Category: Writing

  • Thoughts on The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

    As we get closer to Halloween, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow reappears in my life. The first appearance is always when we visit The Great Jack o’Lantern Pumpkin Blaze at Van Cortlandt Manor in early October, just as the weather gets very cool at night, and leaves are starting to change. The Blaze always has a section which is Headless Horseman themed, and every year, the kid asks us who that is, and what is the Legend? On the drive back into the City, we retell the story of Ichabod Crane, and his fateful ride to cross the bridge at the Old Dutch Church. The kid gets a little spooked when we tell her there is a real town of Sleepy Hollow, a real bridge over the Pocantico River, and a real old Dutch Church graveyard.

    I also am fascinated by The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. I had a bit of giddy excitement the first time that I went to Sleepy Hollow after I moved to the area. I think it was the Summer of 2007, and we had rented a car to drive up to Beacon for the day, but I had requested that my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, drive our car through the town. I also wanted to see the bridge, which is just a cement bridge and not the covered wooden one of my imagination. I wanted to see the graveyard, and the Old Dutch Church, and verify that they were real, and not fictional. It was watching literature coming to life, because the Horseman isn’t real, but everything else was?

    My fascination of the Legend also comes from how Washington Irving created the story. The Headless Horseman ghost has its roots in German and Dutch folklore. The history of Westchester County during the Revolutionary War; how it was a no-man’s land between the British and the Colonists, with skirmishes resulting in corpses left in the woods to be discovered years later. These were stories that Irving heard as a kid growing up in the county. He mixed it all together, along with his observations of how outsiders and homogenous communities deal with each other. Irving created something altogether American from many disparate parts, which still sounds like America.

  • Short Story Review: “Not Here You Don’t” by Thomas McGuane

    (The short story “Not Here You Don’t” by Thomas McGuane, was featured in the October 18th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    The American west is a strange place. I keep thinking that the histories, tragedies and pioneer attitudes of the late 19th century have faded away into our collective American past. Like in “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” where they contemplated that the “west” was over and the country was becoming modern. But the reality is that those western histories, tragedies and attitudes still affect people to this day.

    I had to read “Not Here You Don’t” by Thomas McGuane twice. Not that I didn’t understand it, but to verify that I hadn’t missed something. The story is compact, but not lacking in detail. The main character, Gary, is traveling to Montana to bury his father’s ashes on the homestead where his father grew up. Gary deals with the new land owner, and the people in the local town.

    This makes the story sound simple, and perhaps it is, but the story is also playing with the western architype hero, and the changing west. Gary is duty bound to follow his father’s wishes. Gary also displays an honesty of his father’s legacy; he was a good man, though not perfect. Gray knows his family history with the land, and also displays a knowledge that the new landowner lacks, showing that owning it does not make you master of your land. Gary has regrets over a failed love, and he also has feeling of being out of step when he returns home in the East.

    I found myself contemplating that even if we do roam and live far from home, how much of home stays with you? Are we instilled with attitudes from regions of this country that we never truly shake off? Do we identify with places that we really have the thinnest of connections to?

    Hence why I read it again.  Just making sure I got it.

  • Short Story Review: “The Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell

    (The short story “The Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell, was featured in the October 11th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    SPOILER ALERT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! AND I RUN LONG ON THIS ONE!

    The New Yorker published science fiction! I was really excited about that fact when I started reading “The Ghost Birds” by Karen Russell. For all I know, TNY has been publishing sci-fi for a while, but this is the first time I saw that type of story published here. Science Fiction can be a tricky beast; it can be great for adventure and melodrama, and when done very well, can highlight the best of humanity.

    In “The Ghost Birds” we get a future world of global ecological collapse; Wildfires out of control, limited resources, toxic environment, and mass extinctions, especially of all the birds. The story is told by Jasper, who is in search of ghost birds in Oregon, where the story takes place. A violent group called the Surveillers controls these lands and the airspace, for which they kill trespassers. Jasper takes his teenage daughter, Starling, into the dangerous Oregon area to search for these birds

    Creating a complete universe in a short story is a difficult task. The author has to explain how this place works and the logic to this world, while also keeping the flow of the story natural, and not coming across as spoon-feeding, or plot clunky. Russell does this very well in the first two thirds of the story. This world is a desolate and unfriendly place, but also captivating in how people are finding ways to survive in it.

