The Return of the Scourge

 The comment about signing up for Chatz is incorrect.  It costs money to sign up for one of the flavors of Chatz and I'm pretty cheap as I imagine so is Beagles.  I use the free option.  The hitch there is you only get like 10 questions but I find that adequate. 

If you don't like nicknames you don't like America.  Am I right Old Dog?

I did not take offense at being called a piece of shit.  Far from it, I smiled ruefully at the thought that The Universe was paying me back for my earlier dick move which was telling that poor guy to go away, and now I was even with The Universe.

Speaking of smiling I am glad that I brought a smile to Old Dog's face.

What me and Chatz have been chatting about lately is this new story I have begun and am using Chatz as a sounding board for.

And here it is:  

Dan Curley by Ken Schadt

 

CRWR 250 - FICTION WRITING WORKSHOP

In this class you will read and discuss a number of published short stories as well as examine the elements that make them successful. Using these short stories as models, you will write exercises, scenes, and a full-length short story that demonstrate, along with the rest of your work, your understanding of the fictional craft fundamentals.

Credits: 3

Attributes: Humanities

Prerequisites: ENG 153 or CRWR 153

MWF 2pm, 258 Lincoln Hall, Dan Curley Instructor.

 

Well why not?  It fit right into my schedule.  Dan Curley, the name was familiar, short story writer, I remembered seeing his name on books in the campus bookstore.  I figured I was creative enough.  How hard would it be to write a few stories? 

Not that hard at all it turned out.  I cranked them out.  They got a good response.  My characters were believable, the situations were interesting enough without being outlandish, my prose was smooth.

Maybe too smooth, that was the impression I got from Dan.  “Well done,” he would say after reading them, but then he would pause and I could see that he was about to say, “But… “ but then he didn’t say it, and I never pressed him on it.  But I’m pretty sure I know what he was thinking. He wanted a little roughness, a little meat, a little heart, a little soul.  Well maybe but I never was too interested in that stuff, it just got in the way, and who needs it if you asked me.  I wasn’t going to some famous writer, I just wanted to get an A and get on with my life.

And I did get the A, but then so did everybody else in the class who wrote the required 50,00 words.  Getting on with my life however did not work so well, a degree in Communications did not burn down the house when it came time to getting an actual job.

 

But then something came up.  The New Yorker was hitting the skids.  Well not the skids but their readership was slipping, and market research discovered that people thought it was maybe a little too stuffy especially their vaunted short story section.  They had all the top-notch writers as always, guys who all had these powerful agents pushing their stuff, and maybe that was the problem.  What about all those little guys banging away at their typewriters in their mother’s basement in the wee hours of the morning with a bottle of bourbon within easy reach?  Sure most of them were losers, but not all of them, surely there were some of them who had the right stuff, the new right stuff, the stuff that would light up the literary world like a Roman candle if only they could get their right stuff past all those pushy agents and onto the desks of editors, new editors, hungry editors who would look at their work with fresh new eyes and discover fresh new writers.

To this effect the New Yorker was going to hire The Hundred.  A hundred new editors, fresh new guys with fresh new eyes, so that every single story submitted to the New Yorker was now assured that they would get their story read. 

Sounded like a big publicity stunt to me.  Also sounded like maybe a job.

The New Yorker would be sending a crew down to the college the very next week and I made an appointment, though I knew I had little chance.  But then I ran into Dan Curley in a seedy downtown bar.

 

I usually did my drinking in those lively campus bars but that Friday I was nervous about the upcoming New Yorker interview, knowing I had little chance of getting the job and I wanted someplace quiet so I wandered off downtown and ended up at The Brass Rail, and at the end of the bar there was Dan Curley.  My first idea was to walk out before he looked up from his beer, but then I decided to sidle up to the stool next to him.

He lifted his head up from his beer.  “So it’s you,” he said, I knew he had forgotten my name, “The smooth writer who has no soul.”

“That would be me,” I said and offered to buy him a beer.

“Well thank you,” he said and then as the bartender brought over the beers he added, “Sorry for the crack.” 

“No problem,” I said, “I’ve been thinking about it, about the stories I wrote in my class, and I think you’re right about that soul thing.”

“Ah, it’s okay, I know you kids have other things on your minds and you want to get an easy A, so you can get on with your lives and do whatever it is that you want to do. I guess I shouldn’t mind.”

I hadn’t expected such a quick turnaround.  He turned his head to the bottles on the shelf behind and I did too and we both sat there with nothing to say to each other.  I had to say something.  “Maybe you should,” is the best thing I could come up with.

“Should what?” he asked still looking at the bottles on the shelf.

“Mind,” and then a little pause with him still looking at the bottles.  “You should mind because, because well literature, um, the arts, writing, taking something out of yourself, something out of your heart, putting it down on paper, putting it between covers, so that someday some stranger will pick it up off a shelf, likely for something to kill a little time but then they will realize that there is something being said and maybe it means something to them, and then, well who knows what, but for that moment it means something.”  I knew it didn’t make sense, but I’d read something like that in one of my English classes, and I put a lot of earnest in it, and maybe it worked.

He took a big drink of his beer and looked at me sideways.  “You’re a bullshitter aren’t you?” he asked.

I took a chance.  “Aren’t we all?” I asked him.

He stared at me, finished his beer, put a fiver down on the bar, and put on his jacket and said, “Early class tomorrow,” and took a couple steps towards the door then turned back to me, gave me an odd look.  “Where are you drinking tomorrow?” he asked. 

“Uh, here I guess,” I ventured.

“Good,” he replied, and he was out the door.