I’m standing in Euclid Square Park as I write this with an orange pen on repurposed paper (probably an angry, unpaid bill). (Later it will be typed).
I’m standing next to a small tree.
Tied to the tree are three dogs who I helped rescue, and who rescued me: Bandit, Boo and Colonel.
They’re wearing their harnesses which their leashes are attached to. We’ve been walking around this urban/suburban Chicago neighborhood for a while, and at the moment, among the pine trees of the park, the dogs are calm. All three are handsome mixed blood, two mostly wolfish Siberian Husky in appearance, one mostly pit bull, all three black and white with almost the exact same markings, remarkably. Boo and Colonel are brothers, discovered as tiny puppies with their mother and six others in a Texas alleyway and sent north by the rescue agency. Bandit, mostly pit bull, who looks like a loving and bad-ass version of Snoopy, was also discovered in an alley, in her case, South Side Chicago.
I’ve returned to this park in honor of Leila Allison, who is the subject of this essay. Six weeks after I suffered a stroke at the age of 57 (a long and involved story all unto itself), I received an email from Leila Allison on Sunday, Father’s Day, and Bloomsday (the day James Joyce met Nora Barnacle and on which he later set his ULYSSES), June 16, 2024.
The email informed me that LITERALLY STORIES, the online literary magazine site founded as LITERALLY STORIES UK by Hugh Cron, Diane Dickson, and a few other fine writers who’ve gracefully bowed out for now, was accepting my short story “The Old Guitarist.” “The Old Guitarist,” about a strange, uncanny street musician, and partly inspired by Pablo Picasso’s painting of the same name, which is in the Art Institute of Chicago, is set in and around Euclid Square Park.
The acceptance of this short story by Leila, Hugh, and Diane has another long and involved back story too lengthy to go into now. How much this acceptance meant to me and my life, which had recently almost ended, will be seen by the fact that I returned ritualistically to the spot with my three dearest companions of today except for my daughters, and that I stood there near a tree in winter writing about it by hand in the open air along Roosevelt Road on the other side of the fence beyond the trees.
In the email, Leila also informed me that she had a print of Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” on her wall where she worked on her writing and editing. In the delicate yet mostly recovered state of eight months post-stroke, the literary/artistic synchronicities involved in such a “coincidence” are also too much to go into now, until I can find a way to explain their personal significances in words that are clear enough to be perused by a reader not myself (not so personally involved). That day may come, but it isn’t here yet.
Charles Bukowski was known in some circles as The King of the Littles. This title was a reference to a phenomenon now known as the Mimeograph, or Mimeo, Revolution, and perhaps also a reference to Bukowski’s life’s writing about “the little guy,” or the average person in America (and the world).
The Mimeograph Revolution was a phenomenon of avant-garde writing in the 1960s and 1970s wherein writers utilized the latest cheap technology of the mimeograph machine in order to publish and disseminate their creations.
Now-well-known, American little magazines like BIG TABLE, WORMWOOD REVIEW, BEATITUDE, NOMAD, ANGEL HAIR, FLOATING BEAR, YUGEN, and OLE were part of this movement. The editors of OLE described its purpose in their mission statement as: “Dedicated to the Cause of Making Poetry Dangerous.”
Writers who contributed to, and in some cases rose to prominence in, the Mimeo Revolution phenomenon include, but are not limited to (besides Bukowski the Great): William S. Burroughs, Ted Berrigan, Bob Kaufman, Alan Kaufman, Anne Waldman, Linda King, Douglas Blazek, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Herbert Huncke, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, Ed Dorn, Paul Carroll, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Frank O’Hara, Leroi Jones, Philip Whalen, Michael McClure, Norman Mailer, Gregory Corso, James Dickey, e.e. cummings, Neeli Cherkovski, W.H. Auden, Diane di Prima, Ed Sanders, Bruce Andrews, William Carlos Williams, Barbara Guest, James Baldwin, Gary Snyder, Anais Nin, and Henry Miller.
After I received the email from Leila Allison accepting “The Old Guitarist” for LITERALLY STORIES, I also received, as do all new writers to the site, an invitation to begin commenting on the stories of other writers which appear on an almost-daily basis. In my gratitude, I immediately resolved to do so, and with excitement, gusto, and commitment, thinking of the “Comments” section as something more than most folks perhaps think of it as, believing that, in this case, it could have a truly literary quality and purpose for a formally trained (but mostly self-educated) literary critic like yours truly.
I also began to plunge more deeply into Leila’s work which was published on the site. (She’d started out as a writer and segued into becoming an editor as well, a few years later.)
I’d already read a few of Leila’s pieces before my story was accepted, which was a big reason I’d begun sending my work to LS in the first place. But as I now began to read more, it slowly, then suddenly one day, dawned on me what I was in for, which was a literary experience akin to discovering a writer like Herman Melville, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, Virginia Woolf, or Leonard Cohen. Here was a writer of such fecund and profuse quality that it became obvious a reader would need years, off and on, turn and return again, to fully absorb her work. Here was a truly great American short story and essay writer who’d been hiding in plain sight all along. My excitement continually increased with every piece by Leila which I perused; the width and depth of her creative writing abilities suddenly seemed truly, massively extraordinary, even uncanny sometimes, possibly even miraculous on a good day.
In her work for and with LITERALLY STORIES, and on her own internet site SARAGUN SPRINGS, Leila Allison, akin to Bukowski in this way, has continued the cutting-edge, avant-garde spirit of the Mimeograph Revolution. (In Russia during the same time period, a similar phenomenon was called Samizdat, and was something that could get you sent to Siberia for a very long, extended and unasked for, and possibly fatal, vacation of sorts.) Just as Bukowski reinvented L.A. and California, or as William Faulkner created Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, in his own mind and heart, Leila had made the farthest northwest corner of the lower 48 United States her own.
Leila Allison of northwestern Washington state is a writer of many modes, all of them artistically successful. She writes with many layered personas and multiple, fascinating, resonant pen names. Her work includes at least two broad, main categories which I’ve been able to discern so far: what I’ve since come to call (in my own mind, and now here) her works of literary memory; and those of literary fantasy which are equally convincing.
Virgina Woolf wrote somewhere that the great female creative writers of the deep past were probably treated as witches by the societies they inhabited. Like a Good Witch from out of nowhere, or a magical musician who suddenly appears, Leila Allison can seamlessly weave a sweetly sung spell for, or around, her reader. Her brand of half-mystical, half-magical realism is tempered with a skeptical, realistic intelligence reminiscent of Emily Dickinson and which can match that of any stoic philosopher worth her or his salt. She often appears as a character in her own stories, in such an uncanny way that it feels like someone else entirely must have penned the tale.
She can create, or recreate, realistic memories from childhood that hold a gentle hand out to the outsider; or can conjure dreamlike fantasies of sensitive, literary, artistic souls residing on the edge of life. A fat man so large that his car nearly drags on the ground as he goes along, or the loving, beleaguered mother of a mentally challenged child, and the isolated child himself, are a few of her representative creations.
She can cross the moment of death and depict it as a peaceful dream. She can show the suddenness of a leg amputation for a beautiful girl and how she goes on. She can envision a wildly vivid series of benevolent spirits with names like footfallfollowers who haunt our days without our knowing and help to direct our fates in helpful ways. She can conjure up the ghosts of Hunter S. Thompson and Mark Twain. She can take a lost episode from You Tube featuring Vincent Price playing Oscar Wilde and make him into a literary ancestor from the deep past who speaks eloquently (and hilariously) from the grave. Her animals, from cats to dogs to goats to deer, and many more, are all as alive as her human characters. She can follow an exhausted, overdosing heroin addict into a cemetery and stay with him as his spirit wafts away from this world forever. She can create the Angel of Death as a beautiful, gorgeous woman with red hair and green eyes. “Prophecy” is the title of one of her pieces. Her world is almost as real and unreal as the “real” world because it contains an almost equal amount of complex, complicated, multi-leveled male and female creatures. Her flowing prose is American prose poetry at its best, and hilarity and heartbreak, tragedy and comedy, share the stage in her universe, which is presided over by William Shakespeare, another writer who could pen both tragedy and comedy with equal believability. Her vision and worldview have a profundity, sympathy, and human empathy which call to mind John Keats’ “Negative Capability.” Her short stories and essays are all stand-alone, separate pieces which also form one great tapestry, like the Pilgrims of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales or the plague-fleers from The Decameron of Boccaccio, one of Charles Bukowski’s favorite works. Often while perusing her texts, a literary soul feels like he’s not so much reading as being read. It’s a phenomenon that one also encounters with strong, gentle Montaigne, wise, universal Cervantes, and Good Will Shakespeare.
