Time for "Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day"

"Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day" is hands down, my favorite book of the year (and not likely to be supplanted). (Although I've enjoyed several others immensely: "Normally Special," "Amazing Adult Fantasy," "You Can Make Him Like You," and still need to read or finish reading several more, "Freight," "Giant Slugs" and "The Pale King"). (One dark horse candidate I've got many praising things to say about and I shall hopefully get to in the coming weeks is a poetry chapbook called "Piano Rats," which will be released by Curbside Splendor next month.)

But Loory's collection, returning to the subject at hand, is not only my favorite book of this year, but easily among my favorite books all time. That's to start with.

I've been avidly following Ben Loory's fiction for awhile now, since his story "The TV" appeared in The New Yorker (appears in greater length in "Stories for Nighttime") in spring 2010, I think (i.e. I think it was spring of that year that it appeared). It's hard not to be captivated in some way by how artfully he succeeds at expressing grand sprawling ideas and sentiments in austere, general terms. (For example, see just there? how I wrote "grandiosity" and "austere"? He would have succeeded at saying the same thing but artfully and with much more exact diction). And I should say, these terms seem austere and general but bloom very quickly into something greater, abstractly significant.

His collection is at times moving, challenging, detaching, philosophical, mythical, and downright funny. Loory is a master at saying just enough, enough to keep you scratching your head in wonderment, and plenty of just enough to allow room for your own personal interpretation. Like Raymond Carver, he's an author whose narrative vacancies have as much -- if not more -- meaning than the passages themselves. This isn't a matter of showing and not telling, or some old cliche about writing. Loory seems possessed by all the good muses that power fantastical fiction. His writing forces you to read and parse an enigma, which is both possible and impossible to solve. (See what I mean, yet?)

In my mind, this collection catapults him (via trebuchet, an ostensibly more powerful engine than the catapult) into the ranks of contemporaries like George Saunders, Amelia Gray, and Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. It also puts him among classic authors like Franz Kafka, Daniil Kharms, and Donald Barthelme. All of which of is to say, Ben Loory is easily among my favorite authors, both living and dead. (Not to be morbid, right, but folks often make a distinction, in those exact terms, between the two -- the contemporary and the classic? Or am I just morbid? I suppose I could have put it as contemporary and classic but, ah, that becomes an issue of semantics I refuse to digress into...)

Let me see if I can explain why high praise such as lumping him in the category of the many venerable names above is both correct and due.

See first, in my opinion, the story "The Magic Pig." This story is astounding. Turns notions of belief and skepticism and outright disbelief on their respective heads. A kind of potent farce in the appearance of a magical pig, which shows itself at the inducement of a father who is belittling his daughter's new found faith. The father tells his daughter if god is real then a sign should manifest itself, and so immediately comes the pig, delivered ostensibly down from heaven. This is not enough for the father, who absconds with the pig and demands it show him another sign. I won't explain where the story goes from here. (It's short and fun to read, so read it.)

But I will say there is something of the history of faith and belief in the story, a kind of allegory in the man's conduct. So much of what we believe in contemporary religion (even respecting newer ones like Scientology) owe their roots to tales of ancient supernatural happenings. Things that historical record has no way of confirming absolutely and which require faith. One imagines even those so-called miracles, at the time of their occurrence, might have looked different to different witnesses, if they even ever truly occurred at all. (Bear in mind, it is very likely George Washington never, in his youth, cut down a cherry tree.)

Skeptics were probably eager for more, wishing to see more, and you can imagine a deity of the variety believed in by Western cultures would have grown tired of showing itself at every beck and call, knowing its creation could never be sated. That skeptics might never be able to believe enough for their own or anyone's liking. That such search for belief could easily become an obsession, and that obsession would only grow more potent and powerful with time and age, and the succession of each new generation, further set apart from the miracle's origin. And maybe that's not the point of life, searching for the truth of faith. Maybe, Loory seems to say, you'll find out when you die.

