Category: Writing

  • Short Story Review: “A Shooting in Rathreedane” by Colin Barrett

    (The short story, “A Shooting in Rathreedane: by Colin Barrett appeared in the December 13th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    This was a good, old school, short story. “A Shooting in Rathreedane” by Colin Barrett even starts off with a good title. A shooting is dramatic; what happens?

    Not making lite of the story, but to sum up – The local police are called when a shooting happens on a remote farm in the Irish countryside. The police and an ambulance arrive at the farm, and then there is the fall out of all of these actions.

    Yet, what really happens is this story is seeing characters unfold. Our protagonist is Sargent Jackie Noonan, a forty-five-year-old police woman, and I liked how Barrett kept dropping these little nuggets of her personality as the story developed. The way she drank her coffee, took notes, talked to other officers. And though the story clearly was meant to stick with her, the other characters who came along were all given depth, and actions that fit accordingly to their characters. I also appreciated that the solving of the shooting wasn’t the point of this story. That the shooting was the starting off point to watch how these characters interacted and dealt with the situation. The story also did a very good job of avoiding cliché traps, that I think lesser writers would have fallen for. The caveat to that statement was I found the run in with the local teenagers predictable, but that is a minor critique.

    And when I said old school before, this story reminded me of the short fiction that was assigned to read in high school, like in a Sherwood Anderson ilk. Not that Anderson ever wrote like this, and I can also say that Anderson is the wrong author to compare Barrett to. (Go with me on this…) It’s the feeling that both authors created characters in rural places that were compelling, and you wanted to know what they are going to do tomorrow because you felt you knew them. As “A Shooting in Rathreedane” concluded, I wanted to know, what is tomorrow going to be like for Sgt. Noonan?

  • I Wrote a Blog Today

    Not very inspired.

    I have been trying to think of a subject to write about, and I just couldn’t come up with something that would inspire me. Often, I can come up with an idea while walking the kid to school, but not this morning. We were running late, and had to rush, so we didn’t really get a chance to have one of those cute father/daughter conversations.

    I thought that while doing laundry something would strike me, but not really. I just folded laundry and watched First Take.

    I planned for dinner, which will be a sheet-pan meal from the NYTimes Cooking Page. I’m going to add a side of rice, and make a butter lemon sauce to round out the whole thing.

    The only thing of note, when it comes to the blog, is that some people came by today and read my short story review of “Detective Dog” by Gish Jen. In fact, more people read it today than when I originally posted it. I wonder if it was Gish Jen?

    I think this post is falling into the category of “keeping up the quota.” I made the rule that I need to post one blog a day, Monday through Friday. So, no matter what, I have to put something up. Clearly, this isn’t one that will make the book.

    Oh, did I mention that one day all of these blog will be published in a book. Well, not all of them. Just a select few, like a greatest hits. But then, several years later, a book will be published that will contain all of the blogs, and that will be more like a collector’s edition, unabridged version. Now, thinking about it, yes, I guess this blog will eventually be published, so I guess, this one does make the book.

    If you made it this far I the blog, then I congratulate you. That shows a level of dedication to a very half-baked concept that I am making up on the fly, to justify my existence, and to also give myself a feeling of accomplishment.

    I’ll do better tomorrow.

  • What Defines Us

    Some people are great at coming up with a tagline for themselves, or a witty one liner that can define who they are. I love Roxane Gay’s Twitter Profile which says, “I want a tiny baby elephant. You clap, I clap back.” Man, that shit is awesome. I feel like I now know that she is funny, and don’t fuck with her.

    In the marketing world, there is the 15 second “elevator pitch,” which I always felt I sucked at. I was never able to concisely say to someone what I was all about, so they could feel comfortable and understand who I was. I felt like I was more like a tv show; you needed to get about three episodes in before I started to get good and become worth your time.

    I say all of this because last night I looked at my Twitter profile, specifically my tagline; “Theater, Pictures, and Words… Just Not In That Order.” I mean, it’s always been a placeholder until I came up with something better… because it sucks, you know.

    But what really stuck in my craw and bothered me most was the first word, “Theatre.”

