A Love Note:

Opposites

At the tender age of ten and a half in her elephant bell bottoms and orange Steven’s Funeral and Crematory powder puff football jersey, Alexia stepped on sidewalk cracks and cooked giant black ants under a magnifying glass. The adults in Vanceburg indulged her, the men with “cute little monkey” and the women with “jackanapes.” She smiled sweetly. It was 1976. Andrew on the other hand stitched embroidery on pillowcases with his Mama tut-tutting over this color choice or that shoddy spot of lettering. He cried himself to sleep. When the two came together on a fat branch of the mimosa behind Ames’ barn they plotted their exodus, sealing their promise with wedding vows and a small kiss on the lips. It was her idea. Most everything in their whole twenty years together was…is…was. Cutting down the mimosa tree however, that was all Andrew, all alone. After getting the roots pulled out of the ground and the stump removed, he filled the hole with Alexia’s jersey and bell bottoms. He took his time. The dirt covered his kept treasures slowly, so slowly. When the sun set, he sat on the freshly turned earth, breathed the scent and waited on the moon to rise.

pointing at: JOHN SKIPP

Horrorist extraordinaire, John Skipp breaks the rules. His recent book, Stupography, is a collection of essays that covers a wide range of topics and concerns. His energy is infectious, his humor as audacious as it is fun. He’s one of the good guys, and one I’m pleased to know.

We spoke in NYC about Vonnegut’s quote “literature is in fear of being swallowed up its own ass.” In what ways do you agree or disagree with his sentiment? Where did lit fic go wrong, or right?

Well, if by “literature” you mean the kind of short stories that get published in The New Yorker – essentially, fiction as a literary still-life, in which much thinking happens, but nothing gets done – I must admit, I’m not real crazy about it. But that doesn’t mean that it’s all ass-bound.

If, on the other hand, “literature” simply means passionate, eloquent, insightful, engrossing, brain and soul-feeding fiction…well, we will always have that. There will always be writers of great talent and vision. And if we want to, we can read ‘em.

But if I understand your question correctly, you’re making the highbrow/lowbrow distinction, as set down in the halls of academe. The perception that all genre work is junk food. Which is where that whole “head up the ass” thing comes in.

Personally, I advocate the “third brow” approach: a cross-pollination of refined sensibility and monster truck mayhem. I think everyone should get the view from both the penthouse and the gutter, the church and the charnel house. Spend some time as both saint and sinner, not to mention everything between. Which, to me, is what good fiction is all about.

I loved Michael Gabon’s intro to McSWEENEY’S MAMMOTH TREASURY OF THRILLING TALES. In it, he suggests an alternate universe wherein only novels about nurses are published; and he further suggests that, no matter how good those novels might be, you’d be bored to fucking death after a while.

He goes on to say that the modern short story – at least in terms of “lit fic” – is precisely that inbred, stripped-mined and thrill-free. He then argues that many writers of yesteryear whom we consider to be “literary” today – Poe, Balzac, Conrad, Faulkner, and Twain, for example – actually cooked up some pretty ripping yarns, back in the day. And he concludes that modern short fiction might find itself enlivened if it got out of the house and HAD AN ADVENTURE OR SOMETHING!

Understand, I’m paraphrasing madly. He’s a literary guy. A COOL literary guy! Which just goes to show ya: literature is alive and well. Every time somebody writes a great book, or story, the art form is reborn, and the bloodline continues.

In Stupography you mention your kids and their friends, stating “Say what you will about TV info glut: one perk is a great cultural sense of humor. These are some sharp-witted motherfuckin’ kids. I’m amazed by how many of them really get the joke.” What effect, if any, do you think literature has had in their lives? Can the advent of literary horror (as well as splatterpunk, etc.) bring young people back to reading?

My kids are far more informed by movies, music, and TV than they are by books, and that’s all there is to it. It’s not that they don’t like books – we read them Dr. Seuss when they were babies, for fuck’s sake; of course they like books! – but it isn’t the medium they turn to first when they’re looking for a good time.

The fact is: some people LOVE TO READ. And there will always be those people. And there are also phases in one’s life which are all about the reading: a decade where you just can’t get enough, often followed (at least for me) by a couple years where you can get enough, and already have.

