Deb Olin Unferth’s short story, Voltaire Night

Deb Olin Unferth’s short story, Voltaire Night, appeared in the summer 2015 issue of The Paris Review. Unferth is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of Texas at Austin. She writes fiction and creative non-fiction.

This 15 page short story is actually three stories in one, and it’s always exciting to read several stories told simultaneously. It’s the story of the narrator, a drunken writing teacher. It’s the story of her students, a group of adults, taking a writing course, with the emphasis on the story of one particular writing student. And it’s the abbreviated story of Voltaire’s Candide.

The story starts with a confession:  Our self-absorbed, first-person narrator is a frankly selfish, self-absorbed, flawed, weak, lovelorn lush. “I’m the one who started it. I was depressed as hell and I wanted to share my bad news. ‘Has anyone read Candide?’ I said. I don’t even recall what the bad news was but it must have had something to do with a man who didn’t love me anymore. In those days, I felt most of the time like someone had knocked me in the head with a brick, and even though I had stopped drinking, I had started again and the way I saw it, a real brick in the head would have been okay because then I’d be dead or at least unconscious,” 

This opening paragraph is brilliant. Our narrator  is telling us what a terrible person is, but she’s funny and seemingly honest, which makes her likable. She confesses to being a bit of a hack as a teacher---she teaches at a fancy university, but she teaches an adult-ed class, off campus. She is lowering our expectations---she is not going to be a hero in the traditional sense, but it’s a good bet she will find redemption by the end of the story anyway, as most interesting protagonists do. 

The best memoir writers write this way. Think of Mary Karr’s Lit, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Sarah Hepola’s Blackout. All these narrators admit right from the get go of being wayward  in some way---they are sleeping around, doing drugs, drinking too much. Their parents have died or almost destroyed them as they themselves try to live. They have vices and their lives are, by and large, train wrecks. In short, they are guaranteeing that reading their stories is going to be fun! This is a canny way to set up your story, whether it be fiction and creative non-fiction. The narrator/protagonist is a loser. (Of course, she’s also a very good writer, so the story is compelling and filled with specific details about life disasters.) The protagonist isn’t intimidating, she’s funny and likable  but she’s still a disaster with nowhere to go but up---though first, she might stumble and fall even further. 

I think of these narrators as “low rent protagonists.” They don’t demand too much of us at first, and the writing is so good it doesn’t cost us anything to keep reading about them. Within a few paragraphs, we are already beginning to root for them. This is a great trajectory for your protagonists in fiction and creative non-ficion.

Our narrator in Unferth’s story makes herself even more accessible as a low rent protagonist with a further confession: “Still, getting that job was my one obvous piece of luck that year. The pay wasn’t great, but it was decent and it beat the other adjunct work I was doing. I was teaching all over town and could barely pay the rent. I was drinking in the cheapest bars, driving home blind."

Here we go. It’s going to be a bumpy, interesting ride. and now, on page 24, our story really starts. The narrator introduces her students: “The people who took these adult-ed classes tended to be smart, overeducated for jobs that were no longer fulfilling or that had never satisfied in the first place---journalists, lawyers--and now, in their middle years, they recalled that they had once wanted something artists for their lives but it had not worked out, and despite whatever trappings they had---spouses, houses, tykes---they found themselves confronting a deep, colorless, meaninglessness each day.” So clearly, these characters are in need of redemption too. And fortunately, this seemingly sad sack of a drunken writing teacher likes her students: “Their writing---let’s be honest---was nothing to shout about. Not good, mostly unreadable. No control or sense of timing, no grasp of narrative beyond cliche. But often the language itself had personality, and a clear voice came through: sardonic, witty, self-deprecating, with a tarp of sad earnestness over it, all of which I liked, so I found it easy to read the pages they gave me and to encourage them.”

So, we have the beginning of the story of our narrator. We have the beginning of the story of the students. And now, we have the beginning of the story of Candide (page 24): "In Voltaire’s Candide, there’s a certain passage where a huge crowd wants to board a boat, all vying for the same seat Candide---luckless man, but in this one instance he is lucky and in possession of some extra cash---has offered to pay for. The seat will go, he says, to the man or woman most bad off among them. One by one they choose their woes and tell their tales. That scene---communal, classroom-like, someone in charge judging their stories and making promises no one could keep---these students, with me as their leader, reminded me of that. After the final class of my course of the school, the students suggested we go for a drink.” 

Uh oh. We know no good will come of this---and of course, we want to read all about it. Think about this when you’re writing your own stories. Prepare your reader for a delicious, well-written disaster.

The narrator takes us to a bar. A bar is a great place to set a scene---possibly the best place to set a scene. All sorts of debauchery and drama take place at a bar. People act out, get in trouble, topple over, fall in love, fight, make poor decisions---putting a scene in a bar is a great way to build action and steepen your narrative arc.

