—-
Welcome back to DC’s Writers Workshop. This is the thirteenth in a series of days on the blog where writers who are part of the blog’s community present work-in-progress in search of the opinions, responses, advice, and critiques of both readers who don’t normally post comments here and local inhabitants of this place. I ask everyone to please read these works with the same attention you give the normal brand of posts here and respond in some way in the comments section below. Obviously, the closer your attention and the more you’re able and willing to say to the writer the better. But any kind of related comment is welcome, even a simple sentence or two indicating you read the piece of writing and felt something or other about it would be helpful. The only guideline I’m going to give out regarding comments is that any response, whether lengthy or brief, praise filled or critical or anywhere inbetween, should be presented in a spirit of helping the writer in question. I’ll be responding to the work too in the Comments section towards the end of the weekend. So, I guess all of that is probably clear. Giving support to the artists of different kinds who read and post on the blog has always been a very important aspect of this project, and this workshop series represents an opportunity to make that aspect more formal and explicit. This weekend’s workshop features five very short stories by the writer and d.l. dayeyhoule. He asks for any thoughts, support, or criticism you can give him. I thank him greatly for entrusting his work to us, and I thank you all in advance for your kind participation. — D.C.
*
Serrano
—-In a forgotten stone cathedral off Michigan Avenue, Felicia attended a photography lecture sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art. She was looking for some insight into “art” or “life” – something to take her outside herself for the evening. What she got instead were beautiful, oversized color pictures of bodily fluids, corpses, and old, naked Hungarian women smoking crooked cigarettes. That the lecture was staged in a house of worship was supposed to lend a modicum of “gravity” or “reverence” to the sensational subject matter. Instead, the setting merely added insult to everything the usual Sunday morning faithful accepted as sacred and holy. But, Felicia figured, that was the point all along.
Crybaby
—-On the verge of his twelfth birthday, puberty was already turning Billy into something he wasn’t, but as his eyes bulged all heavy and clear in the bathroom mirror, Billy was turning into something he vowed he’d never be again: a crybaby.
The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community
—-Rose Dennison was a crow. And like a crow her eyes could bully. A small, severe woman – stooped over, rail thin, all hard angles – it was Rose who’d spread the rumor that Earl Kramer poisoned his late wife, Bethany, then blew the insurance money on the slots before he fell down the basement stairs and his children brought him here: The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community. But what Rose and her tar pit eyes were now proposing even her henpecked septuagenarian boyfriend Walter Kern could not abide. She wanted Earl dead.
—-When Walter refused to go along with her plan, she cawed. Rose thrust her head up and cawed.
The Dead Uncles
They were arranged, the kid’s dead uncles were, from left to right by order of death rather than birth order.
—-The first, a medium shot of a ten-year old George straddling a brown- and white-spotted horse, was the only color print. Squinting under a wide-brimmed hat, George leaned forward, bracing himself with his hands on either side of the horse’s thickly muscled neck. His eyes focused on something off the left side of the frame. A slight curl in one corner of his mouth could have been a smile, though it easily could have been a wince from the bright afternoon sunshine. George lay down on some railroad tracks when he was thirteen.
—-Next to him was a standard holiday portrait of Earl posed in front of a Christmas tree. He stared straight at the lens, his unlined child’s face unmoved by the camera’s attention. A striped turtleneck crept up his neck and seemed to push out his ears, both of which poked through the sides of an awful bowl haircut. At fourteen Earl hanged himself from the rafters of the rickety barn Grandma Clara soon thereafter burned to the ground.
—-Uncle Billy was the kid’s favorite photo of the four, not least because the then-twelve-year-old most resembled the kid at that age. Billy’s was a headshot, tight, lots of negative space, with only half his face crowding the grainy right side of the frame. His one visible eye was partially closed, caught in quarter-blink. The slur of freckles across his nose would disappear by the time Billy was sixteen and he threw himself off the Portage Dam two towns over.
—-Jack, though first-born, was the last uncle to die. In the only wide shot of the four, Jack sat hugging his knees to his chest on the front stoop of the uncles’ tiny boyhood home. It was late autumn judging by the skeletal maple tree dominating the foreground. The kid always felt a chill standing before these family ghosts, and Jack’s figure, a seeming afterthought in his photograph, made it worse. Jack put a gun in his mouth a week before his eighteenth birthday.
—-The four-by-six-inch dead uncles lined a darkened, seldom-used hallway leading from the laundry room to the kid’s father’s locked den. Each print was mounted between two thin rectangles of glass then hung from thin-gauged wire on its own clear thumbtack. This precarious presentation always struck the kid as angry, as if his father – who created the tableau – was just waiting for these memories to shatter, was asking for an excuse to duct tape the garage shut and then start the car.
***
—-Why the father never followed in the footsteps of his dead brothers the kid didn’t know; the father was tight-lipped about so many things. If once it was to spare Grandma Clara from yet another loss, she was long gone now and wouldn’t know the difference. Maybe growing up with all that death made the father appreciate life that much more. Maybe he lacked the internal resolve needed to overwhelm one’s will to live – that primordial battle’s a real struggle. Or maybe the father simply loved the kid too much to do that to him.
The Eighteenth Arrondissement
Or
The Novel I Would Write If I Were a More Talented and Serious Writer
—-The novel I would write if I were a more talented and serious writer would be 325 or 340 or 415 pages long, i.e., substantial but still tight, long enough to be considered seriously yet not so long to be considered “bloated” or “in need of an editor.” It would make a beefy, but not unwieldy, slab of a trade paperback (no hardcover edition; trade paperback only – like American Psycho). The spare, elegant cover design would feature a photograph with lots of negative space or a “naïve” line drawing with lots of negative space, both tastefully paired with either a sans serif typeface or some “naïve” hand-drawn lettering:
Down the road, instead of a movie tie-in redesign featuring stills from the film or the official movie poster, we’d keep the original, iconic cover but add a “Now a Major Motion Picture” sticker that essentially markets the novel’s silver screen incarnation while still allowing the serious reader to peel off any reminder that she’s being marketed to. Incidentally, the film adaptation – both a domestic and international sleeper hit – will perfectly compliment the book; that is, it’ll stand on its own as a work of cinematic art, à la The Silence of the Lambs (also, like Lambs, nabbing the big four Academy Awards, plus Best Adapted Screenplay), but not detract from the detail and nuance and beauty inherent in reading a fully-imagined 325- or 340- or 415-page novel.
—-After several million copies sold, the novel I would write if I were a more talented and serious writer would receive the mass-market paperback makeover. It would be sold in drugstores and airports. That, after all, proves your book has really made it.