As for everybody else: they’ll read if they have to, or if you somehow trick them into getting excited about a particular book.

The best argument for reading-as-pleasure is a book that is actually a pleasure to read. So when I stumble upon one I think they’d like, I throw it out there, and see what happens. Sometimes it’s horror. Sometimes it’s not. My oldest daughter prefers fantasy books. She’s reading WICKED right now. And my younger one recently read CHOKE because the film version of FIGHT CLUB kicked her ass.

It’s evident you love music and theater. In what ways do the different media play off each other? Do they have a responsibility to each other as well as society?

I tend to think of all media as contiguous: a million ways to approach the same basic impulse, which is communication through creative expression. And I think most genuine artists, in any medium, feel a responsibility to make great art, or at least scrape at greatness to the best of their ability.

If you have a gift, you want to honor it. And you also want to play with it. And the by-product of that is that others get to watch, or hear, or otherwise participate in this art-thing that you made.

Right now, I’m crazy about making movies, because it’s the one medium where I get to integrate all of my art-cravings. There’s a story. There’s music. There’s the theatrical performance. There’s the camerawork and editing, the lighting and the sound, the art direction, and on, and on. It’s one-stop shopping, for me.

As for responsibility, I guess the big one is to NOT MAKE CRAP. But, of course, one man’s crap is another man’s delicious baloney sandwich. You know? Personal aesthetics are just about as goddam personal as things get.

In a blurb for Conscience, this was written:

Charley Weber is a lousy guy.
He kills for a living, and doesn’t mind it a bit.
He has come to L.A. to do something terrible:
for money, for vengeance, and to make an ugly point
about life and truth and love.
But a funny thing happens on the way to the massacre.
He finds himself confronted by the only one
who could possibly stop him.
He finds himself confronted by… himself.

As a society, what about confronting ourselves do you think we will find? As individuals, what should we be looking for?

Well, CONSCIENCE is a story built around the notion of facing yourself. Coming to terms with yourself. Recognizing who you are, at the core. Recognizing the scar tissue and damage for what it is. Standing outside of yourself, and seeing in from an egoless distance.

That, right there, is a pretty tall order.

And as it happens to poor ol’ Charley Weber, it also holds a mirror up to the whole wide world. I don’t want to give away too much – it’s a lot more fun just to read the nice story – but the whole thing takes place during a New Age Cozmic Convergence of sorts, where the micro-personal and the macro-political might come to reflect each other with painful precision.

It’s a psychological horror story, so it probes some dark psyches. But it’s also about letting in the light of truth. And truth, I think, is what we should be looking for. Truth in the service of empathy and humility, which leads to honesty towards oneself and others.

Wooo-HOOO! How’s THAT for some high-falutin’ shit?

I read an article by Steve Almond recently in which he said, “I only trust the ugly writers, anyway. Deep down, those are the ones who have earned their wrath.” What impact does beauty or its opposite hold over modern aesthetics? And does that influence the literature of our times?

I don’t know about that young man’s quote. I mean, I get the spirit and all; but it’s an overstatement, to say the least. There are a lot of ugly fuckers runnin’ around out there, and half of ‘em haven’t earned shit. They’re just ugly cuz they’re ugly. That doesn’t mean they get a prize.

That being said: I had a fascinating conversation with Jim Van Beber, a couple years back. (His film, THE MANSON FAMILY, was just released in May of 2005, after a literal fifteen-year struggle to get it made, sold, and shown. Talk about a man who has burned for his art. And let me tell you, it’s kind of a masterpiece: a real triumph of true indie filmmaking, and the best, smartest, most vividly realistic and jaw-dropping film I’ve seen on the subject, by far. My friend Scott goes so far as to say that THE MANSON FAMILY and Oliver Stone’s NIXON make the quintessential double-bill for holding up a mirror to the nightmare of the ‘60’s.)

Anyway, we were partying one night – we’d met, like, twice before – and he said to me, “You know, I really admire your work. You know what pain is. You’re not afraid to face down your demons. You’ve been through the fire, and seen the shit of the world, and you didn’t turn away. You put it all in the work.”

