Dave Housely Finds Inspiration in “Bad Decline”

In Dave Housley’s fictional universe, the one that builds up in the stories comprising his first collection, Ryan Seacrest Is Famous, Jack Kerouac and Jimi Hendrix never died; one’s abandoned his artistic ambitions to become an informercial guru, while the other struggles against an indifferent industry to make a comeback after years of recovery. A young Nepali woman fakes a royal background to bluff her way onto a reality show; the veteran announcer of a pro wrestling program gets roped into one last ridiculous story arc before his retirement, with unintended consequences; clowns and victims of identity theft dwell on their failed relationships with equal frustration. Then, of course, there’s that title story, where one of the American Idol host’s former college classmates wonders how the hell this is what fate dealt out for them. So, when I read the essay he sent in about one of his favorite short stories, his selection made perfect sense to me (as it has to other writers before, and probably many more to come).

George Saunders’ “Civilwarland in Bad Decline” is the story, and the book, really, that had the most personal and literary influence on me. I remember finding the book in some used bookstore and thinking, bad decline, that’s a really interesting phrase. I think I bought it on the title alone. At the time, I had finished a novel, a Daniel Woodrell-inspired/ripped-off rural noir thing called Fresh Fruit and Ammo, which is still sitting in my closet somewhere, and I had just started writing stories. This is, of course, exactly the opposite of the way most people do it, which is to write stories and then, once you kind of know what you’re doing, start working on a novel. The stories I was writing were all these very straightforward, realistic takes on folks I’d grown up with and around in Central Pennsylvania. They were no good, these stories, and I kind of knew it, but I also really didn’t know what else to write.

And then I read “Civilwarland” and it was like this whole thing, the idea of the short story and what it could be, just opened up. Wow, these things can be surreal and funny and they can exist in these alternate universes, and all the while they can still say way more about the actual world that we live in, and specifically that world of real, working, striving, good hearted but not necessarily brilliant people who I was trying to write about in the first place.

(more…)

16 December 2007 | selling shorts |

Amy Edelman’s Holiday Gift Suggestion

Amy Edelman‘s first novel, Manless in Montclair, is based on her real-life experiences re-entering the dating scene after the death of her first husband—even the part where the protagonist becomes the subject of a Daily News profile. Originally, she tried writing it as a memoir. “When my publisher initially asked me how the memoir would end, I said I had no idea,” she says on her website. “So she suggested writing it as fiction so I could make it end however I wanted it to… in reality, what ended up happening was even less believable than the fiction.” For this holiday season, she has a straight-up memoir she recommends highly.

Oh, and she’s also got tips for suriving the holidays while single, too.

If you know someone who hasn’t already bought and/or read it, The Glass Castle would make a fantastic holiday gift.

By turns inspiring and heart-wrenching, it is a story out of step with our high-def, flat screen tv-in-every-room times. Jeannette Walls, who we first meet at age three, tells of a childhood where food, a roof, and responsible parents are in scarce supply. But, while her family may be poor, she and her siblings grow up in a world rich in imagination, books, art, and possibility.

I read parts of the book to my ten year-old and suggested my thirteen year-old read it as well. At a time when many people—old and young alike—are encouraged to think about what material things they want for the holidays, it’s inspiring to read about someone who got by—and, indeed, flourished—with so little.

6 December 2007 | gift ideas, guest authors |