Okay, here’s what I came up with. Check the following friends’ blogs to see their efforts for this exercise:

• A Literary Girl
• House of Sternberg
• Jon Zech Short Fiction
• Moondaria’s Playground
• She Writes
• Dance Dance Revolution 2000

Goldfish

This is probably the dumbest gift I have ever received. Not that a present of two goldfish in a bowl for one’s birthday is inherently stupid by itself, but when those fish are presented to a forty-year-old man by his ancient uncle, the one who dresses in black like a geriatric Johnny Cash, and have been hand carried for more than five hundred miles on a train from Savannah, then yes, it’s ridiculous. I can picture him on the Amtrak special, sitting in the club car with the bowl on the pull out table, trying to keep it from sloshing over every time the train takes a curve. And the whole time he is hitting on every woman under thirty who walks the aisle, asking them to check out his fish—ain’t they pretty; do you think they’re handling the trip okay; and other inane and suggestive come-ons in his loopy southern accent. Uncle Orrin’s been like that ever since he was a widower.

But then, goldfish really are an idiotic gift. I mean, they’ll go belly up in a week or so, and while they’re sitting on the mantle they don’t do anything but look out the glass and make that glub-glub motion with their mouths. Not exactly the companionship one looks for in a pet. And what am I supposed to say about them if I get lucky and bring home a date and she sees them sitting there? (Not that I’m dating again yet, but I can just see it.) Oh, goldfish . . . how interesting. Well, yeah, they were a gift. You should get them a bigger tank. I would but they’ll die before I can get it installed, and I’ve had enough of death this year. As they say, it’s the thought—or complete lack of it—that counts.

As soon as he leaves I’ll flush them. Why wait?

He’s probably getting Alzheimer’s is what it is. He could have bought them in the local Petco and saved himself all the trouble that trip must have been. Even better, he could have done what he usually does, just slip twenty bucks into a birthday card and write a note that I should get myself something nice. Then he wouldn’t even have had to make the trip. He could have stayed back in Georgia and saved the fare, as well as my sanity, because having him here could disrupt my routine after a while. He brought enough luggage to make me worry, like he’s moving in. I suppose it’s my fault that he’s here at all, since I stopped calling him on the weekends, but I got tired of hearing about the weather down there.

Orrin says I shouldn’t be alone and that two old bachelors can really have a lot of fun together, and that’s why he’s here. He already wants to go out tonight to a bar and asks me what the secret signal is in case one of us is going to score. I had forgotten guys even do things like that.

He sits on the couch and asks me to bring him a bottle of beer. Time to start our engines, he says. I get one for me too. I give him his and he glub-glubs it down, looking kind of bug-eyed while he drinks. I sit next to him and look out the apartment window and watch autos and people go by on the street below.

Three terms that have nothing to do with each other—or everything to do with each other. We shall see . . .

The Royal Oak Writers in the Woods is one of the most helpful writing groups I’ve ever been involved in. Lately, we’ve decided to engage in some writing exercises. The above terms are our first assignment. The idea is to them in a short fiction piece of about 500 words. I’ll post my effort here as soon as I get past thinking of the man in black as Johnny Cash. Visitors are encouraged to write their own entries here (no prize, just good practice). If your entry is good enough, we may ask you to join the group. Check here later . . . for now, it’s back to my novel in progress.

Perhaps no one blends history and imagination into captivating fiction better than Salman Rushdie. In his past works he has set stories in relatively recent settings such as the partition of India and political turmoil in Pakistan, and he has often attempted to illustrate the underlying ties between eastern and western cultures. In The Enchantress of Florence, Rushdie goes back further in history, to the turn of the 16th century, to present a tale that binds those two worlds into a single narrative and reveals just how connected those civilizations were—perhaps something of a surprise for many in the 21st century.