This was high praise from a guy like Jim, and I thanked him deeply for his respect. Then he went on to talk about the purifying, clarifying power of pain. It was an articulate and heartfelt riff, coming purely from personal experience; and I knew exactly what he meant, and have felt the same way, too.

But I’m gonna tell you what I told him, that night.

“The thing about pain,” I said, “is that it clarifies some things, and obscures others. Pain speaks to pain; and when you’re in the grip of it, it’s hard to remember what life was like without it.

“The trick is to experience the pain, learn what there is to be learned down there, and then GET THE FUCK BACK TO THE HAPPY PLACE. Cuz if you never make it back to the land of the living – and by this I mean the TRULY living, where life is a glorious and extraordinary thing – then you lost the battle. The horror won. The shadow has claimed you, and now the light just pisses you off.”

You know, it doesn’t take a genius to know that it hurts when somebody crushes your skull, or your soul. It doesn’t automatically make you deep, or smart, or a great artist, or even an honest one.

It’s what you do with your experience of horror that determines your character, or lack thereof. Yeah, suffering can ennoble a soul. But it can also snap you like a twig, or turn you into a blustering, self-righteous asshole. Or all of the above, by turns.

Umm…did that answer the question?

And finally, let’s get philosophical. (laughs) The Cleanup, as an example, seems to be about crime, poverty, the decay of society and the human reaction to it. Existential angst, in other words. How much of a role does personal morality (whatever that means) play in your work? Do you see yourself as a philosopher who writes fiction (ala Camus, Sartre, Dostoevsky)?

Oh, I’m a philosopher, all right! I’m such a moralist, it’s almost disgusting.

That said: I’m not an existentialist, any more than I am a Christian. I believe that we are personally responsible, yes; but I also think that we’re a part of something larger. Which is to say, God. My experience is that we’re all individualized manifestations of the infinite energy and genius that underlies all things. I call that thing “God”, for the sake of convenience.

My only problem with existentialism is that it defines us as alone, inside our little bags of skin, confronting an alien and hostile universe. (That’s how Alan Watts – a favorite philosopher of mine – described the modern, godless dilemma.) And I really don’t think we are alone. It just feels that way, much of the time.

The best thing about art, in any form, is that it reminds you that you’re not alone. Somebody else feels that way, too. They captured the feeling, and shared it with you. That’s what it’s all about.

But, anyway. You were asking about fiction as a means of addressing societal ills. And, yeah, horror fiction is built for addressing the damage. It’s the fiction of consequences and worst-case scenarios. So if you don’t tackle that material through your work, I kind of feel like you’re pissing down your leg. You had a shot at writing something that really meant something, and you blew it.

Oh, well. Better luck next time!

Let me say, though – and this circles back to the last question – there’s more than one way to skin reality’s cat. And horror purists are as guilty as “literary” purists, with regard to this conceit. I would say that the social commentary in my comical fantasy THE EMERALD BURRITO OF OZ (which I wrote with Marc Levinthal) is every bit as scathing as THE CLEANUP, or THE BRIDGE. It’s just funnier, that’s all.

I love great horror fiction, be it subtle or splattery. I also love comedy. And I like them together. Laughter is the sugar on the razor blade, and tragedy is the muscle that powers the joke.

I also love beauty, and simple contentment, and the calm clarity that comes from making peace with the world. These are the things that make life worthwhile. That make the horror worth wading through.

Throw in some good smoke, hot sex, filet mignon (rare), a swimming pool, a bunch of friendly people, some beer, and perhaps an adorable puppy or kitty, and I’M THERE, BABY! I will tackle the world. With all its woes. Just keep that good shit comin’, and I’m with you, all the way.

To sum up: I’m probably a little more cheerful than Kafka, Sartre, and Dostoevsky. At least these days. But when it comes time to bring down the hammer, I still got a pretty good swing.

www.johnskipp.com

"the drive to feel"

Born in 1947, Ms. Molly Peacock said of desire “it doesn’t speak, and it isn’t schooled.” She and I, we’re of different schooling. I grew with my hands: in the soil feeling the nurture in its moistness, in the felt and juice of a peach, in the slide of skin on skin. And I grew with my voice: an alone song only heard right in my ears, lullabies for my flesh passed on, whispers constructed out of love words. What I’m meant to do with these teachings, I do my best. I was born in 1966 and every day since.

