Confessions in Narrative

SmokeLong Quarterly—Issue Twenty-Four—"I Use Commas like Ninja Stars" by Samuel Lee

So, this is one of the most popular stories at SmokeLong. Most clicked anyways. So, I decided to take a gander and write a review.

Lee tells the tale of being a 1st generation immigrant. The child of adult immigrants, the narrator grows up with English being taught to him in school and through language he becomes American. Acculturated. Assimilated. He rejects his parents' old world ways until the end when he is reunited with his mother over the grave of his father.

This flash seemed a bit uneven. I found it effective, but not entirely convincing. Lee seems drawn to turn this into a narrative, to give us some "arc." So, the son leaves and rejects the old ways. But he comes back and says, "look ma we talk same." Huh? Same? Isn't this the character who's all about change? Can't he remain changed, "talk different" and still love his mother?

I did enjoy the flash up until the point where it decided to go narrative. At that point, when the narrator goes to college, we lose the focus of the boy learning English and conflicting with his parents and soon we're treated to the tortured phrasing, "pawn their configurations for money." You mean be a writer? Write for money?

At that point, in the second-to-last graph, I find the author stretching. He's got something going, a real flash. Then he decides he needs the arc and there he starts writing the story. The narrator gets righteous about his grammatical prowess and the author loses what's special about this piece.

So, while I did appreciate the confessional nature of the story, the emotional tug of watching a boy grow up through the language of his adopted homeland and the conflicts that brought at home. But, the flash needed to stay there, stay with that conflict and that interesting, complicated focus. That Flash.

Please take a look and comment back if you felt otherwise (or if you agreed) about this flash.

Amazon Fail

I'm not really buying Amazon's obfuscations. Really, that sort of bamboozlement went out with Shrub and the rest of those bums.

There is a nice debunk of the Amazon Bunk Here

So, support Powell's - at least they're in my local economy ;)

Novellas / Short Novels

Taking a tip from John Madera, whom I don't know, but who Matt Bell linked to over at Zoetrope, I'm listing a few novellas I like:

1. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
2. The Secret Sharer - Joseph Conrad
3. Timbuktu - Paul Auster
4. The Mezzanine - Nicholson Baker
5. A Box of Matches - Nicholson Baker
6. Age of Grief - Jane Smiley
   

Review of Living in Reverse by Kate Blakinger

Living in Reverse (published by Vestal Review and available online)

Kate Blakinger offers us an excellent example of a non-narrative flash. Virtually nothing happens in this piece. The only in-scene action we have is where the unnamed woman takes Polaroid photos of her children and names the one June. The rest of the action is rather non-specific in terms of when it occurs.

The title is curious as the woman is not, in fact, living in reverse but wants to live in reverse. The final paragraph is interesting in the wonderful description of a possible life lived in reverse. The life of one of the children, backed up to the moment prior to conception where the woman's lover moans her name.

The writing in this piece is quite strong and I was drawn in by the first sentence. However, I found the second sentence rather hard to swallow - it felt tacked on, somehow. Coming from the humor and accessibility of the first sentence to the stark, simple, and hard-to-believe second sentence was somewhat jarring and I almost stopped reading.

However, I found this to be an interesting flash showing me something about identity, desire, and the loss we sometimes incur as a result of progress.

I find Ms. Blakinger to be an interesting writer and I am curious to find more of her work in the future.

Review of: Skip, Patch, Eye, Brownie, Chalk by Randall Brown

Cricket Online Review

Again, Randall shows a story, finds a story, dealing with the very act of writing and exploring. Moving from a prompt, Brown finds a story necessarily wrapped up in the prompt words. A story discovered in a chain of words which deals with youth, abandon, and with our place in the cosmos.

Wasted youth, wasted on an ancient battlefield. Running over again the patterns, the mistakes, the triumphs and defeats of their parents.

I will add this to my growing collection of favorite Randall Brown flash fictions. If you would like to find more of his work, please look to his webpage/blog: http://randalldouglasbrown.blogspot.com/

Brown's story has now inspired me to look to prompts to find my next story.

The Power of the Author

Along for the Ride

3:AM Magazine » He Was So Clean Otherwise

Straight away, Chinquee pulls me into this piece. I'm caught in a fast rhythm, moving through the market, to the "meat place" for sausage. That language really sells it, tells me that we're in a rather gross place. Add that to the title which puts up my antennae for some filth and there we are at the market with Carlos, in the life of Carlos. Stuck with Carlos.

