John Dufresne Entitled Doing It Again
John's Blog
Shorts
I have a copy of the 1948 2d edition of Writers: Try Short Shorts! past Mildred I. Reid and Delmar E. Bordeaux, published by Bellevue Books, Rockford, Illinois. Mildred got her handsome photo on the dorsum of the dustjacket. Delmar did not. We learn that Mildred conducted writing classes at her studio in the Chicago Loop and at her writing colony in the New Hampshire mountains. We acquire aught about Delmar. But a quick expect on Amazon reveals that our man Delmar is the sole author of Cosmetic Electrolysis and the Removal of Superfluous Hair, which sounds like a delightful championship for a very curt story. Amazon will let you take the book for $299.99, not eligible for Prime. We as well learn that Delmar's middle name is Emil. Mildred and Delmar list the eight types of brusk shorts: the Complication Short-Brusque; the Character Curt-Short; the Decision Short-Brusque; the Reconciliation-Alienation Brusk-Short; the Psychological Brusque-Short; the Dilemma Short-Brusk; the Parallel Action Short-Brusk; the Identity Short-Brusque. All of which are explained in Wink! All of which you become to write!
Directions
Requite these directions at the Wilmington airport.
Use commas with straight accost
If yous don't, you lot might end up with an entirely different and embarrassing significant than you intended, even if it is factual.
WHY I Employ THE OXFORD (OR SERIAL) COMMA
WITH:
Subsequently winning the University Award, Matthew McConaughey thanked his parents, Jennifer Garner, and Jared Leto.
WITHOUT:
After winning the Academy Laurels, Matthew McConaughey thanked his parents, Jennifer Garner and Jared Leto.
Without the comma nosotros have a fake appositive.
WITHOUT:
Mary was proud of her recipes for cupcakes: marzipan, almond and coconut and chocolate flake.
(Is it almond and coconut or is information technology coconut and chocolate chip or are all three combined?)
Volume dedication: To my parents, Ayn Rand and God.
The writer is a demigod with an inherited tin ear for linguistic communication?
Since you take to use it in some cases to prevent defoliation, exist consequent, and use it ever.
Walker Evans:
Stare, It is the way to educate your heart, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
Equally I Prevarication: Plotting
A partial glossary of terms associated with plot. Found in the late Shuffles Marquis' volume Every bit I Lie: Plotting, which is, alas, long out of impress and about impossible to locate. I was fortunate plenty to detect a signed outset edition in my uncle Butch's condom deposit box after he died (bathtub/pilus dryer). Butch and Shuffles had been close.
aplothecary noun, one who provides literary assistance when a plot is bilious; volume doctor
sleeping room-plot, noun, a bit of low comedy, a bedchamber farce
coffee-plot, noun, a story set in the milieu of café order
crockplot, substantive, a erect and balderdash story
implotent adjective, unable to ascent to a plot
jackplot, noun, a story concerning gambling, often gear up in Monte Carlo
pleniplotentiary describing word, invested with the full power of plot
plotability noun, the ability to drink in the plot
plotable adjective, suitable for a plot
plotagerie noun, (rare) a drove of plots
plotamography noun, a graphic blueprint of a plot
plotamologist noun, one who studies and analyzes plots
plotamology a co-operative of literary science that deals with plotss
plotamophilous adjective, plot-loving
plotarite , noun, the naturally occurring cloth used to fashion plots, as in "Your Uncle Ray's drinking problem is all the plotarite you demand."