POST VD

I don’t remember how I got to work today. I mean I know I drove, but I don’t remember any cars I passed, which traffic lights I had to stop at, whether or not the geese were swimming on the pond. I had one of those soft, secret smiles on my drive this morning and my head filled with images of my man. It wasn’t because when I came home yesterday—February 14—there was a beautiful yellow rose (cleverly arranged in my Coco-Cola straw holder) complete with baby’s breath (I love that stuff), a card, my favorite parfum (Michael Kors) and general tso’s chicken waiting for me. It wasn’t because the girls loved their sparkly, velvety blouses or my youngest daughter’s first present from a boy (a fuzzy pink TY beanie bear). It was because as soon as the children were asleep, I slipped into his gift and we, too, went to bed. I’m lucky, however, I drive many mornings with that soft, secret smile.

I didn’t realize just how lucky—maybe—until I actually got to work and the ‘other’ stories started.

The ebullient Sag I work with was as muted as her rose colored sweater. Yesterday was also her first anniversary, having exchanged vows with her husband last year in front of Elvis. She had expectations—maybe some flowers at work, a romantic dinner by candlelight that her husband cooked, something that was a little more thoughtful than the presents she’d received before she became this man’s Mrs., better than a vacuum cleaner, a coffee pot or a bug shield—as most new brides, old brides, girl friends, partners might. She’d mentioned flowers to him, but he didn’t understand. On a day like Valentine’s Day, most women want flowers sent to them at work so their compatriots in the nine-to-five sees there’s someone in their life that cares enough to do get the phone book, look up the number, call and have the florist sign the card with a simple “I do love you.” She got flowers, a bedraggled bouquet he grabbed last minute from the dinky beverage-converted-to-flower refrigerator at the local discount shop o’ horrors. She didn’t have to cook, but she had to go to Kentucky Fried Chicken to get dinner. And that was pretty much it. Her new husband—without so much as good night honey, H VD—was in bed asleep by eight-thirty. She slept on the couch.

Another woman, lacking funds, decided on making her man a special dinner. He likes her breakfast food best. She made the meal, called him to sup and he said, “Hmm, what’s this?” She threw it all in the garbage.

One woman, who has been married for over twenty years, works late two nights a week. She’d worked all day and didn’t get home until almost nine. Her son had a book report to do. Could the husband have helped the boy get it done before she got home? No. Her VD gift consisted of a coffee mug filled with chocolate kisses (another of those, “oops I’m driving home and I forgot, there’s a CVS” presents). It has to be one of those because how can a man who has been married to a woman for twenty years not remember that she drinks one half of a cup of coffee getting ready for work (and who already has a cup for this habit) and isn’t a chocolate person?

If anger and a general man-bashing doesn’t follow (which bothers me because not much was said about what was done for the men), excuses ensue ranging from “I don’t care; it’s just another day any way” or “it’s so commercialized” or “we didn’t have any money.”

Which reminded me of the gifts my husband and I exchanged for Christmas this year. We were watching some kind of red carpet special on VH1 or E!, and I just finished putting out Santa presents and was stuffing stockings. I looked at my sexy husband and asked him, “If we’d had the money, what would you have bought for me?” His list was the usual suspects: perfume, CDs, clothes. Mine was similar: an Egyptian cotton robe (he slept in one on an overnight we had in Indy), cologne, Maker’s Mark cigars. I finish the stockings and put them under the tree. The children, by this time, were good and nestled. We exchanged the look. It’s a look we give each other almost every day, whether we follow through or not. That night was a follow-through.

My VD extends past the actual day. Tonight, I will get the look, but I will pass (he needs time to recuperate and hydrate). Tomorrow, I will get the look, and I will take him up on it. Saturday, we will lock our doors, turn off our phones and completely ignore every other stimulant the modern world has ready for us to indulge our time in…we will turn everything off…except each other.

