March and April have been good months for my writing. David Herrle, editor of Subtletea magazine, accepted a blog, which I revised, on first person writing (see it below). And when I sent him a copy of “Archipelago,” a perverse fantasy story, he accepted that as well. The story is one of a collection I am working on now. Jane suggested that I “field test” my stories by sending them out to literary magazines. Resisting at first, I had a chat with myself. Down to a Sunless Sea, my first collection, took me over 25 years to get published. I felt I had no time to “field test” these stories as I near my end. However, a good suggestion is a good suggestion. And so Herrle will publish the first sent out. Duff Brenna, whose site can be accessed here, is a novelist of worth and a reviewer of my books; he just initiated a new online magazine, servinghousejournal.com — I urge you to take a look — and I submitted “Soap,” a bizarre story about a Holocaust revisionist. In fact, it is quite kinky, so kinky that Duff didn’t know if it was fiction, creative non-fiction or an essay. All this was to my delight. It is suigeneris, and what big ears you have grandmother. Flattering to me, I admit.
Characterologically, I have spent my life avoiding being pocket-holed or labeled. Let me define myself — if I can, if I choose to, but not by you, the other!
And so I go about “sandpapering” each story, burnishing it and all the while careful not to squeeze out the cholesterol that is needed like fat on a pastrami to give it taste. I have also recast a blog, “Freud in Auschwitz (see that below) into a one page story and submitted that as well to an online mag called Ginosko. Perhaps these events will move you if you are a writer to gently remove the chicken from the bone and submit work in progress. I can share with you how delighted I was at small paragraph in the opening pages of Down to a Sunless Sea citing the magazines that published the stories prior to the collection itself. Such small pleasures are my sweets, not money, not whoopla about my work.
Related to all this are the early months of this year in which I diligently formed a database of email addresses to advertise the new version of The i Tetralogy, which is my magnum opus. Anally, I composed a mailing list of over 4300 synagogues, book stores, museum shops, institutes, associations, organizations all related in some fashion to the Holocaust — Jewish studies, yeshivas, Yad Yashem, et al. After that, I tried to forward them and I was blocked by Hotmail because I was now a “spammer.’ After managing this adversity and delay, I tediously finished off the list (1500 addresses) by posting only 5-15 per day. And I just received my quarterly report of books sold, and I managed to sell 7. A newpaper editor requested a copy for review and the Jewish Council requested another for consideration. I knew I was blowin’ in the wind but I went on in any case. I believe in this book because I believe in me and the individual who wrote and composed it with all the passion I could muster. Unlike other writers on the Holocaust, I am not into Shoah business. The book reflects a lifetime of thinking, being, considering, self-revealing, self-examining myself as a post Holocaust, second generation American Jew. I will not capitulate to hustling this book in ways that are American, or degrading. If it sells, wonderful, if it does not sell, wonderful — I gave birth to it; I own it. It is me declaring myself to the world.
The new book, tentatively titled “Working Through the Holocaust,” referencing the psychoanalytic term for processing issues in treatment, contains roughly 3 or 4 poems and the rest are short stories, not one more than 10 pages. I find that interesting. It isn’t that I can’t write more than that, but it is as if the muse has restrained me, made me say so much more with so many fewer words, the old saw that less is more. I work the stories over on an almost daily basis, deleting, rephrasing, sharpening, restructuring; but the die is cast. Major revisions are not on the horizon. I have shot my load. I just cannot bear to redo significant parts of these stories. I feel as if I have lain down cement and I don’t want to repave again. That could be a mistake, a writerly one, but I am a very stubborn cuss.
An analogy about me might be apt at this point: imagine a mustang or steed in a gated pasture; if you want to stroke his mane or rub his nose, you can’t call out to him or demand that he obey. What would be best is to place some sugar or an apple on a post, go away and wait to he comes over to inspect the offering. It is at that point he may listen or obey or tender his self to your touch. That is me. Understand this about me and I am easy to access — I do not abide authority, I question it continually; I will not obey anyone, any dogma or doctrine, except what I give to myself as personal injunctions. And I gravitate to those of a like mind. I loathe slaves and conditoned human beings.
All my writing contains an expression of that special passion to be free, to demand justice in all things and to make the mind work better by asking it to be above all things — fair! This is my writer’s credo.
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