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Week 501: Rage! Rage! Rage! Five Rave-Worthy Tales; Short Books Long on Story

ireneallison12

Rage!!!

But before I explode, I want to thank David Henson for his post last week (and I think he should return with more in the future). Guest posting is not going to be a one off, so who knows, maybe you will be invited to do the same. Now on with the show, as it is.

*****

Everyday I count my blessings then give Heaven the Finger. I took accounting in school (for one semester) and learned the credit/debit system, which I use to total my physical blessings versus the “other stuff” in my existence. The other stuff is made up mostly of new conditions/diseases they give you and charge your insurance for at doctors, ophthalmologists, dentists and Medieval Barbers.

Credit: A Mind not too ruined by various excesses and the addictions that the Mind does not regret at all. A Mind aware of what is happening to it, is still fairly quick and is angry–neither plodding, nor meek nor drooling.

Sum of Credits: 1 (one).

Debits (a partial list): Arthritis, glaucoma (my newest toy), two dissolving neck discs, spondylosis, scoliosis, a stunning variety of personality disorders, hay fever and I’m invisible until someone wants something (I’ll admit that the last one has its uses).

Sum of Debits: Legion.

Strangely, even though I’ve been a cigarette smoker since childhood (well over fifty years), it has not made itself known in any harmful way–yet. Nor has the copious amount of liquor and drugs I’ve imbibed (and continue to do so). “Cigarettes are bad for you”–Crazy talk. There might be more graves in the world if I hadn’t had them to turn to at critical moments.

Now this is not intended to be a woe is me sort of thing. Self pity is, well pitiful. And I know that many of you have debit lists longer than the chain old Marley brought to Scrooge’s rooms long ago. Our friend Tom Sheehan (in his late nineties) is losing his sight, but he still retains his dignity. Many of you suffer in silence. I, on the other hand, will be silent when I’m poured into my urn. I’m all for Dylan Thomas’ advice about raging at age and death.

So, every day I get up, recheck the balance sheet, flip off Heaven and recall an old car that was rusting out in the field near my grandparents’ house. It was a Hudson and had been there so long that grass and flowers grew where the hood once was. But I’d often get inside and play driver (until the hornets built a nest in it). The steering wheel was still there, but anything that involved a knob was long gone, and I tried not to worry about obvious signs of mice living in the seats. Plus it did smell sort of funny. Sometimes I feel that the Mind is forced to play “driver” in an old wreck held together by rust and nostalgia; but that is wistful thinking and I will not stand for it.

But there is much to be said for suffering when it comes to writing. Anyone can gush about the non-extant happiness ever after; but, as I’ve said before, no one I’ve ever read has given me a description of a Heaven that I would want to be in ten minutes let alone forever and ever. Just a bunch of Sunday School, as contrived as Santa Claus. And yet we continue to find new artistic ways to express and create pain, right down to the last pore on its ugly face. Still, I must credit pain with having a sense of humour, albeit one that’s on the dark side: I knew a person dying of cancer who stepped on the scale at the doctor’s office and said “Why look?–shit’s eating me alive.” When she saw she was up three pounds she muttered “Only I would catch a fattening cancer.” You can scan the world’s holy books till your eyes fall out and not find one instance of similar wit. That tells me that no God wrote any of them. If there is a God She’d have to be the funniest fucker ever.

Anyway, here’s to all of us held together by rust and nostalgia; here’s to the sweet sweet wine of rage; here’s to having to make St. Peter laugh to gain entrance to the Kingdom. If I had a lawn you’d bet I’d tell the kids to get the hell off it lest they wanted to be buried under it. For persons who are a bit of a stranger to Rage, check out the Eastwood film Gran Torino, as you sit there contemplating having a go at Thomas’ record for whiskeys in one sitting.