I’m leaving much out, and missing many things, which also shows as evidence of the depth, width, clarity, and quality of her writing. In many ways, as one of her newly dedicated readers, I’ve only begun to discover her world. One of her best tales is called “The Endless Now.” Almost the entire piece occurs in a medical waiting room while the protagonist is doing nothing but sitting, waiting, observing, and reflecting. As in a Samuel Beckett, Anton Chekhov, or Raymond Carver tale, close to zero actually happens in this story, except that also almost everything does. By the end of this piece, which should be read many times to get its full effect, but will also blow you away the first time as well, the reader feels that he or she has understood human life in such a profoundly new way that it’s like reading a case study by Sigmund Freud for the first time, which reads creatively like a modern short story.
Her gift for the word, the phrase, the sentence, is sometimes raw, and always purely unerring somehow: alchemical, gorgeous, beautiful, sculptured, woven, wonderfully literary in its reinvention of literature itself.
While I was on the dog walk during which I penned (literally, penned, with an orange pen, like Van Gogh’s blooming, drooping sunflowers, on unpaid bills and other repurposed paper, to type later) most of this essay, I stopped at a Little Free Library box on the corner of 18th Street and Oak Park Avenue, the street Hemingway was born on and where he lived his first 18 years. Inside the box was a copy of BILLY BUDD, SAILOR by Herman Melville, one of my favorite works from my own deep past (so full of failure according to the world, but endless written successes according to yours truly). I read it for the first time when I was fourteen years old.
Astonished, refreshed, gladdened, amazed, I placed the serendipitous (synchronous, actually sent to me by Melville himself, it felt like) copy of Melville’s final masterpiece, a tale wherein he retells the crucifixion of Christ upon the sea, and which was unpublished at his death, hidden away in his desk, into my winter coat pocket and zipped it up tight with the folded papers upon which I penned this essay. The dogs could tell I was excited. The three of them stared up at me, wagging their happy tails and asking what comes next in this life.
Bob Dylan once wrote in a song, “The vagabond who’s rapping at your door, is standing in the clothes that you once wore.”
ADDENDUM: Ken Kesey, as in so much else, can be seen as the bridge, and a connection, as Ken began to self-publish his own material on the internet long before almost anyone else. He always called himself a bridge between the beats and the hippies. He continued as a beautiful bridge his entire life. Earlier in the twentieth century, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust and D.H. Lawrence all helped set the stage for the phenomenon of modern self-publishing which the Mimeo Revolution helped to fuel/create/continue. Farther back, in America, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman are standard-bearers for a phenomenon like the Mimeo Revolution (and Samizdat) which led to today. (Emily Dickinson’s forms of self-publishing were so original they can never be replicated and belong, forever, to no one but her.) If we had to rely on no one but the mainstream and academic publishers of today for new reading material, it would be a very, very, very, very boring world; mortally boring, deadly boring, as boring as being forced to stack empty boxes on the shelves of a Walmart store, nonstop, from now until all eternity.
The books that Emmanuel Swedenborg’s gentle and wise followers (like Johnny Appleseed) have always most cherished are the ones he published at his own expense.
Image: Pot Pourii or coloured leaves, petals and seeds from Pixabay.com
literally stories 
Dale, Dale, Dale
I purposely avoided reading this until now. First I again congratulate you on your ability to come in from a fresh angle. Your writing is obviously loaded with scholarship yet it never bogs under the weight. Also, your energy in the appreciation of the written word is a wonderful thing.
As for the fantastic compliments you have bestowed upon the subject, well, honestly and humbly I say IT’S ALL TRUE!!! But really, we all are better than we think we are.
You deserve your successes because you have worked hard to get them.
I recall sniffing mimeo sheets because they were supposed to get you high. (a scene of that appears in Animal House.)
All my appreciation!
Leila
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Leila
Ralph Ellison wrote about Stephen Crane, another great American short story writer:
“Such words as ‘clairvoyant,’ ‘occult,’ and ‘uncanny’ have been used to describe his style…and there was an inescapable aura of the marvelous about Stephen Crane.” (“The Open Boat” and “The Blue Hotel” by Stephen Crane are two of the greatest short stories ever written, and “The Red Badge of Courage” stands as one of the greatest war novellas of all time (all of the above are on a level with Tolstoy). Crane’s poetry was like modernism before modernism.)
Clairvoyant, occult, uncanny, and inescapable aura of the marvelous are terms that I think of when I think of you and your work. I’ve said it before: I always had the feeling there was a writer like you out there somewhere and was never able to find her until I found you. As a literary scholar, this is a very, very great gift because great essays cannot be written about crap subject matter.
You set the bar very high for all of us.
False modesty is ill-suited for writers. Writers who are really good know very well that they are really good, probably because it takes such chutzpah to do this thing at all in the first place.
I have told lies in my life but all of the things I say about your work are not even exaggerations. The proof of this is in the pudding as much as 3 + 4 = 7. Anyone who doubts there can be literary writers as great as you in the contemporary world merely has to start reading. But they have to keep on going for a very long time. Your work is not only great, it’s also profuse. One great line, paragraph and story unspools one after another in your work, in an endless-seeming way…
AND anyone who truly wants to understand your work and its worlds NEEDS to not just read it, but RE-read it as well. I’ve read “The Endless Now,” for example, many times, and it NEVER seems the same, and ALWAYS gives the reader something new to think about. Amazing.
I think “The Endless Now” is like your “Tangled Up in Blue.”
As for sniffing mimeo sheets, I had never heard that before. But it sounds like something a writer would do! (I love the smell of books, and each time I sniff one it’s like a tiny jolt of getting high.)
THANK YOU!!
Dale
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We knew right from the first submission that there was something special about Leila and we were absolutely right. That she has become a friend and fellow editor is something that I’ll always be happy about. Literally Stories and its sometimes frustrations are all made worth it when I share it with these two. Thank Dale for shining a light on a shining light and for all the other submissions and comments since the day in the park with the dogs. Stay well. dd
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dd
I meant to hit reply when I replied to your comment but I hit comment instead accidentally – just letting you know. Thank you!
dwb
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Hi Diane
Indeed, yourself, Hugh, and whoever else was involved at the time made a great discovery when you discovered Leila. Only good writers would have been able to recognize a good writer like her.
In terms of the literary and literature and writing, her spirit is indeed a shining light in a world of darkness. And bad people are never good writers (as Sigmund Freud pointed out in his essays on humor) which means she’s a light in the world at large, not just in the world of reading and writing. I haven’t met her in person but I know that people who have met her in person know that she’s good – unless they’re idiots who know nothing.
Also, as always, thanks for the images you curate with the stories. You truly have a witty and creative gift for matching the visual with the written, and in a combined visual/written culture like ours that’s a huge and important gift!
Dale
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Dale
I don’t know if mimeos got us high, but they smelled so good. Like the smell of gasoline or cow flop.
And your attack on the modern publishing machine seems dead on. I have a writer friend who was told by an editor to put a ghost into her story, and he’d publish it. He did and, naturally, the story was ruined. Surely, writing & publishing are two different things.
From ’24 to the present, ever since I became acquainted with LS, Leila’s attributes and top-quality writing were so obvious to me I hardly needed more information to deepen my appreciation. BUT, deepen it you did! Thanks for that. — Gerry
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Hi Gerry
Though it sounds bitter, sadly I’ve seen university presses who published 50 or 100 books per year, not a single one of which was/is readable or interesting. (No names but they’re in Illinois and Ohio.) Thanks for backing up my claim on this.
(I’m talking about poetry, criticism, and fiction.)
There are always exceptions. But my general beef with the writing is that it’s usually: weak, derivative, imitative, politically correct (even to the point where the metaphorical use of the word “heart” or “mind” is sternly frowned upon), and also cynical, resentful, snide and supercilious – much like the people who wrote it. (Sometimes it sounds like the very worst of NPR.) That’s the trend from my perspective, not the ironclad rule in every case, of course.