Mistress Avon

Every time your husband, Tim, pulls Mistress Avon into the water box, does a smoky burnout, trips the yellow lights of pre-staging to staged and sets the transbrake, you chew on the inside of your jaw. Heat blazes. Track temperature is a liquefying 130 degrees. The ground shakes with the power from 454 cubic inches bored to 477, generating 800+ horses. You worry the flesh of your mouth and pray.

If your husband is going to have a Mistress, it’s best if she’s an automobile. Mistress Avon (Nova inverted) was born in 1970. She’s a red machine with black racing stripes. Tim keeps her decked out, saying, “You have to look like a racer to be a racer.” It’s all about her accessories. Sprays to shine her tires, waxes that don’t streak or spot, windows clear, paint and aluminum sexy. Her very own mobile home, complete with posters of NHRA winners and chicks in bathing suits accessorized in body oils. He loves her.

Once staged, the stutter box roars, the RPMs are maxed, time is dialed into the box. His thumb is pressed into her button, losing circulation. When the first yellow bulb flares, you watch his hand fly backwards. He’s let her go, but the time dialed into her box means they’re waiting for green, for go.

Now is when you get so nervous you forget to chew, forget your prayer in mid-thought and forget that you want him to win. For the next six point something seconds, you’re in limbo. Tim has spent the last week converting his machine, his mistress, from racing fuel to methanol-alcohol. He’s assured you there is no more risk of an explosion than with the pump-fuel. You forget that too. All you can think about is the fact that if the alcohol mixture explodes, the fire is invisible. You won’t even know something’s wrong…until…possibly…too late.

Green means go. Mistress’s slicks yak, grabbing the track and pulling her front tires into the air about a foot. You think “wheelie bars!” Your husband is staring at sky. Your bottom lip is caught between your teeth. She bounces back to terra firma, settling into the groove. She eats track and throws down rubber. Then…she floats to the right, outside the groove. Her slicks go up in a puff of smoke, losing traction. She fishtails. Your husband is inside, doing the only thing he can do…ride her out.

Somehow, he steers her through the break, straightens her up and gets her back in the groove.

When Mistress Nova breaks the beams at the end of the 1/8 mile, her ET is 6:30 seconds. You’re looking for wavy air, the telltale signs of invisible fire. Mistress coasts onto the return road, ready to come sit beside her house hooked up to a battery box. She’s ready for her gaskets to be checked, the pressure in her tires to be gauged, her pampering. His time slip says his reaction time was .066. Not bad. He’s proud and while he shakes the adrenaline out of veins and exalts on the love of this ride, you catch his enthusiasm, smile and cheer. Why shouldn’t you? You have almost an hour before you have to hold your breath again. Anyone can stop breathing for six point something seconds.

pointing at: JASON SANFORD

Last summer I had a chance to interview Jason Sanford, editor of storySouth. Before the nominations for this year's Million Writers Award are opened on February 15th, it seems only fitting to dedicate this POINTING to Jason, his journal and award.

The Million Writers Award was a mammoth undertaking, garnering 600 nominations from 51 editors of online magazines, readers and writers in its first year! Statistics regarding online readership of literary magazines and journals are—at best—elusive beasts. Raising the question: To what extent are online journals drawing readers who aren’t also writers? Further, do print journals have the same inherent problem with readership?

As Mark Twain should have said, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and ‘literary journal’ statistics.” Despite this altered quotation and the lack of any overall statistics on the subject, I do believe that online journals do a better job of reaching readers who aren’t writers than traditional print literary journals. I say this because at least average readers are able to access online literary journals. If a reader wants to pick up a copy of a prestigious print journal like The Iowa Review (circulation 2,500) or Ploughshares (circulation 6,000), they’d have to either get very lucky by stumbling upon a bookstore that carries the title or know a friend of a friend who received a contributor’s copy in the mail.

