Dear coal man, 90% of my fiction is autobiographical… OK, maybe 89%, but Sourpuss is only 27% autobiographical. What Harwick refers to as the "tenor of the times," is simply a reflection of my on-the-ground reporting from Planet San Francisco. I remember being at a writer's workshop a couple of years ago when a guy read his poem called, “The Bipolar Seagull” about a bird who soared in the sky but hopped around clumsily on land. Someone said the word "bipolar" can’t be used in this way because (as I understood it) the word becomes insulting and hurtful to actual bipolar people when used outside a clinical context. That seemed like a ridiculous remark to me, and even though I thought the poem was kind of dumb, I tried to defend the guy’s language. “He’s using it as a metaphor," I said. “It’s a contrast he observed. And anyway, why can’t a poet use any word he wants to however he wants to? It’s poetry for christsakes, not a corporate news release. I felt pretty passionate about my position and I tried to express it before the ten or fifteen people who were there and nobody, zero person, agreed with me. The consensus was that the poem needed to be changed to avoid this perceived insult or social faux pas. The people I'm speaking of were self-described creative writers of poetry and fiction, living in modern day San Francisco. That, and similar experiences I’ve had with “incorrect speech” are what led me to write Sourpuss. So, to that extent, the story really is autobiographical.
Yes, exactly what I mean.. I would have bet the family farm on your 'sourpuss' rejoinder to the thought police. Is it ironic that the PC Police have spawned the Anti-Woke Militia ? It's Jerry Falwell 2.0 Further irony? - your stance is actually 'moderate'. What's happening to language when liars are simply proposing 'alternate facts' and plain speaking is 'political'? I suppose, in 'our' contemporary victim olympics the great confusion (hallucination?) is between conflict and 'abuse' and between 'political' and righteous.
But, you know, it seems like I need to explain the meaning of this story to certain people, which means I didn't express problem as well as I thought I did. (And thank you for bringing this up!) I have a couple of friends who refuse to comment on this site but send me emails. One guy said he liked how "Abigail was willing to lose points to speak the truth. And Harwick needed to be nudged off his pedestal." Of course I wanted Abby to be a sympathetic character, someone who wants the best for her son, etc., but I was surprised to find out she won the philosophical argument in my friend's mind. At the aforementioned writer's workshop which I took an early draft of this story to a long while ago, the moderator summed it up as "being about the struggle we all have with difficult friends." The cardinal rule of this workshop is that the author must stay silent and listen, so I was never able to find out why she thought that was the main point. In any case, I'm happy you picked up on what I was thinking about when I wrote this thing. Merci bien.
'the moderator summed it up as "being about the struggle we all have with difficult friends."'
Please tell me the moderator was referring to A, wasn't s/he? I've just read the transcript of DJT's hour-long telephone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, you know the one - 'all I need is 17,800 votes.' I have to admit that my jaw did in fact drop noticably as it slowly sank in that DJT really did believe every single one of his multitude of outrageously preposterous confections. But this wasn't Don Quijote, this was the ex-POTUS at his blustering impotent best. I mention this as it seems to point to a commonality, the tendency of our language to sheer away from 'reality' ("the only concept in every language necessitating scare quotes - yes, I know, Mr. Nabokov) and instead take words and concepts themselves for reality - such that if you point out that 'the obtuse point of resistance/denial we are attempting to work through here in the speach of X' is in fact, i.e., literally a rock - you yourself are adjudged delusional.
"I finished this story back in January of 2022. I wanted to send it to a magazine but, search as I might, I couldn’t identify a single lit mag it might fit with. Maybe somebody knows of one."
"You were a really great writer, Harwick. I thought you were too good for all those crappy magazines you wrote for.” Were they crappy or is her new perception of them crappy?
I'm a big fan of Black Mirror. Maybe it rubbed off. The germ of this story was a question I had: could Charles Bukowski get published today? Harwick isn't Bukowski but I was thinking of him in that line. When he was coming up he wrote mainly for Berkley Barb-type zines (if you recall that wicked throwaway with the dirty ads). He was in LA, but they had similar papers there.
I always find mistakes right after I post. There were about ten words in this that got bolded by accident. Damn! I fixed it here on the site but all the people who read the story in email probably think those bold words were somehow hyper-important. They weren't.