—-
*
p.s. Hey. So, I’ve pretty much laid out how I hope the workshop will work up above. I’ll just add that while the closer your attention is and the more detailed your responses are to daveyhoule’s stories, the better, of course, even a simple acknowledgment that you read the work and/or any thoughts you can share at all, however brief, would obviously be great and would mean a lot to the author. Thanks a lot for your attentiveness and participation. Like I said above, I’ll add my thoughts in the comments arena towards the end of the weekend. ** Misanthrope, Well, at least with news on the internet, you make choices, and you have be active and do things, and it’s a lot harder to sequester yourself with a single slant ‘cos the internet encourages you to move from place to place, keep moving, and you can check different perspectives so easily, even at the same time, unlike with cable TV news where you’re encouraged to be almost totally passive, pick one of the few channels, and let it flow into you. On American TV news, there’s barely any distinction between serious and celebrity news anymore. Gingrich loses his shit in a debate, and almost all you hear about the debate is how he lost his shit filtered through infinite spin about whether that’s good or bad, and the only real difference between Gingrich losing his shit and a Kardashian losing her shit is that you’re told that the former was a more substantive wack attack because he’s running for President, but it’s not more substantive, it’s just a guy in politics losing his shit. I don’t know. If you’re not in America all the time right now, America seems insane, almost lock, stock, and barrel. ** Kyler, Hey. I enjoyed the story a lot. It’s very sharp, and that sharpness has a lot going on in it, and yet it’s all very clear, and yet the poetry inside isn’t weeded out by the sharpness. Kudos, man. ** Ratty St. John, Hey! Ooh, nice sentence. That first one, or, wait, second one, i.e. ‘ … subjecting the norm to flakes of my freak’. That’s super good. So, you do mostly write fiction or you think of it that way. It’s especially hard to make the distinction when you’ve only heard someone’s work read aloud like I have with yours. Have you published your writing anywhere? I don’t need to tell you, I’m sure, to be wary of people who have issues with poetic passages in others’ work. They should be so gifted. There are people who are scared of the poetic or think that it surely must be some kind of mistake by the writer because, well, their imaginations are either losers or fascists, ha ha. If they only knew. ** Empty Frame, Hey. I’m cool, just *cue broken record* too busy. That’s going to be my lot for the next month at least. Michael S. does start crying in interviews sometimes. He’s very into it. He really cares about literature. I have a cuckoo clock in my LA pad. Well, it’s my pal/roommate Joel’s. From his grandma, and it doesn’t work, but I’m hoping some of those links on the post might help him figure out how to begin to fix it, which is easy for me to say since I wouldn’t have to hear it go off hourly. Cool that you scored that very well placed hotel. The ticketed events … You can buy tickets now. I’m going to add the ‘buy’ links when I post the final schedule. I don’t think you need to worry about tickets yet, at least for ‘Them’. Let me find out the score on that stuff once I start working full-time at the Pompidou late next week. I love Steven Millhauser. He’s definitely one of my favorite American writers. His recent short story book was on my 2011 ‘best of’ list. I think he’s wonderful. A great, unique writer. Porn film, interesting. You don’t know what genre? Hm, very intriguing. Sneak more info to me as you learn it if you can. ** David Ehrenstein, ‘Celine and Julie’ are on youtube! That is a new development, right? Happy Birthday to Federico! ** Casey McKinney, Hey, Casey, old buddy! You awesome? Thanks about the cuckoo clock post. It had some of my sweat and blood in it. Mousetrap Day: You mean, like, the game ‘Mousetrap’? The one where you build that kind of Rube Goldberg-esque plastic toy labyrinth with the rolling ball and all that? I love that game. Is that what you mean? I will totally try to do a Day on that. Or do you mean on mousetraps that, like, trap mice? That could be edgy. Man, it’s awfully nice to see you! ** Kiddiepunk, M-ster! Those new animal spirit things of yours fucking rock, man! Ooh, pre-production! So, having Bene out of the house slaving over dolls has had a good side, it seems? Want to see you. I’ll call you today. Also, nachos must be eaten by me soon while in the company of illustrious guests like you, don’t you think? ** Sypha, Hi, James. Oh, right, Bieber’s a serious Christian, right? And a Republican, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, the whole right wing shebang but without the insane lunatic fringe part, right? I think I read that. ** Alan, Hey. Yeah, I do know about that book, but I didn’t know it was out until you presented that link. Bill Mohr, the author, was in the LA poetry scene, and he was one of the few older, old school poets who liked and hung out with us young rebel types. He’s been working on that book for at least a decade. I think he interviewed me for it ages ago. I’m actually quite excited to read that book. A lot of us have been hoping for a serious book about the history of LA poetry for forever, and I’m pretty sure Bill has done a great job at realizing that kind of book. Thank you a lot! ** A.r., Hi, A. The AV Festival, cool. I’ll look that up. It sounds really fantastic, actually! March 17th. I’ll probably be preoccupied dismantling the ‘Teenage Hallucination’ festival then, but I’m going to see if there’s any way I can go to that. Cool thanks, my man. Great weekend of heavily gilded etc. to you. ** Todd (once IF), Hey, Todd! Wow, really great to see you! Awesome news there on your end all the way around! That’s really, really happy making. Yeah, I saw an email from you in my box this morning before I was caffeined enough to see straight much less read, and I’ll get to it and write to you about all that this weekend for sure. Cool sounding agent there. Man, yeah, lovely to see you, my friend, and more soon from me, and, yeah, just great all around, Todd! ** MANCY, Oh, man, thank you for the links and info ‘cos I did decide that, yeah, I want to do a French BM post of some sort, and that’ll be a super huge help. I’ll try to do it justice. I’ll hope that my semi-virginal approach will lead to something interesting. Yeah, I really, really appreciate that! Awesome news about the zine and the other RA-destined thing. Yes, please, alert me when it’s up, and if by any chance you want to use the blog to help let people know about the zine, I would be very happy to have a post here doing just that. Just say the word and we can sort it out, if that’s of any interest. ** Allesfliesst, I’m going to try with the Pompidou. I’m not sure if I’ll lay out the craziness that could result from such a booking first thing, though. I can tell just from the big hassle surrounding the dead animal component in ‘Them’ going on right now that it’s probably best to get the Pompidou excited without introducing the possibility of reservations first. Well, please do participate in the writers workshop, obviously. If you want more pressure, give me a hint about how to apply it respectfully. I love the jellos. I ‘liked’ them, and I like them, and I want to eat them, even that murky one. Murk is good when it wiggles. ** Wolf, You did, you did! I can’t wait to hang out too. And the falafel thing is already RSVPed. Or it is now. Gosh, okay, I’ll see what I can coax out of Stephen in terms of a musical portrayal of his brain in your private regard. He’s in a good mood right now, so heads up. Skiing! You skiing! You know, why the hell not? I am impressed. That’s the God’s truth. I was just reading yesterday that there’s going to be this new amusement park built here in France near Paris called Napoleonland. Yes, it’s true. And I mention this because the ride they’re hyping the most is some thing where you’ll fake ski down some mountain through piles of bodies of dead soldiers representing the soldiers killed by Napoleon and his military dudes at some battle that I think took place on the land where the amusement park is going to be built. Can you believe that shit? I am, duh, excited. ** Pisycaca, Hi, Montse! Oh, I see, that makes sense. It’s lame of me, but I always forget about the War and the unbelievable toll that took on Spanish culture. Anyway, Val del Omar is obviously really special, so I imagine he’ll be a lot better known within a few years. Thank you so much again for yesterday and for all it wrought. Great weekend to you with much love attached. ** Statictick, Okay, cool, about the questions, no problem. I’m just blanking on what Minus is, but I guess I’ll find out. Cool that you Matthew are going to meet, and, yes, Jack is a pip among pips, that Jack. And cool about your approach to the workshop, of course. ** Rewritedept, Oh, shit, that’s the name of a strip club there? Busted? No, I don’t know what the zipline is. The name suggests certain properties, but I’ll google it. I haven’t been to Vegas in, god, 7 years maybe? Whoa. I think Siegfried & Roy were still in one piece. I think Cirque de Soleil was still a cool, underground thing to go see. That long ago. I think your clothes thing sounds totally legit and non-rank. Nice busy day you had there, or, is it today? It’s hard to tell with the time difference sometimes. Enjoy or enjoyed as the case may be. Excellent weekend to you as well. ** Frank Jaffe, Hey Frank! 400 is a real crowd crowd, and, yeah, I still get stage fright, or at least whenever I can see the audience from the podium or whatever. When they’re blacked out, I’m usually okay. Yeah, I got the email and awesome! #2 looks possibly even greater than #1, to judge by the samples. One thing: When is the zine coming out? In other words, for when should I schedule the post? Tell me, and it will be yours. Thank you! I did Ecstacy a fair bit, but not since the mid-90s, I don’t think. If I’ve done MDMA, I didn’t know it. For me, Ecstacy was great for being in stimulating environments and having fun more than, say, for hanging out and watch TV or something. Actually, I had an amazing time being on Ecstacy at Disneyland, but a friend of mine who was also with me and was on Ecstacy had a bad time and got paranoid and stuff. Dancing is a good way to spend it, obviously. Just be sure to stay hydrated. Yury has done MDMA a bunch of times, and I think he would caution you not to take too much of it. He overdid it a couple of times and had really bad experiences. Anyway, that’s the extent of my knowledge/advice for now, I guess. Very cool weekend, F-ster! ** STOVALLSTOVALL, Hey. You’re back where you came from, safe and sound. Well, I guess it’s not where you came from, it’s where you … usually don’t leave? I’m pushing it with the thinking things out angle here. Sorry. Cool about the classes except for that gsi. It has been raining here too. I know there must be some way to walk around holding an umbrella over your head that doesn’t feel like you’re just missing out on seeing stuff. You probably don’t use umbrellas, right? I don’t know why I think that. I see you taking the hood approach or just letting the sky happen to you unabated. Maybe I have this weird idea in my head that people in the Bay Area don’t use umbrellas, I have no idea why. Or why I’m even talking about that, ha ha. Fine weekend on your end, I sincerely hope. ** Right. Please let your kind attention, concentration, and thoughts/ comments of all sorts rain down on our pal daveyhoule this weekend, okay? Thank you very much. And I’ll see you in the comments area once Sunday is on its last legs, at least here in Paris.
Now available in North America 
Oh jeez… first posts. No pressure?