To me, the fact that most of the readers of literary journals are writers isn’t the dirty little secret of the literary world. After all, in every profession—from baseball to politics to fish gutting—there is a core group of fanatics who keep the profession’s passion going. That writers make up this core group among literary readers should be expected. No, the dirty little secret of literary publishing is how many of the writers who get published, and how many of the readers who read the print journals, know one another. And I mean “know one another” in the biblical sense—as in colleagues teaching at the same college, as in the “You were my writing mentor and now you’re publishing my story in your journal and wow, I went to school or conferences with two-thirds of the authors in the journal and almost all of the journal’s readership.” Yes, this is a slight exaggeration. But literary publishing in this country too often seems more about keeping track of who gets published in certain prestigious journals than about what really matters, which is great writing.

To return to Twain’s quote, I have no reliable proof that online journals are reaching a more diverse readership. However, I do know that many online journals (like storySouth, which averages around 15,000 readers per month) have a much higher readership than even the biggest print journals. When you add this fact in with the numerous e-mails I’ve received from non-writing readers who liked a certain poem or story we’ve published, and from writers who tell me that they’ve received a bigger response from storySouth publishing their story online than they ever received for print pubs, then yes, I believe online journals are reaching a much broader audience.

However, at the risk of totally contradicting myself, I must say that some of the newer print literary journals, like McSweeney’s, Night Train, and One Story, have found some innovative ways to bring in new readers. However, whether this trend continues, or is just a flash in the pan, remains to be seen.

According to the interview you did for Novel & Short Story Market, the editor of one of the yearly “best short stories” anthologies refused to consider storySouth’s fiction for his next anthology because he didn’t consider online publication worthy. Creation of the Million Writers Award was in direct response to this proletarian attitude. How well do you think the award is doing (and will do) in advancing the impact web publishing has on the literary community?

I think the award is doing a great job of “legitimizing” web publishing, mainly by showing readers and writers which online magazines and journals are publishing the best fiction.

Of course, this brings up the funny fact that the main obstacle to legitimizing online publishing has always been that fanatical groups of readers referred to in the last question: Writers! The reason for this is simple. Most readers come to a story, essay, or poem from one point of view: Is this piece of writing worth the part of my life I’m giving to reading it? If the story is well written, if the poem engages, if the essay delves into insight and understanding, then odds are the reader won’t care if it’s published in an online or print publication. Writers, though, care about much more than just publishing their work. They want to know that people are reading their work. They want their peers—and families and friends—to respect this new notch on their publishing belt. Prestige. Honor. These are the reasons that many writers were initially suspicious of online magazines and journals. As many writers were saying a few years ago, if you can’t hold a magazine in your hand, then it’s not a true publication.

Since I founded storySouth, there has been a sea-change in this attitude. Well-published writers who never considered submitting or publishing online even a year ago now do so all the time. They’ve seen how online journals reach large audiences and they’ve decided to jump on board. In addition, a few online magazines like Narrative Magazine now pay as well as the most prestigious literary journals.

From Dickinson to Faulkner to Kerouac to McCullers to Vonnegut, in days of old, literature as a body represented the outsider while illuminating living as a whole. To what extent do you think web publishing is the rebel of the industry and continues the “outsider” aesthetic in literature?

I believe web publishing definitely continues the outsider tradition, with the only caveat being that web publishing is now opening up literature to true outsiders for the first time. I say this because while all of the writers you mentioned before were outsiders to the prestigious literary clicks of their day, they still had to have some connection to the literary world in order to get published (with the only exception to this being Dickinson and that classic outsider Walt Whitman, whose self-publishing of his poetry is a 19th century foreshadowing of web publishing). With web publishing, though, you can be a total outsider to the literary world and still have an impact on literature. I believe this will encourage the outsider aesthetic in literature in ways which we will only understand in the decades to come.

For example, let me tell you about a poet I know named Dan Schneider, whom many would consider a classic literary outsider. Dan was born to an unwed teenage mother in Minnesota in the 1960s. Given up for adoption in New York City, he was raised in the toughest parts of that city, ran with gangs throughout his youth, and generally showed no inclination whatsoever for literary matters until he saw a poet on TV talking about how writing poems helps you get laid.