The narrator reveals to us, but not her students, that her boyfriend keeps leaving her (page 25). Then she urges her student to tell the stories of the the worst things that had happened to them. We lean in for more. Our narrator promises her students nothing---if they win, they just win “Voltaire Night.” They play anyway. Nothing is at stake, but of course, everything is. Our narrator plays Voltaire night with one writing class, and then she plays with another. She keeps playing---Voltaire Night is the most fun she’s having, but it’s dangerous too, and the danger she’s putting herself into makes her intriguing  She gets drunk with her students (a no-no, but of course, fascinating to read about): “We’d all be drunk, having closed down several places, and the folks from the suburbs missed the very last train and had to curl on a bench at the station, like criminals down on their luck 9which ween’t we all, in some way? ) until the five-thirty a.m. shuttle. But it was worth it, we all said, for how else could everyone have gotten a turn? How else could everyone have told their story?” (page 28) Our narrator is making bad decisions, her students are behaving badly, and we want to read all about it, we want her to dig herself further into a hole. “As for me, I’d arrive home at four in the morning and spend a few days cursing myself. The trouble I could get in for this. Unseemly. Voltaire night was out of control, a monster I had to rein in but didn’t know how to rein in. I didn’t want to rein it in. Voltaire night was the one night I looked forward to, all of that sitting around feeling for ourselves. I would have liked to do it every night.” (page 28)

And now, on page 29, five pages and almost 1/3 into this 15 page story, we get the worst story of all, the story told by a freelance designer, who was living in Hyde Park, with his pregnant wife. The stakes for him are already raised---he’s poor, his wife is pregnant, he doesn’t have a steady job, he needs money badly. Great set up for a protagonist. He agrees to do a 12 week experiment so that he can earn $15,000. People doing stupid things for money makes for a great plot. And then for seven pages, this new narrator (via Deb Olin Unwerth) tells us the story of how he came to do an experiment, which brought him some money, but also resulted in him not being present for the birth of his very damaged child. Our original narrator occasionally chimes in, but on the top of page 30, the new male narrator clearly asserts himself.

The narrator can’t see natural light for twelves weeks and he has to have a rectal thermometer inserted in his anus. Oy! But a great set up. Unferth is setting this narrator up to be miserable and of course, he becomes increasingly miserable. He has to sleep during the day and stay up at night, like a vampire. He sneaks around, stops working, but pretends to his wife that he still is (page 31). Meanwhile, there’s a baby in the making. Pregnancy often makes for good reading. We worry for the parents, we worry for the protagonist who is most invested in the pregnancy (in this case, the father.) The narrator is doing this terrible experiment and making these sacrifices and sneaking around for the benefit of his future daughter.  “But I thought of my coming daughter, how beautiful she’d be, how much like her mother, and I soldiered on. And one day it was five weeks left, and one day it was four weeks left, and one day it was three weeks left” (page 32.) He starts to hang out a bar and begins to drink too much. His apartment is hot, his wife is furious. His story is getting worse and worse and more and more intriguing.

Finally, he wakes up in his car (page 33.) He is exposed to sunlight and the experiment is not yet over. He has a hangover, and he’s run out of gas. Things are very, very bad.  He’s reached his lowest point, the point all protagonists have to reach in order for the reader to really worry and fear for them. And we fear for him. Will he lose the money? Will his wife leave him? What is happening to the baby? What now? He goes back to his apartment (page 34) and his wife is gone. “Outside, I stood by a signpost and threw up in the road. My daughter, my wife---I’d let them down in so many ways. I’d kept my own wife in the literal dark during the most trying months of her pregnancy, had ignored her, had done no freelance work, and now on top of that may have even lost the fifteen grand and would sink us into debt... Shaking, starving, still hungover, terrified and tired as hell. I took a shower as it got dark. I drove to the lab.” (page 34) 

He learns his wife has gone into labor and the rectal thermometer is removed (page 34.) He finally gets some relief. But the story isn’t over. His baby is seven weeks early. His butt is spasming and he’s in pain (note: there is humor here.) He’s exhausted and hungover. Things are still very bad for him. And then they get worse: On page 35, we are there for the birth of a baby (even in disaster, readers are riveted by births) and we learn this his baby girl has been born without any muscles. ”Holy mother of God,' said a nurse, and pulled her hands to her chest. 'Our Lord Jesus Christ…’ What? we said. What was it? I was too scared to let go of my wife’s hand and walk over there. 'What’s wrong?’ cried my wife, but they bundled the baby up and raced off with her, turning in the doorway to say something along the lines of, ‘We’ll be right back.’”

We’re at the bottom of page 35 here, almost at the end of the story. The tension continues to build: Now a baby is in peril. This is great tension building, and fantastically clever writing. Bad things keep getting worse for the male narrator. Meanwhile, the original female narrator inserts herself. There is now a vast difference between her story and his: “Things were beginning to take a slow turn for the better for me. A very slow creak was sounding in the wheel , but it was turning. I was managing to publish some stories at last. The horrible man was gone for good. It would be the beginning of a better life for me, though it did not feel better yet and it would take mea couple of years to roll my way out. Still a long road to happiness but I was seeing tiny points of light in the distance and I was heading toward them. I’d teach one more class after this one at that school, but my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t do a very good job. The following year I got a tenure track position at a large university, a job I’d really wanted, and then I was gone   (pages 35-36).” 

Good for our female protagonist. What about our male? He is not certain his baby is alive. And then he finds out, on page 37, that the baby is alive but she has no muscle. Her condition is associated with a very short life span. The doctor calls her appearance “startling.” What could be worse? Your baby is alive but you aren’t allowed to see her? As readers, we are going crazy: Show us the baby. Show us the parents’ reaction. Unferth is keeping us in suspense, which is exactly where we want to be, as anxious as we are (and readers want to be anxiously await information and resolution. Don’t underestimate the power of this yearning.) The story soon ends: The male protagonist shows his classmates a picture of his daughter, now seven years old. And his wife thinks the baby is perfect. 

