first week of Winter '25 semester week of reading
McInerney, Carver, Fridlund, Maloney, Beach, Gray, Shattuck, Stuber ... plus some "show your work" thoughts on revisiting an old novel as starting a new novel
A couple quick notes up top:
I had another new story publish this last week. It’s a fun one, if I do say so myself!
“There is something about sharing a moment of wonder with someone you love. Being next to them. Being able to not just witness the moment with them but through their eyes. That’s what I was thinking about, standing next to Amber in the aquarium, watching the jellyfish.”
— “The Zoo” in Bluestem Magazine
“That Was Awesome” short story club #5:
Thursday, Jan. 16, 8pm ET. Amy Stuber’s “Cinema”
In 2024, I started hosting these short story clubs, which basically just means a bunch of us hop on Zoom and chat about a story I picked. Something I love and want to chat about. It’s a fun hang! Open to anyone who is interested (there’s usually anywhere from 15-40 of us, and main “chat” usually lasts about an hour, but a few of us stragglers often keep going into a second hour). If you’re interested, just let me know!
OK, on with it…
I read a ton this week. A great week! MFA applications & Short Story, Long submissions & the beginnings of a couple of books authors asked me to blurb & all the fiction in the four 2024 issues of Michigan Quarterly Review (to judge the “Lawrence Prize” for best piece of fiction MQR published in the journal each year). I also spent the weekend (that I probably should have been using for class prep) reading Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City.
I’d been Bright Lights curious for a while, but I spent the last few years working on a novel in the second person POV, and so was purposefully waiting until I finished that to finally dig in here. And, I loved it. I had a handful of expectations and preconceptions about the book, and it was some of those, but it was also so much more, and different, and just even better than I’d expected. There are at least a couple of different moves and moments that are especially going to stick with me. There’s a “flashback”/memory scene in the penultimate chapter about of the narrator having a conversation with his mom that was one of the best things I’ve read in a while. Great on its own terms, and just perfect for a moment near an end of the book that sheds new light and recontextualizes everything that came before it. I foresee it becoming a new fave recommendation.
I also kept up my practice of reading a short story every morning…
the stories I read this week:
(Sat, 1/4) “The Third Thing That Killed My Father,” “Popular Mechanics,” “Everything Stuck to Him,” “One More Thing” by Raymond Carver
(completed What We Talk About When We Talk About Love)
These are all kinda short, and read fast. They’re all “good,” though I’m not sure any especially stood out. I liked the book overall, but I read Cathedral last year and it knocked me out and these stories mostly made even more clear how much I love those stories and why.
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(Sun, 1/5) “Gimme Shelter” by Emily Fridlund
I was bad this week about keeping notes on stories as I went. I could go back and see what I remember and find something smarter to say about it, but that isn’t really the goal here, the goal is to have fun and enrich my life and yadda yadda, not to give myself more homework, and so, alas, almost a full week later, I don’t really remember this one.
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(Mon, 1/6) “Bot” by Kevin Maloney
Kevin is one of my fave writers. One of my fave people. New story on Little Engines was an immediate read. And it didn’t disappoint. Another Maloney banger, a new Maloney classic.
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(Tues, 1/7) “In the Village of Elmsta” by Jensen Beach
Jensen’s another fave writer and person. I first read this story almost a decade ago! (The collection is from 2016. How is that almost a decade ago?!) I’m not sure I’ve revisited it since, though I think about it often. It’s really lingered in my brain all those years. Because it’s a great story, and because it does this great POV shift where the first few pages follow this character, Rolf, playing tennis, and then biking home, and then… dying. And then the story shifts to an unrelated group of characters who, it turns out (spoiler alert; though none of the pleasures of the story come from anything that is or isn’t or could be “spoilable”) saw him die, from their boat.
The main small detail that has especially stuck with me all these years though is that group of characters on the boat is made up of a man, his colleague, and both of their wives. The first man and his colleague’s wife are having an affair. Halfway, maybe three-quarters of the way through the story, that man blurts out, “We’re having an affair!” I still remember how much it caught me by surprise the first time I read it!