Hi daveyhoule:
So I wasn't planning on sitting down and reading through anything in-depth on here today… so the fact that your writing caught my interest and pulled me through each piece is a good sign on your part. Good on you. I enjoyed these little portraits. They are idiosyncratic in a pleasing way. There's something pitch-on about your tone and impulse here mixed with the brevity. I liked The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community a lot and the way it builds in melodrama beyond its sparse means (so much from so little)–good image of bullying eyes–although for me the final line of her cawing was off a bit. The image itself is fine, but maybe the last set up needs to be a little more indirect; the way that rumours, suspicions, or chinese whispers? Keep it surreal and not so direct–inverted? That was my only thought and it may be useful to you or not.
I also really enjoyed The Eighteenth Arrondissement, and I think your mixture of super-specificity mixed with the general wash of this-might-be-something-I'd-do-if-I-did-it works well here again–approaching a book as the object and its perceived reception and life–as opposed to its interior and content. An oddly specific daydream. And let's face it, that's a lot more fun, no? Thanks for sharing.
Hey Davey!
Cool stuff, man! I really enjoyed getting inside this stuff. I wish I could give some constructive, helpful criticism, but I suck at this. All I can say is that I was excited by what I read and definitely would be keen to see on where it would all end up if/when you keep building on this stuff!
All the best! M
Quite enticing, daveyhoule. Remindful of Edward Gorey, Joe Brainard and Donald Bathelme all at once.
Justin Bieber isn't a 'phobe. Not only is it not possible if you're in show business (and want to get booked on Ellen) but there are pics easily found on the 'net of him and his mother at a Gay Pride event somewhere a few years back. No The Beeb isn't gay. Just visiting.
Dennis, thanks so much, means a lot to me what you said.
Davey, I liked your vignettes and especially liked the titles. They caught my eye and grabbed me in. I suspect they’re parts of a larger whole, with the name Earl used twice as a clue. I’d like to know more about him and more in general. Each segment filled me with a nice picture of something bigger, and I like that, as opposed to something being over-written. The dead uncles, for instance, reminded me of the wall of photographs on my parents’ wall in Florida, with my uncles and grandparents, some dead and some still alive. I’m on that wall too. So your writing has made me reflect on personal experiences, which I think is a good thing. And I always spend my time before a flight in the airport bookstores, seeing which books have lent themselves to good airplane reading (supposedly). Thanks for these. I liked what I read and would like to see them expanded—but not overdone, with the simplicity intact.
David, this work is a success in part because of its placement in literary space. Sipping from this whopping fire hose we call the Innerneh, i actually got some of you in my mouth.
Secondly, one is grateful for brevity. Then there is the light and un-entrenched voices of easy-changing, playful youthfullness. Re: Serrano: Myself once a Near-North Chicago ingenue, i could relate to wanting to have something decent sealed off there, as in protective custody. Peg
Leave It To Bieber
Disneyland on Ecstasy!
daveyhoule, This work calls for appreciation, not criticism. You seem to know exactly what you’re doing.
If I had to pick out one in particular to praise it would be the first one. It doesn’t go in any of the directions one expects it to, without at the same time ruling any of them out. It’s wonderfully precise and, in my reading, very wise and even touching.
I admire all these pieces very much. You have gained a fan.
Can I ask who you’re influenced by?
daveyhoule – Your vignettes are surrounded by negative space, a minimal(ist) writer's best friend, or at least one of them. I had better not comment any further just now, as my rainy day meds are kicking in and affecting my judgement.
Dennis – I'm reading This Must Be The Place, a biography of Talking Heads and giggling at the auth6r's avoid-libel-action way of implying, with6ut ambiguity, that David Byrne slept with Sire Records exec Seymour Stein. It's kind of amazing they stayed together as long as they did, given the other three band member's dislike of Brian Eno and nearly every6ne else who helped them make good, sometimes great records. Personally, I think the entire Heads discography is enjoyable but something goes awry after Fear of Music.
Mr. Houle, I cannot add anything that hasn't already been said, but I would love to see Dead Uncles more fleshed-out. Interfamily suicide is a very real phenomenom, happening, most notably, to the Hemingway family. Your voice furthers my interest.
Dennis, yeah I've got to agree on what I've seen on Derf's "My Friend Dahmer", it does seem too sophmoric. I was hoping for something more revealing, like young Jeffie on a sleepover, and all the possibilities, therein. What did he talk about, was there any furtive groping, was he the pivot man in the circle jerk ? That's why I believe in pornographic, or more correctly, porno graphic novels, a la Alan Moore. Maybe more sleazy and the lurid side of lascivious would work better. Well, for my depraved tastes, anyway.
HAHAHA is that Steve Miller? I'm an 80's kid, the only 70's rock I knew for years was Kiss. In a way that's all I needed to know. Steve Miller's ok, he's like one of those rocker dudes with the rope still around his neck. Isn't that a sad sounding song? I think I've heard it once or twice. I've been listening to a lot of classic rock radio. I think they needed Todd Rundgren on more albums back then or something like that. 70's rock sounds a little dry. Dennis, we have lost, I mean they have lost many Christian soldiers to the ol' "Milk & Honey" number. Thanks, I'm way exited to explore more of his films. I won't be able to make the Stephen O' Malley/Attila Csihar, my loss, Sunn O))) is a once in a lifetime gig. Just checked the "Teenage Hallucination" link, sorry I'm hesitant to link. The bad people might get me if I link or watch videos. I'm going to be there for one of the Jerk performances. I'm gonna be spending some time in England and somewhere, probably Germany, not sure what days I'll be in Paris. I rode a bus in Paris with some German boys one time, I think I'm sold. If not Germany, I'll be spending a couple days in Amsterdam. Got fucked on my swing through. Speaking of England, watched Anonymous, that movie about Shakespeare/Elizabethan politic. The basic premise is though he didn't make king, Edward De Vere became Shakespeare. It was entertaining and fun. Lots of great characters, Marlowe, Johnson, etc. I give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars. LMAO Ever seen "I Was a Teenage Were-Bear" starring Brent Corrigan. Fuck, he's pretty hot. A little masculine for my taste, but very impressive for an ex-gay porn star. Daveyhoule, TMS, and a short-story or three. Big day ahead. Here's to you D. Peace, 5vrs
Steve Miller Band
(intense nostalgia)
Serrano
Cut "photography." If you cut photography out we're in much more suspense about the narrator. What kind of artist (potentially) is the narrator? What kind of art is the lecture about? There's also a nice shock in going looking from "lecture" and finding in "beautiful, oversized color *pictures* of bodily fluids." I think that would allow us to share a little in the narrator's experience. We have to find out answer right before "bodily fluids." If you need the "y" or any other part of the word for aural reasons, replace it with another word, but don't tip your hand. Make it factual, in the mode of "Sunday." (Maybe Sunday?) Then we keep looking.
"She was looking for some insight into “art” or “life” – something to take her outside herself for the evening" could be much more interesting as "She was looking for some insight to take her outside herself for the evening." I don't think somebody who's going out, looking for aesthetic release is going to regard "art" or "life" in quotes. If it's not her, then, it's the narrator, being very cruel, but what for? To belittle aesthetic release? That's done later in the passage when you airquote "gravity" and "reverence." I think it's much stronger, too, if we transition from genuine search, without airquotes, to semi-disillusion in the air-quoted, hypothetical intent of the show-orchestrators. If not, why should I care to begin with about what this girl's doing? Somebody girl the narrator dislikes doing something that she seems to come to dislike.
Cut "as sacred and holy." I think it's pretty evident what the show's doing if it's on a Sunday in a church. Trust your reader's intelligence.
Change or cut "modicum." Modicum is a hand tipping word. You don't use modicum neutrally, and it makes the "insult" that comes after it wholly unessecary. Again, I can see aural reasons, but I think it damages the experience of the piece more than it helps it.
Cut "all along." "Point" is all that's nessecary, and aurally, it's nice and sharp. It'll also rhyme with "accepted" so you have the sharp t of the belivers verses the literal and aural "point" of the art-show.
So, here's the piece with something close to all my edits, so you may appraise:
In a forgotten stone cathedral off Michigan Avenue, Felicia attended a lecture sponsored by the Museum of Contemporary Art. She was looking for some insight to take her outside herself for the evening. What she got instead were beautiful, oversized color pictures of bodily fluids, corpses, and old, naked Hungarian women smoking crooked cigarettes. That the lecture was staged in a house of worship was supposed to lend a “gravity” or a “reverence” to the sensational subject matter. Instead, the setting merely added insult to everything the usual Sunday morning faithful accepted. But, Felicia figured, that was the point.
Crybaby
I hate to say this, but this sounds like a great start to a full story. But I really think it needs to be. The things you engage here are of too great a scope in their nature to be dealt with in these few sentances. "Birthday…puberty…again." These are all big temporal words. Again begs for before. Puberty begs for all the abuses of puberty, explicit. I mean, who can resist the spectacle of puberty? Keep writing with this one.