Choosing favorites pieces in "Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day" is like choosing favorite chocolates from a boxed assortment that contains none with pie-like cherry filling -- they're all so very, very good and tasty. But given no other alternative my tops of the collection are certainly the above delved into "The Magic Pig" and "The Book," "The Crown," "The Octopus," "Death and the Fruits of the Tree," "The Shield," "UFOl A Love Story" (Easily the most emotionally charged among the rest), "The Graveyard," and "Hadley." Plus, "The TV' -- which is no doubt the most enigmatic and challenging of the collection.

"Hadley," though, I'll speak a few words of and then I'll stop with this review. "Hadley" was in the best sense "Weekend at Bernie's" meets "The Shawshank Redemption." Hadley comes up missing in an evening bed count at an unnamed prison and the guards, not wanting to take blame for his disappearance, invent a new Hadley (who is, I think significantly, one of the few characters in this collection who has a proper noun for a name). What ensues is startlingly profound, given the superficially farcical circumstances of the narrative. Which is something I think you as a reader will greatly enjoy. I certainly did.

So go get "Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day" if you haven't already. It's one of those decisions I have faith you won't regret.

LOVIN' INFANT MONKEYS, a mini review

Lydia Millet's "Love and Infant Monkeys" to put it plainly rocks socks. I know I can be a little effusive when it comes to praise round here, but the truth is I was a less than enthusiastic fan of her novel, "Everyone's Pretty." But I enjoyed her short story "Sir Henry" that appeared in issue 1 of Electric Literature, so I thought I'd give her another go with the aforementioned "Love and Infant Monkeys" -- which includes "Sir Henry" in its pages.

I don't know if Millet is better in short form or what, but "Love and Infant Monkeys" was far more to my taste. A little bit daring in terms of using real-life subjects, i.e. celebrities and other famous persons, as primary or main characters. The strange tempo of the third-person stream of consciousness in the first story, the one in which Madonna has successfully if inadvertently killed a pheasant during a hunting outing with her then husband, Guy Ritchie and his cronies. His cronies, I think, are depicted fairly by Millet, at least what my imagination brings to mind.

The eponymous piece "Love and Infant Monkeys" is easily the most tragic of them, in terms of subject matter. It concerns the real-life experiments of an American psychologist, Harry Harlow, and the infant monkeys on whom he tested his various hypotheses. It's easy to see after a few descriptive passages of the animals' treatment, most disturbingly Harlow's "pit of despair" or in the story, Harlow recollects he's been entreated to call them "chambers" rather than "dungeons" by his assistant, a graduate student named Stephen Suomi, who noted the latter would be "bad for public opinion." Harry Harlow's dysfunctional, self-destructive nature is put on full display in "Love and Infant Monkeys" -- not used to rationalize as much as emote the purpose behind Harlow's eccentric behavior. He seems to float through the story in something akin to a alcohol-induced stupor, described early on in its pages as a "functional alcoholic." It ends with a particular strong narrative revelation about Harlow, which I won't reproduce here because you should read the story in its entirety and get the full effect.

The final story in the collection "Walking Bird" hit all the right notes for me too. Conveyed certain feelings seamlessly, touchingly. A good ending punctuation to the entire collection, and all told, the collection is one of the best I've ever read in terms of its "even" quality. These stories were made to be read side by side.

A Snapshot of Work in Contemporary the USA

I had a rare opportunity at work the other day -- one of my jobs, a Costco sales employee -- to talk about things a little more meaningful than a more detailed discussion of the specs on the latest LED LCD Full-Array Vizio HD television we carry. The man, as it happened, was fairly well-traveled. He'd grown up in an Eastern bloc country, although I wasn't able to discern which exactly.