We learn, before we learn about the baby, that the male protagonist was dying  of stomach cancer (page 36.) But this is not nearly as shocking as his, and his wife’s acceptance, of their baby daughter’s strange appearance. And we, the reader, are left pondering this man’s fate: Was his the worst story ever? Or the best?

It’s a difficult question to answer. Maybe yes, maybe no. But it made for a brilliant  compelling, hard to put down, story.

Writing Exercise #4: The Old Age of Nostalgia

Mark Strand, The Old Age of Nostalgia

Those hours given over to basking in the glow of an imagined future , of being carried away in streams of promise by a love or a passion so strong that one felt altered forever and convinced that even the smallest particle of the surrounding world was charged with a purpose of impossible grandeur; ah, yes, and one would look up into the trees and be thrilled by the wind-loosened river of pale, gold foliage cascading down and by the high, melodious singing of countless birds; those moments, so many and so long ago, still come back, briefly, like fireflies of a summer night.

Exercise: Give your character the memory of an old love to yearn for.

First, take a couple of minutes and type out this Mark Strand prose poem so your mind absorbs the rhythm of his sentences. Next, put this longing for the excitement of new love into the memory bank of one of your characters and weave at least three beautiful, specific details from nature (as Strand did in the words in bold) into this memory.

Your character can be the mother or father of a teenager, remembering the passion s/he felt for a baby when the baby was first born; the character can be middle aged, remembering the passion s/he felt for the person s/he lost his/her virginity to; the character can be on his death bed (as Busk was in Scott Cheshire’s short story, "Busk’s Cutting Board)", remembering how he felt when he first saw his future wife bowl for the first time. Implanting a yearning for ancient love and the memory of a forgotten passion into your characters’ “minds” will help make your made-up characters seem utterly human.

Bursk’s Cutting Board, by Scott Cheshire

Scott Cheshire is a novelist and short story writer. His novel, High as the Horses’ Bridles, came out in 2014.

In this 11.5 page short story, published by One Story in Summer 2015, Cheshire takes the exercise of dying slowly, hilariously, sadly and memorably, to new heights.

Let’s look at how and why this story works:

Our protagonist Bursk is at the end of his life. He is lying in bed, “confined to the still boat of his bedroom mattress,” waiting for his wife to bring him his last meals. This a great premise, and a wonderful situation in which to place your protagonist---death is imminent and we all know it. With that decision, you already have your reader anxiously awaiting and looking forward to the end. End of life causes stresses to the reader--and your reader likes that kind of stress. We learn that Bursk is “Fifty-five years old, his liver is unlucky.” Too young to die, and dying anyway.

Cheshire “confines” Bursk to his bedroom mattress. Being confined is also a great thing to do your protagonist. Limits of all kinds are great for writers, and their creations. (George Steiner described classical art as “art by privation,” i.e. creativity defined by limits,” and limits make for drama, pressure and stressful situations, which is what all stories need.)

There is also some great, original, vivid writing, in the first paragraph: “the still boat of his bedroom mattress…the solid porcelain clunk of dish on dish…his whole right side in mutiny and bedsores…A pain like someone stuffed an umbrella up his rump and now they’re trying to open it.” 

Our protagonist used to work in restaurants, and now he owns one, and the story is filled with the author’s knowledge of food and restaurant operations. (Cheshire used to work as a bartender and waiter.) This is what writers do: We take our real life experiences and weave them into stories.) Bursk is glad the restaurant will provide for his wife after he’s gone, but his wife is still “killing” him: “…the wife and her nonstop milk shakes, apple pies, and omelets." 

Food is a character in this story: On page 2, There is chicken soup, fresh (store-bought) bread, cornichon and pate on rye crackers, the memories of foie gras,” “the scent of garlic from the kitchen…roasted garlic ice cream…serviced with strawberry slices… “ These food descriptions lure us into the story. They are familiar props and we know what they look and taste like.

There is a hint of past, deviant behavior and we learn a little something about how men cover up their affairs with garlic: On page 4, we learn that Bursk almost had an affair. “Bursk is reminded of what Amen once told him, how the men back home rub garlic on their fingers after affairs, so the wives can’t tell they’ve been dabbling. He then reminds himself he has never fully cheated on his wife. Although he did come close that one time in Chicago. At an industry tableware convention where a young saleslady drunk on Harvey Wallbangers pulled him into the ladies’ room. Lipsticks smeared on her mouth, like marinara sauce. The lights were hot, and he was famished. Only a full bladder stopped him from going the full ten yards. He has long been heartbroken by this fact, and ashamed. Nevertheless.” Great stories are full of yearning, of dreams deferred or abandoned. There’s power in suppression and denial. We are left yearning on behalf of the protagonist.

There is also a nice flashback to the time when the protagonist was young and in love with his wife. Read this great line on page 6: “He watched her like a dog beside the dinner table, not sure what was being served, but he wanted it all.” He cooks for her on their first date: “A homemade pesto…a scoop of his homemade vanilla mango ice cream.” Food continues to be a character and cooking is an act of love.

