LAST RESPECTS AND OTHER STORIES (2018)
Published by Los Libros de El Problema de Yorick
Editor, Eloy Cebrian
Like a lot of novelists, for years I wrote stories between novels. One, two or three stories, perhaps, while the novel-tank was filling up. These stories had certain things in common. Most of them were on the long side—they might even be considered novels in miniature. A sense of place was very important in all of them, which should come as no surprise since as a writer growing up in the south (borderline south, Kentucky) I had read deeply in the work of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, among others, in whose fiction “place” is so richly and elegiacally bodied forth you begin to think of paradise and paradise lost. In fact, it has always seemed to me that certain southern writers were so identified with the world around them that you could “read” them that way, that is, you could read their characters at their depth by “reading” the natural world they were so drawn to and sadly estranged from. And, it bears remembering, that for certain questing souls a “paradise lost” necessarily puts people on the move. Expelled from the world that once nourished them, they go in search of a replacement. So these stories of mine, more often than not, are also stories on the move.
A very long one, which appeared in The Paris Review in 1982, concludes with these lines: ". . .new starts, in this country at least, come at the end of long self-propelling, self-depleting, wrenching and wasting efforts. Here it never comes to you, you go to it. Here the going there is the only measure we know." For a while I thought of collecting some of these early stories of mine under the title Here the Going There. This can all sound fanciful, perhaps too metaphorical for its own good, but with cars at the time affordable and good highways stretching off in every direction and the price of gas laughably low, what else were young men of my generation to do if not set out across the land. Before it had been a somewhat inglorious adventure of conquest, “manifest destiny”and all of that. Now it had become a self-conscious and self-administered rite of passage. The land remained out there to be taken the measure of. I personally have crossed it ten times by car. “Here the going there. . .”
Published by Los Libros de El Problema de Yorick
Editor, Eloy Cebrian
Like a lot of novelists, for years I wrote stories between novels. One, two or three stories, perhaps, while the novel-tank was filling up. These stories had certain things in common. Most of them were on the long side—they might even be considered novels in miniature. A sense of place was very important in all of them, which should come as no surprise since as a writer growing up in the south (borderline south, Kentucky) I had read deeply in the work of William Faulkner and Eudora Welty, among others, in whose fiction “place” is so richly and elegiacally bodied forth you begin to think of paradise and paradise lost. In fact, it has always seemed to me that certain southern writers were so identified with the world around them that you could “read” them that way, that is, you could read their characters at their depth by “reading” the natural world they were so drawn to and sadly estranged from. And, it bears remembering, that for certain questing souls a “paradise lost” necessarily puts people on the move. Expelled from the world that once nourished them, they go in search of a replacement. So these stories of mine, more often than not, are also stories on the move.
A very long one, which appeared in The Paris Review in 1982, concludes with these lines: ". . .new starts, in this country at least, come at the end of long self-propelling, self-depleting, wrenching and wasting efforts. Here it never comes to you, you go to it. Here the going there is the only measure we know." For a while I thought of collecting some of these early stories of mine under the title Here the Going There. This can all sound fanciful, perhaps too metaphorical for its own good, but with cars at the time affordable and good highways stretching off in every direction and the price of gas laughably low, what else were young men of my generation to do if not set out across the land. Before it had been a somewhat inglorious adventure of conquest, “manifest destiny”and all of that. Now it had become a self-conscious and self-administered rite of passage. The land remained out there to be taken the measure of. I personally have crossed it ten times by car. “Here the going there. . .”
OTHER SHORT FICTION
"The Rio Loja Ringmaster" (story), The Paris Review, Fall 1974.
"The Rookie Season" (story), The Paris Review, Summer, 1976.
"Our Lady of the Mediterranean" (story), The Bennington Review, September, 1979.
"Age of Retirement" (story), Epoch, 1979.
"For Years Without War" (story), fiction international, No. 12, 1980.
"Her Journey Westward" (story), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1981.
"From Pure Products," River Styx, #10, 1982.
"A Life of Crime" (story), The Paris Review, Winter 1982.
"Last Respects" (story), Harper's Magazine, February 1983. (To access entire story see below.)
"Monuments" (story), The New Yorker, October 29, 1990.
"A Sweet and Sunny Life" (story), Columbia Review, 1993.
“Casualties” (story), Epoch,vol. 47, nos. 2 & 3, 1998.
“Song and Dance” (story), Epoch, vol. 54, no 3, 2005.
"Our Peggy" (story), Epoch, vol. 67, no 2, 2018.
OTHER SHORT FICTION
"The Rio Loja Ringmaster" (story), The Paris Review, Fall 1974.
"The Rookie Season" (story), The Paris Review, Summer, 1976.
"Our Lady of the Mediterranean" (story), The Bennington Review, September, 1979.
"Age of Retirement" (story), Epoch, 1979.
"For Years Without War" (story), fiction international, No. 12, 1980.
"Her Journey Westward" (story), The Virginia Quarterly Review, Spring 1981.
"From Pure Products," River Styx, #10, 1982.
"A Life of Crime" (story), The Paris Review, Winter 1982.
"Last Respects" (story), Harper's Magazine, February 1983. (To access entire story see below.)
"Monuments" (story), The New Yorker, October 29, 1990.
"A Sweet and Sunny Life" (story), Columbia Review, 1993.
“Casualties” (story), Epoch,vol. 47, nos. 2 & 3, 1998.
“Song and Dance” (story), Epoch, vol. 54, no 3, 2005.
"Our Peggy" (story), Epoch, vol. 67, no 2, 2018.
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