It’s great to know you agree with me.
You’re right to point out that Leila is also a great person (not just writer) or she wouldn’t be able to write (or edit) the way she can.
Thank you!
Dale
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A fine and well-deserved tribute to Leila! I also remember my first LS acceptance and the joy it brought. Ah, Wormwood Review. They rejected every poem I sent them. One of my poetry mentors in college was a friend of Bill Wantling, who was in Wormwood and many other top journals at the time. My wife and I became friends with his widow.
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Dear David
Thanks for sharing tales of the writing life, which I love to hear.
Thanks also for mentioning William Wantling. I’ve heard of him but didn’t know his work. I looked him up and he looks like a bad-ass in a good way. I’ll be checking out more of his work. I have a special interest in writers from Illinois (and the Midwest), being from here myself.
Just watched an interview with Saul Bellow on You Tube last night.
John Keats said the world is “a vale of soul-making.” I think the Dreaded Rejection Letter helps strengthen writers in Hemingway’s sense of “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.” I’ve had a million of ’em, every one of which is probably written on my subconscious to this day, but mostly I go on…
Thanks again!
Dale
PS
To all writers, I’ve realized that one of the best plans of action is to always have at least one back-up. Never put all your eggs in one basket unless you like taking a fall and smashing all of ’em.
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Dear David
Hello! I read some of William Wantling’s poems and was super-impressed. The stripped-back, intense, and edgy nature of his verses is very catching. He tells it like it very much is and doesn’t waste time with any BS. A very impressive poet.
Also, one of my daughters is probably going to attend Illinois State University in the fall, the place where Wantling was a professor.
Thanks very much for introducing me in full to this great writer!
Dale
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Hi Dale
The opening with the orange pen and the angry bill grabbed my attention! You did a lot with that first paragraph.
The mystery unfolds with the three dogs attached to a tree. “You rescued them and they rescued you.” I liked how you made the backstory of the dogs interesting rather than an info dump.
I’m sorry you suffered a stroke. I didn’t know that. I’m about a year older than you, Dale, and I’m always thinking of my mortality, insuring against it by walking my dogs, and a new venture into church. Hopefully covering that other more important soul condition.
I like the details about Ulysses and Picasso. I’m always learning new information from your essays, and comments. That alone makes what you write valuable, but there’s a lot more to it. Attested by your popularity on this site.
“The Old Guitarist,” I’ll have to “Check it out,” Mellencamp.
Wow that is quite a coincidence of you and Leila recovering from such a traumatic event and the poster of Picasso–connecting in such a way. There is certainly kindness here on this site and art.
I like “writing in the open air.” It conveys a lot of feeling and gratitude. The near miss is not missed. I can see the orange pen again.
The dogs, it’s great to hear about them, and they came from Texas. That’s a mystery too. “An off stage moment.” That makes the reader… Wonder? Good writing uses this technique. Something you pointed out in my own stories, which helped me to understand my writing a little better.
That’s what’s great about your comments. They are very positive and enlightening–It’s very generous of you to help those, who are listening, to benefit. I don’t personally know any other literary professors, so I’m always glad to hear what you have to say.
The Mimeo Revolution. I had never heard of it. Sounds really interesting fo-sho! All of those writers.
This is a great tribute to Leila! The first story I sent to LS got rejected, but Leila was encouraging, and that was a needed boost. When you get a series of form rejection letters/emails from a cold and impersonal world (and probably swamped too) of literary magazines a little encouragement goes a long way!
I read “The Endless Now” by Leila, one you pointed out, and it was a really haunting piece. It had a lot of great lines like. “Hitler Blue Eyes.” Great images: “apathetic sunlight reflecting off thousands of dust particles.” That is quite beautiful. The title itself is so true in so many situations in life.
I also enjoy her Saturday post. It can’t be easy being an editor. All the work that goes into a magazine. I could only imagine the crazy stories that end up in her mailbox. That could be “The Endless Now.” But it’s probably more a labor of love.
Christopher
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Hi Christopher
The stroke was one of my more shocking moments lately and was also like a perfect storm of many things. For 20 minutes I couldn’t think of any words – terrifying in the moment. I started recovering immediately after that. Seven days in the hospital. But it stopped me doing a lot of things I was doing that caused it, like poor diet (discussed in “The Ghost of Van Gogh”) and a penchant for not sleeping enough (ditto). I can relate to: “I took long walks in the insomniac’s night,” a sentence that will ring in the mind and memory of all who have been there.
Now I take it a little easier (or try to) and things are better. Also, I had been depressed when I had the stroke (vicious, horrible, hollow depression) and instantaneously, that disappeared – like magic. Almost like it was sent as a message from somewhere else. The shock to the brain removed the depression (and it felt like the fingertip of God touching my brain and shutting me up – literally).
Like the essay says, I can walk three big dogs again so I’m doin’ okay. Also – temper tantrums. Those are bad for stroke patients. Learning to be more chill (when possible) all around is the way to go at this stage. (And I’m constantly reading The Bible, which I already was anyway.)
It seems like yourself and I both came to LS sort of at the same time, not exactly or literally but pretty close. And that’s pretty cool (and meaningful).
Thanks for reading my work, AND understanding it, AND then saying so with such convincing eloquence.
I LOVE how you pointed out that I used fictional techniques in this essay. This was very consciously (and very quietly) done. Again, thanks for observing this, realizing this, seeing this, and saying this.
Thanks for calling attention to the orange pen and outside. I don’t have a writing desk (it’s covered with books). I tend to write while standing up (outside) or laying down (inside – usually). Also in the car. Something about being on the move makes the thoughts come. The rest of the day is for mulling it over. In 2014 my theater actress girlfriend (ex now) said she hadn’t heard me speak in a week. (I was speaking to the kids and the dogs when she wasn’t around.) I realized at some point that I don’t have anything more to say to 90% of the adults on this Planet, at least not in person. Too many adults engage in too much empty chitter-chatter in this society. It makes you want to hang yourself for boredom.
Earlier Leila used the term “hypocritical fuddy-duddies,” in another context. That’s one reason why she’s great – she gets it.
Thank you!!
Dale
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Dale
That sounds rough about your stroke. Well described though–and awful–I’m sure.
Glad the depression lifted. Depression and anxiety became a sort of constant companion for me once I completed my full blown entrance into alcoholism. A trifecta I guess. A triple shit shit sandwich, lol. I’m not as lost as I used to be. TG
Yes. I came onboard last May with “A Starless Street Corner.” One of my favorite titles that somehow came into being. Thanks for quoting the line… “I took long walks in the insomniac’s night,” It amazes me that you remembered that. Maybe my writing will live on longer than my doubts forecast it will.
Glad to point out things in your writing. It’s always very clear and error free. And ALIVE! It is fascinating how you craft your work too standing–freehand–outside. Probably with that orange pen which I found to be a nice concrete detail. So bright!
Your ex-theater actress girlfriend sounds like the start of a Denis J. story or maybe an end. And the baffling “no speak “only to dogs and your children for a whole week is a very eccentric note. This is very vivid and interesting.
I can relate. 90% is not a bad percentage on that account lol. I’m sort of isolated (self imposed glad to do it) besides seeing my roommate my ex-wife and our dogs.
Christopher
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Christopher
A lot of people don’t realize that Hemingway spent the vast majority of his time alone. What was he doing all that time? Why, reading and writing, of course…the man reread King Lear and The Bible constantly, and spent hours each day writing – alone. Being alone is required territory for the good writer. Sometimes we have to go outside and deal with the rest of the world, of course. But alone is where “the magic happens.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald – also spent most of his time alone.
James Joyce – same.
William Faulkner – same.
Emily Dickinson and Henry David Thoreau – the same…
Bukowski – the same….In fact, one of the things Buk writes about most is his love of solitude, his joys of being alone…he writes about this obsessively, and brilliantly, in both poetry and prose.
And the list goes on and on…
Wallace Stevens never drove a car. He lived alone (in a house with his wife and daughter) and walked four miles to work each day, then back again at night. And when he was at his job as an insurance lawyer he usually kept his door closed. Spending his time – alone.
Not that writers never socialize, of course (especially the alcoholic ones) but there comes a certain point when you truly realize what you always knew. Solitude is a gift (even though it often becomes a burden). And vast amounts of it are REQUIRED for any good creative writer.
