American Literary Review, Reviewed

This is solid, satisfying reading from accomplished and serious writers and artists cleverly attuned to the world of ideas, emotions, and rich imagery.

 Read the full review here.

What's in a Nathan?

In one of the posts on the Vouched blog under the label “Awful Interviews,” Christopher Newgent asks poet Nate Pritts, “Should I call you Nate or Nathan? Sometimes I introduce myself as Christopher and people call me Chris, and I punch their mouths. I have hard punches.” What follows is an enlightening and extensive answer, most of which I will quote:

My given name is Nathan & when I first started writing poems & stories, I was calling myself Nathan. However, no one called me Nathan in real life – everyone called me Nate, everyone has always called me Nate [… but] the name “Nathan” seemed like it had the right center of gravity, the proper level of careful diction & studious energy. Nathan Pritts wrote poems about the moon, or about deer running through field grass. […] Poems were things that guys named Nathan wrote in their barn or somewhere out on the far reaches of their property while contemplating the majesty of a spotted owl.

But I started to have a sense that it was really difficult to write a poem about a spotted owl if, in fact, you had never seen a spotted owl.

So I started writing poems that were more about me – a guy named Nate […] I started to understand that a poem was a dynamic system that depended on a connection to the vital & coursing elements of my own actual life as it had been lived & as I was currently living it. So Nathan Pritts retired – from writing poems, for sure, & mostly retired from life as well. He’s lying in a hammock on William Duffy’s farm, very happy & smug & knowing & soulful. Nate Pritts is still alive & writing poems that reflect his complete & utter confusion about being alive in language that struggles to pin down exact & emotional statements about a world that is constantly forcing him to THINK rather than FEEL.

So: call me Nate.

Like Nate, my given name is Nathan. But most everyone also calls me Nate. I introduce myself as Nate, Nate is the name I type on academic papers, my Facebook page says Nate, and a popular shirt reads, “I Hate Nate Logan!” Nate is everywhere for me.

But when my poems go out into the world though, I use Nathan. When I've been lucky enough to be introduced at readings, I write Nathan in the bio. When women get mad at me, they say Nathan. What is the difference between Nate and Nathan?

On some level, I agree with Nate's explanation: “'Nathan' seemed like it had the right center of gravity, the proper level of careful diction & studious energy.” Though I have never written poems about the moon or wildlife running through grass, “Nathan” fits like a cozy glove. “Nate” is missing something...something intangible that I can't put my finger on. Do I think that Nate sounds less respectable or reputable? No, not at all. Does “Nate Logan” sound worse/better/about the same as “Nathan Logan?” I don't think it sounds worse, it just sounds different.

Some of Nate's concerns are wrapped up in my own, but at this point in my life, I am happy to keep Nathan around. I don't have anxiety about having to choose between Nathan and Nate, but it is a choice I make, which implies that there are some decisions being made based on criteria, conscious or unconscious. It doesn't seem that Nate had “anxiety” about this either, but based his choice of name on larger concerns.

The question of name is something that I'm going to continue to think about. Maybe I will have an answer as insightful as Nate's someday. But until then, keep an eye open for the “Eight Nate's” or “Nine Nate's” reading. That's where you'll find me, cheering from the Nathan bench.

Review: Christine Sneed's Portraits of a Few of The People I've Made Cry

At the end of last semester, Miro walked into the ALR office and asked me if I had time to review Christine Sneed’s Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry, and I said yes, and I read it that weekend and quite enjoyed it, and then, somewhere between revising stories of my own, getting the ALR issue finalized and proofing it, getting my grading done, and then heading off to the tragicomedy that was my Christmas break… well, let’s just say I’m a terrible human being who can’t be trusted.

So when Miro asked me again to review the book this past week, I of course felt like an ass, which is probably not the feeling Sneed would want her book to prompt in someone who liked it a good deal, but here we are.  The book itself, which won the Grace Paley Prize and was published last year, is now a finalist for the LA Times First Fiction Award, and for good reason.  The ten stories in this volume have a special knack for getting at the personal politics underpinning adult relationships, particularly ones in which there’s some kind of authority gap (dramatic age differences between lovers factor into several of the stories).

