An excerpt of Flannery O’Connor reading A Good Man is Hard to Find, 1959.
Her reading is brilliant.
Voices from the Grave #64: Flannery O’Connor Reading ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’
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Tag Archives: Short Stories
Happy Birthday Anton Chekhov, You Sexy Beast
Anton Chekhov was born on 29 January 1860. In addition to being quite the looker…
Anton Chekhov, 1889
…he ranks as one of my favourite writers.
QUOTE: “There is nothing new in art except talent.”
SOME WORKS: The Bear; The Seagull; Uncle Vanya; Three Sisters; The Cherry Orchard; The Death of a Government Clerk; The Huntsman; At the Mill; Easter Eve; Grisha; The Bet; The Darling; The Bishop.
A KEEPSAKE:
Daily Diversion #73: Long I Stood There*
Mansion Original
When I snapped this image in October, I wasn’t too impressed with the result. It didn’t spark my imagination, which is always a bad sign. I was in a hurry and used my camera phone, which was zoomed in a bit too much. Even though this house has stories to tell, I didn’t feel any of them that day. My creativity felt closed off. Since I’m a writer, and not a photographer, it’s normal if I am not immediately able to capture a visual; I tuck everything away until the time is right. I’m familiar enough with this house, which is in my home city, to know that the intuitive call to my creative process would happen, eventually and beautifully.
After a conversation with Jennifer from Quirk’n It, I decided to wade through the 1300+ photos on my phone. When I saw this one, it struck me differently than it did two months ago. I was playing around with some effects, when it hit me: for the last few months, I’ve been writing a short story featuring this house in triplicate. The house is not the star, nor was it the impetus for the piece, but it’s there just the same: altered, transformed, re-imagined into something else. All before I took the photograph. Remembered from previous glimpses, from some unremembered or unnoticed tucking away.
Mansion Original Version
Mansion-Altered Version # 1: Because my story is a bit eerie, I chose effects that dimmed the mansion’s bright, well-kept beauty.
Mansion-Altered Version #2: It’s beginning to look as if scary things could happen here.
Mansion-Altered Version #3: Or, perhaps they already did.
Mansion-Altered Version #4-You should probably turn around and leave, before it is too late.
“No one would know if you went pokin’ around the back with your camera. It’s a real boneyard back there, too. Kind of like the insides of a museum was tossed outside and left to rot. There’s beauty in everything, I suppose. Even in neglect.”**
*”Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”-Edgar Allan Poe
**This is an excerpt from my short story, The Brothers’ Boneyard. No stealing, please.
A Year in Books/Day 202: Tales of Mystery and Imagination
- Title: Tales of Mystery and Imagination
- Author: Edgar Allan Poe
- Illustrator: Harry Clarke (from the 1919 edition published by George C. Harrap and Company Ltd.)
- Year Published: 1987 (The Franklin Library)
- Year Purchased: 2005
- Source: Barnes & Noble clearance rack
- About: It’s Poe, people. We all know Poe, don’t we? His stories are such an immutable fact of our culture that we’re practically born with them embedded into our consciousness. Continue reading
Quote
“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”-Edgar Allan Poe
A Year in Books/Day 195: Murder on the Menu
- Title: Murder on the Menu Cordon Bleu Stories of Crime and Mystery
- Editor: Peter Haining
- Year Published: 1991 (Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc.)
- Year Purchased: I have no idea when this book was purchased, but it was given to me in 2010
- Source: A hand-me-down from my mom
- About: Murder on the Menu is a collection of stories about killing people by poisoning their food, or other dark dinnertime deeds. So fun! So lighthearted! So hunger-inducing! I love literary meals. I think it’s fascinating how authors represent the most basic of human needs in their writings. If you’ve never looked at fiction from that angle, you should give it a try. This crime compilation naturally focuses on the macabre, but the principle stands. The selection of authors is unexpectedly varied, offering a wider appeal than similar books.
- Motivation: People are always giving me books they no longer want. They know I will be kind. Or sell them when they aren’t looking.
- Times Read: 1
- Random Excerpt/Page 76: “Captain Michel had but one arm, which he found useful when he lit his pipe. He was an old sea dog whose acquaintance, with that of four other old salts, I made one evening on the open front of a cafe in the Vieille Darse, Toulon, where I was taking an appetiser. And in this way we fell into the habit of foregathering over a glass within a stone’s throw of the rippling wave and the swinging dinghys, about the hour when the sun sinks behind Tamaris.”
- Happiness Scale: 7
Voices from the Grave #30: Eudora Welty Discussing ‘A Worn Path’
Eudora Welty discussing A Worn Path with Beth Henley (1994).
Alternative Muse of the Month News-Katherine Mansfield Edition
Four Katherine Mansfield short stories were recently discovered by a college student, along with several photographs. All were previously unknown. This is fantastic news for fans of Katherine Mansfield and students of the short story. If you are pleased or titillated by this news, thank Chris Mourant. Kudos, sir!
[Intermezzo] I’m Thinking About Cleaning Out My Idea Bank
I’m thinking about cleaning out my idea bank. It is a knee-quaking concept. Ten years of scraps, plots, extracts, phrases, titles, names, research and character studies are lovingly tucked away or carelessly crammed into various crannies and boxes and drawers. They contain a lot of good ideas and solid or beautiful writing. There are threads of greatness, however frayed and dirty and dusty; there’s a lot of crap, too, or things that I have outgrown or moved past. Legal pads, notebooks, torn napkins, loose leaf paper. Written in pen, pencil, marker, lipstick. It’s all there, waiting to be addressed. Faced. Embraced or conquered. Trashed or saved. Crumpled mounds of surprise or disgust. “I’m this good?” or “What shitty shit of a writer came up with this?” It’s all conjecture, of course, as I haven’t read any of it; but I know the odds, and they are even. The summer is young, and the days are long. I can do this.
Voices from the Grave #25: O. Henry’s Message to His Readers
O. Henry’s Message to his readers, ca. 1908.
To my way of thinking, that’s a waste of good time!
