"I WALK a tightrope between two mountain tops over the Valley of the Waters of Fire. The waters are rising and all too soon the flames will disengage the embracing strands of fiber which hold me up, casting me to my fate below — incineration. I stand very still. To move would be to lose my balance and become cinder too soon.
*
I RECOGNIZE the voice: 'Mummy, can I take this magazine to school? It has a story in it that is full of symbols, and Mr. Walker just loves symbols.'
*
YOU, my friend, have not believed me from the beginning. But you say you do. And that makes you a phony.
*
Click link above for complete story, published in The Literary Review in 1971.
This story has an unusual history. In 1967 I'd dropped out of grad school and with "Sally" moved to Portland to pay dues and become a writer. I took a part-time job as editor of a trade newspaper. I wrote furiously, submitting literary short stories to my favorite journals, submitting features to a Sunday supplement (for money). One day I came home to find the mailbox stuffed with rejection. I had 4 (I believe it was) short stories rejected on the same day, 2 of them from The Literary Review. I was pissed. I entered the house, threw the manuscripts across the room, sat down at my Remington manual and banged out "Fragments Before the Fall," the only quasi statement of poetics I've ever written. Without revising it, I went to the post office and immediately sent it off -- to The Literary Review. This was my way of giving them the finger. And they accepted it, my first appearance of several in this literary journal I admired so much. Moral? I'm not sure. Passionate writing matters, perhaps. Or don't let the bastards get you down. Or do it your way to the end. At any rate, it was a breakthrough experience and I began to publish in literary magazines with regularity after this.
*
I RECOGNIZE the voice: 'Mummy, can I take this magazine to school? It has a story in it that is full of symbols, and Mr. Walker just loves symbols.'
*
YOU, my friend, have not believed me from the beginning. But you say you do. And that makes you a phony.
*
Click link above for complete story, published in The Literary Review in 1971.
This story has an unusual history. In 1967 I'd dropped out of grad school and with "Sally" moved to Portland to pay dues and become a writer. I took a part-time job as editor of a trade newspaper. I wrote furiously, submitting literary short stories to my favorite journals, submitting features to a Sunday supplement (for money). One day I came home to find the mailbox stuffed with rejection. I had 4 (I believe it was) short stories rejected on the same day, 2 of them from The Literary Review. I was pissed. I entered the house, threw the manuscripts across the room, sat down at my Remington manual and banged out "Fragments Before the Fall," the only quasi statement of poetics I've ever written. Without revising it, I went to the post office and immediately sent it off -- to The Literary Review. This was my way of giving them the finger. And they accepted it, my first appearance of several in this literary journal I admired so much. Moral? I'm not sure. Passionate writing matters, perhaps. Or don't let the bastards get you down. Or do it your way to the end. At any rate, it was a breakthrough experience and I began to publish in literary magazines with regularity after this.
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