Say hi to your ex-wife, roommate, and canines! They’re lucky they get to hang out with ya….
Dale
PS,
Stay tuned for more comments on your writing soon………..
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Christopher
“A Starless Street Corner.” “Where Everything Got Broken.” “After Lloyd.” “The Footnotes.” “Girl on a Trampoline.” “Dirty Screen.”
This grouping of six stories says more about the truth of life in the good ole USA today than 99.9999% of the novels that were published in the last however-many years.
When put together with your other online-published stories, plus whatever else you have up your sleeve, forthcoming, on the back burner, or waiting in the wings, or still-to-be-produced – this is truly great, truth-telling work, and it’s also written in a lasting kind of form. I believe these works, plus probably some of your poems, will indeed live on. Indeed, I predict it, right here and now!!
The titles themselves say it all in a way – poetic, intriguing, real, restrained, evocative, suspenseful, descriptive, short, brilliantly simple – like the stories themselves.
These six stories don’t have any false notes in them. And, again, the truth and truths they tell are profound. There will always be readers who want to read work like this. When there are no more readers who want to read work like this, human life itself will be over (and then maybe the angels will read it).
I also wonder how many posts, “letters,” messages, memos, we’ve sent to each other so far on the LS site. It’s becoming rather profuse, and that’s rather impressive. I believe the best of the Comments we’ve sent to each other are also probably something that will live on. There is very much fascinating work in the Comments we’ve sent to each other. Almost like a How-To Book on writing in various epistolary fragments and messages. It’s great writing. Some of the most interesting writing being written in America today, for sure. And I don’t mind if I do say so myself. Keep writing back whenever you can!
Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski both published collections of their letters which are, actually, some of their best work. Literary letters, or “Comments,” are a modern form which I believe will continue to become more and more popular as time goes on. It has to do with the predominance of the internet and the fragmentary nature of modern life, among other things.
And our comments to each other are utterly authentic. Zero bullsh-t, and only the truth. That is valuable, very very very valuable in this world Dylan so rightly called “A World Full of Lies.” And when he said it, he HISSED it, as if he were imitating all the Satanic liars to show them who they are.
That thing about fiction being a lie which tells the truth, and your stories telling the truth – I can’t get over it. I wish Raymond Carver were still here to read your stuff. He would recognize an heir, for sure.
Dale
“I write for children, children at heart – and angels.” – William Blake
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Hi Dale
Thanks for your comments! This is highly inspiring! In fact so much so–I checked out another collection of Raymond Carver stories “Where I’m Calling From.” They are in audio form. I would rather read them to observe his sentence construction. And ask myself how does this or that sentence work? BTW I checked out Harold Bloom’s. “How to Read.” It’s interesting and takes a dedication to absorb it. Right away he speaks of Virginia Wolf, which I liked. I’m sort of a floozy with my ready materials. Jumping from one to another. Sometimes I read Smokelong Quarterly, which runs amok to a “cis white man” but some of them are good. I miss reading The New Yorker. I could have gotten it on a Black Friday deal for 49.99 for a one year subscription. I think the library app took over anyway.
I’m glad the truth comes out in my stories. Most of the things I write about are unpleasant. So many horrors so little time. I think there is beauty in the world amidst this chilling shadow of evil that will never end until God says so.
I’m glad you like these titles. Good titles are hard to come by and there’s a lot of overlap with so many stories in the world.
I think these comments we write are valuable, too. These epistles shared into a lit cave that may be unearthed eons from now, perhaps even traveling in a time capsule to a different plant.
Thanks again! It would be wild to hear approval from the late great Raymond C.
Christopher
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Christopher
Perhaps Raymond Carver is looking down over your shoulder and reading every word you write. I’m not Catholic but I admire the saints and I do believe in tutelary spirits. (And I did teach for three years at Saint Leonard Parish School. Saint Leonard is the patron saint of prisoners, addicts, depressed people, horses, and women in labor. I used to nod to his statue all the time at the school. In all of his statues, he wears broken chains that symbolize his, and our, escape. Sometimes, Catholicism creates truly great art.)
Btw, your tales also remind me much of another writer we briefly discussed, Tobias Wolff, a friend of RC’s. Much of Wolff’s later work feels a bit forced to me (as if he’d run out of things to say for now but was trying to say them anyway), but a handful of his best stories are as good as Carver’s, I do believe. And his memoir This Boy’s Life = near-classic in many places.
Carver died of lung cancer from three packs a day plus nonstop marijuana smoking after he quit drinking. They say he was (understandably) depressed when he received the lethal diagnosis (he has poems about this) but that later the depression lifted, before he died.
His last poem is also on his tombstone. “Late Fragment”:
“And did you get what / you wanted from this life, even so? / I did. / And what did you want? / To call myself beloved, to feel myself / beloved on the earth.”
When asked, he honestly said the poem had nothing to do with the rather late literary fame he had achieved. But it did have to do with the way he felt about the writing he had created.
As I think I’ve said before, your stories also remind me of Stephen King but transmuted into a REALISM and less wordy. This is, truly, a brilliant, alchemical, genius literary invention you’ve created.
More later this weekend!
Dale
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Dale
Thanks on the high praise of my stories. Any mention of R. Carver and SK is skin titillating.
That is neat about your teaching at a Catholic school! I like the mention of Saint Lenard–He we would be the “Rabbi” for me. The Catholic imagery is Iconic. Chekhov’s use of the icon is very stark and almost creepy.
I just re-checked out T. Wolff’s “Our Story Begins.” Small world–great minds think alike… and more cliches.
I understand that thing about forcing stories. It seems I’m sort of there at the moment. But I’m glad to be writing. Raymond Carver said something similar in his “On Writing” essay about Donald Barthelme. Like Donald B. was trying to write like himself in a sort of counterfeit way, if that’s even possible. I thought writers would get better but now I’m starting to think we run out of gas. Hope not…
Too bad about Ray and the smoking. Glad I quit years ago with my drinking. They went together in the most destructive way.
Thanks again for your comments!
Christopher
PS I’ll be sending some comments on your essay today or tomorrow–kind of caught up in some work.
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Hi Christopher
No hurry about the Leila interview. This thing is gonna be around for a long, long time. Looking forward to your astute, creative and inspired commentary whenever you have time.
Know what you mean about the lethal combo of cigs and alc when taken to extremes. For me, cigarettes are exactly like alcohol on every level in the sense that I can never have just one or even a few. A couple of packs per day or nothing, it seems.
Haven’t had a cigarette in around a decade and a half. It took me doubling up on nicotine patches and nicotine gum for a year or two to break the habit but break it I did. I also had a health scare back then and my body (and my doctor) told me: break the habit or die (probably). Mr. Death will get here soon enough so I decided to give myself a break. Also got bored with emptying ashtrays.
Thanks for reading the interview whenever ya can…..
Dale
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Ananias
Greetings! Hope you see this. Answering you under this one because it’s the only place it will let me do it right now for some reason.
Tried to write back to you earlier in the week but I was having computer problems that Leila helped me fix.
Today is a great day to mention Chekhov’s short short story The Student again.
Also wanted to quote what William Faulkner said about Hemingway’s novella The Old Man and the Sea:
“This time, he (Hemingway) found God, a Creator…This time he wrote about pity, about something somewhere that made them all, made them all and loved them all and pitied them all…Praise God that whatever made and loves and pities Hemingway and me kept him from touching it any further…”
The Gospel According to John says:
“They loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”
Which means: they were obsessed with their money and power and material things, and cared nothing for the simple Spirit of Life itself.
Also, thanks for staying sober all these years…The willpower and respect for Life which that involves is something that can and should be compared to saintly behavior, at least in your case because you can write so good. And alcoholism itself is a form of crucifixion (or it felt like that to me).
Faulkner also said, “The basest of all things is to be afraid. So, never be afraid…Never be afraid to tell the truth about pity and compassion and mercy, and against injustice, greed and lies.”
Your stories and commentaries do just that, so on this most important of all commemorative days (except for Easter Sunday), I salute you!
More later….
Dale
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Hey Dale
Well said and thought provoking! Yes, “The Student “would be the one for Good Friday. And Easter is nearly here.