The opener, “Quality of Life,” is one of the more harrowing pieces, a sharp thesis statement of a story that hinges on the kind of personal compromise that happens when a powerful man decides that a woman belongs to him.  It’s a story that’s squelching and awful in the best way (think Don Delillo when he starts being mean to his characters), and serves as a cautionary tale to set the tone and remind us of the tension inherent in the stories to come, even as they play out without the kind of clear sense of danger that “Quality of Life” has.  Here, Sneed demonstrates a knack for revealing her characters without letting us know she’s revealing them—the mysterious Mr. Fulger makes a point of sticking around to see a would-be thief get his due, saying “I’m sure this isn’t his first offense.  He knew what he was doing.  But obviously so did I.”  A statement like this puts a character into sharp focus, and Sneed makes the most of moments like this one.

The writing is pretty keen throughout, but I’d like to single out the beginning paragraph of “Twelve + Twelve” as one of my favorites of my past year of reading, a bitter little firecracker screed that put me right where I needed to be in the story:

Someone in the alley three stories below my window was calling out to someone else and what he was saying was not very nice.  Maybe he did it because we were all stuck in an ugly, listless March, ice visible everywhere and clinging to our lawns like a dense gray scum.  We were exhausted and cynical under cloudy skies, our pants cuffs perpetually caked in grit and mud, our car tires spinning and spinning on snow-choked streets.  No one I knew was outside digging up the flower beds, and certainly no one was in the mood to offer spare coins to strangers distractedly ransacking their pockets for change to feed the meters.  Instead, people were talking heatedly into mobile phones or looking down at their feet as they trudged, these unloved husbands and crash-dieters and stubborn musicians and disbarred lawyers who all huddled in on themselves because among their other hardships, winter hadn’t yet ended and at this near-unendurable point, they just couldn’t look each other in the face.

There’s this great, desperate energy when Sneed gets cracking that I like a lot, and it runs throughout “Twelve + Twelve,” which was perhaps my favorite in the collection.

You’re So Different, concerning a famous director returning home to her high school reunion, is another standout.  So too is the title story.  I hesitate to say that these stories are all about people realizing their own powerlessness, because that would make it seem like Sneed’s characters don’t have agency (and let me tell you, they do), but they are about what we can’t control, what we have to give up, and how other people define us.  One of the frequent conversations we have about stories here at UNT is if the kind of stories you find in literary journals are flat, mechanical, or boring.  It’s a real danger, but it comes with a real reward, as the best “literary journal” fiction contains a truth you’re not going to find anywhere else, and Sneed’s book proves that point.

If the stories seem to go a little slack in the back half of the book, it’s only because of what’s come before.  The arrangement of a short story collection is always a dicey affair (I personally hold to the “crap sandwich” as the best approach, where the good stuff goes on the outsides), and maybe shuffling the deck a little would benefit the book; regardless, the ten stories in Portraits of a Few People I’ve Made Cry reveal a voice that we should be paying attention to.

What I'm saying is that I spend a lot of time as the assistant fiction editor sorting through the slush pile, and yeah, there are gems, but there's also a lot of chaff (and many, many mixed metaphors).  The rest of my time is spent plowing through Tolstoy or Carver or whichever other old hat established writer I haven't gotten around to before now.  So coming across a book like this, full of solidly-plotted, well-written stories by an up-and-comer with a clarity of vision that seems rarer and rarer in the contemporary short story… well, it's a nice feeling is all, and if I had my way Sneed's book wouldn't find its way back to Miro; instead, it would slide into a place on my shelf between George Saunders and John Steinbeck, not too far away from Lorrie Moore, Mary Gaitskill, and Alice Munro, deserving its place.

Final Graduate Student Reading!

Please join us this Friday at Banter Coffee Shop for our final graduate student reading of the semester.  If what you crave in the libinal pit of your desire-deprived stomach is nothing less than an evening of white-knuckled thrills, swashbuckling adventure, and heart-pounding eroticism, then let me tell you something factual: ALR wants to satisfy you. 

And in addition to our orgasmic casserole of original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry by UNT graduate students, if you show up early then perhaps we'll let you participate in the ALR reading party!  Help us proof the new Spring 2011 issue, in which your name shall thus be inkly inscribed forerevermore, and get a line on that pesky, barren joke of a CV whose desolate blankness you've thus far been so painfully ashamed of!  The American Literary Review wants you to feel good about yourself and your place in this mad, mad world!

ALR proofreading party - 5:30-7:00

Student Reading Series - 7:00

• Andy Briseño - fiction
• Emily Allen - poetry
• Matthew Davis - fiction

See you there!

Happy Thanksgiving! We brought blankets!

