Patrick’s Comments (group member since Mar 05, 2009)

Patrick’s comments from the fiction files redux group.

YAY!!

it looks pretty nice.

Wish i could commit. Wish i could come next week and give you a big hug. Barring some miracle or twist of fate, i'd say it's unlikely for me. Mostly I say that because of my Mom. Feel like the little vacation time i will have, i'll probably be headed to Missouri. If i can figure out a way to do everything- i'd love it. But right now- doesn't look good.

and Patty, i have read the Jesse Ball story. a couple times and feel like i'm still parsing it. as it started i was hesitant. what's often impressive to me with his work is at first i feel distracted by his style... at best it feels spare/remote, at worst it feels stilted/awkward- but when i keep reading he tends to win me over. he manages to weave in a lot of emotion and detail and by the end of almost everything i've read by him i feel a bit haunted. there is something magical in what he does. but then sometimes i'm just perplexed. not in a bad way, just curious and not sure how to sort it out. this story left me there. but i did like it. quite a bit. and i know i will keep returning to it.

There are at least two Walter Mitty movies that I know of - the most recent just last year (?) with Ben Stiller.

Now, reading more of her collection, I've found that most(all?) of the stories are reworking a earlier story only from the female perspective. One follows Borge's The Aleph & another Gogol's The Nose.

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketco...

have to confess, i like the Galchen story, a lot. i am aware and have noticed reading through reviews of her work that she seems to irritate a lot of people.

even though she directly references, Thurber's "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" i didn't realize how much her story is a reworking of his story. i'd never read Thurber was just familiar Walter Mitty via the film versions. but after rereading "the Lost Order" yesterday i looked up the Thurber.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/193...

Mitty has an inner life that takes him often to flashier more heroic situations, the narrator here (do we ever get her name??) her inner life seems to leave her in a perpetual fog of mundane self examination/recrimination and painful insecurity, obsessing over her weight, food choices, and what to feed the dog. and then, when someone or something, breaks through that fog, "reality" is no more stable or comforting- it's fraught with awkwardness and miscommunication and potential danger.

she has so many lines and passages and details in here that i love- the throw pillows with matroyshka dolls, photo of Susan Sontag in a bear suit-

"“I’m not going to go look for it,” I find myself saying into the phone. It’s not really a decision, "it’s more like a discovery. I’m not going to be a woman hopelessly searching for a wedding ring in a public courtyard. Even if the situation does not in fact carry the metaphorical weight it misleadingly seems to carry. Still no. I had recently seen a photograph of Susan Sontag wearing a bear costume but still with a serious expression on her face; you could see that she felt uneasy; even a titan is anxious about images that can mislead."


and forgive me, even thinking this i know it may sound ridiculous but i was struck by the specificity of her vagueness. for example, when she is in conversation with her husband and there is a line "He set down his handheld technology." it's kind of a ridiculous throw away line, but in this context it made me laugh and felt perfect.

i understand the queasiness you are talking about. the story is tragically worrisome. but it also made me laugh a lot. and the free associating workings(?) of her mind were familiar to me. maybe that's even more worrisome.

Like Patty, I've listened to Emergency a handful of times now, but I can't say I like it. I want to read it again myself & see if that helps. It's certainly potent and memorable- my favorite sections involve the snow and the cemetery/drive-in theater.

haven't had chance to read this entire thing yet, but it's addressed in here... and, can't remember where, but i have heard him talk about his love/fascination with frege's puzzle https://youtu.be/T-7ZukUZiaw


http://ojs.u-paris10.fr/index.php/lat...

http://www.vqronline.org/interviews-a...

I'm content w/chaos for a bit. We can see how things go... Create/branch off to multiple threads as needed.

Yahoo!! Thanks Patty.

and just finished

I'm flooded in short stories at the moment. in a good way. you have something(one) in particular in mind. I could give you list of the collections I'm juggling currently..??

Johnny, tell me you invited Bobby Canavalle.

sounds good.

Sorry I've been quiet. Would love to be able to commit with complete certainty but right now I could only be high maybe. Do everything I can to make it happen. When I talked to JE the other day he was pretty excited about this year...

patrick is in.

i have trouble focusing on flights. i'm a nervous air traveler. always have a book with but don't usually get too far. short stories sometimes work. i read Ben's book on a flight and arrived safe and happy.
love to read in the car, when the car is parked. when i first moved to the island i used to just go park somewhere and read. but, in motion, car/plane/train, i tend to want to either sleep or just stare out the window.

strangely, i love to read while out walking. used to read a lot of books that way. probably, for me, an even more focused & attentive reading time than sitting comfortably at home, where i, again, feel too easily distracted (art-making, phone, computer, chores undone, the refrigerator, etc.,) walking in the world and reading, there is a shared momentum that i enjoy. it has lead to some awkward moments. people notice when you are walking alone down the street and have to stop cause you are laughing so hard. or those moments you aren't as attentive to curbs and bumps in sidewalk as you should be, not to mention traffic. or i've also had a book(s) bring me to tears which can be somewhat disarming to passersby. but, i've always been a bit of a free-range crier, so i'm used to people looking at me funny sometimes.

http://publishersweekly.com/pw/by-top...

sounds ok to me ...