Historical characters abound. From Asia, we have the emperor Akbar the Great of India, Shah Ismail of Persia, and connections to the line emanating from Genghis Kahn. Italy provides the story with Niccolo Machiavelli, Ago Vespucci (cousin of the more famous Amerigo), and allusions to everyone from Boticelli to Savonarola to Vlad the Impaler. He creates a life for each of these people, and many others, within a fantastical framework of events and intrigues, yet the novel has a overriding sense of realism that urges one to think, yes, it could have all happened that way.

Such is Rushdie. He is well known to have an encyclopedic knowledge of history (in fact, there is a five-page bibliography following the story that reports only part of his research for the book). With all he has learned, Rushdie then connects the dots of history, turning what may seem to be unrelated occurrences thousands of miles apart into a single universe in which forces and outcomes are thoroughly interrelated. This allows him to represent the past with such clarity that even the most mystical events seem perfectly logical. Without Rushdie’s knowledge, however, it is impossible to know what’s really real and what isn’t. In an interview with National Public Radio, Rushdie admitted that much of what readers might assume is fabricated magic realism is actual history, and some of what might seem real he imagined.

Ultimately, whatever parts of The Enchantress of Florence are historical or not, it’s the writing that makes this book sing. Rushdie’s prose is still inventive, challenging, inspiring, and often humorous. An early passage describes emperor Akbar, whose name seems to be a redundancy. “The emperor Abdul-Fath Jaluddin Muhammad, king of kings, known since his childhood as Akbar, meaning ‘the great,’ and latterly, in spite of the tautology of it, as Akbar the Great, the great great one, great in his greatness, doubly great, so great that the repetition in his title was not only appropriate but necessary in order to express the gloriousness of his glory . . .”

The story itself is, at times, also challenging. It alternates between the cities of Sikri and Florence, with stops throughout the vastness separating them, as well as the New World, and investigates the lives of royals, nobles, advisers, servants and prostitutes, some of whom lived, some who were merely imagined by those who lived, and, in the case of the enchantress herself, who managed to do both. Rushdie keeps every aspect in its proper place and masterfully weaves the many storylines, tying them together with the thin and silky thread of the princess Qara Köz, whose matchless beauty enthralls the men and women of every culture she visits, but subordinating it all to considerations of the roles of individuals and religions, represented through Akbar’s deep struggles with his own life and values. The novel culminates in an ending that is nearly irresistible—defying readers to stop during the last fifty pages or so.

For those who crave a commanding, challenging text that transports the reader to not only other places and times, but also to alternate philosophies, The Enchantress of Florence is an awesome and delightful excursion. Rushdie, readers will be happy to discover, is still at his best.

One of the more ironic aspects of love, is that the more one experiences it, the more difficult it can be to understand. We see that perfect person across the room and suddenly find ourselves unable to function. But sometimes we find the courage, and then we date, we marry, we share lives, we just begin to relax – and then it falls apart, who knows why, and we are left to examine the evidence of its undoing, alter our strategy, work on our appearance, and try again. Or not. Somewhere in all that activity, in that constant anxiety, are the answers, we are sure. But every time we think we’ve got one pinned down it’s revealed to be nonsense, because the answer for me isn’t the answer for you, at least not today.

Where does one begin to parse love? For Richard Russo it’s back to upstate New York, this time to the small, failing town of Thomaston, just three quarters of an hour down the thruway from Mohawk, the setting for his first novel some twenty years ago. Hio\s writing has largely stayed in the New York-New England area. In an essay he wrote a few years ago, Russo explained that to him, the setting of a book was very much like a character, and when portrayed properly added to the development of the human characters. His first novel, “Mohawk,” was originally placed in Arizona (under another title). It simply didn’t work there, he said, because the descriptions and feel of the place were too much those of a tourist, rather than a native. It’s interesting that in “Bridge of Sighs” several chapters take place in Venice, Italy, but except for dropping the names of a few restaurants, one might not know it. Of course the character who lives there is something of a tourist, having been transplanted from upstate.