Good Things Found in the Middle

Every time Tom Sheehan debuts a new story I use the same “witty remark.” Only the number changes. Far be it from me to buck tradition so late in the game; even farther be it from me to waste a perfectly good witty remark that still has use. So I again state: The five writers this week have a staggering combined 229 appearances. Three are up for the first time; one for his second, and another for his 224th. (Hmmm…sort of fell flat this time, oh well.)

Ismael Hussein opened the week with his highly energetic All History in One Day. Normally such observations, despite their validity, can come off strident and tiresome. But Ismael has such a winning, sincere attitude that it is hard to dislike him or his work.

A tremendously imaginative and colorful work by newcomer Samantha Barrow won Tuesday. Acid Drop (for those of you familiar with such) is a paradox because it can be labeled as surreal, yet at the same time it is very straight forward. You can only free your mind so far, chemically; regardless of the distance you fly there’s always going to be that one thing that tags along. Alive and vivid.

The Jubilee by our third site debut author, Michael Barbato-Dunn gives the reader a clever angle into the heart of an evil that spread like a cancer that hasn’t been quite killed yet. The approach is original and is one that gives meaning to the overworked, usually inaccurate phrase “history made alive.”

Michael Tyler appeared for the second time with his wonderful And Last For a Lifetime. This story knows about a special sort of pain that explores the fine line between actually experiencing life and ending it by your own hand. ‘Tis short, yet the opening first sentence allows it to flow and create further mental images.

Our friend Tom Sheehan, who doesn’t let the other stuff deter him, closed the week with his 224th appearance–by and far the most stories by one writer (although Hugh has the most total posts). Only a writer of Tom’s stature can take a look at Sea-bound Places I’ve Known and keep it from becoming maudlin and cliched. Tom’s collection is easily found in our archives.

There we go. And since David Henson was so successful last week, be on the lookout for invitations to be an Editor of the week!

List of Small Good Things

The novella or novelette is responsible for some of the finest works in the English language; but publishers steer clear of them; they are under the impression that you need a thousand pages to satisfy the price. Harlon Ellison always said a thing will be as long as it will be when it is done. He was a prickly little fellow, but he understood that padding a short into a novel for the sake of a publisher is poor writing. Perhaps only intricate genres such as Mystery and Crime require room to move, given their complex natures, but so often specific themes do not need to kill a bunch of trees to get themselves across. What follows is a list of great works that would be rejected, by some, due to length. (To anyone who mentions our 3000-word rule in the same breath; you are wrong. We specialize in quick daily reads and War and Peace would not be a good fit.)

  • A Chrisrtmas Carol–Charles Dickens (Boz got pretty windy sometimes, but, surprisingly, this beloved tale weighs in at 89 pages (pg counts vary from edition to edition)
  • Bartleby the Scrivener-Herman Mellville (at just 49 pages this says much more than books ten times longer)
  • The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde-Robert Louis Stevenson (it took him a week to write this! First edition was 141, later ones are even shorter)
  • The Heart of Darkness-Joseph Conrad (Just 69 pages–and the horror, the horror for those who fail to read it due to length)
  • The Artifical Nigger- Flannery O’Connor (obviously the title offends some librarians and educators who have just as obviously not read this work, when they try to ban it. Ugly shit exists. Never fear it.)
  • The Pearl-John Steinbeck
  • The Old Man and the Sea-Ernest Hemmingway
  • A Small Good Thing (the source of the list’s title)–Raymond Carver (Not sure if enough time has passed for the late Mr. C to be considered a classic writer, but this work, even shorter than Bartleby, is as complete and deep as any novel ever written)
  • The Legend of Sleepy Hollow–Washington Irving. For two hundred years the “labelers” say it’s too long to be a short story but too short to be a novel. But I must ask these people what does it matter when the tale is still being told?
  • Open for suggestions

I close with a clip that I ran into the other day that has to be seen to be believed.

Leila

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Published by ireneallison12

40 thoughts on “Week 501: Rage! Rage! Rage! Five Rave-Worthy Tales; Short Books Long on Story”

  1. Leila,

    “The Gypsy Faerie Queen” by Marianne Faithfull with Nick Cave is one of the songs I was thinking of. It’s beyond beautiful, both the video and the song by itself. Also: extremely Shakespearean.

