Short Stories II

Good afternoon, a Saturday. I've launched into reading The Forrests, by Emily Perkins. Stay tuned for thoughts on that one another day. In the meantime I've a few assorted books and themes to talk about in coming posts.

Yesterday I endured almost 3 hours of dental treatment and all I could do to stay focused on the end was to think about my blog themes - so it's already stimulating me and those creative juices! I was lying back in the dentist's chair thinking about more short stories - as well as making a mental note to tell our daughter NOT to eat anymore sticky lollies. In my previous post I did not mention the wonderful collection Sleepers Almanac No. 7. Kate Ryan's story, 'The Leaves', is really terrific. She writes as an observer of a difficult exchange between a pharmacist and a customer, bringing a rare quality of empathy for the stringy character of the user looking for some methadone, all the time reflecting on her own dilemmas, relationships, failed and otherwise. Go to: http://sleeperspublishing.com/2011/the-sleepers-almanac-no-7/

The other thing that was great about this was that it was at the end of a short trip to Melbourne that I discovered the book (after Kate mentioned it) at the Brunswick Street Bookstore in Fitzroy http://www.brunswickstreetbookstore.com/ where I sat and read her story twice in the armchair. Bookstores with chairs! being able to read! it might seem somehow stingy but I was travelling and couldn't fit ANYTHING else in my small bag. The great pity was that I really do want to own that book for the story. Next time, perhaps.

Another blog theme will be 'On Appearing in Other Peoples' Fiction and Poetry' but I'm saving that for later. I know Kate is writing a novel and there have been times when she's grilled me on happenings in my life with such intensity, over and over, that I know they'll appear in other guises reworked as fiction. It's an interesting question about writers, isn't it? I want to mention here Patrick West's The World Swimmers (Western Australia, 2010) where I appear in the little desert in Victoria, however much the 'reality' has been modified. Patrick really likes Gerald Murnane, a Melbourne writer, and both of their stories are written in a mode I appreciate: very spare and precise writing, slightly obsessive. Here's a passage:

"For no known reason, we had each taken a different way from the other. Tiny desert mice and prodigious desert rats were in shadowy motion within the scrub. ... Under blazing sun, it had felt nevertheless as if I were looking into darkest night.

There was orange peel on the ground where the main path took up again: the first sign of recent intrusion that either of us had ever seen."

- from 'Nhill', p. 5

In 'life', I had peeled an orange and we'd agreed to leave the skin to decompose. In the story it becomes a shot of colour in the desert of the relationship, where the 'wife' is tired and grumpy and things are faltering badly. 'How could such intensity ever seem so deep to us again?' (p. 8).