Best of the Web 2009

Best of the Web 2009 is a must-read collection of short stories, flash fiction, poetry and a few essays, all originally published online.

Not all of the pieces were to my taste, but I enjoyed being exposed to things that I might not have read otherwise and I love the whole idea behind this book. I'll definitely be reading next year's collection when it comes out.

One of my favorite stories in the book is Mandible, by Donna D. Vitucci:

"His license named him Manfred, but my little sister and me, we called him “Mandible” from the time he started hanging around. He’d sleep over with Mama, this scary, big-headed, sharp-jawed cartoon guy, who we imagined was made of metal. The guy’s face was all jaw. He was too long of arm, with a slick, black pompadour. Who, in the 21st century, still worshipped Elvis? Manfred did, and other guys in Hebron, Kentucky. So me and Jennie nicknamed him “Mandible,” and we cracked up whenever we said to his ugly mug: Hey Man, yeah, we’re good. How ‘bout you? He had a shameless smile, and he flashed that grin at us—probably thought he was buddying up with his woman’s wisecracking son and daughter."
read the rest online at Front Porch Journal.

Dzanc Books, the publisher of this collection, is currently having a 50% off sale, so this is a good time to snag a copy of the book.

Other News: Last week I had another piece accepted. My short story, In Search of Biswas, will be in the February issue of Amarillo Bay.

An Editor's Advice To Writers

Are you a wicked child or a good child? An ambivalent writer, a self-promoter, a natural, or a neurotic? Betsy Lerner was an editor in New York's top publishing houses before she became an agent and she has dealt with all sorts of people. In The Forest For The Trees - An Editor's Advice To Writers, she challenges us to take a good look at ourselves as writers – at what motivates us, inspires us, frightens us and keeps us from being honest.

"If you are going to be honest and write about all the untidy emotions, the outsize desires, the hideous envy, and disturbing fantasies that make us human, how can you not offend your loved ones, your neighbors and community?".- p 66

She examines the emotional pitfalls of writing – the neuroses, addictions and mental illnesses that writers are famous for:

"Imagine the anxiety level of a job that requires you to start all over from square one each day. But that's the writer's situation. Every day you are starting from scratch, even when you're in the middle of a project." - p 99

" Judging one's own writing is like looking in a mirror. What you tell yourself about what you see in the reflection has far more to do with how you feel about yourself than with how you actually look." – p 99

"Writers love to worry. By their very nature, they are neurotic. And they tend to exhibit the gamut of phobic behaviors from nervous tics and insomnia to full-fledged paranoia and delusional episodes." – p 93

Don't know about you, but I've been an insomniac all my life and lately I've been having some delusions that I might actually finish my novel one day.

I love this advice on page 101:

"Whoever you are, whatever your bizarre behaviors, I say cultivate them; push the envelope. Becoming a writer never won anybody any popularity contests anyway. And most writers couldn't win one if they tried."

"I've come to look at neurotic behavior as a necessary component of a writer's arsenal, the necessary defenses to screen out the rest of the world so that the ballet inside his head can begin to take shape . . . The writer struggles to satisfy himself and also meet the minimum requirements most spouses and families expect. He loves his cage and hates his cage. "I am in chains," cried Kafka to his beloved. "Don't touch my chains."

In part 2, Ms. Lerner moves on to take a look at getting published. This section is full of good advice, anecdotes from the publishing world, and a strong dose of reality. She explains in great detail what actually happens after you land a contract – the jacket meeting(s), the presales conference, the sales conference, etc. Ms. Lerner looks at all the things that can go wrong and prepares you for them. And, of course, the worst thing that can go wrong is your book being largely ignored. Her advice is sound:

"I urge all my writers to get to work on their next project before publication. Working on a new book is the only cure for keeping the evil eye away. After publication, the writer opens himself up to reviewers and critics – or their glaring silence – and is extremely vulnerable."

Overall, this is a really marvelous book and I recommend it to anyone who has not yet been through the publishing process. Even those who have would probably benefit from it. It doesn't contain any how-to writing advice, but it does offer advice about finding an agent and working with your (eventual) editor. And it does get you to take a good hard look at yourself.

The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers

How To Leave Hialeah

This is a stunning collection of earthy, uproarious stories that force you to smile even as they break your heart. Ms. Crucet doesn't hold back at all in her intimate depictions of the lives of Cuban immigrants in Miami.

I first encountered one of the stories in this book in an online literary journal and was captivated by the writer's honesty. Here's a link to the story, Low Tide. If you're not sure whether or not to buy this book, go and read Low Tide first. It will give you an appetite for more.

As always, I'd be happy to mail my copy to anyone who is on a tight budget because of the recession. Just send me an email or comment on this post if you want it.

Affluenza

Maybe you like yourself.
Maybe you don't.
Maybe you're asking yourself that very question right now as my words jar your curiosity.
But don't answer. Not now. Wait.

So opens David LaBounty's dark novel, Affluenza, and right away you get a sense of what you're in for. The person speaking to you is Charles Dash and, while he may be a certifiable sociopath, he is also frighteningly reminiscent of the average consumer zombie. He buys, buy, buys, everything he wants, maxing out all his high-limit credit cards and using the equity in his supersized house as an ATM. He can't drive a car that's more than three years old. He has to outdo the neighbors. His kids stare blankly at an endlessly blaring TV as he finds prostitutes to stand in for his indifferent wife. She shops too, and he pays for it.

At some point, the inevitable happens and the credit runs out. The ARM mortgage adjusts. The minimum payments on the credit cards increase. Charles Dash can no longer manage to hold together the illusion of a prosperous life. And that's when the violence begins.