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful* for our production editor Tim Boswell, who seemed very weary in the office today.  Last week, faced with the fact that the ALR reading for that night was going to be all fiction readers due to a scheduling snafu (he makes the schedule so blame him), and knowing that his slot was right in the middle of that reading when the audience's good will and attention spans would both be waning, he did what any true American hero would do: he wrote a choose-your-own-adventure dinner theater piece called The Crying of a Lot of 49 Year Olds.  We all got parts.  We got to do voices.  Some of us realized halfway through that we, specifically, were probably being mocked, but we were having so much fun that we didn't care.  It was pretty great, and I dare each and every one of you to do something half as ridiculous the next time you give a reading.  We all take ourselves far too seriously.


*I am also thankful for a day of reading books and playing fallout without feeling terribly guilty afterwards.  It's exceedingly rare.

Masters of the Typewriter, Doctors of the Whip

Elif Batuman's provocative article, "Get a Real Degree," in September's issue of the London Review of Books has produced even more pencil-gnawing in the MFA blogosphere than usual. Batuman's opening premise, "Even within the seemingly homogeneous sphere of the university English department, a schism has opened up between literary scholarship and creative writing," is one that us weirdos in Creative Writing-English PhD programs might immediately shelve in the "no-duh" section of our mental libraries. We are all too familiar with this schismy schism; with one foot in Creative Writing and another foot in the Literature, we try not to think about a full-blown case of departmental war breaking out where the two intersect.

But Batuman goes on to offer a brilliant critique of Mark McGurl's The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing. McGurl's book proposes to interpret the rise of the MFA program "not as an occasion for praise or lamentation but as an established fact in need of historical interpretation." Batuman uses McGurl's dry aims as a springboard for her own deliciously unambivalent inquiry into institutionalization's effect on American fiction. While some of Batuman's critiques of program-fiction are stale (making fun of "show-don't tell" is now as ubiquitous as the slogan itself) her fearless dive into the shark-filled waters of the socio-political-grievance-novel is breathtaking to observe, not least because you are waiting for a team of politically correct white men to swim over and club her over the head with accusations of insensitivity or worse.

To get the full brilliance of Batuman's walk through this minefield, you really need to read the article, but for a taste, consider her take on McGurl's dialectic between Raymond Carver and Joyce Carol Oates, which Batuman uses to launch the question of "Who is the real outcast?" What she's really talking about here is program-fiction's preference for the narrative of the outsider. The problem, for Batuman, is that programs often tell their writing students that one can only be an outsider (and therefore fiction writer) by virtue of one's minority class, race, gender, religion, personal history of war or trauma, etc. According to Batuman, the my-life-is-worse-than-yours-contest between fiction writers is like:

"a hot-dog eating contest between a human and a grizzly bear. Is the real outcast the professor's grieving widow alone in the empty house in the college town, or the paranoid Bosnian graduate student threatened with deportation? Which estranged cousin is the real outcast: the German girl who survived Auschwitz and became a successful but caustic solitary anthropology professor; or the American girl who narrowly avoided being murdered by her own father, then became a good wife and mother, but ended up getting cancer?"

Batuman's argues that the real cause of this preference for outsider-narrative is "shame," specifically, the shame of the profession of writing:

"Literary writing is inherently elitist and impractical. It doesn't directly cure disease, combat injustice...Because writing is suspected to be narcissistic and wasteful, it must be 'disciplined' by the program--as McGurl documents with a 1941 promotional photo of Paul Engle, then director of the Iowa workshop, seated at a desk with a typewriter and a large whip."

At this point in Batuman's article, I was thinking, "Enter nonfiction to the rescue!" Nonfiction doesn't cure cancer either, but it can draw the reader's attention toward cancer in a way that fiction cannot. While novels can offer a heightened reality that nonfiction can't always achieve, at the end of the day, real cancer is, well, real. Indeed, Batuman goes on to mention the "gap in quality between American literary fiction and non-fiction today." (Guess which is of better quality!) But as an example, Batuman points to This American Life--nonfiction, sure, but is a radio/TV program really the only example of great nonfiction she can come up with? Batuman is clearly brilliant and a pleasure to read, but I was disappointed when she dropped her line of inquiry right when she got to nonfiction--an obvious antidote to at least some of the problems she has argued inherent in program-fiction. Hey Batuman! Over here, in the nonfiction section! The nonfiction novel is waving at you! The memoir is jumping up and down, trying to get your attention! The Personal Essay just Facebook-friended you! Over in this section, we don't worry about all this false-ventriloquism of the artificial outsider. We declare who we are at the door! I'll be writing a memoir from the perspective of Jessica Hindman, who is many things, but has never been and will never be a pregnant Vietnamese woman (unlike, say, Robert Olen Butler). If I want to know what a pregnant Vietnamese woman's life is like, I'll go find one and ask her. Then I'll transcribe my notes and begin the same narrative craft process that fiction writers undertake, with slightly different rules.