(1/2)
The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community
cut "woman," replace with "crow." If she's a crow, she's a crow. Run with the metaphor all the way through. What parts of her are woman in this, if we need to say she's also a woman? Clearly now the bestial, selfish parts, which are suggested to be crow by the "tar pits" that her eyes are, eyes being the seat of self and therefore intent. Again, trust your reader to see.
Change "henpecked" to "pecked." Unless there's hens in this poor old man's life, he's being pecked by Rose. Is Rose a Hen, a woman, and a crow? It's too much. Breaking her up into all these things in a small place takes away the clarity of the metaphor. It dilutes it.
That's all for now. I think once the stuff I've mentioned is fixed, it's ready to go out. Good job D.L
Hi Dennis. This is the first time I've posted here. Did you know somebody's stolen some of your books from the Pasadena library?
(P.S, Sorry for the multi-post, everyone. )
(2/2)
davey-
loved it. all of it. especially the one about the uncles. it reminds me of my mother's father's brothers, who i don't know and of whom only one is still living (not my grandfather, he died a year or so before i was born). this is how i wish i could write, without all the emotion crap that people think they need to throw into their words. just present the facts as they are without embellishment. phenomenal work, man.
dennis-
yeah, busy night. blew off most of the stuff i was supposed to do and got drunk after practice. went and bought some records, which i'm not supposed to be doing right now, but i got two of them for half price and didn't break $40 in the trip. if you knew me, you'd be amazed, as i'm usually lucky to leave the record store without spending $100+. so all in all, not bad. got two fucked up LPs and the last joe strummer record. his version of redemption song still makes me cry, and it's hard to think he's been gone ten years this december. i hate it when my heroes die.
so the chicken i was supposed to cook this week? yeah, never got a chance. i guess it was only like $5 and i've wasted more money in worse ways, so it's not too bad. but i'm still pretty pissed off.
i was going to expand on this, but i have to run. sidenote, due to my OCD, it takes me forever to leave the house because my socks need to be a matched pair? is that as weird as my friends tell me it is?
-me.
Rabbit,
Hi, it’s nice to see a new voice here.
Your reading of “Serrano” seems to be totally different from mine. Starting with your assumption that Felicia is likely to be an artist. Are you assuming because she is attending a lecture she must be a an art student or art history student? Since the lecture takes place in a cathedral rather than a classroom I think it’s more likely to be a lecture open to the general public that someone looking for “insight into ‘art’ or ‘life’” might wander into without knowing what to expect. I think the corniness of that sentiment is quite intentional. You seem to want to edit out the whole source of tension in the piece, the clues to Felicia’s attitudes. Yes, the reader is presumed not to share those attitudes, but I don’t agree with you that this contrast is necessarily “cruel” or sneering. I think the piece leads the reader to a more complicated place than that. That’s exactly what I liked about it.
Alan,
Thanks for the welcome.
My bad, I should have been more clear: I don't think, and didn't intend to suggest, that the character of Cerrano is necessarily an artist or an art student.
I do agree that our readings were different. In fact, I've come around — after re-reading the piece a couple of times, and I I would like to rescind my suggestion about the air-quotes in the first section. I missed something vital there — and (for the benefit of our author) that's namely somebody who's (at least somewhat) outside "art" and "life" who's coming to a show to take a look in. My apologies to D.L, and thanks to Alan for the nudge. The cruelty was mine.
I still stand by my other suggestions about the piece in question. Especially cutting modicum, in this light. I feel like that confers judgement, and the excitement, for me, is the tension between the beauty of the pictures and the insult of the setting, the character's ambivalence.
Also — I'd like to take back the cut of "hen" in The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community. I think what's being done there, and another thing I missed, is that to Walter Kern, she's just a hen, and so he can say no.
Wow, these are truly excellent. They're so sharp and well-crafted that I don't know that they need much or any work. However, since it's workshop day, here are a few thoughts.
Serrano: Maybe try spending a line–just a few words–on the reaction of "the faithful." To lean just a little harder on this–to get a snapshot of the the reaction of the churchgoers who suddenly found this exhibit in their place of worship–might be worthwhile. (Might not, though.) Also, the scare quotes feel overly harsh. Like, who is this narrator who's thinking this so ironically–and: does putting that spin on things serve the piece?
Crybaby: Beautiful, no notes.
The Dappled Oaks: 1) "henpecked septuagenarian" leans more heavily on sound effects than any other moment in these five pieces, and to me it sticks out in a way i found mildly irritating, though that's a pretty subjective reaction, and I admit that taken in isolation, "henpecked septuagenarian" is quite a nice turn of phrase. 2) I like the last line with its repetition, but you might be able to get more energy by twisting it just a hair further–maybe a couple words of description of the sky the cawing head is being thrust into, or something. But it's also very strong as is, so, I dunno.
The Dead Uncles: Also loved this one quite a bit. You might get some interesting symmetrical energy by switching "kid" to "kids"–would suggest a group who could follow in the footsteps of the uncles, instead of just the single child (though, you know, don't get more specific, and say there's five kids, or anything). Also, I'm not sure how much the short second section gives you. You might consider cutting down to a single line or losing altogether.
The Eighteenth Arrondissement: Very good. Builds well, prose impeccable. Only comment is the last sentence feels a little flat. I think we get it, and I wish it would twist things somehow or land somewhere surprising, instead of just restating what is essentially the piece's thesis.
Overall: great work. These are really beautiful, and I'm looking forward to finding out what lucky publication lands them.
p.s.: Davey, after I read these pieces I found your Husbands and Wives post from DC's last year, which I think I missed. H&W; is the Woody Allen film I've seen most, one of my all time top ten films, and possibly the movie I've seen most in my life–almost certainly the movie I've seen most in my adult life. Was cool to read that interview where Allen talks about the great Judy Davis.
posted without reading the previous comments. interesting to see that rabbit and alan had already gotten into the question of the quotes in the first piece. i think that how you feel about them may depend in part on how you "hear" them in your head. to me, they land quite forcefully–more forcefully than is productive to the piece; it's a very short piece, and to my ear, they throw off the balance in a way that doesn't quite work, or that is not as strong as using the same words without the quotes.
oh, oops, my second comment went up under mark doten rather than no more teenage kicks. these are the same person! i am both me! (OR ARE WE?!?!?!?)
nice work davey.
they have a good minimalist tone and for the most part the twist at the end is effective.
i liked the first four more than the last. they seemed more complete and have more emotion. the last one feels a little more like a joke with some depth to it, not quite twisted enough to really satarise but definitely something there.
one suggestion i have is for the end of the dead uncles. remove the word Or in the last sentence. Making it less indirect will build the emotion more.
Daveyhoule, these are all great, thanks for sharing, and I don't really have any criticism. The style works so well, incredible tight and precise without being overwritten, which is a very difficult balance, but you pull it off each time. The humour and darkness are all nicely poised throughout, and the last piece is self-conscious without being obnoxious at all. I would love to see a collection of these.
Dennis, hope things are good. I'm been hit by another cold, but other than that doing really well with the novel, like a mixer in the studio late at night with half the tracks down.
dennis-
just got back from work. if i didn't get something written during work (don't worry, i'm going to share it), i'd say it would've been more productive to drink drain cleaner, but i'm just losing my mind with that place.
so here's the piece i wrote…
i eat puppydogs and fire and fart rainbows and thunderbolts and for just five (5) easy payments of $99.95, i can teach you how to rob banks with yr nipples.
do you want to be wealthy?
-yes!
famous?
-yes!
do you want to make millions engaged in human trafficking and white slavery operations throughout the world?
-yes! oh god, YES!
good. now follow me to the laboratory that we may baptize corpses in the mormon faith and eat fried chicken laced with formaldehyde and ayahuasca.
–
after only 3 (three) days of study at dr. turkeyfeather brimble-glavin's herpetarium and dojo, you too will:
-spit gumdrops.
-ejaculate plutonium death rays.
-make friends and influence important business decisions.