After getting past this poetry-for-sex belief, Dan educated himself about poetry by reading and studying everything he could on the subject. From his website Cosmoetica.com, he now publishes poetry and literary critiques that drive the literary establishment crazy. Basically, Dan takes a no-holds-barred, analytical approach to critiquing writing. If he likes your work, he says exactly why it is good. If he hates it, he lays out why in immense, excruciating detail. His site has literally recorded tens of millions of visitors since it debuted in early 2001. If you Google for information on poets like Bob Grumman or Thylias Moss, his critiques pop up. Dan and his website were even mentioned in the New York Times Book Review last year in the essay “The Widening Web of Digital Lit.”

For someone like Dan, a self-described working class man who never went to college, doing all of this in the days before web publishing would have been nearly impossible. Dan is the classic outsider. He is also the future of online poetry.

It is storySouth’s mission to showcase that the “21st century south is a mix of traditional and new, regional and international.” To what degree is niche publishing a service and disservice to modern readers?

Simply put, niche publishing is always a disservice to readers UNLESS the writings within that niche go beyond their little crack in the ground.

Let me explain. If a journal’s niche happens to be fiction about, say, smooth rocks, and the only readers interested in this fiction are collectors of smooth rocks, then that journal is a waste of everyone’s time. However, if the journal’s fiction about smooth rocks goes beyond simply talking about rocks to show how David used a smooth rock to take down Goliath, how smooth rocks are wonderful for throwing into glass houses, and how everyone in the world can relate to smooth rocks in one way or another (because we all walk on them), then the journal has transcended the smooth rock niche and its so-called niche publishing is worthwhile.

I feel that storySouth takes this latter course. While we focus on southern writing, we also try to focus on writing that transcends the south. This goal is aided by the fact that southern culture has, in many ways, taken over the United States. Three of the five last presidents have been from the south, country music dominates the national airwaves, NASCAR racing is the most popular sport around, and there is a Cracker Barrel at every interstate exit. So storySouth isn’t just about southern culture. It’s also about the current state of American life.

What's the one question you've always wanted to answer but have never been asked?

Simple: What’s the most scared you’ve ever been? That’s the question no one’s ever asked me, which is a shame because I have a great story to tell about fear.

First, a digression. H.P. Lovecraft once said, “The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” I know this is true because I’ve been in plenty of scary situations—in a shoot-out, in a riot, in a car as it dangled off the edge of bridge fifty feet above a river—without being afraid. The reason for this lack of fear is that I understood what was going on. Knowledge keeps fear away.

But there is one time in my life when I was truly scared, and this situation falls fully into the realm of Lovecraft’s quote. This happened back when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Thailand. During one of the breaks in my work, I joined some other volunteers for a week-long retreat at a Buddhist monastery in southern Thailand. Now, I guess I’m not a very good meditator, because after a few days of squatting on the temple floor and not being allowed to talk to anyone, I went stir crazy.

Right next to the temple was a large, limestone mountain (think of the island mountains in that James Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun, except this mountain wasn’t quite as vertical and lacked the film’s all-surrounding water). Feeling the need to get away, I sneaked away from the temple one day and set off to climb the mountain.

Now in my life, I have a reoccurring theme of getting myself halfway into a situation and then deciding that this wasn’t the best possible course of action. Sure enough, this theme repeated itself halfway up the mountain. As I grasped fallen trees and pulled on vines to work my way up, it occurred to me that no one knew where I was. If I was to fall and injure myself, or grab a poisonous snake instead of a leaf-covered vine, I’d literally be up the creek without a paddle (even though this cliché loses its power since I was climbing a mountain).

Despite these nervous rumblings, out of stubbornness I pressed on. As I neared the top of the mountain, I suddenly stumbled upon a deep tree-filled valley about the size of a football field. I began to work my way down into the valley when I suddenly noticed a little hut on the side of a cliff, about a hundred feet away. The hut was the size of a small car and from its roof an orange flag flapped in the breeze. Thinking this might be a meditation hut of a monk, I began to walk toward it.

That was when the fear hit. I suddenly felt that someone was watching me, that someone was trying to surrounding me and trap me in this little valley. I stood still, peering around for whoever was there. At the edge of my vision, I saw fleeting movements in the trees. But every time I focused on the movements, they disappeared. But then a minute later, I’d see another movement nearby. Definitely a hair-rising-up-on-the-back-of-the-neck moment. I then looked around for the flag-topped hut. Even though it had been so obvious a moment before, now I couldn’t see it anywhere.