That’s about the truth of alcoholism. It did seem like a crucifixion. A slow death for sure. I’m glad to be liberated from it.
God must be shaking his head about the desires of men. Almost entirely “self will run riot,” as it says in The Big Book of AA. Maybe in “Bill’s Story” can’t remember.
Back on James Lee Burke and trying to churn out some more stories.
Thanks for your excellent comments!
Happy Easter!
Christopher
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Christopher
That’s awesome that you’re digging in on and sticking with James Lee Burke in that way! Too many people (most people, almost all people) lack that kind of imaginative commitment these days; too many distractions and they LET themselves be distracted! Have you ever checked out Cormac McCarthy’s novel NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN? Some parts of that book are better than the movie and the movie is pretty darn good! No Country for Old Men, the novel, sometimes reminds me of JLB.
Good ol’ Cormac McCarthy was another American writer who was a HUGE alcoholic who gave himself his own resurrection by quitting The Bottle. He quit right about the time he knew he would end up dead if he didn’t. And as I’ve mentioned before and I’m sure you know from reading him – JLB also had to quit drinking.
Love to hear more about the new stories you’re working on whenever ya get a chance. Also know that sometimes it’s better to not say anything about it while it’s being done – but not always.
I finished a new fictional essay yesterday called “Roadhouse Blues.”
Felt like I was really able to do something new and good with the prose style in this one. I took enough material for a 200-page memoir and packed it into a few thousand words. When that happens, it starts to look like the writing might be around for a while….Also, I felt like I was taking dictation half the time from some writer that knows how to do it a lot better than me…
HAPPY EASTER!!!
Dale
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Dale
Yes, I usually find myself involved with a JLB novel. I like the way he draws his characters, and that other character–the world of New Orleans and Louisiana. Makes me wonder if he lived there at one time?
But after this book I’m definitely going to read/listen to Cormac McCarthy’s novel NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN? Thanks for mentioning him! I loved the movie. I’ve heard a lot about C.M. but I haven’t read any of his work. I’ll probably be absorbed.
It’s funny how all these writers, including us, have gone to the mat with alcoholism. I like the religious way you describe this battle. It’s very good! I think you mentioned a, “Crucifixion of drinking.” It really is a spiritual warfare. I wouldn’t want to be “tied to the whipping post.” That’s always waiting, NO THANKS!.
I have one story in the Que at LS. I’m not sure if it will be accepted or not. Been awhile since I sent it in. It’s called “Still Speaking.” and another revised version is called, “A Dog’s Grief.” I have four that have been accepted and are staggered out about a month apart. “In the Flames.” will be out in two-three weeks.
I’ve started several stories lately, but whatever magic it is that makes a good story has alluded me. Sometimes I think I can’t write at all and wonder how the hell I wrote these stories? I can’t recreate them either it doesn’t work like that for me. Then I start cracking a few good lines and it’s better, but I want the total buzz of something working. I could see how a writer might lose the faith. Quit for awhile, but I don’t think that’s me. I’m in the writing game maybe until someone writes my obituary. Big talk, I don’t know? lol.
Congratulations on finishing “Roadhouse Blues!” Wow that sounds pretty cool and with the creative prose! Sounds like you were in the groove!
Happy E!
Christopher
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Hi Christopher
Just wrote a long/ish one that got bounced back at me/deleted for some reason…will try to reconstruct some of it later….thoughts on what you called “the total buzz” of creating a piece of literary art, plus the Spiritual Warfare of Alcoholism, and the genius of Cormac McCarthy … today is Shakespeare’s birth AND death date…
That’s AWESOME to hear about how many stories you’ve got lined up at LS…can’t wait to read all of ’em. Thanks for sharing. Great titles too! More later…
Dale
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Hey Dale
Hum that’s strange… I hate when a story gets deleted.
RIP Will. S. and Happy Birthday. I’m ass-backwards today lol.
Thank you! I hope they don’t disappoint.
Christopher
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CJA
PS
Really intrigued by your titles…Titles, of course, are a huge part of creating literary art no matter what the genre is, and your titles are especially good, it seems to me (matching how good the rest of your stories are)…creating a good title is like creating a tiny poem in many respects…probably one reason why titles by poets like yourself are often so well-done…
Would be eager to hear about how you come up with your titles…if you KNOW how anyway, because I know that sometimes these things are more instinctual than thought out, etc etc…like good writing itself, good titles often have at least a partial element of spontaneity in them….I know Hemingway, Charles Dickens, and F. Scott Fitzgerald used to make very long lists of possible titles, throwing in everything including the kitchen sink, before eventually settling on the right one…
Thanks!
DWB
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Hi Dale
I think you’re onto the good instinct for a title. Sometimes I have a title before the story, but it doesn’t mean a story will follow. Lol. Most of the time in this place of creating art which can seem foggy, until after enough drafts and dropping details and curving a phrase–a title comes alive and whatever the story is trying to say the title says it out loud.
And to speak it another way with another title might be a mistake. The ghost of the original title might haunt me. I think stories after they are published become a life that is over for the creator. “It’s in the books.” For good or bad–hopefully good.
Yes I think spontaneity is there too and that’s great when a story kind of names itself.
Iv’e never made a list of titles. I have run a few past my ex-wife to get her opinion. I think I answered your Postscript first.
Christopher
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Christopher
“The ghost of the original title might haunt me.” WOW! That’s such a cool commentary line, and it says so much about the art of real writing and how the writer walks around with the spirit of their own work surrounding them.
I believe you’re right, that once it’s “out there” and published in whatever way, the writer loses control and the thing she or he has created takes on a life of its own.
Regarding Cormac McCarthy – his novels aren’t all of the same quality. All of his work has value to it, and you can learn a lot by comparing his less successful (artistically) work to his more artistically successful things, but like any writer, he’s uneven, and some of his stuff is decidedly better than other stuff he typed. And he always used a typewriter, even long after computers came along.
His best books are BLOOD MERIDIAN, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, THE ROAD, ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, and finally, his very great drinking novel which is about ALCOHOLISM, AND shows both the downsides, and the hilarious sides, of this disease, a novel called SUTTREE which CM spent 20 years (off and on) writing.
CM didn’t become a financially successful novelist until he was well into his 60s. Before that he was poverty-stricken, and even did things like live in barns without electricity because he couldn’t afford rent. Some of his early novels were actually written at night in barns in Tennesse by candlelight. No joke. He also said at one point, “Everyone I know from the old days (meaning all the old drunks he used to drink with) is dead. And I would be dead too – if I hadn’t quit drinking.”
Sometimes I have problems with McCarthy’s worldview. He seems to accept secular materialism for what it is, and stops there. I like the writers who push it farther – who imagine other possibilities. McCarthy did that in some of his work, but other times he stops at nihilistic tragedy – and that can be depressing. James Joyce and Shakespeare were nothing if not great comic writers, kind of like Dante’s DIVINE COMEDY – where Hell is imagined and shown, but Heaven is also imagined, and also shown.
But CM’s LANGUAGE USE alone is well worth studying. The man could write brilliant sentences (sometimes too many of them). Let me know what ya think of his work whenever you get to it!
How’s the writing going?
Dale
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Hi Dale
Yes writing does haunt the author. The what-ifs and should haves. It is a lot like the black and white pages of life. The “I have no regrets” statement people like to flout does not apply. I’ve always thought that was bullshit. How can a human being have no regrets? Then again being an alcoholic created mountains of the stuff, lol.
“how the writer walks around with the spirit of their own work surrounding them.” SEE. Right there is such a true example of a writer knowing what’s going on in another writer’s life. People who don’t write like we do wouldn’t know this. It doesn’t make them less or anything it’s just not their experience. Only a true writer would know this.
I heard Joyce Carol Oates talk about this world. And she said people that knew her would be astounded by what was going on in her head most of the time…THE WORK.
I started Cormac McCarthy “No Country for Old Men.” So far it seems a lot like the movie, which was very good. I’m still in on Tobias Wolf, too.
C.M.’s poverty seems to be a rags to riches story that is a common denominator for a lot of these famous writers.
Well, on the writing front… LS accepted the “Still Speaking,” story. Then I submitted another one. These days a lot of my writing is going over old work. But I still start a lot of new stories too, but that “Buzz” feeling hasn’t struck, lately.
How’s your writing? Were you able to reconstruct your lost work?