-perform open-heart surgery on unanaesthetised patients.
as an added bonus, call in the next ten (10) minutes and we'll include seal's complete discography for free. all you pay is shipping. if seal isn't yr bag, we have five pallets of slightly irregular cassette copies of alanis' morrisette's jagged little pill, and believe me when i say we can't even give these fuckers away.
so come on down to dr. turkeyfeather brimble-glavin's and visit the diner for the best brisket and schadenfreude in the tri-state area, and free gumjobs from ellamabel. ellamabel's the second (2nd) youngest on the waitstaff at a spright and healthy sixty-eight (68) years.
that's dr. turkeyfeather brimble-glavin's dojo, herpetarium, diner and, aw, hell why not, the largest giftshop in the county for early incan knicknacks, artifacts and other such bric-a-brac.located just off hwy 409 near the oliver north expressway exit and right across the street from clancy's, still home to the state's best inventory of gently-used secondhand wheelbarrow tires and crepes. and during the summer months, ride the terrorcoaster, 2 miles of the ricketiest wooden track that the county inspection board will legally let us run. this baby's one loose screw away from being condemned as a hazard to all human life, and that includes you, buster, so don't you forget it.
once more, that's dr. turkeyfeather brimble-glavin's dojo, herpetarium, diner, early incan gift shop and slightly irregular alanis morrisette cassette tape emporium. right across from clancy's gently-used secondhand wheelbarrow tires and crepes, and of course in the summer months, there's the terrocoaster.
so call now, or else risk the fury of my giant, filthy bumblebee. operators are standing in puddles of rainwater.
—
just another snake oil peddler selling ass in the cold light of morning or something?
on a sidenote, you should totally come back to vegas, and i can show you the cool stuff that there is to do off the strip and even some that's not downtown. it's funny, even though i didn't want to be at work at all, i was such a nicer person after band practice. cupps has a new song already and re-write is working on like two or three. i'm pretty excited for it.
so there's the thing i wrote. and some other stuff. and it's like 3 in the morning, so i have to go to bed. til tomorrow, i suppose.
-chris g.
also, davey-
i really enjoyed crybaby. i agree, though, that it would be nice to be expanded on. there's so much great territory there to travel and document.
daveyhoule -Apologies for the lack of constructive criticism but I've read all the pieces here and they're just wonderful. I wouldn't want to see them changed. So yeah, probably not the most helpful of comments, but your work really hits the spot already. Congratulations and I'm looking forward to reading more of your writing.
Dennis – Hey. Hope you're well. So I saw M83 play last night. It was great. The sound, the atmosphere, the enthusiasm onstage. A really fun gig. It's funny because I'm not the hugest fan in the world – well, I love some of his stuff, just not all of it – but live he really nails it. Left me and my friends buzzing.
This morning I've woken up with a cold. Time for some soup. How's stuff with you? Actually, I will read the P.S. and gage it. Love, Thomas x
p.s. in the next week I think me and a couple of friends are gonna look into the possibility of making it over to the Pompidou. Because of work I think I'll only be able to make a short, maybe 3 day, trip, but I'm gonna try and pinpoint which stuff I wanna see the most. Hopefully I'll be able to work something out.
Robert Nelson R.I.P.
Daveyhoule:
Hey. Firstly (first?), thanks and congrats for putting your work out there on that operation table under our shakey hands and under-qualified scalpels, you suicidal/masochist/brave/fool you.
So. Since you provided no introduction, i was confused at first: are those segments of longer to-be-stories or whole pieces? The i re-read the title and assumed that it was the latter. Which, i have to say, disappointed me a little, because i thought each of those would have been a great opening paragraph or page to a much longer work. They all provide clue-like glimpses into a character's history and then withdraw sadistically, "You wanted to know more? Well, tough. I'm out." That's kind of evil.
Ok, i kid, and i guess that was your point (..or was it?), but seriously i find the extreme shortness quite frustrating.
Actually, now i think about it, the most frustrating to me is the longest one (so there you go, i've already contradicted myself), about the early suicide uncles. I mean, those are such flat-out cold data bits we get, the obvious question is "what the fuck is the family history? what happened when those boys were kids? what's going on in the survivor dad's mind/psyche?". We get a little kindof answer to that last one, but to be honest i feel that maybe if those questions are to be ever eluded, that one might as well; what i mean is that this story is maybe even more frustrating than the other because it starts to develop into a more complete insight of the character(s), but does not, really, and stops dead. (on that note, i also feel that the little internal monologue of the kid about his dad's survival rings a bit off, i don't think a child, whatever their age, would rationalize the event in such a way). In a way, that piece, to me, would work better without that paragraph.
Could also be that, like that kid, my own family history crawls with suicide uncles and aunts, and i've never articulated questions about it in such a way. Or barely any way at all. I think kids understand that they cannot understand.
When i say "frustrating", by the way, it's not a bad thing really, don't get me wrong. I mean, it is annoying, but in an engaging way, it's a reaction, and reactions are good. The very short intros stay there like small cut-out bits of polaroids, and i like that we're left to make up the rest. I do however feel that your writing abilities are more than sufficient to carry on with the story, not to novel-length necessarily but they'd be great beginnings to short stories.
In such a (dark) light, i find the 18th Arrondissement quite ironic: If you feel you're not talented enough to write that badass novel, think again. If it's just because you can't be bothered, then, here's a kick up your ass! DO IT! Haha, no really, you should. Would that 18thArr. work as an introduction to the small pieces above? I actually quite like the cynical tone of that piece, implying that you really don't "want" to write that novel, and it's got nothing to do with talent or seriousness. But then again, maybe i misread.
Anyway. On the pieces themselves, there isn't much i can say, the style is no-bullshit and i like that. At first i thought that an even more abrupt, concise style would work better with such short pieces, but now i'm not so sure.
So, uh, that wasn't very helpful i guess, but then i don't really know what you wanted help with and/or what you thought about the work in its present state, or even if that state was final or not, so, well, that's what you get! Good luck!
Dennito Burrito, hey! Oh wow shit, i just realized that burrito probably comes from donkey, burro, small donkey = burrito, mmh, small donkey? Small ass? No wonder you like burritos. There, i've solved a deep psychomagic ritual riddle of your psyche in three and a half second. No, no, don't thank me, i enjoyed it. Keep your money.
Jeez that Napoleonland sounds fucking horrible and also awesome. Napoleon, what the fuck? Are they gonna pretend he wasn't a psychotic "short-man-with-a-grudge" proto-nazi? Oh, funny that, i can think of another french head of state who… Probably a coincidence.
But what battle is that? Civil war battle? Against french soldier? So not Austerlitz, Amiens, Russian snowbound siege… Mh. I need to look that up.
I have to say that this latent french "oh, wasn't Napoleon a great guy after all" crap, eerily similar to the revisionist Thatcher-cult that is happening here, is making me feel sick in the mouth, though. It's always been there, and i've always hated it with a passion, but this seems to be worse than all our history classes that didn't have time to mention slavery and Haiti. He was the Great Narcissistic Traitor, that's all. Just another Cunt in the long saga of French Cunts. I do hope he's still roasting down there, in Satan's claws.
Daveyhoule,
Hey. Thanks for sharing your work. I actually read all of these five stories earlier today, while hastily drinking coffee, and I got stuck enough they made me miss my bus. Totally worth it since they're great and fed me a few visuals I enjoyed.
Dennis,
Still mega busy with all the exciting things going on? Ahhh, I bet. I sent you an email today containing the stuff you will need for the end of this month. Obviously, I can't wait to get things going and M is just as excited.
Take care, more soon!
Love,
Joakim
Oh and btw.
Hopefully this won't crush your positive outlook on Sweden, after all this is pretty insane,
http://www.allout.org/stop_forced_sterilization
Barbaric, right? Please make one of your notes about it so that people here can sign against this horrible practice, it's been on my mind recently and I'm kind of furious about it to say the least.
Joakim, hey! how you doing?
Wow, pretty crazy law. I'm surprised it exists, and in Sweden too! To be honest, i think it should be reversed so that ONLY transgender people can have children hahaha! Seriously, i'm sure the next generation would be a pretty cool population. I'm all for forced sterilization of Tories/Republicans, dog/wife/kids-beaters, grown women who wear pink, anyone who doesn't like garlic, and people who buy Damien Hirst spot paintings.
daveyhoule,
I've enjoyed reading this. I think all the stories are great but I certainly would be interested in reading an extended version of The Dead Uncles. Thanks for sharing your writing.
Have a great start of the week, Dennis!
@ daveyhoule, thank you for sharing these stories that were a genuine pleasure to read. They went down like a cold, fizzy gin and tonic.
Re The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community, like Rabbit I thought the crow metaphor could be ratcheted up. I reckon you can replace "like a crow" with "being a crow", for instance. Rose is still quite a character, with a very evocative appearance. If this story were developed, and I think it should be, there seems definite mileage in the grotesque, villainous aspect of her.