I quickly edged back the way I had come. Even though I had no logical reason to be afraid, my heart couldn’t stop pounding. I climbed down the mountain, went back to the temple, and didn’t tell anyone where I had been.

I have no idea who was in the valley. Perhaps some Thai hermit lived there. Perhaps monkeys. Perhaps nothing but my imagination. All I know is that this one valley spooked me because I couldn’t figure out what was going on. This lack of knowledge let the fear grow until I had to leave.

And now that I’ve told you this story, I realize that maybe it has a purpose to our interview about literature. I have long despaired about the lack of great stories in today’s literature. Instead of writing the stories that resonate and inspire people, too many writers in today’s world instead tell little stories about the little details in our lives. I wonder if this lack of great storytelling comes in part from a fear of the unknown, from a fear of what both the writer and the readers may find as they work their way through a great story.

Or maybe I’m making a mountain out of a molehill, a cliché which is totally apt after my silly little mountain tale.

What kind of writing inspires you?

I am inspired by writings that take risks, that attempt to tell great stories which resonate and echo through my mind and soul until I can't for the life of me recall if I was reading--or simply living--a story or poem or essay. Basically, show me something new with your writing. Take me somewhere I couldn't otherwise go. Tell me a story that has so much life in it that it seems more alive than any human could ever be.

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biography: Jason Sanford's short stories have been published in the Mississippi Review, Pindeldyboz, Beloit Fiction Journal, Diagram, and other literary journals. He is the winner of a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship and edits the literary journal storySouth.

Weekends Are For Friends

Weekends are for friends: cook outs, jaunts to ironic restaurants steeped in shtick, the drag strip in my ‘Stang, or sometimes simply watching The World Poker Tour or cake decorating. It’s our time to catch up with each other, find out who’s leaving whom, whose parent is ailing, look at the most current vacation pictures or—rarely—discuss politics, religion or child support…albeit gingerly.

Unless, of course, you’re friends with some of my friends.

This weekend with the scent of gnocchi and pies on the air, we spent our time throwing things at each other. Starting out, it was just little things. Cool Whip, a mop head, a stapler. The norm. Several of us slip away for a couple of hours to write a little en masse. We enjoyed.

After, we realized the food fight had graduated…with honors.

Furniture was strewn, paint slung, big purple and green doodles on the walls, and someone or two or half a dozen had turned the refrigerator over. Talk about a buzz kill (there was tira misu in there!). Long story short, the weekend evaporated between this commiseration or that WTF.

And on Sunday, I realize I’d neglected everything, including In Cold Blood. A weekend gone with no reading? Well, it’s just not done. I forced myself to put the book down at 3am. I knew I was going to pay on the morrow.

Monday, I clocked out for lunch and made my way out of the building to huff a cigarette, ticking off the errands I’d neglected over the weekend: bank, gas. The gas was my undoing. I’d already noticed the sorry state of my eyes, particularly the left. Bleeding comes to mind. When the odiferous scent of regular unleaded climbed through the air and swirled through my sinus passage, it combined with the buzz from two chain-smoked cigs and the dull ache behind my bleeding eyes and bam: blind spot—precursor to migraine. I’m forty-five minutes and a heavily traveled expressway from home.

I make it and walk in to find my husband beneath my cheetah throw, cap askew and the gathering of thunder clouds on his brow as his nap quickly fades from his gaze. Now the point of all this is had I actually gone to one of my friend’s houses—let's say Mindy—on Sunday and stayed there until after 1:30am because she was distraught and driven the 1.5 hours home to fall into bed, wake up too few hours later and schlepped my way into work to leave sick four hours thereafter, not a word would have been said. In fact, my husband may have even commiserated with me, pampered me a little even since I would sacrifice so for my friends.

But no. Part of my existence occurs online, my friends are people who type their happenings and thoughts into message boards, other writers. And they aren’t real.

Be that as it may to my husband, I feel otherwise. The unreality of those people, at the very least, helped kick my booty into gear, into kicking up my reality within this media. Thus, my first blog entry.

Welcome!