plotash , noun, that which is cut from the plot in revision and discarded or burned
plotashery noun, revision (see plotash)
plotass substantive, someone stupid when information technology comes to plot
plotassium substantive, anything that is poisonous to your plot
plotato head noun, (slang) a person obsessed with plot to the exclusion of character and theme
plotatory adjective, of or related to plot
plot-au-feu noun, a big traditional French plot
plotawatami substantive, a plot specifically concerning a North American Indian people of the Great Lakes
plot-bellied adjective, a plot that is thick in the middle
plotboiler substantive, any volume heavy on plot
plot-bound adjective, a story in which there is no room for further character growth
plotch noun, a spot, a blotch, a blemish on your plot
plotcock noun, a devilish chemical element in your divine plot
plot de chambre noun, where French writers dispose of their plotash
plot du jour noun, today's featured plot
ploteau noun, an elevated only flat plot, i that does non rise to a climax
ploteen noun, a drink favored by Irish writers when fashioning stories
plotency substantive, the ability to accomplish climax in a plot
plot-et-fleur noun, a decorative plot set in a florist shop
plotform noun, a stage on which your characters human activity out their struggles
plothead noun, an habitual user of plot
plotinize verb, to wax philosophical in your plot
plotless describing word, characteristic of an immoral story
plotemkin village noun, the unpleasant result when you lot only concern yourself with the façade of your fictional setting
plotentate noun, a prince of plot
plotential noun, having the capacity to develop into a plot
ploteresque describing word, relating to or being a 16th century Spanish style of plot, distinguished by a wealth and richness of ornamentation
plotform noun, a stage on which theatrical performers, or other persons testify themselves to an reader
plotful adjective, thick with plot
plothanger noun, a chip of gossip on which one hangs a plot
plothead noun, a reader who inhales plots
plothole noun, a hollow spot in your story; a defect
plotitude noun, 1. a plot that is flat, dull, trite, or weak; commonplace; 2. a absurd, cocky, defiant, or arrogant plot
plotling, substantive, a minor grapheme
plot liquor substantive, come across plottie and ploteen
plotluck noun, the luck or risk of succeeding events in a story
plotmeal adverb, a plot constructed piece by piece
plotment noun, a portion of your plot
plotomania substantive, a morbid craving for plot
plotometer substantive, a bit of quackery: a device one time sold to novice writers which promised to measure out the effectiveness of plots
plotoon noun, a story featuring a small-scale body of foot soldiers
plotorious , adjective, of or relating to plot
plot roast noun, a story that simmers for a long time before it's done
plotsticker, noun, moments in the writing when the action stalls
plot-shotten adjective, intoxicated by plot (see plotzed)
plottable noun, a story capable of being plotted
plottage noun, (pejorative) excessive plotting, equally in a mess of plottage, not to be confused with a mess of pottage from the excessively cooked stew of that name and meaning something valueless
plottee noun, the primal character, he or she who is the subject of the plot
plottery noun, the business concern of writing a plot
plottie substantive, a bracing drink favored past fiction writers and other plotters
plottocrat noun, a fellow member of the plottocracy, most often a creative writing professor who derives ability from publication
plotty adjective, pertaining to a story with lots of plot (run into plottage)
plot-valiance substantive, boldness in the structure of plot induced by ploteen (q.v.)
plotwise adjective, smart when it comes to plot
plotz intransitive verb, an explosion of joy at the success of your plot, every bit in "When I end my novel, I'll plotz."
plotzed adjective, drunk with story
Butch and Shuffles
execrable prose
When I realize that the grotesque and toxic ideology of Ayn Rand is about to be elevated by the installation of an unprincipled government, I accept some comfort in the words of Flannery O'Connor:I hope you don't accept friends who recommend Ayn Rand to you. The fiction of Ayn Rand is every bit low every bit you tin become re fiction. I hope you picked information technology upwards off the flooring of the subway and threw it in the nearest garbage pail. She makes Mickey Spillane look like Dostoevsky.
Doris Dufresne 1926-2016
The oblivion nosotros come from ends, and our lives begin, with our earliest memory. My life began when I was 2 years, two months, and 2 weeks old on the day that my newborn sister was carried home to our apartment—the flat with the leaky roof, the ice box, the console radio, and the walk-through closet to the Vanderhoofs' living room, at xvi Security Road, in the Lincolnwood public housing projection—began when I had my first nightmare, and in the morning, my starting time conversation.