And then we get to this great paragraph, on page 7, where butter is elevated as an object, and summons a Proustian memory of the protagonist’s father and wisdom: “He smells butter melting in the kitchen. Must be mashed potatoes, more mashed potatoes. But he distinctly said no more, please. What’s she making? The butter reminds him of his father, and the warm and welcome snell of wheat bread, two pieces, slightly cooked a pat of yellow--shuffle-click of the toaster popping--- ,  and a vision of Bursk Sr,standing there in his kitchen whites, biting his morning toast. Perfect toast. If my father were still alive, Bursks scolds himself, he wouldn’t stand for so much sentimentalizing. He would slap a table and insist---We’re all food, junoor, and the dirt is alive and well for it. Ask the bugs and bacteria, ask the flowers, the mud bricks, and clay pots, ask whatever else you can think of.” On page 11, Cheshire writes, “All of us are food.”

The story ends with great smells as Bursk dies, calling out to his wife in his mind, speaking directly and silently to her as she “lifts the spoon to his lips (page 11)”. How exciting it is to be with a man as he dies---don’t underestimate the power of this. We are at the end of this man’s life and in the middle of his death. This is a great, sad place for your reader to be. You want the reader to mourn the death of a character s/he has become attached to.

Smells and scents are crucial to making a story come alive. Bursk remembers their eating and lovemaking, the activities all mammals do, and the smells that went with their lives: “The smell of you under the stinking compress of whatever fills my head, the smell of our vegetables going soft in the bin, the coffee grinds in the trash, musty cereal boxes stacked by the stove…You smell of thirty-nine years of light, and dust, and like the cigarettes from back when you were smoking, like those strawberry gums you nibble and the stay lovemaking we made in the outside showers up north. It’s all yours, my love. The Cutting Boards is yours, let it last forever and forgive me. Please. For leaving. And maybe don’t come any closer, because my death is sour, and this bed is moving, and if you reach out to me, warm bowl of whipped potatoes, metal spoon, I might knock them from your grip and grab your hands instead. Tell Amen to bring your favorite dishes. Let him ladle gravies, and portion pot roasts, and push in your comfortable chair the way I used to. Make every menu, winter, spring, summer, and fall, corn soup, kebab, and cassoulet. Fill the table up with every season. Eat slowly. Pretend with every forkful, every last lift to your lips, and make believe your hand is in mine ."…” 

The last line is glorious: “Even when I’m gone, let us eat.” How exciting for us as a reader to be there as a protagonist dies and we are able to listen to his last words, a confession of sorts, and a last lover letter to his wife. What a privilege. We feel that he is speaking to us, and he is.

As an exercise, write out the last paragraph to see how the rhythm works, and notice how the author slowly shifts from writing in the third person about Bursk, to writing directly from Bursk to his wife. It’s a terrific way to end a story.

Please see below for info about Scott Cheshire. I particularly love his Q&Q with Hannah Tinti.

http://www.one-story.com/index.php?page=stories&story_id=206

“Bursk’s Cutting Board” by Scott Cheshire

Issue #206 • May 11, 2015•Buy Now!

Scott Cheshire is the author of the novel High as the Horses’ Bridles. His work has been published in AGNI, Electric Literature, Guernica, Harper’s,Slice, and Picador’s anthology The Book of Men. He lives in Los Angeles.

sample:

Confined to the still boat of his bedroom mattress, Albert Bursk hears the solid porcelain clunk of dish on dish coming from their kitchen and wonders what she will shove at him today. He’s not pale like you’d think. Instead his eyes and skin are going gold like a trophy —1st Place for “He-Who-Sleeps-the-Most-and-Refuses-to-Make-His-Wife-Feel-Unappreciated-by-Saying-I’m-Sick-and-I-Have-No-Appetite-Left.” Like it or not, she makes him eat, his whole right side in mutiny and bedsores. A pain like someone stuffed an umbrella up his rump and now they’re trying to open it. His bones work against him. This is a man who jogged, drank little, never smoked a cigarette in his life, and walked how many stairwells, a million steps through countless kitchens, propping restaurants up on their faulty feet. All this while the back-of-the-house sucked down Heinekens swiped from the walk-in cooler, while the line cooks puffed like smokehouses out back by the dumpster. They stay up for days, and work double-shifts on the end of a cocaine bender. Those suicidal bastards will live forever. But not Bursk.

Q&A by Hannah Tinti

What was the seed of this story? What was the first thing you wrote?

Most of my writing is rooted in a question I find compelling, some idea I can’t quite shake, and the more unanswerable that question the better. In this case, I read an article by a hospice worker who happened to mention what a complicated relationship there is between food and the fatally ill. How food quite literally represents “life” for us all, and so, predictably, the closer one comes to death, the less one desires food. And yet food is often exactly how a concerned family shows its love. This seemed to me a profound irony. And because I worked in restaurants for years, as a waiter, and as a bartender, and because I love food (I do all the cooking in my home), I wondered what that loss might be like for a man who’d spent his whole life around food. Food was all. I also wanted to write my version of a love story. And so I put the poor man in bed, exhausted, dying, and dreading what the love of his life might be cooking for him in the kitchen. I wrote the first paragraph, pretty much just as it is. It has changed, but very little. And this became Albert’s voice.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this story?

