Found Sally Zigmond’s checklist detailing attributes of a short story over at the Quality Women’s Fiction Web site. Check it out and share your reactions here. (Which elements do you find “true” for your own approach to writing a short story? Which do you find less useful? Why?)
Drivers
Stories by Nathan Leslie
Hamilton Stone Editions, 2005
Everyone who knows me knows I don’t particularly like to drive. Many people–ranging from friends and family to the guy who inspects my car each year–routinely tell me that given how infrequently I use the car the fact that I own one makes absolutely no financial sense. A few years ago I thought I’d write a short story about someone who either didn’t like to or was simply afraid to drive. I started that story, but, as can happen, the piece soon turned into a story about something else; a story truly “about driving” eluded me.
So I wasn’t quite sure how I’d react to Nathan Leslie’s new collection, Drivers. In the end, I was a little surprised and quite delighted by this group of 23 stories, most of which have previously appeared in print and online magazines. (Leslie, the author of another story collection, A Cold Glass of Milk, is himself fiction editor for The Pedestal Magazine. He also teaches at Northern Virginia Community College in Sterling, Virginia.)
It’s tough to assemble a story collection, and it can help if you have a theme connecting the components. Leslie definitely has that. The “drivers” of this book, while mainly residing in Middle Atlantic states (Leslie was born in Minneapolis but raised in Ellicott City, Maryland) illustrate a variety of compelling “driver” characters and situations. That’s also an admirable achievement, because it’s far easier to write not-very-variable variations on a theme than it is to create distinctive yet related stories.
In “Stuck on Woodrow Wilson,” for example, a woman seethes behind the wheel while caught in accident-exacerbated traffic on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge leaving DC. In “Shape,” a car salesman evinces a surprising sales approach as well as a deep–if conflicted–concern for his troubled sister, to whom he lends a car (with problematic results).
The main character in “The Hit and Run” is a driving instructor making money off parents’ fears. He’s a pretty disturbing instructor: he makes it to his class through ice and snow “at 65, skidding all over the road and blaring right through the stop lights, stop signs, and anything else in the way.” He’s also responsible (though apparently not particularly remorseful) for killing a mother and her daughter in a hit-and-run.
Some stories reflect a sheer love for and/or knowledge of cars. Again, I’m no expert even when it comes to my poor neglected Honda, but the references to Duryeas and Hillmans seem authentic to me.
Whether you like cars, or like short stories, or both, you’re likely to enjoy Drivers. Find out more here.
A few people have asked me what I think about the current literary scandals, particularly the memoir-oriented James Frey case. Actually, a few of those who asked did so admitting they could already guess my take on it. They know I’ve never had much patience for what I consider nontruth in nonfiction. And by the way, I still consider memoir a sub-genre of nonfiction, with all nonfiction’s attendant characteristics, rewards, and responsibilities.
Maybe that explains, in part, why I really haven’t wanted to take on l’Affaire Frey myself. And maybe today’s Publishers Lunch summarizes even more clearly why I haven’t focused on the subject here: “It would be an understatement to say there is an abundance of stories on James Frey, his Larry King appearance last night, and Oprah’s dramatic last-minute blessing of the ’emotional truth’ of however it is that he told his tale. We presume that if you’re interested, there’s little new we can tell you, just as our subjective assumption is that you’ve probably already formed a firm opinion on the matter.”
Yes. Which isn’t to say that I won’t comment later, once I’ve had more time to think about all this. Maybe I’ll decide I have something original/potentially new and interesting and enlightening to contribute. I’m also looking forward to Mary Karr’s editorial on the subject, which, according to today’s PW Daily, is in the works.
But for the moment, I’m confident that you’re following the news yourself. In the unlikely event that you aren’t, here are just a few recommended readings:
A transcript of last night’s Larry King Live Interview with James Frey;
An editorial published in the Los Angeles Times;
And though it’s dated (from 2003), this article, “Memoirs: The Novel Approach to Facts”, published in The Age, is also highly relevant.
ADDED JANUARY 15, 2006:
Here are two articles/commentaries from today’s New York Times with which wholly agree. You’ll need to register to read the full pieces; registration is free.
1) Randy Kennedy’s “My True Story, More or Less, and Maybe Not at All,” which appears on the cover page of the “Week in Review” section.
2) Mary Karr’s op-ed, “His So-Called Life”.
The National Humanities Center has announced the topics for its 2006 Summer Institutes in Literary Studies. This year’s seminars will include “George Eliot’s Middlemarch,” led by Catherine Gallagher, and “Herman Melville’s Short Fiction: ‘Bartleby the Scrivener,’ Benito Cereno, and Billy Budd,” led by Andrew Delbanco.
I can tell you from personal experience that these seminars are worth checking out. You can learn about eligibility, application instructions, and more right here.
At the First Parish Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on November 7, Salman Rushdie read from his latest novel, Shalimar the Crown, and spoke about storytelling in today’s world.
According to the Harvard Gazette, Rushdie said that the novelistic conventions we associate with Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and Gustave Flaubert don’t suit our own times very well.
“The novel does not want to live in a world like this. The novel wants to be about Madame Bovary living in a small town and having an affair because she’s bored. It’s much harder to write a novel about our world, but it’s important to try.”
(To which I say, “Amen.”)
At the same time, Rushdie also cautioned against allowing larger world forces/events to overtake the novel.
“One has to remember, at the heart of the novel is the human figure. In this book, Shalimar gradually becomes a man of violence, but he’s from a community where everyone undergoes the same privations. Why does he become a man of violence when others don’t? This is where individual character becomes very important.”
Rushdie further noted: “The reason Tolstoy wrote ‘War and Peace’ was not to describe the battle of Borodino. It was to write about the lives of his characters. The novelist has to make sure that human beings stay at the center.”
Pretty intriguing stuff, especially for someone (like me) often drawn to what some have disparaged in writing workshops as “current events” in my fiction. To read the full Gazette article, click here.