I woke upwards crying because in the nighttime, and despite my vigilance, a band of shadowmen crossed the kitchen forth the greenish walls, by the tabular array and behind the stove and slipped through the crack in the closed door to the baby's room. I screamed, but none of the inattentive adults in the living room heard me, and so the worst thing that could happen did happen. I told Mom that Paula had been stolen by the shadowmen. She assured me that she would never let anything bad happen to her babies. She told me I'd had a dream, that's all, and explained what a dream was, simply I constitute her explanation preposterous: how can nosotros see things that aren't really there? She showed me a comic book on the coffee table—Lefty borrowed them from Uncle Richard—and pointed out the source of my evil 2-dimensional shadowmen at that place on the illustrated folio. I kept crying; she lifted me onto her lap, rocked me, and rubbed my back. She offered to take me to encounter the living, sleeping baby, simply I didn't want the backrub to end.
We all wanted to be alone with Mommy. She was virtually herself in confinement or when she was with i of her children. Cyndi remembers a long ride to Onetime Orchard Beach sitting in Mom'due south lap, her head on Mom's breast, feeling the vibration of Mom'southward voice as she spoke with Dad and being comforted as she might one time have been in the womb. She remembers mornings when she was 4, drinking java with Mom at the kitchen table, the two of them chatting about the long day in front of them, Mom would iron and watch her stories, Cyndi would color outside the lines, chatting, sipping, and waiting for the Cushman Breadstuff human being to arrive with his treasure of java cake. Paula remembers Mom showing upward at school and walking into the classroom with Paula'southward forgotten lunch, and at that moment and for the first time, Paula realized how beautiful her mother was. Mark loved lounging with Mom on the couch in the den watching Boston Movietime. Country Line potato chips and Polar cola were involved.
Doris had unproblematic needs: enough money to pay the bills, to buy us back-to-schoolhouse clothes at the Mart and groceries at the Big D, and perchance a petty extra for a long weekend at the beach. She wanted to be happy, but she had a complicated relationship with happiness. She yearned for it, just she didn't trust it. Too much well-beingness tempted fate and summoned problem. She was a realist, not a romantic; a pessimist at times, but never a cynic. And she did know how to have fun despite her circumspection and those intimations of her mortality.
She liked bingo, candlepin bowling, and shopping, specially pock-a-volume shopping. She led the hora dance at every wedding, often with her son-in-law Denis, the guy she once told Paula to dump—he'due south too much similar your male parent. She threw legendary Christmas Eve and New year's day's Eve parties. Anybody she and Lefty knew was invited and all of them showed up. Some Christmas mornings nosotros had to step effectually senseless and snoring survivors to become to the gifts. She could get silly every bit on a contempo girls' nighttime out in Wilmington with Cyndi, when, after shopping and a doctor'south visit, the ii of them had a pillow fight in the hotel room, and Doris laughed till she peed her pants. Or at her coronation as Miss America in the living room with the terrifying orangish and brown Castilian furniture at 177 Warner Ave, she in her two-piece brown bathing adapt, golden sash, and plastic tiara, a makeshift scepter, posing for photos as Mark sang, "Here she comes . . ."
In her salad days, Dot could beverage like a Jesuit. When she did, she saved her drink stirrers at the bar so she'd know when she'd had enough. Are nine gin and tonics enough? Are they ever enough? She relied on routines like the drink stirrers to requite her a sense of control, I think. She was determined to face life on her ain terms. When she finally quit smoking, she kept a carton of Pall Malls in the freezer. Now she had the choice. To smoke or not to smoke. No one was going to tell her to quit. She would decide.
Some of her decisions in this regard seemed perverse and baffling. She had a long secretarial career at Lawrence McCoy Lumber Merchants only refused full-fourth dimension employment with benefits and paid vacations. I guess you could say she was stubborn. She chose to work in that location all those years equally a temp for Manpower. She said in that way she could call in sick whatever day she wanted to. She might need to get some tanning in earlier the weekend, for case. Information technology was her habit to lie in the sun on a chaise longue in our blighted backyard from early on April till Labor 24-hour interval, and by late May, she was nut brown. She slathered her body in baby oil laced with iodine. She never got skin cancer. She lived till ninety without a contraction.