    I haven’t done a show in three years. Does that word even apply to me anymore? Also, I haven’t perused any theatre work in two years. I’m not sure that word defines me.

    Now, if my puppetry friends and colleagues were to call me up and ask me to help out on a show, I would be there is a heartbeat. Yet, I can fully admit that I would be there for them, because they are my friends, and I believe in their talent and creativity.

    I think the passion for theatre has gone out of me. For twenty years, it was that thig that burned in me, that I thought about, and wanted to experience, and know about and discover new ideas about, and meet people who are trying new things in theatre. I don’t feel that now.

    When I hear about friends in shows, I do want to go out and see them, and support them. Or I see that the show that they are working on is opening, or started rehearsal, or is casting, or whatever; I am excited for them. But, I don’t feel the desire to do that career anymore.

    In fact, when I think about a theatre career, I feel like I have broken up with it. Like, “It’s not you, theatre. It’s me.”

    To be honest, this isn’t the first time I have felt like this. I was crazy passionate about theatre from like 15 to about 20. I was a high school theatre nerd, and when I first went away to college. I wrote plays, and acted, and directed, and was way too dramatic for my own good. And then one day, when I was at the University of North Texas, I just didn’t want to do it anymore, so I dropped out of school. In the meantime, I wrote, I worked shitty jobs, tried my hand as a sort of a roadie for a friend’s band, I explored playing drums in a band, and really just farted around with my friends.

    And then one of my friends went back to college, and joined the theatre department. I made friends with his theatre friends, by drinking at the same bar. Then one day while drinking with the theatre people, they told me they had a class project and were one actor short. “You used to act; can you help us out?” they asked. And I did. And it was so much fun.

    And I went back to school, and became a theatre major again. I had a really great time, and made some amazing friends. And I moved to New York City to have a theatre career, and married my wife, and had a kid. And here I am.

    So, I don’t know. Maybe this is a phase. Maybe this feeling is my new reality. Maybe looking back at it all, theatre still does define who I am.

    I do need to come up with a better tagline, though.

  • Short Story Review: “The Hollow” by Greg Jackson

    (The shot story, “The Hollow” by Greg Jackson appeared in the November 29th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Okay, no cutesy introduction here, I didn’t get this story, and I’m not sure whose fault it is. Greg Jackson? The New Yorker’s fiction editor? Is it me?

    Here’s the story: Jonah Valente is a college football player who quits the team and wants to become a painter. Jonah is so earnest about his new vocation, it takes on a level of ridicule from other classmates… Like Jack. Though Jack doesn’t think of Jonah often. Fast-forward several years, and Jack is married to Sophie, and they buy a home off in the county away from the city where they had been living. But then Jack loses his job, and Sophie leaves him. Alone in this old farm house, a college friend of Jack’s, Daniel, tells Jack that Jonah lives in the next county over. Jack reaches out to Jonah, and the two begin to hangout. Jonah lives with his mother, coaches a girl’s rugby team at a local high school, is still pursuing painting, and peppers all his conversations with stories about Van Gogh and Picasso. One of the days hanging out Jonah points out to Jack that his home has a hollow space in the middle of the house, which could be a hidden or sealed up room. On another evening, as Jonah tells another story about Picasso, and in a fit of frustration, Jack tells Jonah he will never make it as a painter. Jonah storms off, and then the two lose touch. Later, a letter shows up from Jonah telling Jack that after their fight, he got drunk and fell off a water tower he was trying to paint, and the reason he tells all those stories of Van Gogh and Picasso is because it makes him feel better. Jump some more years, and Jack and Sophie are back together, living in the farm house with a kid now. At a local fair, Jack runs into Jonah sitting at a booth with some awful paintings in it. Jonah claims the paintings aren’t his, and he is helping out a friend by watching his booth. Jack and Jonah share a laugh and never see each other again, and seriously, what the hell is this?

    First, 100% respect for Greg Jackson on getting a story in The New Yorker, because that is a goal of a great number of writers, and the majority, myself included, never attain it.