Somehow we never tire of Russo’s places, the characters’ lives so intertwined with the fortunes of their hometown they can never be separated, and he builds on these relationships to create spectacular depth. In Thomaston young Lou C. Lynch (Lucy, thanks to a teacher who said it too fast when taking attendance), is a child seeking to avoid the local bullies. He’s kidnapped by them near and dumped into a trunk at an abandoned mill. They try to scare him by pretending to saw the trunk in half, but it works too well – Lucy is too scared and too slow to realize he could have walked away at any time. Too scared also, to admit that one of the bullies is the boy he idolizes as his best friend, Bobby Marconi. After that he’s never quite right again. Lucy is plagued by spells, reliving the incident at he most inconvenient times.

Much of the book is written first-person, from Lucy’s view. Russo, who can make anything work, paints Lucy in an as unfavorable light as an author dare make a central character. He is big and dopey, sentimental and all-too trusting, aspects his mother, Tessa, tries throughout his adolescence to talk him out of. But her real-world logic didn’t work on his father either, and the two of them remain loveable doofuses for many years.

Big Lou (Lucy’s dad) is the cushy rock that holds the Lynch clan together, despite the fact he’s oblivious to the snubs of neighbor Marconi (Bobby’s dad), and the tension between Tessa and his brother, Dec, who had a torrid affair before she decided to get serious about life and marry him instead. And now they all work together in the family convenience store, struggling to make ends meet, rubbing elbows, rubbing each other the wrong way, but working it out like a 1960s version of the Waltons. It’s a tough go at first, but eventually the store holds its own against the corporate-owned A&P, and provides a warmth that pulls in customers, as well as teens looking for a refuge from the cold of their broken home lives.

Lucy, stumbling his way through high school, still lacks for friends. Bobby returns from military school and Lou (the grown-up Lucy) reattaches himself to his boyhood idol. Bobby thinks the big kid is a bit of an embarrassment to hang out with, but he’s not as bad as he used to be. After all, Lou has somehow managed to get himself a girlfriend. She’s just a shy, sweet artist, and from the day they got together they both realized it would be a lifelong affair. But although she’s not really Bobby’s type (he’s dating Nan, the Barbie doll cutie whom all the boys want), there’s something about Sarah he can’t shake out of his system. She feels the same way about him. Their private talks have a depth that neither shares with their significant others.

So here’s where Russo gives us the showdown: which kind of love will win out? The long, slow, comfortable love of two people who have made their commitment and maintain it, like a pot of soup over a low flame, or the passionate, full burn of a love that is just waiting for something to provide the spark. Is she too good of a girl to abandon Lou? For Bobby, does he love Sarah only because she’s Lou’s – is it more jealousy than love? With the constraints placed upon them, Sarah and Bobby may never know from where their love is born, and that’s exactly why it will never go away, even after Sarah and Lou are married, with child, and take over the store from Big Lou and Tessa.

The questions never stop coming for us, and for Bobby, who leaves Thomaston after an explosive scene. He changes his name from dad’s Marconi to mom’s Noonan and directs his passions towards art. Following in Sarah’s example he becomes a painter. Not just a painter like her, but a world-renowned artist. He leaves the states and wanders Europe, settling for the last decade in Venice, home of the infamous bridge (which both of them wind up painting at various points in their careers). He paints bestsellers, while Lou and Sarah mind the store. Love’s not done with any of them, though. Even at sixty, Sarah and Bobby harbor unresolved feelings for each other, and a planned trip by the couple to Italy encourages Sarah to put her thoughts in a letter to Bobby, which Lou discovers. For once, Lou angers. He hasn’t had a spell for years, but now he zones out and the trip is cancelled. Sarah questions her life with him and leaves – for how long even she doesn’t know. She heads to New York. Bobby’s on his way to the city to show his latest work. Perhaps, if they meet, they could still be friends, or maybe more. But then there’s Lou – big, sweet Lou – who loves them both, standing there like the big galoot he is, in between them. How could they do it to him?