I would telephone call her parenting style laissez-faire. Hands off. Summers at 84 Warner Ave, she'd lock the door later on luncheon and say I'll see y'all at five. What if I have to pee? Use your imagination. Use the woods. You were on your own, but you didn't want to beguile her trust. She had her limits. At that place was naught so scary every bit trying to sneak in the house at 3 in the morning, tiptoeing beyond the kitchen, thinking y'all'd fabricated it, and then look to the living room and see the reddish of her cigarette glowing in the dark and hear her say, "Sit down down." We ate the same meals on the same days for years. We ate early—4:xxx or 5. Our table talk ran to imperatives and complaints: You're not leaving the tabular array until you've eaten every last bite of your supper; Stop playing with your food; My jaw hurts from chewing; I can't permit the vegetables touch the meat, and This spinach is making me ill. All the while Shep was under the tabular array devouring our decline. Dot may accept left the states largely to our own devises, but she did raise iv kids who dear one another and cherish the families nosotros come from and are a part of.
Like her begetter earlier her, Dot did non trust doctors, not as far as her own physical or emotional health was concerned. She refused to respond questions or volunteer information. Her fears and her regrets were her own and were nobody'south business organization. She defied the world with what I think of as an insecurity blanket held close to her chest. Y'all could come across it, but she wouldn't permit you take information technology away. She may have been in need, may take felt weak, only to acknowledge to vulnerability was intolerable. She told me that she had secrets that she never shared with anyone, not friends, not family unit. And she wasn't starting with me. She loved a crisis, just not ane of her ain. She sprang into action when someone else was hurting. When a sibling needed a place to stay, Dot invited them into her home. Aunt Bea lived with us for a fourth dimension, so did Uncle George, and Aunt Lou and her kids. The Dufresne family always got more interesting and lively and unpredictable when the Berards moved in, especially the Berards named Holland.
Unlike her husband and her siblings, Doris was not a storyteller. But on a road trip from Worcester to Tampa a couple of years ago, Doris, who was geographically challenged, and who said every bit we crossed the George Washington Bridge, "Is this Virginia or are nosotros still in New York?" surprised me with some family revelations. She confessed that she regularly lied to her parents when her sister Bea, the wild 1, snuck out the window to meet a date. She was here all dark in bed with me, she told them. An aunt, I learned, was left at the chantry, but afterwards married the man with cold feet. Andy and Hector Berard, who married the sisters Bea and Agnes Lucier, claimed to be brothers, were thought to be cousins, but were non, in fact, related at all. Her sister Paulette died at birth. She and her friends got then rowdy in a New York hotel that the security baby-sit was chosen to warn them near the noise. He stayed and partied with them for two hours. Three days of revelations on that trip, not the great revelation, to quote Virginia Woolf, that never came, but petty illuminations, like matches struck unexpectedly in the night. In Savannah, as Mom and I were walking back to the hotel from supper in the rain, she with her cane and slippery boots, me holding onto her arm with ane hand and the umbrella with the other, a human passing us said, "Hello Teenagers!" and then a woman offered to sell me a palm rose for "your lady."
Doris died with an unbeaten tape in the Terminal Person Standing football game pool, just not before selecting her remaining picks for the flavor. She did not go gentle into that expert night. She raged against the dying of the calorie-free. But she was weary at the end and said and so. She was ready. She was tired. When she lost the use of her legs in the final weeks, she told me if she were 60 she'd be angry, but she was not.
Memories are our waking dreams. They're how nosotros see the people who aren't really here. We call back them and we tell their stories. That'south how we keep them with us, how we keep them alive, how we salve them from oblivion, how we make significant, brand sense of the world and of our own lives. Stories and memories offer our only happy ending. My last memory of Mom is of her asleep in her hospice room. I looked at those artillery that held me, those hands that rubbed my back and wiped away my tears, and in her easily she held a laminated prayer card of Lefty from Mercadante's Funeral Abode. Those easily. That union. Good night, Memere Dot. So long, Doris. Goodbye, Mom.