First, he talked about his visit to the Dead Sea and its immediate and literally corrosive effects. It's quite a vista, he added, noting especially its depth below sea level. He spoke of the Cold War, too, and the nature of U.S. - USSR power-play dynamics during that period. He also made an offhand remark regarding the nature of employment at a place like Costco, which, honestly, I was not offended by, but nevertheless, it immediately struck a chord with me. He said a job at Costco is fine for younger people, i.e. college aged, (there was a slight language barrier; his English was good but not entirely fluent) but that if an older person (i.e. above college-aged), an older man in specific, worked at Costco. then you knew something was, to paraphrase, wrong with that individual.

I didn't debate the matter with him, nor would I now with the benefit of hindsight, nor do I think he meant to insult me specifically (since technically I'm at about college age, or could reasonably be confused as college aged). I feel I understand his perspective, which is a common one, and is a stigma worn by people working in retail in general, not just at Costco. But what the man I spoke with failed to realize, and what the great many people who think in the same terms fail to realize, is that we've created an infrastructure, via cultural norms etc., in which this is the only alternative for many, many people, even college educated people, who for a pantheon of reasons do not work in more "respectable" fields. It's like everyone acknowledges we need companies like Costco., Wal-Mart and McDonald's, but nobody acknowledges that someone has to draw the short end of the stick and actually work there. These are the new factory jobs, people. Worse than that few of them are allowed to unionize where there was at least a time when that option existed for factory workers (still do for those who remain in the vastly diminished US manufacturing industry).

Look at this advertisement (later parodied by Dave Chappelle on his agonizingly short-lived "Chappelle Show"). It depicts a young black man who's bettered himself, avoided the pitfalls of his community, by working at a McDonald's. At the very least you should be able to see how this is a culturally insensitive portrayal of "Calvin" the young black protagonist.

We talk about socioeconomics and things like people's place in our society in glib terms, more often than not. If someone works a low level job at McDonald's it's because they aren't trying hard enough to go out and aspire to something better. But as I've said, I'm a Determinist insofar as I believe there are many external factors that play into who we become. No bigger is the cycle of poverty. Probably second to poverty's cycle is the cycle of affluence.

The point is, fine, go ahead and say "Calvin" is better off working at McDonald's than being a gangbanger and petty crook. No one disagrees (except maybe gangbangers and petty crooks). But how can we then say there's something "wrong" with a person who has evaluated his or her options only to decide / realize the best, most apparent one is working at a McDonald's? So we can then say the mentally defective populate these positions? And is it not funny that we let corporations off scot-free, bearing no burden of culpability by building these corporations that employ only "mental defectives," i.e. people who do not earn a respectable living, but the individuals themselves are the ones stigmatized. We need our McDonald's but we'd never deign to be employed by one! Or is there no incongruity? Is there no cake and eating it too, here?

How callous have we become as a society, and where does it end?

Regarding Untoward and People and Rejection and Stuff

Sometimes I'm going to talk about Untoward, because I need as many venues as I have at my disposal to get word out that, primarily, my interest these days is in publishing fiction, i.e. either getting my own fiction out into the world (where hopefully it will elicit a reaction, either positive or negative (and no, truthfully I don't care which, I care more that you react than not)) or publishing other people's great fiction. And the latter of which is the point I most want to talk about here. Untoward Magazine exists and I hope you'll send something our way. We might reject it. I've been rejected, as a certain previous post will attest, probably somewhere in the 90-95% range to this point in my career. It's a part of it. Anyone will tell you that. This isn't new to anyone who has tried to get published. It's hard to create a name for yourself in the world of fiction publishing. But it's good that you're trying, too. Keep reading and ignoring posts like another of mine that appears here today on Literary Equations. The important thing is that you're building relationships with other people, so step out of your shell a bit. That is the realization that has kept me going throughout all of this, that it doesn't much matter to me if my stories get accepted (I'll keep crafting and developing my style just the same), what matters is I don't lose sight of the fact that I want to know and engage other people, even though that's not what comes most naturally to me. I force myself to do it because I know how much happier I am when I feel I've successfully related to someone else (and in this case, relating is almost exclusively positive, or I'm not happy if I've had a negative relational experience with someone. I think most people feel the same way, no?). All right, so that's my rant for now, but maybe you have some comments? I'd love to hear them.

