit to The Tattered Cover, I picked up Improbable Fortunes:  a Novel by Jeffrey Price and Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume, two books I have not heard of anywhere else. 

I always experience a moment of hesitation when I decide on a book (or two) for purchase and realize that I will be paying $25 or more for a new hardback, but that’s not so much to trade for an hour of actually seeing and touching the books that interest me.  A friend recently asked why I have a Barnes and Noble membership ($25 annually), commenting that she doesn’t buy enough there to get her money’s worth.  That could be true if you measure it by your 10% savings afforded by the card each time you make a purchase; however, I feel it is worth $25 to know that I can jump in the car and be thumbing through “New and Recommended” in only 15 minutes.

Reconsidering the Short Story

I have never been much of a short story reader; it’s a form that I – and I think most people – associate with middle and high school English classes, a form that is ideal for quickly teaching plot, characterization and irony, but not something readers outside of school, well, read. Who doesn’t remember O. Henry’s “The Ransom of Red Chief”, “The Gift of the Magi” and   Ray Bradbury’s “The Sound of Thunder”?

In recent years, however, I have changed my mind.  Ironically, or not, my rediscovery of the short story did happen in a classroom.  A few years ago my colleague and I, teaching senior IB English, decided to reconsider the novels we were asking students to read in the spring, novels that, if we were lucky, 50% might finish, the rest having succumbed to senioritis.  We decided to end the semester with short stories, pairing pieces from South African writer Nadine Gordimer’s  Jump and Other Stories with selections from Nigerian Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s The Thing Around Your Neck.  The buy-in for reading skyrocketed as students could all power through 5 to 10 page stories that could be read in one sitting and, even more exciting, the resulting discussions were rich and wide-ranging.  An added bonus:  as an adult reader, aside from my role as teacher, I found most of the stories complex and interesting and looked forward to reading and discussing them.  Adichie’s stories are set both in Nigeria and in the United States and many focus on characters who are seeking to clarify their own identity while struggling to overcome stereotypes and judgments of others.  Her manipulation of narrative, her imagery and her deft handling of communication between characters makes her stories masterful.  “Jumping Monkey Hill,”  one of my favorites in the collection, is about a small group of African writers who gather for a writer’s retreat sponsored by a British society and organized by a Brit, Edward.  Stereotypes abound as Edward treats the writers as “Africans” and proceeds to tell them that what they write about doesn’t sound African enough. 

Gordimer, a white South African, confronts race relations in a variety of ways and her use of symbolism is powerful. A student favorite in the Gordimer collection, “Some Are Born to Sweet Delight,” is about a family that lets a room to a foreigner whose home country is never named, but context clues suggest that he is from the Middle East.  The daughter in the family falls for him and is so in love with love that she (and often the reader) ignore some very important details. . .  “The Ultimate Safari” is the heart-breaking story of refugees who must travel across a game park filled with wild animals like lions to reach a safe camp.  They pass by white vacationers who are staying in luxury, there for a safari.

Yet another classroom activity that drew me into short stories, albeit a different kind, was a fiction-writing unit I taught at the end of last year.  In search of short examples for short original pieces, I discovered Flash Fiction:  72 Very Short Stories, edited by Thomas, Thomas and Hazuka.  The concept, as explained in the book’s introduction, is to write a complete short story that will fit on two facing pages so that the reading is not interrupted by the turning of the page.  Most of the stories in the collection are around 750 words.  The stories are typically first or third person and limited to one or two characters.  Out of necessity, they jump right into the moment without an exposition and most have a surprise ending.  While I intended to read only enough to find three or four good examples for students, I found myself reading the whole book.  Most of the stories are quite good and it was too easy to think, “Oh, I will just read one more.”  One of my favorite stories was “Deportation at Breakfast” by Larry Fondation.  A guy goes into a diner and orders breakfast.  While he is waiting, the Hispanic man who is cooking and running the place is arrested by the immigration police.  The narrator is hungry and senses his eggs are going to burn, so he gets up and finishes cooking his breakfast.  While he is behind the counter, other customers come in, assume that he works there, and order breakfast.  The story ends with him contemplating hiring extra help.  In addition to being fun to read, I found the stories also inspired me to write flash fiction.

Here are a few other short story collections that I have read in recent years and definitely recommend:

Redeployment by Phil Klay

Winner of the National Book Award, this collection of related stories is reminiscent of Tim O’Brien’s All the Things They Carried in its focus on individual soldiers and the aftermath of war.  The opening line of one story is, “Success was a matter of perspective.  In Iraq it had to be.”  This reflects what Klay does so well in this book – showing a variety of perspectives, none of which reflects that the American involvement in Iraq was positive.  Each story assumes the voice of a different person involved the war.  Often the narrators are soldiers, but one of the best stories channels a civilian contractor who naively believes that he can make big changes. Klay’s un-PC point of view is very effective.  A veteran in a bar tells a guy he meets there about a particularly harrowing war experience.  The guy declares his respect for soldiers and the veteran replies, “I don’t want you to respect what I’ve been through.  I want you to be disgusted.”  This seems to be at least one overall goal of the book:  to deglamorize war, to pull back the curtain and show the physical, emotional and spiritual destruction that it reaps. 

Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri

From the writer of The Namesake and The Lowlands, this collection echoes similar themes of identity and exile.  The stories capture the challenges of first generation Americans and their immigrant Bengali parents.

Ford County by John Grisham – a departure from his usual legal procedural, this collection seems like Grisham’s slam dunk of his home state of Mississippi.  Many of the characters represent the stereotypical deep Southerner of country western songs:  alcoholic, cheating, loose, gambling, racist. Several of the stories are humorous and the book shows that this writer is capable of work more literary than courtroom thrillers.

Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk by David Sedaris – I am a huge fan of Sedaris’ memoir-type stories and embarrass family members by laughing so hard when I talk about them, I can hardly get the words out.  He’s not to everyone’s taste, however.   That said, these are stories written like modern fables featuring animals who clearly represent people or types of people.  My favorite story was about two flies who meet in a pool of vomit at the bus station and the one fly goes on and on about her connections.  She has eaten the vomit and once the feces of the lieutenant governor’s wife and sees herself as superior to the other fly as a result.

Honeydew by Edith Pearlman

An eclectic collection of stories, many of which bear discussion in a book group.  Pearlman creates interesting characters and writes with an eye for detail.  Several of my favorite stories (“Puck” and “Assisted Living”) take place in a thrift shop called Forget Me Not.  Pearlman explores the significance of objects to memory and the importance of not letting love slip away.  “The Golden Swan” takes place on a cruise ship, providing a contrast between the experiences of the pampered passengers above deck and the employees below.  “Wait and See” is an imaginative story about a man who has pentachromatic eyesight, meaning that he can see many more shades of color than the average person.

And finally, sitting on my nightstand. . .

The State We’re In:  Maine Stories by Ann Beattie  (in the book group queue)

The Tsar of Love and Techno:  Stories by Anthony Marra (author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena)

Three Moments of Explosion:  Stories by China Miéville (described as a “genre-subverting novelist”)

Recommended Reading:  

Sara Gruen’s At the Water’s Edge

One of my favorite reads in recent years is Sara Gruen’s 2007 novel Water for Elephants.  The story, in which she vividly recreates the world of the traveling circus of the 1920’s and 30’s, is both a coming of age tale of young Jacob Jankowski who runs away to join the circus, as well as the story of a stormy love triangle between Jacob, the beautiful horse rider Marlena, and her fearsome, cruel husband, a circus boss.  Rosie, the featured circus elephant, becomes a prominent character who figures into several of the novel’s key events.  It is also the story of a world on the edge of change as the attraction of traveling circuses is on the wane.

Gruen’s latest offering, At the Water’s Edge, is a compelling read with many things in common with the earlier book.  Maddie Hyde accompanies her husband Ellis and his best friend Hank to Scotland in search of the famous Loch Ness Monster,that, like Rosie, figures in key scenes throughout the novel.  Also, the elusive sea creature soon becomes a metaphor for other kinds of monsters – Hitler (It’s 1945) and, more significantly to Maddie, Ellis.  The three come from money and status in Philadelphia and the origin of the trip is Ellis’ feud with his father (who as a young man claims to have photographed the famous sea creature but is later discredited) – a chance to redeem both his father’s reputation and his own standing after disgracing himself at a society party.  Hank and Ellis’ treatment of the locals who run the only inn in town reflects their own self-satisfied sense of superiority and lack of sensitivity to anyone but themselves.  Their stay in Scotland is comprised of a series of revelations for Maddie about her husband and his friend, about herself and about the greater world from which she has been sheltered. 

Scales fall from Maddie’s eyes as she comes to first see a world beyond her own sheltered one.  On the ship over, she encounters wounded soldiers and in Scotland, she is faced with the scarcity of food and fuel, the need for a bomb shelter when the sirens go off, and the dread that a telegram can bring. While the two men go off for days at a time leaving Maddie behind at the inn, she begins to develop friendships with the two women who cook and clean there, Anna and Meg, and out of both friendship and boredom, she offers to help with the running of the end, winning their admiration for her willingness to get her hands dirty and support as she grows increasingly alienated from her boorish husband.  As in Water for Elephants, a love triangle slowly begins to develop as Maddie develops a friendship with Angus, the man who runs the little inn where they are staying.

Gruen again is masterful at recreating a sense of time and place.  Even though it was the 1940’s, the novel reinforced my desire to visit Scotland.  Her characters are well developed and the juxtaposition of a creature with the humans who, in this case pursue it, again serves to highlight human folly and the power of the natural world.