Some would say that the memoir is facing similar problems in terms of privileging outsider narratives (indeed, during a recent Q&A at UNT, Kathryn Harrison said something along these lines) but I still believe nonfiction allows an escape from the smell of shame emanating off the pages of outsider narratives ventriloquized by insiders (Batuman's looking at you, Dave Eggers!). But as Batuman points out, even Eggers began as an outsider (in his trauma memoir), and his fiction increasingly reads like nonfiction.

So why not just write nonfiction? Given the shame that, as Batuman argues, writers feel about their elitism, isn't it better to state it up front as nonfiction requires (see Adrian Nicole LeBlanc's Random Family and Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks - both nonfiction masterpieces concerning black life written by white women who don't/can't disguise their whiteness) rather than smuggle it under the skimpy blanket that fiction writers call "creativity" (see James Franco's debut. You know, James Franco - that total outsider who writes about slavery). Isn't it more interesting to know that even the James Francos of the world understand, or at least want to understand, all this outsideryness? Is there any reason we need to fictionalize these narratives? Personally, I think Mary Karr's voice rings truest in the debate over nonfiction's relationship to fiction: "God is in the truth." If made-up stuff can no longer express truth, then why not give the old truthy-truth a go?

But regardless of whether program-writers deal in fiction or nonfiction, my biggest contention with Batuman's examination of shame in the writing-program world is that I believe this shame is somewhat well-justified. Whether you're a student on Planet MFA or Planet PhD - the classrooms of each are, yes, shamefully lacking a representative number of students of color, students from working-class backgrounds, students from rural areas. For this and many other reasons, we Creative Writing PhDs should heed Batuman's article as a call to arms: We know the typewriter, we know the whip - it would be shameful if we didn't write about both.

On doldrums and telling yourself that a fallow period is good for you and not getting super anxious about how if you don't write something great you will die unremembered and alone

Lately, I have felt like one of those inbred dogs that fall to pieces too young, their bad hips a mystery to the children they were brought into the home to please. I loll useless in the corner and make up overwrought metaphors is what I’m saying. I hope I’m not alone in this feeling—I hope it is something universal to the writing life, where so much of who you are and who you want to be are squirreled away into words, the value of which are decided far down the line by strangers who don’t really know your pain and how very very special it is.

I know I must have some modicum of talent, given that sometimes I get a nice email from a stranger who’s read my book, and perhaps once in awhile I get stopped on campus by someone who heard me read somewhere, but I never feel sure of it. How do you get there? How do you arrive at the self-assured charging ahead that seems to be a necessity in this crushing business? These questions press down on me more when I don't have something compelling to write about, which, lately, I don't.  I am always haunted by the words of Flannery O’Connor (that sassy bitch): “Everywhere I go I'm asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don't stifle enough of them. There's many a best-seller that could have been prevented by a good teacher.” I keep thinking that I will turn some corner or walk into some room and find that all my colleagues and professors are seated around a plate of cookies. Dr. Phil is there, and he tells me I should have a seat, these people want to talk to me about something, about how I’m hurting their lives, about how they have a way that I can get well.

What can I say? I am often a bummer. This post is not meant as a bummer, though. It is meant as a hopeful, timid proclamation of solidarity. I am saying to you, dear reader, dear Imaginary Audience: “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing, but I’m doing it.” And you can take that with you as a token that what we do is worth doing, or you can look at this and say, “Well, at least I’m not a walking whiny joke like this dude over here” and get by a little better for it.  Either way, I did my best to help.

Upcoming Events, Wonders

I think somewhere in our talks about blogging there was mention of including local events and happenings. Last night Beard and I went to TEX gallery. I read a story about adulterous priests. One of the readers read prose poems while smearing cake all over herself. It was Kullberg's birthday. Colin Winette was in town. It was awesome.

In light of that, I decided to take up the baton of promoting these other awesome literary events which will soon be happening right here in lil d.

