That's Big Boy, who came with the Key West condo in which we stayed two Januaries ago.
1. My "Mr. Cat" appears in the new Mississippi Review as part of a selection of flash fictions edited by Kim Chinquee. Among the writers in the issue: Diane Williams, Mary Akers, Randall Brown, Kathy Fish, Tiff Holland, Meg Pokrass. Excellent company.
2. The last time my work appeared in the Mississippi Review was twenty years ago with a very early story titled "Radar." The story evolved from the first chapter of a novel--what I call my "first" first novel, Bad Florida--that I eventually put away. These pages were written in 1988 for my first workshop at Iowa with T.C. Boyle. It's funny to see my obsessions playing out all the way back then. Failed housing developments, subtropical plants, swamps, Florida, identity anxiety, rootlessness, homelessness--all there. Funny, too, to think of how the two pieces talk back to each other. A long time, and no time at all. Twenty years.
6 comments:
I enjoyed reading your Radar story Paul. It's poignant and captures the experience of a ten year old boy, a misunderstood ten your old boy very well.
Have you read the Australian writer Sonya Hartnett's novel 'Of a Boy'. Your story here reminds me in some ways of the story of Hartnett's 9 year old Adrian.
See: http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/24/1061663661895.html
Adrian's story is bleak beyond measure though so beautifully written, the writing redeems his story from its despair.
There's more hope in your story, I think. Your boy Red seems to me as though he will survive even against the odds.
Thanks for providing the link to Radar here, Paul. You write beautifully.
Kitty! So handsome.
Paul, I love love love "Radar" - I've not read it before. If I ever go back to teaching it will be on my syllabus. Sending the link to some friends.
Thank you so much, Elisabeth--I'll check out Sonya Hartnett's novel. I don't know of her work. Thanks, too, for passing on the link.
I should mention that when I wrote this story, I tried to make myself laugh in the writing of it. Aspects of it still seem funny to me, but the darkness of the family is clearer to me now. What some years will do.
But you're right: Red will get out and go on.
Matthew! No nicer compliment--thank you so much. I hope your writing is going well. P.
radar is terrific. i love it when a story puts us inside the life of a young boy or a girl, so we can look out onto the world and be reminded how isolated kids can be.
Thanks very much, Nancy!
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