The Eighteenth Arrondissement is my favourite of this suite, as to me it's just such a dynamite idea. I suggest you develop it into an entire metafictional novel, all about the appearance of this imaginary author's imagined novel. You don't have to actually do it of course but that's what the story suggests, to me anyway.
dennis: 'murk is good when it wiggles' will be my motto for at least the first part of this year – until i'll hopefully have found a position at some uni, that is, where things won't have to wiggle. the absence of coffee jelly in europe is curious, btw. in japan they love it. and you can buy fruit in jelly at every supermarket. nobody's afraid of mad cow desease from cheap gelatine in a country where they build nuclear plants in earthquake areas, of course. sigh. subject change: elias bender rønnenfelt (iceage singer). crush?
daveyhoule: being late i haven't much to add to what others said – just that if you plan to add more to those stories and develop the whole thing as a project which eventually will fill a small book or be a contribution to a bigger one, it might be interesting to keep it open whether the pieces are fragments of a cosmos (related through a character, the narrator, or whatever), or whether they are separate works. i liked the balance between the pieces' belonging and not-belonging together. in any case, i'd be happy to read more.
Daveyhoule – These little windows into such meticulous worlds are splendid and I admire your penny-wise use of words in constructing them. I suppose the two pieces that pique my interest the most are the ones at either end of the length spectrum: Crybaby and The Dead Uncles. The first introduces us to a nameless character in limbo; he’s no longer a boy and not yet a man and all the many malfunctions that place can have on a pubescent male are evident in just seven words: “his eyes bulged all heavy and clear”. Didn’t every man find himself in this kid’s shoes at some point growing up? A very lucid little sketch. The Dead Uncles just makes me ask so many questions, from what kind of mother Grandma Clara could have been to what design the relationship with her surviving son might’ve taken; what does the father keep in his den and why is it kept under lock and key? This story begs the reader to fill in the blanks and I enjoyed it for that. As a novice writer myself I won’t go into an evaluation of your writing technique anymore than as a learner driver I’d judge my boyfriend’s driving, but I will say you have a clear style and a smart grasp on snap-shooting the tiny moments in life.
Dennis – Hey! I must confess to being a little phobic about cuckoo clocks. I don’t know why. It’s a very random thing to cringe over. So, you think leotards are sexy? I can’t see it myself, though I like the allusion between them and photoshopped escorts, so maybe I find them half-way sexy, as a metaphor at least? I hope you had a cool weekend. Take care.
Hey Davey,
First, I don't believe that I've read any fiction by you in years and years unless I'm blanking, and this is quite exciting, as I think the stories are truly excellent to a one. I have very little to say as far as quibbling with your decisions. The writing is very honed and, clearly, either you have worked very hard to pare the stories to their ultra-essence, or you have a natural gift for what constitutes exactly enough said and, at the same time, what will cause a story to feel very alluringly withheld and insufficiently revealed. I love that quality in writing where you're presented with a minimalism that is absolutely justified on the level of the technique, and where the prose is pretty and refined enough to seal the surface shut, and yet the story itself feels barely touched upon but absorbing.
I can't say that I'm in agreement with those here who think the pieces should longer or extended. Not that any harm would necessarily be done were you to continue them, but, personally, I'm completely sold on their length, and smitten with their prose-poem- and squib-like brevity. I love how that works sufficiently that I personally feel that to fuck with the magic of their tightness would be to merely option for a more conventional approach. Although your work is very different, of course, I'm reminded a bit of Felix Feneon's great, tiny stories and minute novels in the best possible way. Do you know his work? It might really interest you, if you don't know it. Of course, it would certainly be interesting to see what happens to your writing when you work at greater length, but, if working more lengthily interests you, I would leave these stories alone and tackle a longer form via something new and from scratch.
(continued below)
Serrano: I, like some others here, am not completely sure about the use of scare quotes. There is something, I don't know, slightly external and forced about them maybe. At the same time, to remove them would alter the piece's tone, and I'm not overly bugged by them, so it's mostly just an observation that they jumped out for me too. Also, for what it's worth, 'modicum' didn't bother me until, I think, Rabbit questioned it, and then it did seem slightly wrong as a word choice to me. I'm not sure what that change in my feeling about the word means. Anyway, the piece is lovely.
Crybaby: Perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. I love what it does, and I love how it does it.
The Dappled Oaks Assisted Living Retirement Community: It's interesting, and is obviously a good sign, that people's choices of their favorite story among the five are all over the place. I would say this story is my favorite. The concision, the images, the flow, the pace, you name it: all note perfect to me, and the ending has a fascinating force and multiplicity of tones — heartbreaking, grotesque, blackly hilarious. Very strong piece. Kind of a little masterpiece of sorts.
The Dead Uncles: This is interesting because I've written a few pieces wherein my intentions in them were not entirely dissimilar to your intentions in this story, I think, and so I'll take a kind of personal approach, if that's okay. I found that striking the right balance between the flat and the emotive, the confessional and the clinical was very tough, and I think in my pieces I probably erred too much on the side of flatness and an 'inappropriately' chilly accounting. I'm very impressed with how you've really struck a beautiful balance here, fleshing out and coloring the incidents without displaying sentiment and yet signaling the presence of feeling when needed. And the addendum or p.s. paragraph at the end breaks through and is very touching. Very nice work.
The Eighteenth Arrondissement: I like the form and the way you used it a lot. It's very funny, and the dryness of the humor manages to be warm as well. The specific references work like clockwork for me. I would agree with whoever said, and it may have been more than one person, that the very ending, and the last sentence more particularly, feels a little flat. It's like the clever turns and smart takes you present earlier in the piece might deserve a conclusion that feels less, I don't know, pat, or like a given that's perhaps too generalized and seems to have been generated from somewhere outside the sharper and quirkier sensibility that piece's voice has shown to that point.
That's it. Thanks, Davey. Great work, and I really appreciate your entrusting it to the workshop.
Wow – thanks everyone for considering my stories! I’m a bit at a loss how to respond. I so appreciate both the encouraging words and the close readings you’ve provided. They’ve helped a lot.
For a little background, these are standalone stories – they’re not introductions or culled from longer works. I chose to share some of my shorter pieces a. for accessibility and b. because I really enjoy playing around with compression but more than that with *suggestion*, and I wanted to see how that came off to readers. It’s encouraging hearing that some of you want these to be longer or fleshed out/explored more, but for me (on one level, at least) the whole point is what to leave out. I very much like the play between what I’ve chosen to include and allowing the reader to fill in the blanks, if that makes any sense.
As for all of your specific comments, I’m so completely overwhelmed I don’t know where to start. I’m kind of losing my mind trying to craft responses to each post, so let me just say in general that I’m glad and touched that those who enjoyed these stories and whatever qualities in them that you liked (the tone, the language, the brevity, the humor, being reminded of something in your own life, etc.) took the time to say so. It means a lot to me.
Here are a few direct responses to some of your comments/suggestions, but I want to stress that just because I don’t respond specifically to your post *doesn’t mean I haven’t considered it completely*. Frankly, I’m having a difficult time (in a good way) dealing with all of this feedback all at once and figuring out how to be coherent about my response to it. Being so floored was the last thing I expected, and I have to admit I’m quite unprepared for it. Anyways . . .
alan- I’m glad you liked and I have a fan! Influences? Gaitskill, Lydia Davis, Philip Roth, Denis Johnson, DC, DFW, Houellebecq, the list goes on and on; david kelso- housman- negative space as best friend, indeed! I loved This Must Be the Place and had forgotten about the Byrne/Stein sexual implication. Funny.; Rabbit- good point about cutting “photography” and cutting/changing “as sacred and holy” and “modicum.” “henpecked” isn’t in reference to hens, it’s a term for a browbeaten or dominated person; no more teenage kicks- thanks much for you comments and I’m super-glad you not only found my Husbands and Wives post but that you love that movie as much as I do!!; wolf- The Eighteenth Arrondissement was actually the first one I wrote and sprung from the frustration of trying to dive into a novel-length work and essentially feeling paralyzed at discovering I’d apparently bitten off more than I could chew. Instead of actually writing the novel, I found myself fantasizing how awesome the book would look and all these superficial specificities that have *nothing* to do with actually doing the work. But thanks for the encouragement!; Joakim Almroth- Glad these were absorbing enough that you missed your bus, but sorry you missed your bus!
I was disappointed to read an article on Sundance in THE ADVOCATE and see their program director bring up FRISK (the film, not your novel) as if it was some sort of landmark in avant-garde queer cinema history. Does anyone still recall it? Look where Todd Verow's career is now. (Granted, many talented filmmakers have trouble sustaining a career, but in his case, the inability to find distribution does really say something about the quality of his work.)
Dennis- Thanks so much for this forum and the opportunity to share with the blog community. It’s been awesome! And thanks for the kind words. I’m glad you’re sold on the stories’ length. I’m in agreement there. I haven’t read Felix Feneon, but will check him out for sure.