    Dale

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  2. Dear Leila,
    I love Marianne Faithfull and also Bowie, and have watched this video with my teenagers many times in the past, during the Covid lockdowns as a pick-me-up, it’s so bizarrely surreal and hilariously un-self-conscious…She has some later collaborations with Nick Cave that are also totally amazing, in a very different tone (darker and more serious) than this Halloween-like video which tears down gender barriers amidst a bunch of other funny things.
    Thanks for sharing!
    Dale

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    1. Hi Dale
      I couldn’t believe that I had never seen that clip before. I am pretty good at digging up clips, but this one evaded me. Love it that they were having fun. Especially David, who appears to have a pretty good buzz going.
      Thank you again!
      Leila

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      1. Leila,

        I think Bowie had that same buzz going for the entire decade of the 1970s, thank God! I read somewhere that at one point he subsisted for months on nothing but a diet of milk, red peppers, cigarettes, and cocaine. It’s pretty obvious when you watch him being interviewed by Dick Cavett.

        Thanks again!

        Dale

        PS, “Blackstar” is an amazing album. I can think of few things more haunting.

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      2. Dale
        Love the Cavett shows I find. There was a great hour with Groucho and the unforgettable dust up between Mailer and Vidal. Capote was always interesting too
        And I love Bowie and Marianne who had a hell of a hard time surviving the 70’s herself.
        Thank you again
        Leila

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  3. It’s good to count your blessings – I agree but I also agree that cussing and swearing at the ‘other stuff’ can be most agreeable. I am typing at the moment with one finger in a stupid splint thing and I have invented some new curse words – okay they are mostly typos because of the ugly blue finger confiner!! Keep on trucking friend. dd

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  4. Dear Leila,
    Hi!
    As usual, you’re exactly right. The novella is and has been one of the finest fictional forms, because of its length, which, when handled right, can be exactly long enough. Your list is also an amazing one. These can be fruitfully added:
    “The Ballad of the Sad Cafe” and “The Member of the Wedding,” by Carson McCullers.
    “The Awakening,” by Kate Chopin.
    “The Turn of the Screw.” Henry James.
    The four novellas in “Different Seasons,” by Stephen King.
    “The Mysterious Stranger,” Mark Twain.
    “The Prophet,” Khalil Gibran.
    Several works by the late, great poet, Jim Harrison, who wrote much of his best work in the novella form.
    “A Sentimental Journey” by Laurence Sterne.
    “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” and “Master and Man” by Tolstoy (in this piece, the horse is more alive than the humans in most other fiction).
    “Rasselas,” by Samuel Johnson.
    “NOTES FROM THE UNDERGROUND,” by Dostoevsky, one of the greatest, most influential novellas of ALL time.
    “The Subterraneans,” Jack Kerouac.
    “The Call of the Wild,” Jack London.
    “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” Hunter S. Thomspon.
    And the Gospels. Following in line with the likes of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Kurt Vonnegut and Albert Einstein in this regard, I’m a massive fan of The Bible as Literature. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and the Acts of the Apostles are each, in their separate ways, a novella, and they’re all novella length. Mark is the shortest. He calls himself the “son of man” and no one understands him, not even the disciples.
    THANKS AGAIN for the Inspiration!!
    Dale

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    1. Those are excellent suggestions. I recall The Turn of the Screw very well and can’t believe I forgot it. Especially find of Different Seasons, especially The Body. And I hope that people won’t forget Carson McCullers; she was brilliant despite her suffering.
      Thank you!
      Leila