I would say trying to believably straddle comedy and tragedy. I imagined Albert as one of those men I knew in my youth, like my father and his friends who would gather around the grill in our backyard, and talk and shout and eat and gossip with so much enthusiasm, so much life. Their faces would go red, making each other laugh, as they told and retold the same ridiculous stories, calling each out on earlier versions that belied the one they just shared. All very old school. I imagined a man like this cut down, at way too young an age. I figured Albert would be bursting with life, even while he was dying. In fact, this is where his name came from—“burst” became Bursk. So I wanted a tone that allowed for laughs, but one that also let Albert be sincere, loving, and possibly, hopefully, strike sad chords within the reader. Not to mention I’m naturally drawn to playing with structure and perspective, so that’s always a challenge for me. Pushing the envelope, but also making it work.

This story is about a man’s last meal, and also, a kind of reckoning. Can you talk a bit about the connection between food and memory, and how you used it wind your way through Bursk’s life?

I’m drawn to stories that unapologetically face the fact that all of life is spent inside the mind. Yes, we walk through the world, and we fall in love, and we play sports, and we knock on doors, etc., but all of that is mediated by consciousness. I love books that attempt to marry the exterior and interior experience. I try to do the same in my own work. And food is a hell of a bridge. When I smell fresh curry I’m helplessly thrown thirty years back (I grew up in an Indian neighborhood in Queens, NYC) to my twelve-year-old self. I see faces and places I’ve completely forgotten. I leave my body. When I smell fresh New York bagels, I swear I can see my grandmother, who’s been gone for years. It works the same for Albert. On a technical level, food as a trigger for memory is sort of perfect. It’s particular and tied to real experience, and yet it’s sort of ghostly, and exists only in the senses, and so it allows him to travel about in memory, which of course lets the writing go anywhere I want it to. Plus I got to write about toast. I love toast.

Like most writers, you’ve worked in a restaurant before. Did that experience help you write this story?

It definitely helped, if for no other reason than I got to briefly write about those deathless pirates that work in a busy kitchen. Line cooks are by far the most dangerous and devoted people I have ever met. I love them.

One of the hardest things for Bursk to deal with is the jealousy he feels about his wife Shelly, as well as regret for his own near-dalliances. Do you see this story as a kind of confession?

Yes! And I’m so happy to have you describe it this way. There is the obvious deathbed confession trope, but for me all of writing is confessional, in one way or another, even if it’s done inversely. If a writer writes about things that do not in fact matter to them, that do not feel pressing, personal, or real, this too is a confession of sorts. A rather sad one. But the best writing, as far as I’m concerned, is always some veiled admission of obsession to the reader. Frankly, it was a bit of a relief to let a character do it so openly, for once.

The concept of zaghghat (forced feeding) winds throughout the story, from goose liver pâté to Shelley’s spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. Something that should bring joy and sustenance becomes instead distasteful. How does this relate to Bursk’s own life? And what do you think he realizes, in the end?

Sometimes when you’re writing the universe seems to respond, and it feels like you are directly in dialog with what Emerson called the “Over-Soul.” You ask, and the great world answers. Or maybe I’m just a sucker for that kind of mumbo jumbo. Either way, when I realized that essentially I was writing a story about force-feeding, it only made sense that Albert had a problematic relationship to foie gras; and when I realized that zaghghat was the original and Egyptian term for force-feeding, and that that word sounded uncomfortably like a certain diner’s guide—well, it was like a great gift, a deeply embedded pun had been revealed. Or maybe it’s just me. As far as Albert, I think he comes to accept love, utterly. Which means he forgives himself. He eats up life to the end.

If you had the chance to choose your last meal (and could still enjoy eating it) what would it be?

This is such a good question, as it’s just the sort of question you ask yourself or you ask your friends but never take it quite seriously. And so here is my answer, for posterity—it would be breakfast: a pot of hot coffee, fresh cream, and a lightly toasted sesame New York bagel, with a thin schmear of cream cheese, a generous portion of smoked sable, a tomato slice, red onion, and capers. The Sunday paper. A breeze.

How long did it take you to complete this story?

On and off, it took about a year. Short stories are not especially cost effective endeavors. But how I love to read and write them.

What are you working on now?

I’m halfway through a new novel. It’s sort of an inside-out thriller, “a literary thriller,” if you like that better. I’m also working on a short story, based on one I used to think was the best thing I’d ever done, until I realized it was actually incoherent, often terrible, and forty pages long, which officially made it not short. I liked the last paragraph, though, and so I made it the first of a brand new story. The rest went in the trash. We’ll see what happens.

What is the best bit of advice about writing you have ever received?