Interesting the discussion the scare quotes in Serrano has sparked. Not sure what I’ll do with them . . . Wow, thanks for the kind words re: Crybaby/Dappled Oaks. Yeah, wow. I’m glad you felt a balance between the flat and emotive in The Dead Uncles. I’m sure that story was influenced by your Ten Dead Friends – a personal favorite of yours for me. Was that the “inappropriate” chilly you were talking about? I’ll have to take another look at the end of The 18th. I was going for something a little sad or tragic in that being sold in drugstores and airports means you’re selling a tons of books, but a. the quality of most airport reads often leaves much to be desired, so why want to be a part of that? and b. that writing about this whole fantasy of a "successful" novel has nada to do with the actual writing of said novel and means it’s even more unlikely that the novel will be sold in airports and drugstores.
Anyway, thanks again for this. It’s far exceeded my expectations! This will definitely help me going forward. And now I’ve got a growing stack of stories – a collection-in-the-making perhaps? That’d be awesome. We’ll see how it goes.
daveyhoule, I usually don't look in the comments before commenting on days like this, but I did this weekend and all I saw was a couple mentions about the quotes in the first story. I actually don't think they're out of place there. However, they bug me in the last story. That last story is obviously a piece of satire and I think the quotes used in there remind us of it and make the satire a little less poignant. It'd be funnier if there was this possible notion -without the quotes- that the author/narrator is totally serious and unaware of his attempt at satire.
Interestingly, I think the main thing that bothers me at all about your stories -and I really do like all of them, I found them all funny and interesting- is calling them stories. They just don't seem to be stories to me. Snapshots, yeah (Crybaby, Dead Uncles, Dappled Oaks). Small psychological portraits, yeah (the three mentioned above). A couple nonfiction essays commenting on Art, yeah (Serrano and the last piece).
I don't know, maybe I shouldn't have said that. I'm such an old fogey, tied to traditional definitions of genres of Art, especially Literature. I think maybe what I'm really say is that, for me, I just want more of each. Like, there are these really interesting characters superbly drawn in a short space, then…nothing happens, either to them or by them. In the end, I'm kind of left thinking, "So what?"
It's interesting to me that I find myself really liking what I've read by you and being kind of frustrated by it. But that's on me.
As far as changing anything in the pieces to make them better, I have no suggestions at all. I think the sentences, structure, word choices, and language are spot on. "The Dead Uncles" is my favorite, and I guess it's no coincidence that it's the longest of the 5.
So in the end, any problem I have with any of your stories here is just to do with my preconceived notions of what a story is. If it helps, I could easily see myself reading a whole book of your stories, and while maybe being frustrated a bit, I'd be enjoying the hell out of it because one thing I do admire is a unique insight and perspective and you have that in abundance.
DavidE, Supposedly, Biebz and his mom were at that Toronto Pride Event doing recon work for the Christian Identity movement, looking for the best places to plant bombs. Hehehe, sorry, I'm joking. But seriously, the comments on that pic are crazy, everything from "He's gay!" to "He's religious nut!" Though I agree with the one commenter who said that it looked he and his mom stumbled upon the parade by accident – they both have this "What the hell?" look on their faces.
But you're totally right. Even though he's said he thinks being gay is a choice, I don't think he's a 'phobe at all. I haven't seen anything to suggest that he is.
Dennis, Oh, yeah, I totally agree: if you based your perception of reality or what's really going on in the world on what you see on the news, you'd have a very distorted view of the world. Every news agency and reporter are biased one way or the other and it seeps through. Problem is, nowadays, that bias almost seems to be the point of most news stories. Or at least perpetuating that bias.
I've said that ideology -and people's strict, unwavering adherence to it- is destroying us and I think that's becoming more and more the case as the days pass. There are some things that are black and white, but most things aren't and you don't get that analysis of grayness from any news outlets anymore.
Which is why I try to use all the sources I can, and even then, I'm often left thinking to myself, "You're all fucking wrong!"
I don't know, I guess we just keep on keeping on and being good to one another and doing the right thing and we should be okay. But I don't know if that's enough.
I caught most of Games, Curtis Harrington's 1966 Gaslight / Diabolique mashup. Upstairs I've a fuzzy VHS copy but Retro's print or DVD looks much better. Games is one of those secondtier 60s thrillers, like Blake Edwards' Experiment in Terror or Edward Dmytryk's Mirage that's overlooked, overshadowed by Charade, Psycho, Manchurian Candidate and other big deals. CH makes you forget the lowish budget by laying on the atmospherics and peopling the cast with the likes of Kent Smith and bird lady Estelle Winwood.
Dennis – literally mediocre weather here, a dusting of snow that melted so quickly it was almost apochryphal ( 'David saw some snow' in the same tones as 'David saw a flying saucer').
I've been lurking recently at opiophiles.com, a self describing message board for opioid / opiate enthusiasts. TPTB want you to PAY for the privilege of posting there. Imagine that! It's very educational if you want to learn how to extract the codeine from a Tylenol #3 and other drowsy data.
daveyhoule – way late here, but I really did enjoy these and think the brevity left room for the imagination in a really nice/effective way.
Dennis – No problem, very glad to be of help. and, yeah, doing something about the zine here would be amazing if you're into it, thanks for offering!
Davey.. really really loved the last piece. Could totally relate.
The first three definitely work, tho it seems like kind of punchline oriented. Which is cool, I just wonder if you tried it without the setup and then punchline and see what that is like. I suppose for such short pieces you want to tie it up in the last sentence. Nonetheless, I enjoyed reading these and am sure they'll find a home in some (hopefully worthy) publication.
hey dennis!!
Just sent you an email with some corrections… Did you have any ideas for a cool condensed title? I'm hopefully coming out with the zine on Tuesday, so anytime after that is great!!
Wow, thanks for the advice re: MDMA…. I tried it for the first time last night with just a few friends and I really enjoyed it,,, much more than shrooms, although it was a lot a lot less intense… Much more relaxing and fun. Honestly It wasn't very strong, so i'll probably take more next time, but all in all a very fun and relaxing night!
So we thought of a really cool art project last night. It started when one of my friends was saying that he'd love to film someone jizzing on his face, and then that went on to me suggesting he should submit that for the Queer Art Show we're having in February and I suggested some ways to make it seem a bit less shocking and to also have some purpose in the context of an art exhibition. So we're all really excited now, and I just have to find out if the gallery/the university is going to allow this 🙂
Could be really cool though!!
Alright I gotta jet! Hope your weekend went great!!
xxfrank
haha, I try. a teacher once accused me of vobobation i.e. vocabulary-masturbation & i could not deny the charges…..yeah i definitely write more fiction than poetry, as you can tell from my slam & my rants i have a problem with lengthiness 😉 unfortunately for me, fiction proves to be harder to publish………i recently had a poem published in Polyphony Magazine & a story in The Talkin' Blues Review (which was in association with the Bob Dylan Days writing Contest) and, (not sure whether or not I should be embarrassed or perversely amused by this….) when i was younger i published 2 stories in Chicken Soup for the Soul (an easy $200!) Do you know/like the band S4lem?
to daveyhoule, i particularly liked The Eighteenth Arrondissement, i think you hit your stride there in terms of tone & brevity. the dead uncles was also intriguing with some lovely images ("Each print was mounted between two thin rectangles of glass then hung from thin-gauged wire on its own clear thumbtack" gorgeous & evocative!!), however, the last paragraph below the line break struck me as unnecessary & detracting from the whole. anyways, write on man!!
@daveyhoule: Your stories were really terrific, I loved them—the dead uncles is incredible! Everything is so scary and compressed…I think you definitely know what you’re doing, you should just keep doing it—
Serrano is brilliant–I like the quotes, I don’t think anything should be changed…–I googled Serrano and what mostly came up was stuff about the Serrano pepper, why is the title Seranno?
Crybaby is amazing and perfect how it is, I’m sure everybody has had that moment in front of the mirror when they were twelve…
The Dappled Oaks retirement community is great! It reminds me of something out of James Purdy, I like how nasty and grotesque and conspiratorial and crow like Rose is, Rose is a badass.
