This requires a bit of explanation. Back when I was posting my reviews of all the stories in Interfictions, I missed this one. Only lately did a few shrewd readers notice this and call me on it. At their behest, here it is. With apologies for the chronological dementedness.

“Alternate Anxieties”
Karen Jordan Allen

In the Afterword, Theodora Goss mentions this as one of the first stories she recognized as interstitial. And it is, in a very literal sense: it’s part-way between a story and the notes for a story (and/or the notes for a philosophical essay?). To me, it reads like a personal journal entry—somewhat self-indulgent, thoughts and ideas recorded for the purpose of catharsis rather than that of telling a good story. At times, the fragmented structure (numbered outlines, incomplete sentences, a lot of line breaks) meant I had to force myself not to skim. This is the challenge and the danger of this sort of experimentation in fiction: there’s always the chance of going too far, knocking readers out of the story. For me, though, the structure was only part of what contributed to that effect. The ideas involved—parallel universes, decision trees crippled by postmodern self-evaluation and unhealthy paranoia—didn’t do much to inspire me. Possibly this was because they rang a little too true.

Anxiety and self-doubt are touchy subjects, and Allen deserves respect for having the guts to lay hers out there with such frankness. (I acknowledge the possibility that this isn’t an autobiographical piece of fiction, but expect that’s not the case. Maybe it’s presumptive, but I think to write about self-doubt in such depth as this necessitates having experienced it at least once.) However, it’s because these subjects are so touchy for me personally that my reaction to them in this story was so negative. I think of Notes from Underground, a similarly bleak and even despairing work, which, when I read it, both blew my mind and angered me intensely at the same time, and which, while I was duly impressed and influenced by it, I will never read again. Why not? Because part of its influence on me was to make me wish from the bottom of my being never to become the Underground Man. How does one avoid becoming mired in self-doubt? By choosing not to wallow in it; part of which, for me, means not seeking out the type of fiction which addresses it. Not that I haven’t read and even written my share of circular-reasoning, postmodern fiction. But in every one of those stories (a total of three I can think of offhand), the object was to break the circular reasoning, to find motivation or excuse to move on with my life and accomplish something, rather than wallowing in indecisiveness and misery. “Alternate Anxieties” doesn’t seem to be about that, and in that respect, it leaves me with the unpleasant feeling of being stuck in a rut, spinning my wheels, but only getting stuck deeper.

With the kind participation of some wonderful writers, I have cobbled together a podcast of the INTERFICTIONS story teasers that were performed aloud at Readercon 18.

The December episode, featuring “Pallas at Noon” by Joy Marchand, is the last of them. Further story teasers shall have to wait until I attend another reading!

Subscribe using RSS

Or use your RSS reader’s subscribe feature to add the following URL: http://mjd.joskinandlob.com/podcasts/interfictionspodcasts.xml

To subscribe with iTunes, choose “Subscribe to Podcast…” from the Advanced menu and paste in the above URL, or click below to visit the INTERFICTIONS Podcast page at the iTunes Store:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=263967559

Links to the MP3s podcast thus far (right-click to download):
“Pallas at Noon” – Joy Marchand (5.5 Mb)
“The Utter Proximity of God” – Michael J. DeLuca (7.0 Mb)
“Hunger” – Vandana Singh (7.5 Mb)
“Black Feather” – K. Tempest Bradford (8.4 Mb)
“A Dirge for Prester John” – Catherynne M. Valente (7.9 Mb)

Enjoy!

With the kind participation of some wonderful writers, I have cobbled together a podcast of the INTERFICTIONS story teasers that were performed aloud at Readercon 18.

The November episode features, well, me–Michael J. DeLuca.

Subscribe using RSS

Or use your RSS reader’s subscribe feature to add the following URL: http://mjd.joskinandlob.com/podcasts/interfictionspodcasts.xml

To subscribe with iTunes, choose “Subscribe to Podcast…” from the Advanced menu and paste in the above URL, or click below to visit the INTERFICTIONS Podcast page at the iTunes Store:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=263967559

Links to the MP3s podcast thus far (right-click to download):
“The Utter Proximity of God” – Michael J. DeLuca (7.0 Mb)
“Hunger” – Vandana Singh (7.5 Mb)
“Black Feather” – K. Tempest Bradford (8.4 Mb)
“A Dirge for Prester John” – Catherynne M. Valente (7.9 Mb)

Enjoy!

With the kind participation of some wonderful writers, I have cobbled together a podcast of the INTERFICTIONS story teasers that were performed aloud at Readercon 18.

The October episode features Vandana Singh’s “Hunger”.

