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Bonus bust: Henrik Ibsen

This is Henrik Ibsen (those Norwegians! sometimes their Is look like Js). He is also from eBay. Many of the household's busts have been bought elsewhere, in antique stores and flea markets, but I've been photographing our more recent additions. Ibsen is made of parian, one of my favorite substances for busts: light, more durable than plaster, easy to clean, always beautiful. Until this bust arrived in our house, I didn't realize that to my tin ear "Henrik Ibsen" and "Henry Gibson" sound identical. Happily I love both, and I love the strange jolt I get when I hear someone say "Henrik Ibsen" and I picture Henry Gibson on Laugh-In, about to declaim a poem.

Unknown/Publishers Weekly

This is another eBay bust. We bought him from the artist's daughter, who said it had been made in NYC in the 1930s. Like Florence Nightingale, he's also plaster, but very big: that rare bust that is more than life-sized. The artist's daughter didn't know who was depicted, or even if it was an actual person, though my ball-&-chain thinks it looks little like Edmund White in a good mood. He sits in a window with Florence Nightingale, she melancholy and he pensive but happy.

I got a starred review from Publishers Weekly.

(Edited because I do actually know the difference between Edmunds White & Wilson but it's been a trying day.)

Kirkus Reviews/Florence Nightingale

After a bust hiatus, more busts.

I am very bad at self-promotion, not for any moral or philosophical reason but because I am tremendously awkward, and also because though I have mostly ditched the superstitions that ruled me as a younger person, I have retained a fear of the Evil Eye inherited from my grandmother, who said that her father would never even count how many children he had (he had 11) for fear of attracting the Evil Eye. You don't brag about children: the Evil Eye might snatch them away. (Or if you do, you then say kinehora, to ward off the EE.) Talking about positive reviews feels like bad luck to me: that is, if it seems like you think you deserve them, the Evil Eye will do something about that to set you right.

& if you talk about them on social media, nice people will congratulate you, so posting links to good reviews is a way to solicit more praise, and now I am squirming in my chair with awkwardness.

Nevertheless: I have decided that I can post reviews if I also include a bust.

Above is Florence Nightingale. No good story for how she arrived--she was a lucky eBay purchase--but she's very lovely, made of plaster, and mounted on a home-made wooden plinth. She seems to have a subtly different expression depending on what angle you see her from. I imagine she's a maquette for a bigger work.

Also: I got a starred review from Kirkus.

GREAT LIVING AMERICAN SHORT STORY WRITERS

On Twitter--my favorite place to ask opinions--I asked people for who they thought were the Greatest Living American Short Story Writers.

Here are the answers, in no particular order.

I will also add two more underrated (I think) young short story writers of my own: Judy Budnitz and Asali Solomon.