Dead Uncles is my favorite—I think the story is scarier and more surreal without the last paragraph, but maybe part of the reason I don’t like the last paragraph as much as the rest of the story is because I secretly want the father to be a really evil and fucked up character who would traumatize a little kid by telling him about all his uncles’ horrible suicides…but really I shouldn’t automatically feel that way…if all my brothers committed suicide I might hang up their pictures in my house…my first instinct was to think about the father like how I thought about Rose, i.e. crow-like…but actually the father might be a really nice guy…anyway the last paragraph made me think “you know, the father might have some good reasons to hang up those pictures, you shouldn’t judge him…”
The 18th arrondissement is brilliant, great—I’m almost tempted to steal it which I would never do but if I did it would be about 340 to 415 pages long and go into excessive detail about how I would potentially want my potential literary masterpiece to be perceived in the future, including what type of emotions I would want people to feel while reading my novel and how attractive I would want those potential readers to be including what outfits they would be wearing and what environments they would be reading my book in and a few basic biographical details which would outline their lives up to the point of encountering my potential novel such as Linda the sexually confused botanist was late for the train so on a whim she bought the 18th Arrondissment from the store to kill time…little did she know that was about to encounter a literary masterpiece that would forever change the direction of her life…
Anyway your stories are great, very inspiring, I would just say keep doing what you’re doing, I’d love to read more.
@Dennis: Tamala 2010 was awesome! Thanks for recommending it, it makes me want to have a space ship really bad.
Do you think you would go to Mars if it was just a one-way trip? Like to go set up a colony there, but you could never come back to earth? I read a really interesting editorial by a NASA scientist proposing that the next Mars trips should be one way. Like you, Dennis Cooper, could be the first writer on Mars. You could be the first person in the entire history of the world to actually see and experience another planet with his own eyes. It would probably be really lonely on Mars, I’m sure. You would have to endure loneliness for a great honor, and for the chance to see things that other people would never see.
Did you ever read Ray Bradbury? When I was 14 and 15, I really loved Ray Bradbury stories, the Martian Chronicles and all that. But I guess he usually made going to space seem like a scary, probably undesirable thing–most of the astronauts in Bradbury end up getting divorced from their humanity or human nature and end up going crazy or getting killed or turning into Martians…
I don't care though, I'd want to go out into space, that would be really cool. I want to see a cloud nebula.
My quitting smoking is not going so good…have to re-focus and get my steely-eyed determination thing going again…
got home safe – surreal visit to New Orleans – loved the city, the food, the music everywhere – running into ghost tours at night – didn't really connect at the conference – felt to old and to white – amazing newbies doing great work – see you soon – a great version of Sinner's Prayer by Ray Charles came on the shuffle on the way home on the air plane – seemed appropriate, got into a fight with the car service driver, back home. have a good week
hey, zonked, about to fall asleep so I defer to all the other in depth readings of your work here, daveyhoule, but I do really dig this fragmentary style. Keep it fragged.
Dennis: no of course yeah was thinking of the game mousetrap, not nasty rat traps, but also that style of contraption that the game represents. A giant dominoes sequence of motions with varying objects. Like the beginning of Peewee's Big Adventure? His breakfast machine. I saw an unbelievable one on reedit the other day and didn't bookmark it and now can't find it, really bugs me. But here's a few hastily dug up urls. I'm sure you'd find the shizzle if you looked. Hope you have a good day. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8481062450961367450http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zudydE4Uuw
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_mouse_trap/2011/11/rat_mazes_and_mouse_mazes_a_history_.html
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1669153/pee_wees_big_adventure_breakfast_machine/
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Misanthrope- Interesting your enjoyment-frustration re: these stories. I kind of like that you were drawn into them and then they ended and you’re left thinking “so what?”. Kind of reminds me of why I love Christo and Jean Claude’s work (not that I’m comparing myself to those incredible artists!). But they go through years and years and years of work and preparation for these art installations that last only a few days or whatever. And you see them and then it’s over and it’s kind of like “Huh? That’s it?” I don’t know – maybe I’m off base there. But yeah, maybe we just have different ideas of what can be a story. But it’s heartening that you’d read a whole book of these. Cheers!; MANCY- Thanks!; l@rstonovich- Glad you dug/could relate to The 18th. The punchline thing I’ve been thinking about, and in a book (eventually) of stories like these I just need to make sure space them out so it’s not so samey one after the other.; Ratty St. John- Thanks about hitting my stride in The 18th; Chris Dankland- Thanks for the encouragement. I’m glad you enjoyed the stories. Googling Serrano – you’d have to go to page two and there you’d find Andres Serrano. Interesting that you wanted a nasty father in The Dead Uncles. I didn’t want a total downer of a story – I wanted some *heart* in there, hence the final paragraph. Hysterical about your fantasy of my fantasy of The 18th. That piece originally was longer and did go into greater, obsessive detail about how the novel would be structured and the plot and themes explored, but I cut all that out to focus solely on the more surface, superficial fantasy aspect.; Casey McKinney- Thanks for the frag! Sweet dreams!
serrano and crybaby look promising to me. i would keep reading either one.
Hi Dennis! Hope you're doing well. I always love your workshop days but many times feel inadequate about commenting on them. With this guy however, I am not afraid.
Hi Daveyhoule, the five stories are terrific, though I might have ordered them differently, and the one thing I wonder about is the retirement home story. As I grow older the one thing I notice is how difficult it is for even the most talented writers to get inside the head of someone older than themselves. Even a genius like Beckett or someone; I had to act in Krapp's Last Tape recently and it was just ludicrous how senile or whatever Krapp is supposed to be, just because he's old. Hmmm, I wonder how old Beckett was when he created this character. OK, I looked it up, he was 52. Otherwise I congratulate you on the achievement of all these pieces. Dennis's suggestion of Fénéon as a man to look at is a fine one, his book "Novels in Three Lines," well, you don't know whether to laugh or cry and I think you have some of that bittersweet flavor here. Hope to see you again, in Chicago or maybe here in SF? I'll be there giving a reading March 1st at the Golden Gallery in Chicago, maybe you know where it is, but you know,it will be more of the same old thing. Ciao Davey!
d-
more rambling. work was long. and frustrating. big surprise there, right? no inspiration tonight unfortunately. oh yeah, just so no one calls me on it, the thing i posted last night wasn't to steal thunder from davey's stories which i will say again i enjoyed so much.
davey- publish a book. and send me a copy or let me know where i can buy it. i could read yr writing for days.
as regards the whole MDMA thing, if you've done ecstasy, you've done MDMA, or at least MDA. i don't like pressed e pills though cuz they're very frequently cut with meth and i really don't like uppers. i'm pretty strictly pot and hallucinogens these days, at least until i have enough money to start fucking with painkillers again (i'm kidding, mostly, about that last bit). that said, my bass player got sold some bunk acid a couple weeks ago, and it really bummed me out, cuz we ate two tabs each and barely tripped at all. i think i mentioned that after it happened though, so i don't know why i'm telling you again. also reminded me that i'm overdue for a good acid trip or five.
so there was this… girl? i'm not really sure. but i encountered this person at work earlier who was strikingly attractive and completely androgynous, but not in the like david-bowie-skinny-girl-with-boyish-face-or-vice-versa sort of androgyny. like, kind of like that, but not super anorexic skinny. god, i'm doing a terrible job of describing this … (i'm mostly sure it was a girl so i'll refer to her as such from here out) girl, but i was really into her. like, her sweater was too baggy to tell if she had tits or was maybe just a boy who dressed a bit girlishly. and i wouldn't have been surprised at either result, or any less enthused at the idea of a roll in the hay.
lot of words there to say that i got really turned on by the androgyny, which i'm not normally into.
hey, so if you want something for the blog to hold onto til december, i'm working on an essay about joe strummer and the impact he had on me as a musician/songwriter/lover of music/person. and tying that into the whole 'waaah he's been dead ten years' thing. and maybe trying to make it universal and talk about the impact that mr. mellor had on all of us. or something like that. but i'll send it along when it's done, at least so you can give it a read and tell me it's overly nostalgic and engaged far too much in navel gazing to have any universal appeal to any readers, let alone the discriminating literati here on DC's.
OOOH! instead of calling us distinguished locals, you should call us discriminating literati.
on that note, i'm off to bed. early day tomorrow and the rest of the week too. cheers.
-me.
thank you dennis
the novel i'm working on, part of it's based on you, i hope that's ok (since it won't ever be finished much less published it's not an issue lol)
i'm just so sorry & so grateful. you've done so much for me while i've been a psychotic freak.
"i'm not having an episode, i'm having a whole series" except it's NOT FUNNY
i'm sorry dennis, and i always do try to be better
please, please, please have an excellent week, you deserve decades of awesomeness,
centuries
Todd (once IF)- Thanks, man!; Kevin Killian- Hey, Kevin. Thanks for your comments! Yeah, trying on an older (in a retirement home) character in Rose was different for me. Obviously the piece was short so I didn’t have to dive deep into to her, but in a small way I liked making her sharp and manipulative and dangerous. Plenty of older folks are way on the ball – maybe moreso than we think? And thanks for the reading heads up – I very much hope to see you on March 1st! rewritedept- I’ll keep a book with your name on it!