I’ll give you two since they are both wonderful, and have done me well, and because they both involve profanity. The first came from my teacher Colum McCann, after I explicitly asked for advice regarding my career. He said: “Don’t be a dick.” Succinct, punchy, and wise. Just like him. The second came from another writer, one I deeply love and admire, but I’m afraid I cannot give the writer’s name, as I have no good reason to think the writer would appreciate the anecdote. The question was: “What do you do when people don’t get what you’re doing, when they’re confused by a book, or a direction you’re going in? When the critics don’t like it.” The answer was a brief pause, then: “Fuck ‘em.”

https://www.one-story.com/blog/?p=5555

Issue #206: Bursk’s Cutting Board by Scott Cheshireon May 27, 2015 by Hannah Tinti

Nothing taught me more about the inner lives and desires of people than waiting tables. From the maniac chefs in the kitchen, to the customers demanding substitutions, to the bartenders passing around kamikaze shots, a restaurant is full of drama and bursting with energy. At the center of it all, of course, is the food that is being served. The pleasure of eating and the awakening of the senses. But what happens when a bite loses its taste? When a man whose entire life has been focused on cooking finds himself the one being cooked for? This is the dilemma in our new issue,“Bursk’s Cutting Board” by Scott Cheshire. As the narrator awaits what could be his final meal, he reminisces on his past and his marriage, sifting through his memories as the smell of his wife’s cooking winds through their apartment to the bedroom (now sickroom). Bursk has lost his appetite, and though he hides this from his wife, this loss intertwines with all his other regrets and fears. He worries: was he a good husband? He worries: what will happen when I am gone? In the end Bursk connects it all–his past, present and future—in a rousing speech that clutches at joy and salutes his hopes and dreams. I hope you’ll read Scott Cheshire’s Q&A with us on how he wrote this compelling and moving story, and also this interview where Scott discusses publishing his celebrated debut novel, High as the Horses’ Bridles, and what it’s like to be a One Story Literary Debutante. Until then, let’s all raise a glass to first books, and to great meals, and to the smell of garlic lingering on our fingers.

http://www.one-story.com/blog/?tag=scott-cheshire

Introducing 2015 Debutante: Scott Cheshire

Posted on April 27, 2015 by Catherine LaSota

On May 15th, at our 6th annual Literary Debutante Ball, One Story will be celebrating 10 of our authors who have published their debut books over the past year. In the weeks leading up to the Ball, we’ll be introducing our Debs through a series of interviews.

This week we have the pleasure of chatting with Scott Cheshire, a wonderful and generous person and author. Scott’s debut novel High as the Horses’ Bridles is now available from Henry Holt. The book follows Josiah Laudermilk as he goes from being a twelve-year-old prophet in a religious household in Queens, New York, to a divorced man who goes by “Josie” and owns computer stores in southern California. When his estranged father falls ill and Josie returns to New York to care for him, Josie confronts his past in ways that reverberate into his present and future. Memories of his childhood, his departed mother, his break from the church, and the early years of his marriage collide as he tries to figure out how to be around his father again and how to move forward in life with a clearer vision of his reality. It’s a very relatable family story told through the fascinating lens of religion, history, and love.

Where were you when you found out High as the Horses’ Bridles was going to be published? How did you celebrate?

I was at the Housing Works Bookstore Café, in Soho, when I got the call. Which was fitting as I wrote much of the book there. After the call, I wanted to call my wife and my friends but I resisted that and went outside. I walked around the cobbled streets out front and I tried to be very aware of the moment. I let it sink in. I thought about how long I had been working on the book, how many years. I thought about how long I had been writing. Then I called my wife. I probably got weepy. And then I called one of my teachers, who by then had become a real mentor and friend. I asked him what to do next. He said, start another book, right now, even if it’s shit. That was very good advice.

The title of your book is so perfect. How did you decide on this title and were there any other contenders?

Well thank you so much for saying that. The whole time writing it, the book was called The Ends. I had it at the top of every page. It kept me focused. Everything in the book had to funnel toward that, and so the book became about the many ends of our lives, the end of childhood, the end of love, the end of faith, the end of life, the end of time, even the opposite ends of the country. At some point I realized this was not, in fact, the title of the book, but rather its preoccupation. It also helped that everyone hated that title. I made a list of more terrible titles until it struck me that the title should come from the book ofRevelation, since the book itself was birthed from that book and my relationship to it. I readRevelation again and came across the phrase. It seemed poetic, even American, it sounded like a Cormac McCarthy novel (which couldn’t hurt), but actually referred to something quite violent and nightmarish, the depth of sinners’ blood come Armageddon. I liked that tension.

High as the Horses’ Bridles is set mostly in Queens and Southern California, both locations where you have lived yourself. Can you talk about the process of writing a story that takes place in environments with which you are very familiar? And has your recent move back to Southern California from Queens affected your current writing at all?

This is an especially interesting question because I never had plans to live in California again, and yet here I am. Place, I must say, is very important to me. I mean in life and in my reading and writing habits. Place directly affects my mood. For instance, just thinking about the splintery beach of Truro, Mass., gives me peace. I have a photo of that place on my laptop screen. As far as Queens and Southern California, they were the landscapes of the most formative times in my life and so it made sense to write about them. Not to mention, for me, life is sort of a dialog with the physical world. And so my work tends to revolve around characters engaged with the world around them, the trees, the beach, the sidewalks, and subways. As far as returning to California, well, I’m writing about Queens again, but with the beach just minutes away. This makes for a better mood and hopefully makes for better writing.

One of my favorite chapters in the novel is very removed from your own experience—it’s a vivid depiction of a tent revival in nineteenth-century rural Kentucky. What kind of research did you do to create such a believable environment and characters in this section?

This was the last thing I wrote and it happened quite fast. It took about a month of long marathon writing sessions in which locked myself in the bedroom and had my wife bring me lots of coffee. But that only happened after a tremendous amount of research. I took lots of notes but mostly just figured I would use what stayed with me. After writing it, I reached out to a few historians of American religious history who not only responded, but they did so with great enthusiasm. They sent me notes and corrections on things I might consider, or about stuff I got plain wrong. I could not have done it without them.