Edward P. Jones, Gish Jen, George Saunders, Nathan Englander, AM Homes, Amy Hempel, Kelly Link, Deborah Eisenberg, Yiyun Li, Ted Chiang, Lorrie Moore, Ethan Canin, Cynthia Ozick, Pam Houston, Allegra Goodman, Chris Adrian, Jeff Ford, Stacey Richter, Carol Emshwiller, Karen Joy Fowler, Jayne Anne Phillips, Karen Russell, Steven Milhauser, Jhumpa Lahiri, Jennifer Egan, Robin Black, Andre Dubus III, Dan Chaon, Tobias Woolf, Lydia Davis, Tim Gautreaux, Anthony Doerr, Junot Diaz, Gilbert Sorrentino, Mary Caponegro, Antonya Nelson, Claire Vaye Watkins, Susan Steinberg, Kevin Brockmeier, Mary Gaitskill, Emma Straub, Sam Lipsyte, Stuart Nadler, Tom McGuane,Charles Baxter, Elizabeth Strout, Joan Wickersham, T. C. Boyle, David Means, Edith Pearlman, Mary Robison, Charles D'Ambrosio, Lori Ostlund, Lauren Groff, Jess Walter, Laura van den Berg, James Alan McPherson, Andrea Barrett, John McNally, Rebecca Curtis, Denis Johnson, Robert Boswell, Tim O'Brien, Jamie Quatro, Ron Carlson, Rick Bass, Tom McGuane, Tom Franklin, Richard Ford, George Singleton,  Alan Heathcock, Benjamin Percy, Joe Hill, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Richard Russo, Bill Lychak, Robert Stone, Jean Thompson, Mary Gaitskill, Ann Beattie, Mary Miller, Joyce Carol Oates, Miranda July, Stuart Dybek, Edith Pearlman,Peter Orner, Jim Shepard, Tobias Wolff, Kevin Wilson, Tim O'Brien, Lorrie Moore, Roxane Gay, Brian Evenson, Stacey Levine, Rick Moody, Sherman Alexie, Ward Just, David Schickler, Sherman Alexie. Steve Almond, Pinckney Benedict, Hannah Tinti, Gary Lutz, Gene Wolfe, Ursula K. Le Guin, Russell Banks, Tom Barbash, Diane Williams, Aimee Bender,Jill McCorkle, Matthew Klam, Adam Johnson, Rick Bass, Lydia Davis, Tim Gautreaux, ZZ Packer, Melanie Rae Thon, Wells Tower, Lauren Groff, Lydia Peelle, Elizabeth Spencer, Robert Coover, Donald Antrim, Richard Bausch, Lee Abbott, Holly Goddard Jones, Cary Holladay, Patricia Henley, Caitlin Horrocks, Jess Row, Barb Johnson, Dylan Landis, Norman Lock, Thomas McGuane, Jamaica Kincaid, Michael Chabon, Stephanie Vaughn, Robert Olen Butler, Elissa Schappell, Julie Hecht, Rick DeMarinis, Joy Williams, Chris Offutt, Elizabeth Crane, Lucy Corin, Lucy Jane Bledsoe, Doris Grumbach, Saïd Sayrafiezadeh, Jessica Francis Kane, Seth Fried, Danielle Evans, Patricia Engel, Christopher Coake, Adam Haslett, Joshua Ferris, Rebecca Lee, Louise Ehrdrich, Noy Holland, Tony Earley, Lydia Millett, Susan Minot, Michael Martone, Lore Segal, Cris Mazza, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Amy Bloom, Daniel Alarcon,Elaine Fowler Palencia, Edwidge Danticat, Megan Mayhew Bergman, Thom Jones, Tania James, Alice Elliott Dark, Alyson Hagy, Jessica Keener, Allan Gurganus, Victor LaValle, Beth Nugent, Aleksander Hemon, Jodi Angel, Donald Ray Pollock, Rebecca Makkai, Rajesh Parameswaran, Sandra Cisneros, Brad Waston, Aryn Kyle, Tiphanie Yanique, Julie Orringer, Joan Silber, Reginald McKnight, Lynne Tillman, Nell Freudenberger, Elizabeth Tallent, Susan Daitch, Jonathan Lethem, Dawn Raffel, Christine Schutt, Yannick Murphy, Gordon Lish, Peter Ho Davies, David Leavitt, Ron Hansen, Padgett Powell, Rafe Posey, Percival Everett, Jeffery Renard Allen, Victoria Redel, Stephen O'Connor, Rebecca Brown, Thomas Glave, Debra Spark, Steve Yarbrough, Ben Stroud, Kevin McIlvoy, Kevin Canty, Steve Stern, Joshua Cohen, Tess Gallagher, J. Robert Lennon, Ben Marcus, Jim Krusoe, J.C. Hallman, Geoff Becker, Leni Zumas, Richard McCann, Elizabeth Evans, Melanie Sumner.

THINGS I HAVE SAID OR WRITTEN OR THOUGHT WHILE TEACHING CREATIVE WRITING, #2

Fiction requires friction. What we have here is here is just a soupçon of frottage.

Novel readers want to be implicated. They long to be implicated.

Hooray! A White Hen Pantry!

Just because someone came up with the word “interrobang” doesn’t make it a piece of punctuation for grownups.

If you withhold information from the reader so you can reveal it on the last page, it’s like pulling an ace from under the table at the end of card game. The reader won’t think: the writer’s great at cards! The reader will think: the writer cheats at cards.

No more deer in headlights unless you’re speaking of an actual deer in actual headlights and it's written from the point of view of the deer and even then it’s probably a bad idea.

Lynda Barry is a genius.

THINGS I HAVE SAID OR WRITTEN OR THOUGHT WHILE TEACHING CREATIVE WRITING THIS WEEK

(Possibly the first in a series.)

There seems to be a nitrous oxide leak in this story. Less smiling and laughing, please.

No more characters storming off. It means nothing, unless your character is 3-years-old or an actual storm.

You have put a bomb in your story. As a writer who cares about the world you created, you instinctively you want to defuse it. But that’s not your job. Your job is to let the bomb go off.

If you start another story with unattributed dialogue I will wring your neck.

If, when revealing a secret at the end of a story, you think, Wow, this is going to blow the reader’s mind! think again. At best, you will befuddle them.

Any time you suggest a character “couldn’t help but remember” you might as well drop a coconut on their head to start a dream sequence.

Your characters seem to have a neurological disorder that prevents them from recognizing ordinary household objects in order to make the story more “suspenseful.”

Two unconnected symbolic animal deaths in a story is one too many.

Ask any slapstick comedian: comedy requires gravity.

MY PEOPLE OF THE YEAR SO FAR

1. Antoinette Tuff.

2. Diana Nyad.

Most years there wouldn't be a feat more astonishing than swimming from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage at the age of 64. This year there is.

AWKWARD THINGS I HAVE DONE WHILE GREETING OR BIDDING ADIEU TO PEOPLE I DIDN'T KNOW PARTICULARLY WELL

1. Kissed a friend's husband on the neck.

2. Tucked my fist into the armpit of a woman in a sleeveless dress.

3. Solemnly shook the right breast of an eminent busty lady writer.

Back in Time

It's always a relief when you reach the end of a Texan dinosaur park and there's no Adam & Eve in the garden with a sign saying, Just foolin'! We're creationists. Today we went to the charming Dinosaur Park in Cedar Creek, Texas, a little walk through the woods around a bunch of fiberglass dinosaurs.