Subscribe using RSS

Or use your RSS reader’s subscribe feature to add the following URL: http://mjd.joskinandlob.com/podcasts/interfictionspodcasts.xml

To subscribe with iTunes, choose “Subscribe to Podcast…” from the Advanced menu and paste in the above URL, or click below to visit the INTERFICTIONS Podcast page at the iTunes Store:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=263967559

Links to the MP3s podcast thus far (right-click to download):
“Hunger” – Vandana Singh (7.5 Mb)
“Black Feather” – K. Tempest Bradford (8.4 Mb)
“A Dirge for Prester John” – Catherynne M. Valente (7.9 Mb)

Enjoy!

With the kind participation of some wonderful writers, I have cobbled together a podcast of the INTERFICTIONS story teasers that were performed aloud at Readercon 18.

The first episodes include Catherynne M. Valente’s “A Dirge for Prester John” and K. Tempest Bradford’s “Black Feather”. New episodes will follow monthly.

Subscribe using RSS

Or use your RSS reader’s subscribe feature to add the following URL: http://mjd.joskinandlob.com/podcasts/interfictionspodcasts.xml

To subscribe with iTunes, choose “Subscribe to Podcast…” from the Advanced menu and paste in the above URL, or click below to visit the INTERFICTIONS Podcast page at the iTunes Store:
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=263967559

Links to the MP3s for this month are here (right-click to download):
prester_john_tease.mp3 (7.9 Mb)
black_feather_tease.mp3 (8.4 Mb)

Enjoy!

In a concerted effort to improve my functionality as a shameless self-promoter, I am turning over a new leaf: telling people about things involving me before they happen.

I am going to be at Readercon next weekend (July 5th – 8th). That wouldn’t be anything new, except that for the first time I’ll be appearing in a non-fanboy capacity. No, seriously. It’s not like my name is going to show up on the participants list or anything, but I do get to take part in an Interfictions discussion panel AND an Interfictions fiction reading. Yeah. Crazy. I don’t quite know what to do with myself.

Matter of fact maybe you all can advise me. The people in charge tell me I can read anything I want that I think has interstitial qualities. Now, I’ve already given a reading of an “The Utter Proxmity of God” teaser, and sooner or later a much better-quality version of that teaser is going to show up on the Interfictions blog as part of a podcast series. I love reading aloud, and it seems a shame not to take this glorious opportunity to read something else, something new. But anything else I read will be an unpublished story…unless I read one of those two semipro things I sold ages ago and everybody forgot about. So do I just read “The Utter Proximity of God” again or what?

MassLive.com (website of the Springfield Republican newspaper) has posted recordings from the Artifacts reading…including my own. I am somewhat wierded out by the fact that I didn’t have to do anything to cause this to occur. Then again, I can’t actually get the recording to work. Plugin missing or some such nonsense. But here’s the article if anybody wants to make the effort:

http://blog.masslive.com/soundcheck/2007/05/winterpills_small_beer_press_j.html

I particularly recommend the Paul Park thing: a whacked-out alt-historical premise with satirical wit and beautiful description.

I realize that most likely, if you read this blog, you don’t live near me, and vice-versa. But just in case:

Tomorrow night, Thursday, May 17th at 7 PM, I will be participating in a series of fiction readings at Artifacts, a new gallery at 28 North Maple Street in Florence, MA. Other (much better) participants include Jedediah Berry, Elizabeth Hand, Paul Park and John Crowley (see Gavin Grant’s complete announcement about it from the Small Beer blog).

I’ll be reading a teaser excerpt from my Interfictions story, “The Utter Proximity of God”. Which I will spend tonight practicing profusely, so as not to screw it up.

Today, April 30th, is the official release date for the Interfictions anthology. I just reviewed eighteen interstitial stories in (some close approximation of) eighteen days. Phew! I am exhausted. Can’t say I’m sad it’s over, either. Don’t get me wrong–I really enjoyed doing this, I learned a lot, and I’m still not sure what I’m going to read with breakfast now that I’m out of interstitial stories–but when I started this, I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

“The Utter Proximity of God” was my first pro sale ever. I was wildly excited. I wanted people to read it! What better way to build anticipation, I thought, than to take advantage of my advance reader copy and post a whole bunch of reviews? Also bubbling up and over in the unwatched pasta-pot that is my head was the question of what it meant that this, my first pro sale, had been chosen for a place among the eerie and intriguing “interstitial”. I’ve often used my blog to puzzle out this sort of thing–once, I spent several months and several thousand words attempting to convince myself it was all right for me to try writing magic realism. I figured this interstitial mystery wouldn’t be much different.

It wasn’t until the politely-worded metaphors for severely injuring myself started rolling in from all quarters that the realization hit. With my snazzy new WordPress technology flinging links to my blog far and wide, and a brand-new, breaking-news, cutting-edge anthology to blog about, the writers I was reviewing, in every likelihood, would find their way here and read what I’d written!