First, Sherman Alexie is reading on Thursday. Plus you can go to an "exclusive" Q&A session with him before the reading. Everyone likes things that are exclusive. I learned that from the movie about the facebook.

Also, there is a really cool series of events called The Narrative Arc that's going to be put on by the New Media department. They are looking for readers for the final event on Friday, November 12th.

Below are all of the details for these events. I hope to see everyone there. Happy fall!

-Hillary

Opportunity to meet writer Sherman Alexie:

We still have spots available at a small pre-lecture discussion this Thursday with writer Sherman Alexie. You must sign up in advance to attend. The event is free.

Details: 5:30 discussion on Thursday, 10/28 in Silver Eagle Suite (must sign up in advance), reading is at 7:30 in same location

This is a wonderful opportunity for creative writers at UNT. If you are interested in attending, send your name and student ID to Professor Foertsch today. http://us.mc654.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=Jacqueline.Foertsch@unt.edu

Asst. Professor in New Media Jenny Vogel is asking for fiction, nonfiction, or poetry students to read for five or ten minutes on Friday November 12 at UNT on the Square. This is an impressive idea to explore the complexities of narrative in multiple forms and a variety of objects.

If you're interested in reading (and adding a useful line on the CV), please email Professor Vogel at jenny.vogel@unt.edu. She's curating the event.


UNT on the Square presents:

THE NARRATIVE ARC

November 1 – November 12
Opening Reception: Tuesday Nov 2, 5-7PM

UNT on the Square, 109 N. Elm St, Denton, TX 76201

Hours: Mon –Wed 9-5; Thurs 9-8, Fri 9-5, Sat 11-3 (closed for lunch from 12-1)

It's a lucky man who can say "when," "before" and "after."
- Robert Musil "Man Without Qualities," 1930

Narratives are based on a sequence of events, no matter how improbable, "as long as it sets off an emotional tick, to which subsequent episode can provide an answering tock." This suggests that narratives not only rely on sequencing or stringing together cause and effect, but also on our perception or misperception of relationships or dependencies within the episodes. How can this understanding of sequences and a continuation of plot through textual strings be translated into images and objects? What kind of structures can replace the words, sentences and paragraphs to experience narration in a visual context?

The moving image, the graphic novel, or digital art might be the most obvious media where both text and image collide, providing a bridge between the two disciplines. But if narratives are also established through our ability to read dependencies between two or more parts, then stories can emerge from spatial relationships, complex layering of material and meaning, or the artistic process itself.

The artists in this exhibition address the questions raised above, while challenging the conventions of visualizing story.

Artists featured in this exhibition:
Patryce Bak, Ofri Cnaani, Ellie Ga, Sven Johne, Ezra Johnson, Selena Kimball, Ellie Krakow, Dave Mishalanie, Joshua Sanchez, Julie West
and UNT New Media Art students.

Events related to the exhibition:

Tuesday, November 2nd, 5-7PM
Opening Reception

Friday, November 5th, 5-9PM-
First Friday Denton Gallery event with live-cinema projections by UNT New Media Art students

Thursday November 11th, 7-9PM
Exhibition artist Ellie Ga will perform The Fortune Tellers, a performative lecture about her experiences on board the Tara, a sailboat drifting in the frozen pack ice in the Arctic Ocean.

Friday November 12th, 5-6:30PM
Reading by UNT Creative Writing students

This Poem Tastes Funny

Recently, I received a package in the mail from a professor at my MFA program. It's a poster advertising a reading to celebrate 25 years of the Tom McGrath Visiting Writers Series. The reader, looking thoughtful with a stem of glasses on his lips, is Billy Collins.

I laughed when I unrolled the poster. I don't like Billy Collins. I mean, I really don't like Billy Collins. I'm sure every poet in my MFA program knew that I was adamantly against Collins' brand of poetry (I know the professor who sent me the poster knew—he was my thesis chair). If they didn't know, they could read about it—the first section of my thesis is partly devoted to critiquing Collins, particularly his use of humor.

Now, I'm not saying that Collins' is “wrong” in his use of humor or anything like that. My argument revolves around the idea that he really doesn't try as hard as he could. Sure, a reader could interpret one of his poems in x amount of ways, but one, I think, doesn't really have to apply themselves too much to “get it.” In my research for my brief discussion of Collins, I came across an interview where he said that “poetry should be transparent” and that “there's an awful lot of bad poetry...about 87 percent of the poetry in America is not worth reading.” One can assume anything that is not transparent, not easy to get on the first read, not difficult to understand, is not worth reading. Well, that's excluding an awful lot.