To me, your novel is ultimately about the often unrealistic expectations that parents place on their children—or even expectations that the children perceive, whether they exist or not—and how families and individuals deal with the dynamics that result from these expectations. Do you agree with this assessment? Have you heard any interpretations of the book that have surprised you?

Well, because the book centers on one family’s religious legacy, people often talk of the book in that context, that it’s a book about religion, but really for me it’s a book about family, first. It’s about fathers and sons. Mothers and sons. So it makes me very happy that you describe it this way. I have heard many differing opinions on the novel. I have been hugged by an atheist who told me he was happy that someone finally wrote a novel about religion from the atheist’s perspective. I have received letters from people thanking me for writing a novel about religion finally from the perspective of the faithful. I have sent at least one woman back to church. All of this pleases me. Probably my favorite response though was from a man in Boston, who bought five copies, one for each of his boys. He said they were going to read the book together. It doesn’t get much better than that. I know writing the book certainly brought me closer to my own family.

What are you most looking forward to at the One Story Ball on May 15th?

I love One Story and have been reading it for years, so it’s thrilling to be a part of this year’s ball. Not to mention I get to put on a tie, and get a haircut, although I need to get new shoes. Since the move out west, I’ve been wearing flip-flops, mostly. Maybe I’ll get a pair of fancy ones to go with my suit.

Writing Exercise #3: Fiction, "Going Solo"

Fiction: Going Solo. This exercise is adapted from Poets & Writers Summer 2015 issue.

When the weather heats up and the pace of life slows down over summer, it’s natural to start thinking about traveling. Whether you set off on a long road trip across the country or catch a plane to an exotic land, being away home almost always feels like an adventure---even if you are going to a sick relative and staying in a motel. But what happens if the person you were planning to take a trip with can't go at the last minute?

Write a story about this scenario. How does your protagonist handle traveling solo? What obstacles does s/he encounter? Pretend this happened to you and “document” the trip you took alone for the person who couldn’t make it. Write diary entries and postcards---let the diary entries reveal the truth of your protagonist’s life and the let the postcards reflect the positive but deceptive, excessively happy "Facebook face” that s/he is trying to maintain. Make sure there is a real disconnect between the two. Remember: Secrets are always interesting. The diary entries should contain the secrets, unless you decided to reverse this, i.e. perhaps the diary entries are fiction and the postcards reveal truth, and the writer knows the diary entries will be preserved for posterity but the postcards will be thrown out and therefore, are actually safer to write.

Write for no more than thirty minutes and then stop. What does your protagonist really want to happen when his/her diary is found? What does the protagonist really want the reader to think when s/he reads the diary entries?

Writing Exercise #2, Creative Non-Fiction, “Breaking News"

Creative Non-Fiction: Breaking News. This exercise is adapted from an exercise from Poets & Writers Summer 2015 issue.

When something major happens in our lives, we often leave some time between the time that it happens and when we get around to writing about it. But great fiction and creative non-fiction are full of strong emotion, powerfully expressed, even if it’s restrained. And if we let too much time pass, the intense emotion of the event fades and is replaced by a more analytic, subjective memory of the event.

In order to channel that sense of immediacy, put yourself back at the scene of a significant incident right in the middle of the action. Sit down and picture this: Something life-changing is happening to you right now. Be sure you cover those key journalistic questions, the Who, What, When Where and Why of the story. Sensationalize at your discretion! Skip the mundane details! Get to the heart of your story and write as much as you can remember without stopping.

Write for no more than 20 minutes.

Lucia Berlin’s B.F. and Me (Paris Review, Summer 2015)

Lucia Berlin passed away in 2004. She published eight short story collections before she died, and has another book coming out posthumously in August called A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories.

What struck me about this short story is how short and funny it is, and how tragic. The narrator is first person, and she speaks to us as if she is sitting down fora drink or coffee with us, in chairs outside her trailer. She immediately draws us in by speaking directly to us: “I liked him right away, just talking to him on the phone. Raspy, easygoing voice, with a smile and sex in it,  you know what I mean.” Of course we know what she means, and how can we not want to read further, with that kind of easy, intimate confessional tone beckoning us to? In that second sentence, she suggests that this is a love story of sorts, and maybe even an erotic one.

This is also, very cleverly, a short story about class, aging, voices, smells and process. Our narrator used to be an operator at a hospital, longing to meet one of the doctors she paged. Now she’s an older woman of 70 but she’s still got it going on---the guys at Pottery Barn are still flirting with her. “I bet you’re really gonna enjoy lying on this rug.” This is ridiculous, funny dialogue.

By the middle of page 270, our narrator has introduced us to her man, her antagonist perhaps, and maybe a charming villain. Whoever he is and whatever he does, he’s introduced into the story to shake things up and to change the narrator. “He answered the phone…And he laughed, real slow. I told him I had a floor job and he said he was my man. He could come anytime. I figured he was a smart aleck in his twenties, good-looking, with tattoos and spiky hair, a pickup truck and a dog.” This characters sounds sexy, young, appealing--we can’t wait to meet him.