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      1. Leila,
        Carson M. deserves to survive based on two quotes alone.
        One: “Writing, for me, is a search for God.”
        Two: “She had a face that I knew would haunt me for the rest of my life.”
        Somehow, in her best work, she seems to know/understand some of the deepest thoughts, fears, and desires that people have. And she’s able to express these things in writing, as much as is possible. Because Wittgenstein rightly said that the deepest things can’t even be approached in words, not even by Shakespeare. But she gets very close. Richard Wright thought she was better than Flannery O’Connor because of her deep understanding of the black as well as white experience in the American South. He called her the first white writer to create a believable black character in fiction.
        As the survivor of a stroke that stopped me in my tracks 5 months ago, I also look to her as the long-time survivor of many strokes, even though one got her in the end, at 50. Also Walt Whitman, who had his first one at 54 and lived to be 72. Because writers are so tenacious and angry, as you pointed out, they often tend to survive things that would kill anyone else (at least for a little while). They can be great models for life lessons in this regard, despite lots of other questionable behavior that often goes along with it. (Like a wicked temper and a tongue that can shred folks to pieces in under ten seconds.)
        Thanks, Leila!!
        Dale

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      3. Dear Leila,

        I just finished reading your short story “Where Have All The billigits Gone” from Sep. ’22, and I have to say that I don’t know of any other writer who can create such lively, original, engaging, stand-alone fiction about their own fiction. This story alone opens up so many other levels to your fictional worlds that it’s almost literally mind-blowing. I have to applaud Hugh and Diane again for discovering it. And I’m glad I was somehow led to it by an unseen hand (anyway, that’s what it feels like) because this is truly great writing on a level that’s unavailable anywhere else.

        Also, thank you for your comments on my health. I was literally knocked off my feet and onto the floor by the stroke, and for 30 minutes I lost all my words and completely lost my ability to speak, but there was never any paralysis or facial drooping. I was already recovering by the time I made it to the hospital. My vocabulary came flooding back to me all at once. After 1 surgery on my neck and 1 week in the hospital, a few weeks later I was already walking 3 dogs for 2 hours per day again (2 Siberian Huskies and 1 pit bull, one of the dogs officially mine and the other 2 technically owned by my twin daughters). I’m still weaker than usual on some days and have some other problems, but my prognosis is good.

        On Father’s Day, Sunday, June 16th, six weeks post-stroke, I received your acceptance of my short story “The Old Guitarist,” which was an enormous boost to my spirits during recovery.

        So thanks again! Take care of yourself. You’re totally one of a kind! Thank you!!

        Dale

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    2. The Death of Ivan Ilyich is a wonderful addition to the list, Dale. I read it so long ago, but still think about it once in a while. Another shorter work by Tolstoy I read around the same time and loved is Family Happiness.

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      1. David

        Thanks for bringing my mind back to “Family Happiness.” I read it once in a literature class at the University of Illinois around 40 years ago, and had sort of forgotten it; you’re right, it’s a great piece of work.

        I’m currently reading and carrying around “A Confession” by Tolstoy, nonfiction. A short book, novella-length (or long essay), and probably as good as Ivan Ilyich. Thanks again!

        Dale

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    3. Hi Dale

      I finally figured out how to submit multiple replies. I really should have a child around, for my nieces (now in their 30’s) were/are handy for things that I overlook tech-wise.

      Ah, the billigits. It’s amazing what will prompt a thought. In his 1970’s remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Warren Beatty was on the poster wearing a 70’s track suit and he was looking down and had angel wings; just sort of hanging there–like a flying triangle. Although the billies do not resemble him that pose is all theirs!

      Thanks again!

      Leila

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  5. Thanks for another excellent post … insightful, witty, and portraying a darkness many feel from time to time. The metaphor of the abandoned car is brilliant, and the line “Anyway here’s to all of us held together by rust and nostalgia” is powerful and haunting. I sometimes find myself being held together by nostalgia more than I’d like. To the list, I’d add Melville’s Billy Budd and Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger.

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    2. David,

      “Billy Budd” is a great addition to the list. For some reason, I often think of Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville as together on the same page, esp. with Billy.