What Collins' does not talk about, and what seems to get lost in a lot of discussion about “good” and “bad” poetry, is taste. The literary theory class I'm in pokes at my brain and makes me want to ask, “But, does taste really exist?” And yes, it does. It has to exist. If there were no such thing as taste, Collins would love that 87% of poetry he currently dislikes. If there were no taste, I would like Collins' poetry.

But where does taste come from? How do I know what I like and what I don't? Saying, “I like making the familiar unfamiliar,” is true, but, that seems to be Collins' modus operandi too, though there are different results. Can I just say that my gut tells me what I like? Can I say that growing up in “flyover country” makes my imagination work harder? I don't know. These are questions I can't answer.

I don't know how many poems in the world I'd call “awful,” but I don't think 87% is close. I couldn't even count that number of poems. Collins' taste must be narrow in scope though if 87% are not worth reading. 87% of people who buy poetry from chain bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble and Borders, probably buy Collins' books. He has broken sales records for poetry (I know, this is hard to believe, it's poetry after all). Every time I have been to a chain bookstore, I have seen Collins' name staring at me from a handful of book spines. My professor told me over 400 people came to hear Collins' read. Almost every reading I attended while I was a MFA student, there were around 25 people, maximum. Does this mean I have bad taste? Am I missing something here?

I will give Collins credit though—I am happy that poetry is still being read other than by those of us in the Academy or graduate students in English. One of the things that poetry, or literature for that matter should do, is entertain. Many people are entertained by Collins' poems. That's especially telling today, where electronic media dominates the entertainment landscape.

So, I'm going to put the poster up in my cubicle. I'm not sure what my professor told Collins about me, if anything, or if he read my thesis introduction. Collins was nice enough to sign it though, in what appears as a cheerful scribble. This reminds me that I stole a poem idea from Collins and even got the poem published. I hope it's the most awful poem ever written.

The heartbreaking job of the assistant fiction editor

What am I doing?  I'll tell you what I'm doing.  I'm reading stories, whittling down the list of great ones until what's left are the really great ones that will have a shot at being in our latest issue.  And I don't want to be doing this, man.  I want to be in bed, or writing, or reading a book, or something.  I have my postcolonialism class in the morning with Dr. Raja (who, it should be noted, is able to run down a hundred years of Western thought in the space of forty-five minutes while his students sit there, at once aghast and amazed), there's a stack of grading to be done on my desk that has gone rancid from sitting there too long, I haven't been to the gym in a few weeks and am becoming unacceptably fat and sluggish, and--let's face it--Halo isn't going to play itself.  But I'm here, reading stories, making ugly decisions I don't want to make.

I wrote a story last semester about a guy who had my job who started writing odd, personal notes back to the submitters.  The guy in my story is a navel-gazer, one of those sad sacks that young men from Brooklyn tend to write about, and in writing it I was trying to work my way through the way this impersonal yet personal connection between the guy who is in charge of reading his way through the pile and the person who has sent their little measure of hope to him along with a SASE is in many ways a horrible bummer.  My job as arbiter and gatekeeper makes me the enemy.  I am the faceless jerk who says, "No, I don't think so."  And then, I toss it carelessly into the rejection box.  Carelessly!  Now, I am up late reading stories that I genuinely like and trying to decide if I genuinely like them enough, weighing them against the other ones, knowing that my decisions will ultimately be this many blows to this many egos. 

The upside is that I've read some great things so far, and I'm going to continue reading great things.  So many times over the past few weeks, something has come along in a story that has knocked me flat on my ass.  Just now, it happened again.  Every time this happens, I want to call the number on the cover letter, I want to ring someone up at this late hour and say, "Hey, look, I don't care what happens from here on out, but this one sentence, right here on page 4.  Hell, you've done it."

I probably shouldn't do that, though.  We have a reputation.  We are respectable.  I am prone to gush and am not that great at the whole extemporaneous phone conversation thing.  The awkward humanist, in love with everybody.  And of course, what does a phone call like that mean if your story doesn't end up making it through the next round?  What good then is that one sentence, that self-contained gut-punch of a sentence that woke me up and reminded me why I write in the first place?  The person on the other end would be right to feel cheated.

And... that's quite a rant, I guess.  What I mean is that I love my job, in part because I hate my job.  Keep sending me your stories.  I'll try my best to like them hard enough.