It takes an author like the Pulitzer Prize winning Russo (for “Empire Falls”) to artfully track the lives of these characters and about half a dozen more over a period of more than fifty years. It’s a seamless web of fiction that, like the best literary works, is more real than real life. There may be no other author today who so fully captures the feelings and motivations of people, and who does it without gimmick or melodrama, in easy, accessible language that mirrors the way his characters live. That his subjects think and react the way his readers do is Russo’s genius – like many works of genius it seems so simple when it is presented on the page, but in analysis the scope and effort become awesome.

Does “Bridge of Sighs” hold any answers for us? Think about your loves – the love you have for your spouse, for your children and parents, for your friends when you were growing up, the ones you have now, for the people you dated before you made that big commitment and became who you are. In all that lovin’ have you ever come up with any of the answers? Have you ever figured out why it happens like this? Or is it just as fulfilling to keep playing the game, to keep trying and winning, trying and losing, and to hold on to the memories? That, after all, may be all we can take out of it. For Russo, it is enough.

Bridge of Sighs
By Richard Russo
Published by Alfred A. Knopf
New York, 2007
On sale October, 2007

Cracking the barrier of the first novel – having that first book published – is perhaps a more difficult goal than ever for writers. Because publishing has become more business-oriented and less willing to take risks on new writers, agents and publishers tend to look for manuscripts that exhibit certain characteristics that appeal to readers. Travis Holland’s The Archivist’s Story is an excellent example of those writing traits, and it’s a darn good read too.

The story centers on Pavel Vasilievich, a former teacher of literature, living in Moscow in 1939, just prior to the start of World War II. He’s lost his position at the university and is now working at the Lubyanka, a secret arm of the Communist government. His position, ironically, is to archive and catalog manuscripts that have been confiscated from poets, novelists and other writers for being deemed critical of the administration, before they are ultimately destroyed.

Pavel sees the writer Isaac Babel incarcerated, and watches as torture and intimidation take their toll on the once proud man. He stands by helplessly as friends are hounded and arrested by government goons. He battles against a wall of red tape in his effort to discover the truth about his wife’s death. Finally, Pavel decides to fight back – in perhaps the only way he can. He takes a story of Babel’s from the archives and hides it under his clothes before he leaves the building one night. Later he takes another. If he can keep from being discovered, these stories may survive the purge and be delivered into more understanding hands in the future.

Holland has written a book that was a perfect piece for a first-time novelist, according to his agent, Amy Williams. The story contains fewer than 100,000 words and is divided into thirty-seven brief chapters, enticing readers to keep moving forward. The language is accessible. Details and description are beautifully done. It’s clear Holland did a tremendous job of research for this book, which makes this historical fiction quite believable.

The author provides the reader with three interwoven sub-plots, each of which is developed quickly and which moves rapidly to its climax: the first, of course, is Pavel’s dilemma over the Babel stories; second is his attempt to find out the truth about his wife’s death aboard a train that was mysteriously derailed in an isolated part of the country; third is the deterioration of his mother, who has contracted Alzheimer’s Disease and can no longer be left alone. These all come together seamlessly at the novel’s climax, yielding an ending that is ultimately satisfying.

Holland is a graduate of the University of Michigan’s Creative Writing MFA program who has received Hopwood Awards for the novel and for short fiction. His short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Ploughshares, Five Points and The Quarterly.

The Archivist’s Story
Travis Holland
The Dial Press, a division of Random House, 2007
Available at amazon.com

Writers must go crazy wondering why most of their stories are rejected by the journals to which they submit. Was there a flaw in the character arc? Was the writing uninteresting? Did they not like the premise?

Trouble is, unless an editor takes the time to write a note to the writer, he or she will never know what the reader thought. That’s when the imagination takes over. Couldn’t be that the story was bad—the reader must have been having a bad day and rejected everything. Maybe my story was slated for publication and something came in from Joyce Carol Oates and they decided to bump me. Maybe the story was so good, it was beyond the comprehension of the editors. (I often imagine this when I am rejected by a student-run journal.)