And then her, and our, expectations are dashed. He doesn’t show up and when he does, he’s an old guy, “gasping and coughing after he climbed three steps.” Not the hot young guy we were expecting, but then our narrator has “bad arthritis” and got “tangled up” in her oxygen hose. These are vivid images of aging so now the story has rearranged itself---maybe this is a story of old, new love. It’s certainly a story of defying the reader’s expectations---BF is the opposite of a hottie, and he’s nothing like the handsome young doctors the narrator was yearning to meet when she was a hospital operator. Read this great description of BF: “B.F’ was holding on to the wall and to the banister, gasping and coughing after he climbed the three steps. He was an enormous man, tall, very fat and very old. Even when he was still outside, catching his breath, I could smell him. Tobacco and dirty wool, rank alcoholic sweat. He had bloodshot baby-blue eyes that smiled. I liked him right away.”

What? She likes this old, smelly guy? Yes, she does, and again, the story rearranges itself.  He doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to, he’s old and smells, but she still, she wants him.  And now this is also a story about smell. This paragraph about smells is key. The narrator’s memories of smells is what propels her forward, and her description of the smells she remembers instantly suck into the story. We are familiar with all these smells and now we’re very familiar with the kind of man BF is, the kind of guy we might see in a bar, a laughing good, old boy, and we start to think about the smells of men and animals we have known: “The pong of him was like madeleine-like for me, bringing back Grandpa and Uncle John, for starters. Bad smells can be nice. A faint odor of sunk int he woods. Horse manure at the races. One of the best parts about the tigers in zoos is the feral strength. At bullfights I always liked to sit high up, in order to see it all, like at the opera, but if you sit next to the barrera you can smell the bull.” Don’t underestimate the power of using smells in your own work!

As readers, we’re constantly being forced to shift our expectations about this guy BF, and we’re happy to. Now, on page 271, we’re more than half way through this 3.5 page story. And now the story shifts to process. Process is always interesting. BF might seriously need a shower and be unreliable, but he knows how to lay tile in a bathroom. He tells her how much tile she needs and how she can’t walk on the tile for 72 hours. They banter back and forth, each one stubborn and cheerful about what needed to happen in that bathroom. He may be out of shape and unreliable, but he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to laying down tile. This makes him appealing and knowledgeable. In your own work, give one of your characters your knowledge of process---cooking, knitting, dog-walking----any ritual or habit that you are intimate with will make your character come alive. 

Towards the end of the story, the narrator reminds us that B.F. is really old and unreliable. She makes us worry that he might die and this is great---nothing tethers a reader to a story like the possibility that a major character may leave us soon. (Think of how you feel when a favorite character gets killed off in a TV show. You mourn the character’s loss, but are further invested in the story’s outcome. After the death, all you want to do is see what happens next to the characters who have survived.)  “He was obviously sore after bending down. Gasping for air, he limped out of the house, stopping to lean on the kitchen counter and then on the stove in the living room. I followed him to the door, making the same rest stops. At the foot of the stairs he lit up a cigarette and smiled up at me.”

The ending: Naturally, B.F. doesn’t show up again when he’s supposed to, but then he calls. The narrator and the tile guy do their dance again. Will he continue to disappoint her? Probably. Will he break her heart by dying or falling down on the job? Possibly. But a powerful connection has been established between them and we want to see what happens next. I agree that the ending leaves us hanging, but in a way, it is very effective---we start to imagine what will happens to these characters after we leave them on the page. Or they leave us. And we can see them vividly, at the end of their lives, clinging to each other, and whatever cheerful banter they can still trade, in bars and trailers. Their banter and their promises to each other are their currency.

Mark Strand’s prose poem, “An Event About Which No More Need Be Said."

Writing Exercise 1: Inspired by Mark Strand prose poem, “An Event About Which No More Need Be Said.”


An Event About Which No More Need Be Said

I was riding downtown in a cab with a prince who consented to be interviewed, but asked that I not mention him or his country by name. He explained that both exist secretly and their business is carried on in silence. He was tall, had a long nose beneath which was tucked a tiny mustache; he wore a pale-blue shirt open at the neck and cream colored pants. “I have no hobbies,” he explained. “My one interest is sex It can be with a man or a woman, old or young, so long as it produces the desired result, which is to remind me of the odor of white truffles or the taste of candied violets in a locating island. Here, let me show you something.” When I saw it, saw how big it was, and what he’d done with it, I screamed and leaped from the moving cab.”

This writing exercise is inspired by Strand’s prose poem, which comes from his book, Almost Invisible: Poems. The beauty of poetry, and of this poem in particular, is how precise and powerful it is--and how efficient. In eight sentences, Strand’s narrator manages to intrigue us, shock us, and leave us wondering. Who was this prince? Was he really a prince? What exactly did the narrator see? Did the prince expose his penis? Or some other part of his body? What did he do to himself? Did he tattoo his penis? If so, what did the tattoo look like? What happened after the narrator jumped out of the moving cab? Was he hurt? Did he run for his life? And what happened to the prince that night and over time?

Exercise: This poem could also work as the first paragraph of a short story. Please write out the poem  and count the words and the sentences to see how much is packed into one paragraph. Then spend no more than 20 minutes writing out at least one more paragraph to this story. In doing so, try to answer at least one of the following questions (you can also answer some of the questions above):
What did the prince want the narrator to see in the cab?
How did the narrator spend the rest of his night?
How did the prince spend the rest of his night?

Let the reader’s desire to be shocked and scared drive your writing.