Salinger's Jackets
In the 1950s Salinger had a clause put in his publisher'due south contracts that insisted just the text of the title of the book and his proper name were to appear on any future editions of his piece of work, and absolutely no images. This hard line was particularly prompted by an early on fatal experience with a publisher who covered a collection of short stories, then titled for Esm̩ Рwith Beloved and Squalour (after i of them) with a dramatic illustrated portrait of a seductive blonde. Salinger'southward outrage is understandable: his Esm̩ is a precocious young daughter of vii, and the story depicts a run a risk see and redemptive conversation with a solider on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nevertheless, it'south instructive to run into how various publishers and nationalities have dealt with Salinger's legal ane-liner over the by half-decade of reprints and new editions.
I have a 1961 paperback edition bought long agi=o at a used book store. The copy was bought in December 1961 by Phyllis Kirshenbaum. Phyllis, if you're out there. I'm finished with your book and will gladly return
Andy and Agnes
I bought a pocketbook full of photos this morning time at the flea market place as is my custom. I was delighted to find this gem amidst the pictures. Think of it as today's curt story waiting to be written. Whose thought was it to come to the house of anti-gravity anyway? Sure, it'southward but an illusion, simply information technology still makes the caput spin. Why did Andy, or was it Agnes, remember this was just the circuit to put some zip back into the marriage? Where are they headed when they go out? Tiffin? Agnes wonders how she'll go on anything down. Back to the El Ranchero Motel?
A Civilized Person
Donald Trump has failed at every i of Chekhov's criteria for civilized people:
1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore e'er tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable ... They do non create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they practise non make you lot feel they are conferring a nifty benefit on y'all when they live with you, and they don't make a scandal when they leave. (...)
ii) They have pity for other people besides beggars and cats. Their hearts suffer the pain of what is hidden to the naked eye. (...)
3) They respect other people's property, and therefore pay their debts.
4) They are not devious, and they fear lies as they fear fire. They don't tell lies even in the most trivial matters. To lie to someone is to insult them, and the liar is macerated in the optics of the person he lies to. Civilized people don't put on airs; they behave in the street as they would at domicile, they don't show off to print their juniors. (...)
5) They don't run themselves down in order to provoke the sympathy of others. They don't play on other people's heartstrings to be sighed over and cosseted ... that sort of thing is merely cheap striving for effects, it's vulgar, old lid and false. (...)
half dozen) They are not vain. They don't waste time with the fake jewelry of hobnobbing with celebrities, being permitted to shake the hand of a drunken [judicial orator], the exaggerated bonhomie of the kickoff person they meet at the Salon, being the life and soul of the bar ... They regard praises like 'I am a representative of the Press!!' -- the sort of matter one but hears from [very modest journalists] -- as absurd. If they have done a brass farthing's work they don't pass it off every bit if it were 100 rubles by swanking about with their portfolios, and they don't boast of being able to gain access to places other people aren't allowed in (...) Truthful talent ever sits in the shade, mingles with the oversupply, avoids the limelight ... As Krylov said, the empty barrel makes more noise than the full one. (...)
7) If they exercise possess talent, they value it ... They take pride in information technology ... they know they accept a responsibility to exert a civilizing influence on [others] rather than aimlessly hanging out with them. And they are fastidious in their habits. (...)
8) They work at developing their aesthetic sensibility ... Civilized people don't merely obey their baser instincts ... they crave mens sana in corpore sano.
semicolons
;
Some people don't similar semicolons:
Kurt Vonnegut: "Hither is a lesson in creative writing. Beginning dominion: Exercise not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is testify you lot've been to college."
Gertrude Stein: " [Semicolons] are more than powerful more than imposing more than pretentious than a comma but they are a comma however. They actually have inside them deeply within them fundamentally within them the comma nature."
Some practice:
Abraham Lincoln: "With educated people, I suppose, punctuation is a thing of dominion; with me it is a matter of feeling. But I must say I accept a cracking respect for the semi-colon; it's a useful little chap."