When we paid the admission the guy told us to make sure that we didn't go off the path no matter what, and listed a bunch of reasons: snakes, cactus, poison ivy...

"Plus," I said, "you don't want to screw up the whole flow of history by accidentally stepping on a butterfly."

I was so gratified that the guy laughed I made the joke every time we passed an actual butterfly on the trail. My husband started sprinting ahead when we saw one.

& then I wondered, do I think of any short story as often as that one ("A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury)?

ourmichaelp

Happy Anniversary

This picture was taken a week ago, shortly after I had been reunited with Michael’s wedding ring. I consider having it in my possession a miracle because it couldn’t be located within the hospital, and the Cambridge Police Department didn’t have it with Michael’s possessions. After a day, maybe longer, fliers were about to be created and distributed around Harvard Square in a last-ditch effort to locate it until a friend suggested I call the ambulance company that brought Michael to the hospital. Within 30 seconds of contacting them I had confirmation the ring was in their possession, and within a few hours it was delivered to the hospital and placed into my hands. A tiny, needed miracle.

The specifics of Michael’s hospital stay, while only being a week so far, have been blurred by worry and concern. I can’t remember what day of the week it is. I have to think about exactly which day Michael has his surgery. People come and visit Michael and I haven’t remembered their previous visit. When I try now to remember what it was like those first few days, I can’t remember things like peak blood pressure numbers or temperature spikes, or how swollen he he might have been, but I do remember the thoughts of walking away from my home, my garden, my job, Somerville, and all of my family and friends if Michael didn’t come back to me. It ached immediately that I couldn’t curl up next to him, or hug him, or offer him any comfort other than kisses on his hands and forehead. If I couldn’t touch and hold Michael, how could I comfort myself?

I now have the wedding ring around my neck, waiting until Michael is well enough to wear it on his finger.

And there’s more. Today’s update. For the past two days a few of us have noticed stronger, perhaps more deliberate movement, particularly in Michael’s left hand. There were memorable moments from yesterday where we saw Michael fuss with his bed sheet, or reach for his vent tube and we just knew there was more behind his movement than instinct. After several hours, the hope wore off and I went to sleep that night trying not to get my hopes up, or put too much stock into the things we witnessed.

Today Michael was sitting in his chair when I came in to sit with him for a bit. People had been in and out, and now we found ourselves alone. It was very quiet and Michael seemed a little bit restless. I wanted to take advantage of his empty bed while he was sitting in his chair, so I tried to lay beside him but couldn’t reach him to hold his hand. I grabbed a chair and brought it close to his, and sat facing him, my left hand tucked under his.

I decided this would be a good time to sneak some music from my iPhone. Scanning through my library, I knew he wouldn’t be pleased: Nada Surf? Elliott Smith? Kurt Vile? Thin Lizzy? (Well, he does love Thin Lizzy.) Nothing seemed right until I got to The Beatles. There were two options: Abbey Road and Revolver. I was just about to play Abbey Road when I remembered that’s my favorite record, not his. In my attempt to be deferential, I chose Revolver. Within seconds Michael’s hand started moving around mine. He reached for two of my fingers and squeezed them. He placed his hand on top of mine and rubbed it from side to side. I watched and said nothing and didn’t move a muscle as his fingers found my wedding rings and held them. It was this exact moment when I was certain we were making a connection; he knew who I was and he wanted me to know.

Tax Man, Eleanor Rigby, I’m Only Sleeping, and then I realized that our wedding song, Here, There and Everywhere, was also on this album. When it finally played, Michael squeezed my hand and I wept into his.

The best moment of my life. I now know he is inside there, just how I left him before the accident. He remembers me, and loves me, and wants me to know. And I’m so glad I had the chance to share the same with him.

We were married 15 years ago today. The friends and family, both near and far, who surrounded us that day are surrounding us now, as well as the friends we’ve made since then.

Happy Anniversary, Michael. I love you so much.

Cathy

elizabethmccracken

An amazing story (and an amazing piece of writing) by my dear old friend Cathy Piantigini. (We were baby librarians together. I was at that wedding. In a bridesmaid dress.)

Can't sing. Can't act. Big muscles. Can dance a little.

(Undeniably a singular sensation.)

This sign was on a shelf in a house we rented in Houston. The more you think about it, the more hell I don't know what.

NON-TEACHING JOBS TWITTER RECOMMENDS FOR WRITERS

Trophy spouse.

Criminal mastermind.

Front desk at an unpopular museum.

Bookseller.

Librarian.

Nurse.

Outreach/education at zoo, aquarium, or museum.

Cabdriver.

Epicure.

Salesperson in sofa or bed emporium.

Journalist.

Scuba instructor.

Combination journalist/scuba instructor.

Oral history intake.

ER doctor.

Skydiving instructor, stunt double, advice columnist, coffeehouse owner.

Landscaper.

Medical librarian.

Dolphin.

In case you'd like your cat to look like a deranged millionaire.

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