Christopher
PS I started M. Aurelius’s “Meditations.”
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Ananias!
I love Marcus and his Meditations! If the Gospels somehow disappeared from the world, much of their wisdom would be preserved in Marcus’ Meditations. Among other things, he was drawing on many centuries of the Stoic tradition before him, including Socrates and Diogenes, for his wisdom; plus a lifetime’s experience, the kind of experience which CORRUPTS most people (but not Marcus), i.e. being born to vast power and endless wealth. Also fascinating how he initially wrote the work for no one but himself (to remind himself how to act and keep his courage up), and that he never tried to publish it, even though he was King of the entire Roman Empire.
There’s a brilliant guy named MICHAEL SUGRUE who has brilliant, concise, compelling, fascinating lectures about Macus’ life and work on you tube.
Sugrue points out this wild fact: during Marcus’ era, there were exactly two truly great philosophers: one, Marcus himself, THE EMPEROR; and two: Epictetus, WHO WAS A SLAVE.
I remember Marcus saying: You need to remain CALM, even if being devoured by a wild animal. How many among us today can live up to that? Although guys like Marcus weren’t even afraid of falling on their own swords if that’s what it took, for the most part.
Thanks for reading Marcus! Every translation of him I’ve ever seen is simple and direct, which helps the wisdom come through. More soon!
Dale
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Dale
Marcus A. sounds like a totally wise bad-ass. “Stay calm while wild animals devour you.” Has set into my mind. How an anxiety prone dude like myself can live up to that is a tall and impossibly worthy order.
Guys like him willing to fall on their swords. Speaks volumes of character. Sometimes I think booze jaded most of my finer idealism. Where I operated from the bottom rung of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
I’m not sure how far I really got in AA’s 12 steps, but I’m grateful to be sober.
I need to look into Epictetus…
Christopher
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Christopher
I was thinking about how despondent and half-depressed, and RESTLESS, I get when I’m missing the ‘TOTAL BUZZ’ (your great phrase) of writing/creation like you talked about, which sadly is at least half the time almost all the time and all the time sometimes, although sometimes, for rare periods, not at all.
Then I always try to remind myself how many stages and phases it actually takes to write good stuff. Like:
Reading for years. The idea or impulse to write. The being compelled to do it. Doing it: writing the rough drafts. Cooling off periods so you can think about. Revision, which could last years, minutes, or seconds, depending. Reading and rereading your own work to study and figure out how to fix. Cooling off periods of years sometimes then returning to old work as if it were new (and sometimes this results in the very best things of all). And then there’s the after-writing parts of writing, like letting the well refill, resting, leaving it alone, sleeping, thinking it over, trying to leave it alone, thinking it over some more, sleeping on it, dreaming about it, worrying about and obsessing over it, not listening to people around you talking because you’re thinking about this, returning to it, rinse and repeat on a daily basis for many decades….and these all describe maybe one percent of the process, at most. The way you described being haunted by this is perfect. But if one turns away from this THE VOID stares you in the face.
I do believe that with 99% of good writers, once you’ve achieved a certain level, it’s something that will ebb and wane a little bit but will never leave you now, not even (or especially not) in the end times…
But the search for that ‘TOTAL BUZZ’ and the sense of being haunted in good, and sometimes bad, ways…Makes you realize why the whole thing is so addictive. When the total buzz kicks in there’s simply nothing like it on Planet Earth anywhere! No wonder we get depressed when it goes away (or it goes away when we get depressed); but the standing up to that is one of those “whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” Hemingway issues…
Thanks for sharing!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Such an excellent way to describe this writing process, which not only rings in the truth–It is the truth!
I like your descriptions of “despondency and Restlessness.” It sounds like E.A. Poe’s mental state. That created such magnificence!
Your comments are very sharp, and I wonder if you were not experiencing the “Total Buzz,” of creating them?
Man, you have the writer’s ability to clarify the beast. To speak the words that the writer hopes to speak.
This is a great image, “not listening to people around you talking because you’re thinking about this…” I can just see the distracted writer (possibly me, without a doubt) adsorbed wholesale schizophrenic into this creation that blurs the lines.
Yes It does make sense… This “Jonesing” to do good work, “The Total Buzz” to repeat it over and over.
I feel like I’m battling a lot and even when I’m kind of pissed off or disenchanted, I continue, because I feel worse when I’m not writing so I know the “VOID” you speak of. “There be dragons.”
Writing with all of it’s obsession and opportunity cost is pretty great when it works! Sometimes I lower my expectations and shoot for one good line. One nice little description.
Christopher
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Hi Christopher!
Yes, Epictetus has an endless string of good quotes, almost all of them worthy of being pondered upon for hours, days, or years.
Some of his key wisdom/s include never judging yourself by the standards of others, not being too interested in “the things of this world,” being yourself and never letting life get you down – no matter what.
It’s the EXACT SAME WISDOM that every single great philosopher who ever lived tries to impart to his/her hearers, but the ways he says it all have a tendency to stick in the mind perhaps more than many others.
He’s a philosopher I’ve studied exclusively through his bio on things like Wikipedia, and also his single quotations also available all over the internet.
And he’s helped lift me out of more than one depression more than one time, too…(all of these people are supporters for or members of the spiritual army that surrounds the greatest, most divine philosopher of all time, and you know who that is….)
Dale
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Dale
I think if the wind was blowing just right and the stars were lining up according to Hoyle. I would say Jesus.
Second place winner. Marcus A.
I like not judging yourself by other people’s standards. That’s never a good idea. I mean what does another human’s (usually not spiritual) standards have that they should tell us how to live our equally good life.
That reminds me of a great a piece of flash fiction from the 1800s, “The Night Came Slowly,” by Kate Chopin.
Christopher
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Christopher
Thanks for all the great compliments about my comments, and thanks even more for UNDERSTANDING what I think I’m trying to talk about! It’s all inspiring at every level and truly deeply appreciated.
What you said about sometimes lowering expectations and shooting for one good line or one good little description makes a mountain of good sense. Hemingwayesque.
Another thing I sometimes try is the WORD COUNT trick, where you pick a certain amount of words – not much – like 100, or maybe 200, words, and say – to yourself – I will write at least that much, and I can surely write at least that much, and even if it’s crap, I can leave here in good standing with myself and know I tried and did the best I could today – and heck, at least I produced 100 (or 200) words – even if it’s crap! And maybe I can make it better tomorrow.
I find that SOMETIMES (not always) that little trick opens the floodgates on to longer and better and more developed things.
Another thing I’m eternally grateful for now, at the ripe young age of 58, is that I know now, almost unerringly, whether I’m producing crap or instead producing something that’s at least half good.
When I was younger, I couldn’t always tell (very frequently I could not tell at all) whether what I was producing equaled CRAP or equaled GOOD (enough). Indeed, I used to write reams of things I thought were good that were total crap, and some of the best things I wrote back then, I thought were no good at all. I had very little true ability to JUDGE MYSELF as a writer, back then.
Now I can tell almost without fail whether I’m producing something that’s at least OK – or NOT. This feeling, of KNOWING what’s going on (with my own writing), is such a good feeling that it’s worth almost everything in so many ways! So I can also know when it’s time to go do something else for a while and let the well refill as it needs to because it’s part of nature too (night and day, yin and yang, tide in, tide out, etc etc.)…
This level of knowing would NEVER have been achieved without a level of persistence (over decades) bordering on mentally deficient at times! (like banging your head against a wall)…
Thanks for UNDERSTANDING!!
Dale
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Hi Dale
You’re welcome! I think the writer, writes. Goals are good to have to keep up the habit. “Inch by inch it’s a cinch.” (AA).
Maybe not a cinch but “if you don’t begin you can’t win.” I got that from a Dale Carnegie type book. Actually it was a self help/spiritual book by Robert Schuller.
I had an alcoholic fueled stint in jail during my mid 20s and I read whatever I could get. Including my proudest reading of the New Testament. None of it stopped me from rampaging on, but the judge did halt my ass for 4 months. Being in jail was a lesson unto itself.
I’ve written about those experiences, and I might submit it to LS. It grew from flash fiction into a proper short story, but it’s not quite fiction…
Denis Johnson has a great jail story called “Strangler Bob.” DJ is the best. Now I’m onto “Tree of Smoke” by him. Giving it a second look. I think I could read Jesus’ Son once a month.