Also, Untoward is on Twitter, so if you are I implore you to follow us. We appreciate your readership more than you know. http://twitter.com/#!/Untoward_Mag

No One Should Ever Read a Thing

No one should ever read anything by anyone. Controversial? Perhaps. But I didn't join the blogging game to sit idly by and play nice. Oh no. I joined it to do otherwise.

But let's think about my blaspheme for a second, won't we?

What can you say you've honestly taken from reading anything? Besides nothing? Maybe you've taken thoughts from it, but were those thoughts you wanted to think? If you wanted thoughts you didn't want to think put into your head why not just go watch TV and some great advertisements? Not writing rife with thoughts you didn't want to think. What a waste of your thoughts. What about the ones you did want to think? Where'd those go?

Have I just blown your mind? I apologize, but it must needs be done sometimes.

Oh and I don't care about the irony here, reading something by me. I think of myself as much more like TV, in that the true endgame of my words is to subliminally get you to desire McDonald's or maybe Nike shoes, depending on my mood. So don't throw that in my face, because like Yahoo! "comments section" denizens who most often comment on stories of a politically charged nature and are named things like "THUG" or with single letters like "P." I don't have much desire to sit here and explain what I'm thinking. I just do. And what's more, think about how right I am if I just believe it. I think Stephen Colbert has vocalized something to that effect, if nothing else then subliminally.

Do you see how none of this is explained very well? That's fun to do!

A Brief Exchange

The day buoyant met curmudgeonly. Of course. How could I forget?

“Ha ha ha, I have found you! I was looking for you and now I have found you!”

“Do I look like I give a care? Do I look like I give just one single care?”

“Yes! Yes, you do look that way.”

“Fine, now let me take you out for a cup of coffee and some sausages.”

“You’ve got yourself a done deal!” sprang the middleman, ready to shake hands, bring hands together.

And no one was killed or otherwise harmed for the most part, i.e. aside from one stinger to one member of the party’s left arm, following his being thrust down on his head very hard and purposefully!

If you think that I am smart

Ever think I'm a really smart guy, as in me, Matt Rowan, is a really smart guy? Worry no more! Here's a perfect example of how I am not, and how actually I'm a moron just like the rest of us.

Dear MATT,

Thank you for your submission of "Surveil " to SmokeLong Quarterly. We gave the story careful consideration, and though we are not accepting it for publication, we hope you find a better fit for it elsewhere.

Thanks again for trusting us with your work.

Best,
Editors
SmokeLong Quarterly
http://smokelong.com

***

Dear SMOKELONG QUARTERLY,

You can change the setting on your submishmash account so a submitter's first name isn't all caps in your automatic replies. It'll preserve a modicum of your giving the story an honest read. I know this is a bit snarky in tone. I just find that to be one of the more irritating aspects of these rejections, and an easily correctable one. I hope my next rejection by your publication comes with my name in the standard capitalization.

-MATT Rowan

***

That's actually the way you spelled your name when you submitted the story, not an automatic setting on Submishmash. So if you submit your story to us with your name spelled the way you prefer, then it will appear that way on any correspondence we send you.

Thanks,
Tara

Editors, SmokeLong Quarterly
www.smokelong.com

TA DA!

HAHAHAHA, sigh, well I sent a very contrite email, acknowledging my mistake (and it was my mistake). Somehow when my account was set up, the default profile name was in all caps (either I did this or it's automatic). If you have a submishmash account you can alter your rejections email name (or acceptances) under your personal settings. All you have to do is investigate them, rather than jump to a conclusion of error on the part of an external source.

Or maybe I'm the only one who's had trouble with that, too.

P.S. SmokeLong is a good publication that's fun, so go read it and have fun. They put up with me and my snark, so there's something.