Exactly what I was thinking.

[twopoint]

So I've been going on and on about how I've had it with the real-world, Raymond Carver scripted stories being churned out by workshops and published in The New Yorker.  To quote John Cheever (from the late '40's via N.S.M.) "I want to write short stories like I want to fuck a chicken."  My feeling is that I want to read mainstream short stories like I want to get intimately involved with farm fowl. 

Thank you Publisher's Weekly for realizing the zeitgeist.  Read all the way to the bottom to see verb_noire  's mention in the cover story.

Comments

[victoriawiley.livejournal.com]

That has got to be one of the funniest things I've ever heard anyone say about short stories. Personally, I'd rather take a novel writing class because writing short stories today is like trying to write arias for kindergartners: a wasted effort. They're often abstruse, incompatible with the interests of modern readers, and so technically difficult to do well. Way to go (RIP) Mr. Cheever. And you.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

I wish I could suck you more into lj land. Imagine the fun we would have trading snippets. Arias for kindergartners is right and very well said (much more eloquently than Cheever). It's not that I'm opposed to the short story - it's just that I want the short story to do more for me. I want little jewels of stories, character driven, rich. Stories are like houses to me - there was a giant, unintelligable novel I read once that needed a code to break it but the story was actual architecture - and the more stacked, cluttered and sprawling, the better. I want rugs on the floor, rugs on the walls and an inch of dust.

*looks around the room*

What I really want is a house keeper.

[victoriawiley.livejournal.com]

Don't laugh at me: what's lj land?

[victoriawiley.livejournal.com]

To your point, if they were all "A Good Man is Hard to Find" then short stories would be the best things ever, but they're not. They mostly fall far short of her greatness.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

I'd never laugh at you. Livejournal. Here. lj. *sorry*

All of O'Connor's stories are houses.

[levadegratchets.livejournal.com]

I must be reading what they say doesn't exist, but then being in SF might help. I see plenty of books locally that have black, Asian, Indian, protagonists. Again, it might be the city. Berkeley publishes a lot of alternative works.

Interesting read. I feel challenged if my head would stop wanting to blow up, the pieces crawling off into dark corners.

[two-point.livejournal.com]

See? I'm in the deep south, Asheville is the exception to the rule around here. There are still too many rules in these here parts - too many things that are forbidden, or just not spoken of. This weekend I found myself in a town beside a rail road track and I kept walking away from conversations so I could pick my jaw up off the floor. I'm also located in the home of Bob Jones University, a school that still believes in book burning. People often ask me if I have to wear a head scarf in Istanbul and I just laugh because the American south is far more restricted than that place.

[levadegratchets.livejournal.com]

Wow. I seem to forget all the time things are not as they are here where I live. You can't go two blocks without hearing another language, skin colour not your own, cultures very different. I take that for granted, clearly.

In fact, an East Indian fellow just walked in with a lovely accent. *g* It's funny too how I take this for granted -- our customer service was recenty moved to High Point, NC and just yesterday one of the ladies called me and, in her thick accent, complained she couldn't understand "that man" (he's Asian). I laughed and said he had called me complaining he couldn't understand a word *she* said.

Wait...there is a university that burns books?!! HOLY smoking frejoles. That's frightening.