More Books on Writing Fiction

A few more books for the beginning fiction writer — or for the poet long in the tooth who decides to give fiction writing a try — starting with a couple of good anthologies:
The Story Behind the Story – Andrea Barrett & Peter Turchi: This is a good anthology of short stories by many of [...]

Jean Stafford’s Rocky Mountain Stories

I’ve been reading the stories that fall in the middle of Jean Stafford’s Collected Stories, most of which are set in the Rocky Mountains. When I first began reading Stafford, I saw her as a specialist in the grim, a chronicler of the unloved or insufficiently loved. Those impressions are not untrue, but they fail [...]

Short Fiction Notes: Recent Reading (II)

“Prime Evening Time” — Ward Just: Character study of an Army Captain home & working in the Pentagon after three tours in Vietnam. He has won bronze & silver stars & the Congressional Medal of Honor. Only a Captain, he’s on track to be a general. There really isn’t any external action in the story; [...]

New Poem in The Sun

I have a new poem, “Ballad of Crows & God,” in The Sun, a magazine I rediscovered last summer & have been enjoying since subscribing. In many ways it’s an old-fashioned magazine, with its emphasis on autobiography, first person point of view, and direct expression of feeling; all of these characteristics are tempered with a [...]

On Taking Up Fiction

The novelist Stewart O’Nan came to Clarkson last fall to give the Convocation address & while he was here I had a couple of chances to talk to him, once at dinner, once the next day. He amazed me by reading my book, which I gave him at dinner, by the time we talked the [...]

Short Fiction Notes: Recent Reading

“Shelter” (Charles Baxter) — This is the first Baxter story I’ve read, but when I began writing fiction a couple of months ago I was greatly influenced by his how-to book, Subtext, which I am reading straight through for a second time. “Shelter” is in Baxter’s collection A Relative Stranger & it’s an effective story, [...]

Short Fiction Notes: Andre Dubus

If Flannery O’Connor known for her her cruelty toward her characters, Andre Dubus is known for his kindness. Of if not kindness, sympathy. (He is also better at writing women than O’Connor is at writing men, but I’m not really interested in a comparison that, carried any farther, would quickly become tendentious.) I’ve been reading [...]

Short Fiction Notes: Flannery O’Connor

I’ve just reread O’Connor’s “And the Lame Shall Enter First” and “Everything that Rises Must Converge,” & it hasn’t been so long since I read “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” It’s not my purpose in these notes to produce an analysis, but to catch a sense of my own reactions to various writers’ [...]

Short Fiction Notes: Chekhov

Because I have been trying to write some fiction, I have been reading the acknowledged masters of the genre, beginning with a little Barnes & Noble edition of stories. What appeals to me about Chekhov is his coolness, his detailed dispassionate descriptions of people and events. He is sympathetic toward his characters, but he does [...]