One thing I would have to criticize in this piece is that this seems to be a day like any other. There doesn't seem to be anything special going on to make Carlos particularly vile on this day. Since this is a very narrative flash, I would like there to be some central event to set things off. And I wanna know why the veins in his forehead are throbbing - is he exhausted? angry?

Without some real defining elements I'm simply left looking at a woman who doesn't really like her boyfriend. She made a mistake and now she's with this rather gross guy. I don't find this to be really compelling fiction.

I usually enjoy Chinquee's writing. I admire her quite a bit, actually. However this flash just doesn't do it for me.

Please comment if you have another view.

Meg Pokrass: Needles

Find Meg's latest at w i g l e a f : (very) short fiction.

I love a good Pokrass story. I also love saying that I love a good Pokrass story.

Ahem.

Here, Meg tells a tale about needles. Things that needle and fester, needles that release, and the actions we take which prolong pain; actions which numb ourselves to the needles of both pain and relief.

Pains from childhood, pains acquired as an adult. I love the bulbous man in the story who drives a Mercedes but who cuts his own hair. He nails it for me, shows me that the narrator is pepetuating a cycle, one more time around, taking her out of her element into a foreign world where she is a Martian, a willing martian on display for his camera.

Well, just go read it.

Flash a Thon

This week in the Zoetrope Flash Fiction wing, there is a flash-a-thon going on. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, it works thusly: for a week, you attempt to post one flash per day. For each flash you post, the system requires that you review 5 flashes.

Sounds like a tall order, and it is. However, this is a great way to push yourself or to take up those abandoned fragments and see if something can be salvaged from them. That's what I did during my first flash-a-thon as a Zoe newbie last summer. Heck, I was just coming off my first residency for my MFA so I was a virtual newbie to (serious) writing.

So, if you can't catch up enough to participate this time around, do get a Zoetrope account and poke around. Then, when the next 'thon comes around, you'll be seasoned and ready.

Don't forget to buy a silly t-shirt at FlashFrenzy!!!

Dripping Humanity

Fish: 'Swicks Rule!'

Kathy Fish has an uncanny ability to depict humanity in a very real, raw way. Her characters always seem to have a bit of grease on their nose and maybe a pimple on their neck. Not grotesque necessarily, though she does go there on occasion, but just very human.

Here, your heart just breaks for the narrator, sensing his tension and pain. He's being a good sport, surviving horrible heartbreak and loss. Just read it and let Fish show you.

I suggest reading this story and then heading to Google to find Fish's other works. You won't be disappointed if you do.

Don't forget to visit the main Wigleaf page, either.

Elvis by Hobie Anthony

Elvis by J. Hobart Anthony

I hoped they would change the pen name, but no dice. No biggie, it's still me and it's my story.

I based the dog after my friend's dog Elvis who has all four legs but who is a lab. Their earlier dog, whose name currently escapes me, was in fact bitten by a rattlesnake and had one of his back legs removed. So, I combined the two dogs, removed a leg et voila: Elvis!

I'm considering a rewrite here. I'm conceiving a collection of stories set during Chicago's infamous heat wave of 1995.

Maybe this One by Randall Brown

Word Riot

I read this one back when I first started really writing. I remember critiquing it and being somewhat of a jackass. Of course, it did need work as the piece was really a mess - written as though the author were on the way back from a Dead show with all the psychoactive implications of that.

But, it's neat to see the final form. Brown sets us up with a couple travelling and lost, a couple bound for nowhere. Free and easy out on the road until they run out of gas in a bilingual land. Love unrequited, but not by the 1st person narrator who is still yet left with something of a loss.

Check it out. Word Riot does good work, so be sure to check out the other flash pieces there.

Always Beautiful by Thomas Kearnes

w i g l e a f : (very) short fiction

I've read Thomas Kearnes work for a while at Zoetrope and I find this piece to be somewhat of a shift. Not only is he writing about a woman, or with a woman in the story, but he's taking a more poetic turn, it seems.

This is a rather nice piece, it seems to me. Anyhow, take a look and then hit the Wigleaf main page to find their other wonderful treasures.

freezebubbles

Links. That's about all I got until after Residency next week.

freezebubbles

I've just started 3 new flashes and I'd love to have one submittable by the end of the month if I don't explode first.

Funny Movie

Ok, so I haven't been posting much. I've been busy with other stuff (silly job.) So, here's a funny video featuring a dog to tide you over. I found it at Andrew Sullivan's site (he finds some really good stuff!)

Write a flash about it or something.

Oh, if you're going to AWP in Chicago, Dogzplot is holding a flash fiction contest. I believe the prize is $200 and there's no entry fee! So you might as well enter. Say hello to them for me. I'll be surely soaking in Portland rain.