    But…

    I had so many issues with this story that all seem like very basic questions an editor should have asked. Such as; were Jack and Jonah friends in college? If yes, what was their relationship back then like? If not, then how does Jonah know who Jack is? The story starts off implying that Jonah was a person people at college knew of, but weren’t actually friends with, but when Jack contact Jonah, Jonah’s reaction is as if he knows who Jack is. Well… which one is it? Also, it feels like Jonah is the character that is imparting some sort of wisdom toward Jack, but the tone of the story, and Jack’s attitude, seem to make Jonah the butt of a joke. And if Jonah is not the protagonist of this story, then what is Jack’s heroic act? Then, why does Sophie come back? Did Jack change? Then there is the whole hollow thing. Is the metaphor really just the hidden part of ourselves that no one can access? Really? Following the Chekhov Rule, if it’s in the story, it has to have a purpose, so what was the purpose of the hollow? Being that the story drips a realistic tone, then I don’t believe that there is a modernist/surliest twist going on here. It has to have a meaning.

    As I began to puzzle these questions over and over again, I started to wonder, is the problem with me? Is this story executing some new theory when it comes to what a short story is? What if Jackson presented a story that feigned logic, when it was in fact disassembling what a story’s internal logic could be, thus making the reader question what was really necessary to tell a story.

    No. That’s not what was happening in this story.

    Sadly, it felt like the basic, but essential, work of laying the structure of the story’s internal logic was not fully formed, and thus left the central relationship between Jack and Jonah feeling incomplete, and half-baked. And I don’t think that was the, attempted, point of the story.

    If I’m wrong, then please, someone explain this story to me.

  • Short Story Review: “Detective Dog” by Gish Jen

    (The short story “Detective Dog” by Gish Jen was featured in the November 22nd, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    I don’t like characters in a story who are wealthy. Not that I have anything against a real person being rich, but in fiction, I think it’s a cop-out when an author makes a protagonist’s wealthy. A wealthy character can travel anywhere, do anything, and can be carefree and selfish. Fewer complications means less conflict, and stories need conflict.

    So, when “Detective Dog,” by Gish Jen opens with the line, “No politics, just make money,” and then we find out that Betty, our protagonist, did just that, and made lots of money, my defenses went up. The story is about a Chinese family from Hong Kong, that was living in Vancouver, then moves to New York, and proceeds to buy two more apartments in the building their living in to have more room. Betty is married to Quinten, and they have a seventeen-year-old son Theo, and a nine-year-old adopted son Robert. This family left Vancouver due to racism there, and settle in New York as the pandemic starts. Theo keeps talking about the Hong Kong protests against the Chinese Communist government, and wishes he were there, taking part in the demonstrations. Then we learn that Betty’s uncle is asked by Betty’s sister, Bobby, to smuggle out a letter to Betty, but the uncle destroys the letter, fearing the Communists will discover the letter and jail him. The story takes a turn where Theo wins a large amount of money gambling online, buys a car, and then leaves, not informing his family where he is going. Then Robert gets an extra credit assignment to come up with a mystery, and Betty tells Robert a secret about their family, and I’ll leave it at that; no spoilers.

    There is a lot going on here, which is not a problem, but I feel I’m giving the impression that this is a complicated story. It’s not. It has a very easy flow to it, and the spartan use of details is actually pretty impressive. This is a story that is pared down to the most essential details, and it didn’t feel that a single word or sentence is wasted. But, overall, that story still felt uneven to me. I enjoyed how the story was written, and I couldn’t predict where the plot was taking me, which felt good. And when the end of the story arises, it completely body checked my preconceived notions about telling a story of a wealthy family, and why a person would choose to be wealthy as a goal for their family. What made it uneven to me was Theo’s leaving the family. I get that it was meant to be a parallel in the story structure, but, and this one is big, Betty didn’t seem to be upset about it. Yes, one or two lines was thrown in of Betty or Robert wondering where Theo was, but I found it unrealistic that a mother, in the middle of the Covid Pandemic, would just let her seventeen-year-old son leave, and not try to get him home by calling him, texting his friends, or something. It felt like Theo needed leave so Betty’s final story would have more weight, rather than thinking through what a mother would do if her son ran away. It was a choice that the author made that I had a hard time getting past, which is too bad, as the ending was well worth the read.