      Dale

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  6. Leila
    Since you brought up Carver and I taught Writing & Lit at the community college level for 35 years, I’d given my students double Raymond doses of “Cathedral” and “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.” Put them together it’s 3,615 words. Hardly a novella, but short enough to do in class taking turns reading out loud to each other like it was a boozy play. Plus, they loved getting to act drunk and say “fuck” officially in class.
    I’d stay clear of the “classics” for the most part, but Joyce’s “The Dead” worked pretty well at about 15,000 words and I’d get away with a longer Chekov story once in a while. My best trick was novella-izing on the Xerox machine [totally illegal] Alice Walker, Maya Angelou, and Langston Hughes novels realizing showing mercy was the soundest route to overall happiness.
    Gerry

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    1. Gerry
      The Dead had one of the best endings I have ever read. After all his verbal windage, Gabriel realizing what he was and that his wife never had the passion for him the way she did for the boy who died is incomparable. Liked Araby too
      And as far as copying goes you chose first class stuff for your students. I am sure that the writers would approve of it
      Take care!
      Leila

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      1. Leila,

        Absolutely right about Sunny Jim!

        I also love “The Sisters,” “An Encounter,” “Eveline,” and “The Boarding House” from Dubliners, plus “The Dead” and “Araby.” Those 6 make him one of the greatest short story writers ever, I do believe. (I’ve heard The Dead called both novella and story over the years…)

        I never saw John Huston’s film of The Dead, but I plan to some day, although nothing can ever compare to the words in the last few pages of it.

        Dale

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      2. Dale
        Dubliners is one of the finest collections by an author. I still keenly recall the boy’s increasing anxiety as he was forced to wait and wait for the pittance he wanted to take to Araby.
        Leila

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    2. Gerry

      Thanks for sharing how you brought Carver into the classroom. I bet he’s laughing somewhere in drunk heaven with his endless cigarettes and marijuana he shared with the blind man in the Cathedral.

      Dale

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    3. Gerry
      I live in the Pacific Northwest about seventy miles south of where Carver finished up in Port Angeles. PA was a fun town in the 80’s; quarter schooners at the bowling alley and it is where I saw the wildest bar fight I have ever seen. Sadly I was ignorant of Carver at the time, but I like to think we saw him in one of the many taverns.
      Leila

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      2. Leila and Gerry,

        The last time I was in that part of Washington state, which was around 30 years ago, I was acutely conscious that it was Carver country. In fact, that was one of the reasons I was there.

        I hoisted many a glass at that time in his honor and memory, just as I did in the White Horse Tavern in NYC where Dylan Thomas drank his final 39 whiskies. I do believe Carver is a classic. Harold Bloom, while not perfect on everything, is almost certainly the greatest literary critic America has ever had. And the second in line is not even close (Bloom is on a level with Samuel Johnson). He too believed Carver was/and/or would-be a classic.

        Thanks!

        Dale

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      3. Old Harold (whom I respected) considered Hamlet and Falstaff to be such great characters that they reached the level of being actual personalities. The book he wrote on the subject certainly made the case.
        But man oh man he hated Stephen King!
        Leila

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  7. Hi Leila,

     “Cigarettes are bad for you”–Crazy talk. There might be more graves in the world if I hadn’t had them to turn to at critical moments.

    Excellent observation – Not the smoking for me but booze has removed my mood of paper-cutting someone to death on many an occasion.

    I don’t think I calmed down, more forgot about it until the next time I saw their stupid face.

    I’ve not read many Novellas of note but I thought I had until I just checked out the word count. It seemed a lot shorter and I hope my misjudgement was due to me really enjoying the book. It was Poul Andersen’s, ‘The Devil’s Game’. But I’ve just found out that it is 62750 words – So probably a tad too much. But what’s twenty or so thousand words between friends!!

    You mentioned ‘Gran Torino’ which is a brilliant film. I would also throw in ‘Falling Down’ as something I could understand! I think it and ‘The Lion And The Darkness’ are the two films of note from young Mr Douglas.