Virtually every lit journal out there uses this cop-out: “The volume of submissions makes individual responses impossible.” So who’s to say whether a story is rejected for a good reason, or the decision was unsupported? Writers are, by nature, insecure about their craft, and this condition doesn’t help. Wouldn’t it be great if somehow editors could communicate just a little about what they thought about the stories they received?

Well, I believe it’s possible. In fact a group of writers here in the Southeast Michigan area believe that too, and we’ve started our own online lit journal, called Third Reader. (The name comes from something said by Greek poet and Nobel Laureate Odysseas Elytis. Visit us at http://thirdreader.com.)

Our goal and philosophy is to comment on every poem and story we receive. It’s possible because our website is technologically advanced—editors already have opinions about what they read, and our system allows them to immediately comment. Each writer has access to his or her account, and only the writer and the editors can see the comments.

So far it’s working. And the responses we’ve received back it up. Writers are telling us how much they appreciate the comments (we try always to be constructive). We’ve had several tell us that our suggestions made their stories or poems better.

Frankly, if this is successful, we’re going to change the way the literary journal business is run. No more editors in ivory towers passing judgment without accountability. Editors will offer constructive criticism. Writers will accept it and improve their craft. The entire field of creative writing will be better off for it. What a crazy idea!

I don’t know whether to jump for joy or jump off a cliff over this one.

As writers, we often spend many hours preparing a manuscript—writing, editing, rewriting, listening to critiques and rewriting again—only to send it off to a literary journal or ten, into that black hole known as “submissions.” Ninety-nine percent of the time we wait anywhere from a few weeks to several months to receive a response, which is usually a form rejection letter or e-mail, or an acceptance. A very few times, among all the rejections, is a note from an editor.

I received one of those last week, handwritten from Holly MacArthur, Managing Editor of Tin House, one of the best known and highly respected literary journals in the country. Here’s what she wrote: “Alas the editors have decided to pass. There were mixed opinions, but all agreed you have great promise.” There was also a handwritten note from the initial reader that was very nice as well.

I’m encouraged, of course, that the editors at such a prestigious publication believe I have promise, but it’s also incredibly frustrating to know my story came so close without making the cut. I can’t help imagining how ecstatic I would have been had the story been accepted at this stage of my writing career (I’ve been at it for two years and have had one other story published). I would have told everyone—my classmates in the MFA program at Whidbey, my local writing group, my family, friends, people I passed on the street . . .

But not to be. After all, it’s really just another rejection, although a nice one. I wonder if all the pinpricks the writer’s soul endures on the way to success ever heal when that success is achieved. I hope to be able to let you know.

Maybe they think we’re just not paying attention, or perhaps they believe the public has completely accepted the fallacies, but there are some things that Hollywood movies almost never get right. I’m not what I would call a movie buff, but I’ve seen enough of them over the past few decades to start a list of those movie aspects that always seem wrong:

• Thunder and lightning at the same time: Well, if that was the case, people in movies would be getting fried left and right. Since lightning travels at the speed of light, and thunder at the speed of sound, those who live to tell about it almost always experience a delay before the thunder is audible.
• Sound in outer space: Except for Kubrick’s classic “2001 – A Space Odyssey,” movies always include sound effects in the vacuum of space, which can’t conduct sound, because – duh! – it’s a vacuum!
• Crappy glass and/or building construction: Something hits an automobile windshield and it shatters like a water goblet. Has Hollywood not heard of safety glass? This one’s from “Spiderman 3″: a rogue I-beam (how do they think of this nonsense?) rips through an adjacent skyscraper as though the building were made of papier-maché. Come on! Didn’t they use an I-beam or two in the construction of the skyscraper? If they wanted to make a cartoon, why didn’t they just draw one?
• The phone hangup dial tone: Just try it yourself. Have someone call you, and when you answer, have them hang up. You get dead air, not a dial tone. Thought everyone knew this already.

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Feel free to add to this list.