I hear what you’re saying about knowing now about what’s good in your writing. I think I’m getting a better idea, too.
I’m rambling into nowhere land but I’m writing and that’s good.
Christopher
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Christopher
I’ve never been in jail except for a night or two here or there in my 20s (hospitals, mental wards, and drug treatment facilities are a different matter). Four months is one hell of a long time for a sensitive soul like yourself. (They even have a name for it now, HSP, highly sensitive person.) I can say this. Knowing you went through that, I feel like a failure next to you. Also, reading the Gospels in there is such a classical spiritual experience that I have to say I envy you for that. You’re the REAL THING in a world full of fakes, flakes and fluffballs. I do have a cousin who did two or three years in Joliet for dealing heroin and crystal meth. She called it “helping people out” and probably still believes that (and it might even have been true to a certain extent). So jail runs in my family. Her son will be getting married this month and the ceremony shall be held in a trailer park in far northern Wisconsin middle of nowhere. I also have a few rich relatives, not all “poor white trash.” For the most part (not in all cases) I admire the poor ones more than the rich ones. They’re more authentic to a certain extent, although there are always exceptions and in my experience trailer parks often have as many idiots in them as gated communities do.
I absolutely think you should submit that piece you talked about that isn’t really fiction. Fiction that isn’t really fiction is a new mode that’s very, very, very important in these apocalyptic times. I can’t wait to read this! Send it in ASAP, I say! For sure and 1,000%!! I’m sure it’s a searing, intense masterpiece with its own brand of new truth, humor, tragedy and worldview, too. Absolutely can’t wait to read this soon. Wish I could read it right now, in fact.
That Kate Chopin flash sounds cool. Haven’t read it and will be checking it out. I read her AWAKENING years ago and it knocked me for a loop, especially the watery end and the way the prose was influenced by Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”
I’m gonna go ponder some more upon four months in jail and reading in there, including the Gospels. That is mind-blowingly good as far as earthly experience goes. I don’t think it gets any better than this. No wonder you can write so good!
Dale
PS, I want to add that MANY saints have been in jail, including Saint John of the Cross…
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HI Dale
Thanks so much! I can see how people find God in jail. When you’re stripped to pauper-hood and put in orange it’s a crude awakening. There is no place to hide, and always some big gorilla “tryin ther shit on ya.” The longer you’re there you find the ropes and signal post of being institutionalized. Something very dogmatic and routine like. The jingle of the Turnkeys scowling turning out your cell. The loud slaps of card playing. Anger–Chess pieces flying off the steel picnic tables. Running in place in your socks. Corn flakes every morning except Sunday then it’s a glazed donut.
Too bad about your cuz on her holy mission to sell heroin, lol. That sounds like a great story in the making. I know the trailer park well. Rich people not as much…
I’ll have to check “AWAKENING” by Kate. Thanks again for all the positive feedback!
I’ve got a story coming out on Tuesday in a KOA campground near you .
Christopher
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Christopher
YIKES!!! You really brought the American jail experience alive in a very few words. These descriptions will be seared into my brain pan at least until Tuesday, when I read more of your work (and will never be forgotten).
Yes, my cousin. Two days after being released from the penitentiary, she was arrested for driving 55 in a 30-miles-per-hour zone while consuming marijuana products via the bong method. Straight back to jail for another three months since you didn’t get the picture the first time. Since then, stints for shop lifting, burglary, car theft (“I borrowed it”), and many other noble pursuits. All while blaming the system continuously. LOL! While I can’t recommend most of her favorite hobbies and economic pursuits for the weak at heart (and stomach), I can and do admire her energy. Very much so.
If you haven’t already, you should read about the life of Feodor Dostoevsky, the great Russian who was one of Chekhov’s favorite writers (his second favorite, after Tolstoy). Wikipedia has a pretty good article on the life of Dostoevsky. (I find that Wikipedia usually does have good articles on the lives of writers and artists of the past.) Dostoevsky’s stories and novels are great, but probably, his life is even more fascinating. Check out the part about what happened to him right before they sent him to Siberia.
I’m glad you made it out of there alive, thereby saving the life of an original, truth-telling American short story writer and poet sadly needed these days like any days.
I’ve spent lots of time in trailer parks, especially when I lived in one with my grandmother during much of the summers outside the humble village of Caro, Michigan, a few miles down the road from where the old farm was. She was a German mystic in the disguise of a cleaning lady. I miss her and it more than I can say, especially in this Land of the Inauthentic.
Dale
PS, Check out what I said about Kafka’s short story “In der Strafkolonie,” “In the Penal Colony,” yesterday, when you get a chance…
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Dale
Thanks!. I’ve written at least one poem about jail. But my poetry isn’t very educated. I haven’t studied poetry like I have short stories. I love short stories!
Your cuz sounds like she’s got the drumbeat of recidivism. It’s a BI that revolving door. I once had a friend that was going to prison for habitual DWIs and he rented me his house. (We were alcoholic comrades for years.) Then by Friday they had me for operating while intoxicated. Motorcycle, wreck–laid it over leaving a bar.
I think I read a personal account of Dostoevsky’s once. I’m not sure I mix him and Tolstoy up. They are so worthy of reading, but It seems I’m stuck on their country-man, Chekhov. He is in the close running of favorite writer of all time. Right up there with SK (novels and Short S), DJ, RC, Kafka, Poe, Joyce C. O.. JLB for novels.
Love Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony!” That strange executioner’s machine inspired a 3000 word story of my own. I’ll check out “In der Strafkolonie,”
CJA
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Hey Dale
I couldn’t find your comments about Kafka
Christopher
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What a fabulously heartening homage! Astonishing, moving. I think I’ve already mentioned that should a selection of Leila’s writings – essays, stories, anything at all – ever be issued between hard &/or soft covers I’d be among the first to order a copy or three. Her work, expansive, inventive, dynamic, never fails to stir, enliven, astonish, unsettle, move . . . ; always more than meets the dazzled eye, a rare quality in itself. Should that selection ever be issued, an introduction by Dale would be an added boon. Magnificent read. More power to Leila. More power to you, Dale. “Excitement, gusto, and commitment.” Absolutely: it’s in every word you write.
Come to that, Leila’s bio is itself a clear-eyed inspiriting read. She is “all for people who NEED to write. As it goes with all compulsions, the sufferer is worth the bother.” Reading that, it gladdens the heart to know that there are such persons on the planet.
Geraint
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Hi Geraint!
Thank you for this.
Freud pointed out in some of his essays on humor that good people produce good humor, while bad people produce mean-spirited humor, a fact so obvious that I hadn’t even realized it that way until I read where he pointed it out. One of the great joys of reading good authors is that you know they have a light-bringing spirit, even if they’re not a perfect person (like the rest of us).
Your stories are startlingly original and profoundly well-done, and your commentary and abilities as a reader are commensurate with Leila’s greatness as a writer at every level!
Thanks again for reaching out.
Sincerely,
Dale
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Very happy to join in Dale’s hymn of praise. When I first started writing short stories ten years ago, I had no idea where to send them and just sent em off to anywhere that didn’t charge a fee. It was another five years before I stumbled on LS and now the only pieces I’d send elsewhere would be ones that were less than 500 words. The turn-round time is minimal (barely time to turn around!), when changes are suggested they are always beneficial. The comment system works well (in contrast to some other mags), partly because all three editors usually comment on each daily piece. And the editors are brave enough to publish their own stuff (setting a very high bar as Dale has pointed out).
We who submit salute you,
Mick
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Mick
I love that phrase “hymn of praise,” and if I’ve been able to accomplish even a fraction of that, I’m happy. Thank you! My genre is praise, with some ridicule of people like Donald Trump thrown in for good measure.
I’ve seen other short fiction magazines/sites where the comments are 99.9% useless at all times, almost always something along the lines of:
“This was kind of interesting I guess but you had a typo on page 22 and my friend’s monkey can write better than this usually.”
In this kind of forum, if you don’t have anything nice to say, keep your mouth shut (for the most part). That is almost universally true here, and I believe you’re right, it emanates from the fine spirits of the three current editors.
Thanks again!
Dale
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To Dale, Leila, Diane and everyone of you who have kindly commented on this, I just want to add in a few of my own thoughts.