I read a ton of submissions and a common “problem” across them is a lack of conflict. And I’m probably extra sensitive to that because I am so aware that I can be an avoider of conflict. In life, which can lead to in stories, which can lead to a lot of inert stories. And so I think about it often. What if a character just says out loud the thing that is so supposed to be unsaid? What happens then?!
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(Wed, 1/8) “Thank You” & “Dinner Date” by Amelia Gray
I didn’t totally realize it at the time, but typing these up, it was a real week of reading stories by favorite writers who are also friends I love. Kevin & Jensen & Amelia, oh my!
This was my first day of classes, and I don’t often but this semester I get to teach an intermediate fiction class. I usually start that class with Barthelme’s “The School” but I thought about switching it up this semester and doing a different short-short “pattern story.” I skimmed through Gutshot and peeked at a few others, ended up reading “Dinner Date” in full, and the whole book is great, but “Thank You” is the one that really has its hooks in me. (I ended up assigning both “The School” and “Thank You” for our second class.)
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(Thur, 1/9) “This History of Sound” by Ben Shattuck
I wasn’t familiar with Shattuck but my buddy, and great writer, Russ Brakefield, recommended this collection and, WOW. This story knocked me out. A week of bangers, and I’ve been reading a daily story for a while, and it just might be the best story I’ve read in some time. I checked this book out from my university library, and on the strength of this story alone, I’m already looking forward to buying my own copy when it drops in paperback and adding it to my shelf of faves. Really excited to keep reading.
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(Fri, 1/10) “More Fun in the New World” by Amy Stuber
Speaking of “shelf of faves”! I’m running out of superlatives for this collection.
Here’s a tiny little moment I want to shout out:
…and he’s reading The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, like everyone else age eighteen to twenty-two that summer.
One, it’s a fun little Chabon shoutout. It can be a little tricky to pull off, I think, for whatever reason, but I love seeing favorite authors/books/movies/etc. pop-up in new fave stories.
Two, it tells us a lot about this kid. And even that, it does in a few different ways. It tells us something about him if we know and are familiar with the book. It places the story in time (book was published in ‘88). Whether we know anything about the book or not, that “like everyone else age eighteen to twenty-two that summer” does so much work. Insert whatever literary book “everyone 18-22” was reading that year… this kid is reading that book.
Here’s something I wrote/revised this week:
New year, new writing project. Which is actually a new old project.
I mentioned this last week, but I’m starting this year by revisiting a novel I wrote a handful of chapters years of ago and then… got busy? got overwhelmed? got sidetracked? I don’t 100% remember why I discarded it, but I’m returning to it, retyping everything I already have as I go — revising, moving stuff around, deleting big chunks, writing a lot of new stuff.
I also mentioned last week that, as part of this weekly “reading log” I am going to experiment with showing off a bit of a “writing log,” too. Last week I shared a paragraph that I wrote years ago, and then also the new version.
Last night I met with my writer group buddies. They were really complimentary about these first couple of short chapters I’d shared with them, which was incredibly encouraging. Which is really all I want from sharing work that’s in progress — a deadline to finish something, some hanging out and chatting and encouragement to keep going. It made me doubly excited about the project. Def feels like it has some juice.
I took that encouragement and inspiration and went to the coffeeshop and wrote a new ~1500 word chapter this morning. It’s almost an all new chapter. I reread over the last draft’s version of this chapter and there were a few interesting ideas and turns of phrase, but it was also really inert. A lot of watching, a lot of weak language. I scrapped that and put the character on a run. I made him exhausted. I made him call his brother (linking it to his brother having received a call in the previous chapter, a call that isn’t on the page, and I didn’t know might get referred back to until it happened on the page this morning). It all felt pretty good. I’ll type it up this week, and then try to write the next one…
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That was my week! In reading and writing, at least. Thanks!
—Aaron
Congrats on the Bluestem pub!
Mysteries of Pittsburgh came out in 88?! Chabon's been at this for longer than I realized.