    Brilliant as usual Leila and again you instigated much discussion!!

    Hugh

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  8. A particularly great week of writing, topped off by the great Mr Sheehan, and a great post. I really like what you say about the application of accounting and credit and debit. One of my favourite books (at 188 pages a pinch too long for a novella) is Christy Malry’s Double Entry by a certain B.S. Johnson which is a funny, wild tale of a young man who joins an accounting firm and decides to apply the principles of double-entry accounting to all decisions in his life in order to make sure he has a clean balance of things done for him and things done against him, with increasingly mad consequences.

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    1. Dear Leila,

      Just letting you know I received this.

      I’m Single, Divorced, and Unemployed, and I live with Literature (and Music and Painting) as my dearest companions, other than my Daughters and our Dogs. Your words mean everything, including your fiction. The level of rejection I’ve experienced during my 57 years is beyond words, as with so many writers. Your example is inspiring! Thank you!!

      Dale

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      1. Hi Dale
        As long as you have your Kids and Dogs and art, it’s all good. My mother was married to six different men in the space of five years. They were all nice enough, but I don’t think that it’s something a person should keep doing. Maybe people should have a limit, like a fishing license.

        Thank you again!
        Leila

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  11. Enough in that friendly rage to lift the ailing spirit!

    Another dozen or so titles to add to the list: George Steiner’s 1981 The Portage to San Cristobal of A.H.; Edna O’Brien’s Night & Beckett’s 47 page Worstward Ho!, Orwell’s Animal Farm & Kafka’s Metamorphosis; also one of Dostoevsky’s most entertaining ‘short stories’ (i.e. approx 100 pages) variously translated as A Most Unfortunate Incident/ A Nasty Story/ An Unpleasant Predicament. Light, Eva Figes’ evocation of a day in the life of Monet, is another. As is Hun, by Anthony Burgess, a 70 or so pager depicting the life of Attila – written some 30 years after A Clockwork Orange. And the books of Ecclesiastes & Job – their style & rhythm in turn calling to mind e.g. Rimbaud’s 7,000 word Season in Hell. Lastly, there’s that quiet & most devastating of novellas, The Beast in the Jungle, by Henry James.

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    1. Hi

      Those are outstanding suggestions. Just re-read Animal Farm a few months back. Gets better every time. You cannot distinguish between some people and Pigs even more so now than then!
      Thank you again–
      Leila

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      1. Dear Leila,

        Yes, Old Harold did seem not too fond of King at best. Later in life though, a couple years before he died I think, in an interview he said that Stephen King was Cervantes when compared to David Foster Wallace: which I also happen to totally, one thousand percent agree with. (I can’t stand DFW, and consider him to be one of the most over-rated writers of all time by far, which I believe that time will prove; maybe it’s just me…)…

        I received a brief but cherished hand-written note from Harold when I mailed him some poems through the USPO one time. In 2011.

        Thanks!

        Dale

        PS, GENIUS, by Bloom, is one of my favorite books of all time. All his appearances on the Charlie Rose show are also worth watching over and over again. Pure genius! Truly comparable to Samuel Johnson, which is saying something. (I think King was pretty gracious about Bloom’s judgements on his writing style.)

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    2. Honestly

      This is an amazing list!

      About a third of these works I’ve never heard of, a third I’ve read other things by the authors but not what you mention, and a third I’ve read the works. I haven’t read the works you mentioned by Beckett and Burgess, although I love both authors, so thanks! Ecclesiastes and Job mentioned alongside Season in Hell is mind-blowing.

      A BEAST IN THE JUNGLE, which for some reason I had forgotten about, is utterly beautiful, fantastic, great, wonderful, tragic, sad, true, and many other things besides. It’s my favorite work by Henry James. Can’t believe I’d forgotten it. Thanks for reminding me!

      Dale

      PS, I have a piece coming out on Kafka in LS on 12/15.

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