Dear Sourpuss, I mean RBix, I mean RBull
Didn't know you did autobiography...Don't let them turn you into an agreeable kitty
Dear coal man, 90% of my fiction is autobiographical… OK, maybe 89%, but Sourpuss is only 27% autobiographical. What Harwick refers to as the "tenor of the times," is simply a reflection of my on-the-ground reporting from Planet San Francisco. I remember being at a writer's workshop a couple of years ago when a guy read his poem called, “The Bipolar Seagull” about a bird who soared in the sky but hopped around clumsily on land. Someone said the word "bipolar" can’t be used in this way because (as I understood it) the word becomes insulting and hurtful to actual bipolar people when used outside a clinical context. That seemed like a ridiculous remark to me, and even though I thought the poem was kind of dumb, I tried to defend the guy’s language. “He’s using it as a metaphor," I said. “It’s a contrast he observed. And anyway, why can’t a poet use any word he wants to however he wants to? It’s poetry for christsakes, not a corporate news release. I felt pretty passionate about my position and I tried to express it before the ten or fifteen people who were there and nobody, zero person, agreed with me. The consensus was that the poem needed to be changed to avoid this perceived insult or social faux pas. The people I'm speaking of were self-described creative writers of poetry and fiction, living in modern day San Francisco. That, and similar experiences I’ve had with “incorrect speech” are what led me to write Sourpuss. So, to that extent, the story really is autobiographical.
Yes, exactly what I mean.. I would have bet the family farm on your 'sourpuss' rejoinder to the thought police. Is it ironic that the PC Police have spawned the Anti-Woke Militia ? It's Jerry Falwell 2.0 Further irony? - your stance is actually 'moderate'. What's happening to language when liars are simply proposing 'alternate facts' and plain speaking is 'political'? I suppose, in 'our' contemporary victim olympics the great confusion (hallucination?) is between conflict and 'abuse' and between 'political' and righteous.
But, you know, it seems like I need to explain the meaning of this story to certain people, which means I didn't express problem as well as I thought I did. (And thank you for bringing this up!) I have a couple of friends who refuse to comment on this site but send me emails. One guy said he liked how "Abigail was willing to lose points to speak the truth. And Harwick needed to be nudged off his pedestal." Of course I wanted Abby to be a sympathetic character, someone who wants the best for her son, etc., but I was surprised to find out she won the philosophical argument in my friend's mind. At the aforementioned writer's workshop which I took an early draft of this story to a long while ago, the moderator summed it up as "being about the struggle we all have with difficult friends." The cardinal rule of this workshop is that the author must stay silent and listen, so I was never able to find out why she thought that was the main point. In any case, I'm happy you picked up on what I was thinking about when I wrote this thing. Merci bien.
'the moderator summed it up as "being about the struggle we all have with difficult friends."'
Please tell me the moderator was referring to A, wasn't s/he? I've just read the transcript of DJT's hour-long telephone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, you know the one - 'all I need is 17,800 votes.' I have to admit that my jaw did in fact drop noticably as it slowly sank in that DJT really did believe every single one of his multitude of outrageously preposterous confections. But this wasn't Don Quijote, this was the ex-POTUS at his blustering impotent best. I mention this as it seems to point to a commonality, the tendency of our language to sheer away from 'reality' ("the only concept in every language necessitating scare quotes - yes, I know, Mr. Nabokov) and instead take words and concepts themselves for reality - such that if you point out that 'the obtuse point of resistance/denial we are attempting to work through here in the speach of X' is in fact, i.e., literally a rock - you yourself are adjudged delusional.
Ok. Calm down. Personally, I'm reading Janet Malcolm today. "Still Pictures; On Photography and Memory." I really loved her book on Chekhov.
I know some very unpleasant people who would be rich if they lived in this fictional world.
They'd need to be pleasantly unpleasant then.
Yes, they specialize in that.
This feels Black Mirror-ish.
"I finished this story back in January of 2022. I wanted to send it to a magazine but, search as I might, I couldn’t identify a single lit mag it might fit with. Maybe somebody knows of one."
"You were a really great writer, Harwick. I thought you were too good for all those crappy magazines you wrote for.” Were they crappy or is her new perception of them crappy?
I'm a big fan of Black Mirror. Maybe it rubbed off. The germ of this story was a question I had: could Charles Bukowski get published today? Harwick isn't Bukowski but I was thinking of him in that line. When he was coming up he wrote mainly for Berkley Barb-type zines (if you recall that wicked throwaway with the dirty ads). He was in LA, but they had similar papers there.
I always find mistakes right after I post. There were about ten words in this that got bolded by accident. Damn! I fixed it here on the site but all the people who read the story in email probably think those bold words were somehow hyper-important. They weren't.
A couple typos in the last paragraph too. Fixed 'em. I proofed this ten times I swear! Ha.
...a couple more changes near the end. Wow am I sloppy!