“First, I’m gonna blow his toes off.
::boom::
There go his toes.” –Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels

After that it was all I could do to keep from running in unholy terror from the whole idea. I managed it somehow–told myself I would just feel like more of an idiot if I quit in the middle. And I know it’s too late to take back now, and maybe the whole notion was suicidally misguided from the outset, and maybe I’ll never sell another story as long as I live…but I think I’m still glad I went through with it.

Of the eighteen stories in the Interfictions anthology, I was genuinely impressed by fifteen, absolutely loved nine, was bowled over with jealousy and admiration of five, and found zero to be a waste of my time. That is hands-down the best record for any collection of stories by more than one author I’ve ever read–magazine, anthology or otherwise. Which is saying a lot. It means, whether or not I manage to write another interstitial story ever again, that I like reading interstitial fiction–that in fact, I prefer interstitial fiction to any of its mundane genre-adherent alternatives. I want there to be more interstitial fiction, frankly, and less of everything else. To that effect, I think I’m done trying to decide what is and what isn’t. As AsphaltEden pointed out in a discussion of the Interfictions cover art, names and definitions are traditionally assigned to a movement in art only externally, from a critical perspective, long after the movement is established. It’s almost a shame that Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman ever had to cross that boundary, to try to identify (and thus isolate) what they do in the work of others. Art doesn’t need borders–only the distribution of it does.

Another great thing I’ve learned in the course of my bumbling: interstitial writers are reasonable, thoughtful people, inward-looking, capable of recognizing their own flaws and forgiving them in others because it’s the flaws that drive them to write what they write.

Hmm. There were other things I meant to get to here…something about the function of experimentation in fiction, the balance between strangeness and familiarity? But this is getting long, so I think I’ll leave that for comments, and end with the index, for those people getting their copies and wanting to know what I’m babbling about.

My eighteen Interfictions Reviews:
“What We Know About the Lost Families of — House” Christopher Barzak
“The Shoes in SHOES’ Window” Anna Tambour
“Post Hoc” Leslie What
“Pallas at Noon” Joy Marchand
“Willow Pattern” Jon Singer
“Black Feather” K. Tempest Bradford
“A Drop of Raspberry” Csilla Kleinheincz, translated from the Hungarian by Noémi Szelényi
“The Utter Proximity of God” Michael J. DeLuca
“Burning Beard: the Dreams and Visions of Joseph Ben Jacob, Viceroy of Egypt” Rachel Pollack
“Rats” Veronica Schanoes
“Climbing Redemption Mountain” Mikal Trimm
“Timothy” Colin Greenland
“Hunger” Vandana Singh
“A Map of the Everywhere” Matthew Cheney
“Emblemata” Léa Sihol, translated from the French by Sarah Smith
“When It Rains, You’d Better Get Out of Ulga” Adrián Ferrero, translated from the Spanish by Edo Mor
“Queen of the Butterfly Kingdom” Holly Phillips
“A Dirge for Prester John” Catherynne M. Valente

“A Dirge for Prester John”
Catherynne M. Valente

I have to admit I went into this story with a general feeling of dread. I have read Catherynne Valente’s work before, and even heard her read aloud. I had formed the opinion that she writes with more attention to how words sound than what they mean. Style over substance. And this story certainly supports those earlier impressions. As far as phantasmagorias go, “Dirge” gives “A Map of the Everywhere” a run for its money: style-heavy, ponderously lyrical and at times just plain freaky. Both her vocabulary and her menagerie of mythical monsters are daunting. I’ve noticed, in this and other of her works, a strange, obsessive romance with words for gemstones; in particular an unhealthy appreciation for ‘onyx’ and ‘chalcedony’. She also seems to like things that are creepy-crawly and erotic at the same time. Can’t say I’m with her there, either.

That said, having struggled past her decadent, indulgent prose and nightmarish, erotic imagery, I was pleasantly surprised to find quite a depth of meaning in “A Dirge for Prester John”. I find it has a lot of the same innocently predatory sensibilities of Through the Looking Glass, but with a less tyrannical protagonist, who ends up getting destroyed by his fantasy world, rather than destroying it. And, you know, a little bit of poignant sex between a priest and a lady with no head thrown in for flavor. A medieval holy man, lost in a hellish world of illuminated manuscript marginalia-come-true, finds comfort in the familiarity of ritual. Hell’s fantastic citizens pity him his inflexible worldview while doing their best to accommodate it. And from that perspective–that of an alien culture observing the tragic collapse of the lonely imperialist–the decadent prose really does serve the story’s purpose. It makes the world surrounding John seem even stranger, and allows us to react to his slow adaptation simultaneously with sympathy and disbelief. This story fills me with newfound respect for Catherynne Valente–and I think those of you who shared my original opinion would do well to give it a try.

…though I have to admit I still don’t get the section headings. Some kind of astrological reference? No idea.