    When the climax of the story starts, the logic and cohesion of the story starts to falter. At this point I refer to what a professor in college taught, which is the Chekhov Maxim; If you introduce a gun in your story, you have to fire the gun. The Surveillers are that gun in this story. They are given enough examples of how dangerous they are, yet they never show up. The climax of the story is that Jasper and Starling get trapped in a furnace smoke stack, which Jasper tries to climb out of, but falls and breaks his leg. That leaves Starling to climb out, and get help from their friend’s airship, which lead me to ask why where the Surveillers introduced? The smoke stack scene is climatic enough, and the threat of the Surveillers plays no part in it. Also, Jasper couldn’t use communication devices because the Surveillers could hear, but somehow, they could get in and out using an airship, even though it is mentioned that the Surveillers patrol the sky. See, the logic started to fall apart. Then, I also had issue with Jasper not having a heroic act. He becomes injured, and witnesses the ghost birds, which makes him passive to the situation.

    I ended up feeling very conflicted about this story. I was really rooting for it, as I liked that this story was about ecological disaster, and that is an issue that I care greatly about. But this sore thumb stuck out at the end that I couldn’t shake or ignore.

    Good effort, just didn’t stick the landing.

  • A Bad Rehearsal

    Yesterday, I finished a second draft of a story. I had been working on it since September, when the kid went back to school and I got some more free time during the week. I had been sticking to my paradigm of writing, which is to outline the story, and then, you know, do it – write the thing. There’s nothing special there, I have been following this pattern since the summer, and it’s been a help. I have been getting ideas and drafts down on paper. Whether they are good or not is a completely different discussion.

    Anyway, so when I complete a draft, normally, there is a feeling of accomplishment. You know, I got something done. Not like a huge feeling, like I won the big game. More like, I was able to put the Kallax shelf together by myself; that type of accomplishment feeling.

    So, yesterday, when I finished the second draft… I didn’t have that feeling. That feeling of accomplishment didn’t come over me. What I felt was like taking the garbage out. Something happened, but nothing I am proud of.

    I don’t think it’s the story’s fault. At this moment, I like the idea, but that doesn’t mean it will see the light of day.  I could read the thing again, and hate it. Or, I could see it needs another draft.

    As I thought about it, I guess what this most closely feels like is a bad rehearsal for a show. And I love rehearsing. I think I like rehearsing more than I like performing. I like trying out ideas, and seeing what the other performs do, or how they react. I like when someone changes things slightly, and that causes me to trying something new in return. That type of working makes me feel like I am being creative, and makes the rehearsal feel fulfilling.

    Maybe that’s it. It was a bad rehearsal draft. I might need to listen to my gut. It might be a bad draft.

  • Short Story Review: “Red Pyramid” by Vladimir Sorokin

    (The short story “Red Pyramid” by Vladimir Sorkin, was featured in the October 4th, 2021 issue of The New Yorker.)

    I don’t read work by Russian writes much anymore. I over did it in college as a theatre major. I read a ton of Chekhov, and studied Stanislavski’s writing, and just to be safe I read some Dostoevsky as well. And after I graduated, I never went back to it. I just stopped reading Russian writers. Nothing personal.

    And I know nothing about Vladimir Sorkin, other than he is Russian and he is a writer. Up until five minutes ago, I couldn’t tell you if he was still alive or not. (Thanks Wikipedia.) So, I knew nothing about what to expect from his story “Red Pyramid” which was in the October 4th issue of The New Yorker.

    I shall try to summarize this story: in 1960’s Soviet Union, guy gets on the wrong train while trying to get to a party, and has to get off that train and take another train. While waiting at a station in the middle of nowhere, with no one around, an old man appears. The guy and the old man talk. The old man is strange, and mentions a red pyramid in Red Square, but the guy knows there is no pyramid in Red Square. Train arrives, guy gets on, never sees the old man again, nor makes it to the party. Then the story shifts to the life the guy leads after that experience, and I’m not going to give it away.

    I’m leaving out a couple of bits, because when I got to the ending: My Goodness! I didn’t see it coming, but it wasn’t shocking either. It totally fit, and I cannot explain to you how it fits with the story… it just does. I have been thinking about this story for two days now. I don’t know what the red pyramid is, I know what literally is happen at the end of the story, but I don’t know how they fit together – They just do.

    It’s that big paragraph at the end. It’s a feat of wordsmithing, and its translated! This type of writing I am very envious of, to craft words that almost seem nonsensical, but are capturing a moment or feeling correctly to the authenticity of the story. Sorkin was making me say words that at first, I didn’t understand their relevance, but I knew I was being guided to a satisfying conclusion.

    Well done, sir, though I still don’t get what it means. And that’s the fun.