First off, Leila is a legend. I have mentioned so many times about how she is an absolute master (No-one touches her) with interweaving back story into new works. I’ve read all her episodes of the same ilk and never once have I became bored with the details that I have already known.
Another thing that I have said is my absolute awe in the simplicity of the complexities in her work. How the hell she keeps it all together and remembers is astounding!
I agree with Diane, we knew that Leila was something special. Dale, not sure that you know this but of her 130 or so works, there are no refusals in between. Only Nik Eveligh is another who has a one hundred percent record. (Too few stories Nik if you are reading this!!) And trust me, there was no favour, we are harder on each other! (I reckon I’ve had over twenty refused!! Not that I’m bitter!! I put a poppy on their grave each year!!!!)
Leila’s imagination is only enhanced with a very acute ‘writing brain’. What she excels at is being individualistic. She lets that beautiful and immense imagination take her where she and they want to go. That makes her work fresh, unique and bloody entertaining!!
This was an excellent piece of writing. Only you and Mick Bloor can mingle fact, fiction and infectious knowledge that even heathens like me can enjoy (Even when not knowing the references.!)
I am not a great people person…Well that’s maybe not completely true. I like who interests me in whatever way. But the sheep, the trend followers, the social media twats, the vain, the selfish and the stupid (You don’t need to be uneducated to be stupid!!) all piss me off big time.
What I’m trying to say is for every-person who continually comments and all our writers tweak an interest in me that makes me realise that I don’t hate everyone!!
Last thing from my own point of view. It’s a simple thing. Pride! Us Scots are proud of being proud. We don’t always have much to back that up, but that is always in us. The four proudest moments in my life have all to do with this site.
Thanks Dale, Leila, Diane and every-one…It’s a continual blast that keeps me sane and entertained!!!
Hugh
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Thank you Hugh
I end up writing “Thank you ” so often that I fear I might drain it of its meaning, but there are no alternatives.
The writers here (especially Dale) are the sort you want to have write your introduction letter to heaven ( just in case).
Still, life will humble you. Just yesterday “the genuius” locked herself out of the building while doing laundry. She had the house key, but not the building key. This happens about once a month. She stands there at 6:15 on a Sunday morning waiting by the door.
Thank you everyone for their remarks. Thanks to my co-Eds Diane and Hugh for keeping the ship afloat since 2014 and of course, thanks again to Dale, and a special thanks to the resident of apt 5 who let me in around seven without asking too many questions.
Leila
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Hi Leila!
They say Einstein sometimes used to go outside without his shoes on, and not on purpose. (He also liked to go outside without his shoes on, on purpose, but that’s another story.) With great gifts always come the burdens large and small as surely as the yin and yang. Boo and I would’ve come to your rescue but it’s 2,100 miles from Berwyn to Bremerton and you probably already would’ve gotten inside by then!
Thanks for penning (keyboarding) a corpus which entire books can (and will) be written on!!
Dale
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Hi Dale
Boo would be perfectly charming with one of those little kegs the St. Bernie’s tote about. For medicinal purposes only, of course, of course.
Leila
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L
Boo adores your pragmatic fashion suggestion about the St. Bernie keg ’round the neck…He was online earlier trying to order one but he refuses to use Jeff Bozo’s mad shopping invention…(As a Siberian, he’s also fond of Rasputin’s revolutionary spirit…and he likes his beard.)
D
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Hi Dale
I think Boo would do a super job. I like St. Bernies but the ones I have known prefer a spot by the fire.
Leila
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DEAREST Leila
Boo is glowing after I read him your latest comment.
Dale
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Hugh
You are a fantastic teller of widely varied tales and a great editor who recognizes great and good stories and always keeps up the standards, too!
Great stories tell the truth through using a pleasing (to the reader) lie (like a song that sounds good). Leila’s work is filled with subtlety, psychology, spirit, pain, joy, laughter, and depth (and hidden meanings) and truth, and you recognized that fact very early.
Such skills as yours are, are rare in any age, but perhaps especially rare now, when The Age of the Machine has taken over so many minds (and hearts). People living in the bush in Africa, in tune with nature, are far better off than we are. And if and when nuclear war comes, they will be the ones who survive, not us (so who is wiser?). We need great stories of truth, in this Age of Lies (like advertising), now more than ever (or as much as ever before)…….The mainstream media world is almost 1,000% a barren desert designed to keep a few people rich and the rest of us in chains.
Thanks for great discoveries!
Dale
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Hi Hugh
Don’t think I ever mentioned this tiny factoid before, but regarding John Belushi, I went to the same high school he did. I arrived five months after he passed on.
His legend was still very much alive in the halls of the school at that time. Including pictures of him on the walls in the Drama Department, etc. (I’m pretty sure they put the pictures up only after he died.) Not just me, but a whole cadre of different students who attended that school were very much inspired by the life and legend of Mr. John Belushi. It was rumored that he was always a massive troublemaker and rebel at the school (not surprising of course), but also a really nice guy and very polite to his elders when he wasn’t busy smashing all the rules they were trying to enforce, etc.
I even took a couple (acid) trips with a kid who had the same last name as him and claimed to be his cousin (there were a lot of Albanian-American folks in Wheaton, Illinois, at that time). Belushi was also the reason I made a vow to myself that I would never use needles for any kind of drugs, ever (and I never have).
I think we were all trying to resurrect the spirit of the 1960s in the early Ronald Reagan 1980s through the spirit of John Belushi. His legend has faded a bit now, but he remains a great anarchic ghost and inspiration. Really glad you appreciate him and the spirit of his work.
Thanks!
Dale
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“The Book of Life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations.” – Oscar Wilde
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
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Yes, writing outside the box is the best. Bukowski likely would have to self-publish today. Leila A’s writing is indeed outside convention, the literary fantasy tales remind me somewhat of Lewis Carroll or Mervyn Peake, as well as somewhat like Bukowski in the literary memory stories. Very interesting tale of “The Old Guitarist” painting and the acceptance of your first story by “Literally.” I like the little free library reference to Billy Budd, one of my late wife’s favorite movies… justice vs. mercy.
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Harrison
“But me they’ll lash in a hammock / Drop me deep. / Fathoms down, fathoms down / How I’ll dream fast asleep. / I feel it stealing now. / Sentry, are you there? / Just ease these handcuffs at the wrist / And roll me over fair! / I am sleepy, and the oozy weeds about me twist.” – Melville, “Billy Budd”
As always, mucho gratitude for your reading and commenting and understanding of the contemporary writing scene…
Dale
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May I throw my puny gas can on this warming bonfire? A blaze so hot it singes a fella’s eyebrows from three good-sized bookstores distant or at least makes them so crunchy they fall off with a touch.
“Good writers, at heart, ought to be as dangerous as a riled cat with thumbs and the keys to both the liquor and gun cabinet.” —Leila Allison
Writerly words that have found me and lit the way. They stand alongside familiars like “a series of small victories,” the first paragraph (it’s a long, leafy one) of Odour of Chrysanthemums, and a quiet thought from poet/editor/publisher Judith Lawrence, who advocates for “the rawness of the pure untarnished colloquial voice in the reading.”
All these are as weighty as a Kesey bicep and simultaneously light as a Miriam Toews drop step into the truth.
Great essay Dale Williams W Barrigar!
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Mitchell
Very happy to hear from you! Thanks for reading my essay, and thanks for such great comments upon it. Leila is a truly great writer and spirit.
Thanks again for your story of today, too. The whole thing really sticks in the mind. It stares reality in the face while remaining positive, a very rare quality.
The Call of the Wild by Jack London is one of my favorite novellas. Among other things, you really managed to capture the nature of the pit bull.
I truly love this great sentence:
“I loved the pit bull and its fearless spirit and how it raced out to challenge me, happy to protect the yard and the people in the house – the people it loved.”
This is a truly great end sentence, one Kesey himself, or Hemingway, would’ve been proud of.
Dale
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DALE! You are generous and write that way too. I’ll keep an eye out for you on LS, a very-very-very fine house. mjt
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MJT
Thank you!
Keep on rockin’ in the free world!
DWB
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“I don’t know what I’d do without my friends. They are the we of me…The sad, happy life of Carson McCullers. Sometimes I think God got me mixed up with Job. But Job never cursed God. And neither have I.” -Carson McCullers
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