I didn't relate to much in this book on a personal level because I abandoned the "Affluenza" type of lifestyle a long time ago. What makes this book worth reading is the story – it's well done and compelling and draws you along from page to page. Charles Dash is a fully realized character and even pitiable at times. You can't help wanting to know what will happen to him. What makes the book valuable is the way it documents this era of disconnected spending, in a memorable way. If we manage to survive global climate change, as a species and as a culture, this is a book that I think (hope!) would be enlightening to future generations. It would tell them a lot about people of the 80s, 90s, and 00s. Yes, Charles Dash engages in acts of extreme violence and, for that reason, is not completely typical of the average American. But his violence is the violence of our day.

The Suburban Swindle

Just finished reading this one the other day. Good stuff. Jackie Corley is a very talented writer with a powerful voice. She has a real knack for capturing the angst and confusion that accompanies early adulthood. Reading this book took me right back to my early twenties - I could almost taste the cheap vodka again. She has a way of dragging you headfirst into her scenes and making you rub up against her characters, even when you really don't want to. Some of them are downright repulsive but, then, I like it that way sometimes.

Now I'm reading Affluenza by David LaBounty. I won a free copy through PANK and David was super speedy about putting it in the mail for me. He signed it too. I'm not very far in yet, but already enjoying it.

The Weary Motel

This book, by Mark Spencer, is one of the best books I've read all year. Mark Spencer is a realist, who gives us characters weighed down by their pasts, by their personal failings, by their bad choices, by their surroundings. These are people who spy on their boyfriends, respond to chain letters, cheat, drink too much, neglect their children, and otherwise live up to the "trailer-trash" stereotype in every possible way. Spencer cracks open their bleak little lives - gives us such a deep, intimate look at them that we can't help feeling their pain and, after a while, starting to root for them.

The novel largely revolves around Dill and Jo Rene, siblings and survivors of a childhood marked by TV dinners and a father who disappeared repeatedly to indulge his fetish for crippled women. Adults now, Dill and Jo Rene are still stuck in grim Adams County – a place of sordid poverty and bleak prospects. Dill owns the Weary Motel, a place frequented most commonly for its hourly rate. Jo Rene cleans the rooms. Her young daughter, Kari, has been missing for five months, kidnapped by her father, and this Jo Rene can never forget for more than an hour. Spencer brings this suffering woman to life so vividly that you can almost hear her crying in the next room. Like her brother Dill, she is a tangled confusion of good qualities and bad; perhaps the word that sums her up best is human.

The surprising thing about this book is that there is humor in it. Dark humor, but humor nonetheless. This, for me, provided a needed counterpoint to the often poignant scenes that sometimes made me think about having a cry. Spencer pulls it off flawlessly and it actually gives the book a richness that I think might be missing otherwise. The characters and plot lines are quirky enough to keep things from descending into unremitting gloom.

The ending is satisfying and, though I won't give it away, I will say that Spencer avoids cleaning things up too tidily. It's a realistic ending and, as such, in keeping with the rest of the book.

This is a good book, a memorable book, a book that is by turns funny and bitterly sad, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Winter of Different Directions

I just finished reading this collection of twenty short stories, by Steven McDermott. There's a little bit of everything in this book. The characters run the gamut from a homeless landscaper trying to pretend he's still in business to a self-made millionaire watching his empire crumble. There's a drunk pro-golfer, a carpenter obsessed with single malts, and a software developer who can't debug his code. Best of all, there's a guy who was paralyzed in a crowd-surfing accident and returns to the mosh pit in his wheelchair. Now that's originality. I think Enter Wheelchair Man is the best story in the book and it's certainly the one that stayed with me longest.

Overall, this is a good collection and worth a read, especially if you like dark protagonists.

If anyone would like to read this book, but is held back by the pinch of the economy, let me know and I'll put my copy in the mail for you in a couple of weeks (after my husband finishes reading it). If you own a book on my To-Read list and would like to trade, that would be good too - shoot me an email or comment here. To see my To-Read list, scroll down and look in the sidebar.

Obviously, I can only oblige the first person who responds, but I'll be doing similar book giveaways in the future, so check back soon if you miss this one.

Winter of Different Directions can be purchased from Amazon.

Interpreter of Maladies

Jhumpa Lahiri's debut collection won the Pulitzer Prize and I was expecting great things from it. I wasn't disappointed. Each of the nine stories in this collection is seductive from the very first paragraph. Lahiri has a genius for creating vibrant characters who claim our sympathies at once and lure us effortlessly into the intimate corners of their lives. Everyone in these stories is longing for someone or something, and their longing is so familiar and so deftly captured that it becomes our own. The stories will resonate with anyone who has ever felt alienated or lonely, anyone who has ever yearned for home.

At the end of each story, you are left wishing for perhaps a little more; a reluctance to leave the characters; a desire to spend more time with them. That, I think, is one of the hallmarks of a great short story: characters who continue to walk around in your head long after the story has ended.

The Secret Life of Bees

I just read this, on the recommendation of a friend. It was pretty light reading, very much like an adult fairy tale with a strong religious agenda. The premise was interesting: a young white girl, Lily, who believes she is responsible for the death of her mother, runs away from her abusive father with her black nanny. The story is set in South Carolina, during a period of extreme racial tension.

The book did not make a strong impression on me. I found the characters fairly one-dimensional and the ending unrealistic. There were a handful of good scenes scattered throughout the pages and one thing I did admire was Kidd's portrayal of the romantic love developing between Lily and her black friend, Zach. A relationship between the two of them would have been unthinkable at that time in history. I would have liked to see it taken even further in the novel.

Next on my list: Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri. I'm looking forward to this one with so much anticipation that I can hardly keep from drooling.