Lewis Thomas: " I have grown fond of semicolons in contempo years. The semicolon tells you that there is still some question nearly the preceding full sentence; something needs to be added; it reminds you sometimes of the Greek usage. It is nearly always a greater pleasure to come across a semicolon than a period. The menstruation tells you lot that that is that; if y'all didn't get all the meaning you wanted or expected, anyway you got all the writer intended to packet out and at present you take to movement along. Only with a semicolon in that location you go a pleasant piddling feeling of expectancy; there is more to come up; read on; it volition become clearer."
Why Vonnegut gets then exercised about semicolons is puzzling. Beginning of all he uses them. Here in the terminal sentence of his story "2 B R 0 2 B": "Give thanks you, sir," said the hostess. "Your city thanks you; your country thanks you; your planet thanks you. But the deepest thanks of all is from future generations." And here in the first sentence of his story "Miss Temptation": " Puritanism had fallen into such disrepair that not fifty-fifty the oldest spinster thought of putting Susanna in a ducking stool; non fifty-fifty the oldest farmer suspected that Susanna's diabolical beauty had fabricated his cow run dry out." And what's he got confronting cross-dressers? And is the hermaphrodite remark meant to convey the mixed characteristics of the male comma and the female menses? I'll go out that to you lot.
The reputable mark of punctuation has three jobs to do and does them well:
i. To separate (or join) ii independent clauses used without a conjunction, the utilize of the semicolon rather than a flow indicating a close human relationship between the clauses: I kissed the girl; I ascended into heaven.
2. To join two main clauses also separated by a conjunctive adverb, such every bit nevertheless or therefore, followed by a comma.
three. To split up items in a series or list when the items themselves contain commas or are long and complex. Try making sense of this serial without them (I take here replaced the semicolons with Stein's preferred commas): " Well in that location's egg and bacon egg, sausage and bacon, egg and spam, egg, bacon and spam, egg, bacon, sausage and spam, spam, bacon, sausage and spam, spam, egg, spam, spam, bacon and spam, spam, spam, spam, egg and spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, baked beans, spam, spam, spam and spam, or lobster thermidor aux crevettes, with a mornay sauce garnished with truffle paté, brandy and a fried egg on top and spam."
Stein claims to admire the "comma nature," but refuses to use conventional commas in her explanation, making us wonder if all she really wants it to call attention to her "daring" and "risky" prose manner.
"We don't need no stinkin' semicolons!"
--some bandito from a Cormac McCarthy novel
The purpose of punctuation is to group words past means of conventional marks so that the meaning and the relationship of the words are clear; the absenteeism of those marks would obscure the meaning. The Chicago Manual of Style says the function of punctuation is "to promote ease of reading by clarifying relationships inside and between sentences. This part, although it allows for a degree of subjectivity, should in plough be governed past the consistent application of some bones principles lest the subjective chemical element obscure the meaning."
Today'southward Short Story Waiting to Be Written
Room 32, Upkeep Inn, N Port, Florida. One dead woman. One incoherent man. 2 Capuchin monkeys. Proper noun the monkeys. Describe the details of the room. Consider a simian POV.
the whitsun weddings redux
On the 50th anniversary of Philip Larkin'due south magnificent poem, "The Whitsun Weddings," fans are recreating the 200 mile train journey from Hull to London.
and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this 60 minutes
Here's the poem.
no way to live similar this
Here's a link to the opening of No Regrets, Coyote on the Bookanista blog.
florida noir
A slice I did for a British website. Shotsmag.
what I meant to say
A Guardian contributor mistakenly cited Sir Patrick Stewart as being gay, resulting in this correction:
This article was amended on 17 Feb 2014. The third paragraph originally said 'Some gay people, such equally Sir Patrick Stewart, remember Page'due south coming out oral communication is newsworthy'. This should have read 'Some people, such as Sir Patrick Stewart, call up Page's coming out speech communication is newsworthy'.
coyote
A find in the new British GQ.
cunninghamobtainted.blogspot.com
Source: http://johndufresne.com/blog
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