Introducing Paul Elwork and Michelle Reale

SSM 2011: Conversation between Paul Elwork and Michelle Reale, 5.20.11

In honor of Short Story Month 2011, I thought it would be fun to chat a bit with a short-story writer I know, Michelle Reale, about her work. Michelle has published many short pieces, largely flash fiction, in a variety of journals. She has also published a chapbook of her work entitled Natural Habitat (Burning River Press); her second story collection, Like Lungfish Getting through the Dry Season, is forthcoming from Thunderclap Press in 2011, as well as another short fiction collection, If All They Had Were Their Bodies, from Burning River. Michelle’s fiction has a compressed power and clarity of language that is both arresting and often deeply unsettling. She gives us engaging characters that suggest haunted pasts and troubled futures, all with warmth that never gets sentimental and a brutal honesty that avoids cynicism.

I asked Michelle to send me several links to her work and she replied with the following stories: “What Passes for Normal,” “Shells,” “Current,” “Frantic City,” “We, the Women,” and “Three Stories": Honeymoon, Local Custom, and Bone in the Throat.” Sample through them and see for yourself the qualities I’ve listed above. And now, let’s pick Michelle’s brain a bit…

Paul Elwork: These stories are so well-rendered, reading them is a bit like paging through a book of illustrations full of shadows and striking details. Dysfunctional family dynamics run through these selections. The mother in “What Passes for Normal” is absolutely frightening in her sociopathology and ability to put a good face on things for people outside her family. Can you put your finger on what draws you to this subject matter?

Michelle Reale: I will say that if there is a flaw, I will see it before most people will. I am very shy and I have been all my life. Being shy often means that you “participate” from the sidelines. In school, people thought I was mute! But I watched very closely, always. And I listened, and still do listen, very carefully when people talk. Even in conversation there is a “text” and a “subtext,” if you will. We are all schizophrenic in so many ways. Living in polite society often means sublimating what we are really thinking and feeling. We compartmentalize our feelings, what we will say and to whom and in what context. But I can see the underside of nearly everything. And I also know that people are not always what they seem: the good aren’t always so good, and the bad aren’t always so bad. Some of my fiction will really exploit that dark side of human nature. “What Passes for Normal” was hard to write in some respects. Our society does not like flaws. We abhor what isn’t “pretty” and we shun those who fall out of the strict parameters of “normal.” I don’t even really know what normal is!

Families, too, fascinate me. What an absolutely complex relationship system. I like to explore what happens there. We can live with people our whole lives and not really know them—we are all unknowable in that way, so when I write about people and families and relationships, I am really trying to figure things out. I realize that this is not very original—I think most writers are after the same exact thing—we are writing to make sense of things. My characters are flawed, indeed. They suffer. They are not pretty. They hurt inside and then they hurt others. My job is to make them live on the page to regret it. And if I get a reaction from a reader, I suppose I have done my job!

PE: Nobody really knows what normal is. It’s one of those myths of polite society. And I like the notion of discovery you proceed with. Does anyone write really good fiction if he or she goes in with it all figured out and ends with absolutely unchanged notions?

I agree that family dynamics are an endless resource for inspiration. What informs your fiction more: Your own family dynamics, past and present, or your outside observations? Or is that too difficult to tease apart?

MR: I have to say that I am not a person who sits down and outlines or any such thing. For myself, I simply don’t see the value, most especially because for me writing is an exercise not only in creativity, but in discovery. Often, I may have an idea in my head, the way I think a piece may go, but then it goes in the opposite direction. I don’t think the writing mind is rigid—at least not for fiction. I have written an academic book in my field—now that book I most definitely had a game plan for—and I laid the groundwork very carefully. Fiction, however, is a whole different ball game, requiring more heart than mind. I don’t want to think when I write fiction—does that sound strange? But I really don’t. I want to hit bedrock of truth somehow and I can’t do that with my brain. Brain turns fiction into formula. As a reader I am turned off by that right away. As I writer, it frightens me.

My fiction is informed not so much by real incidents either in my life or the lives of others, but from impressions of incidents. How something made me feel, how it might have made others feel. I think about the fallout from messy emotional situations. Things like that. I was recently buying coffee in a Dunkin Donuts where they also have Baskin Robbins ice cream. I watched in horror as a mother practically bullied her daughter who looked to be about 10 or 11 to me into getting two scoops (“might as well,” she kept saying) instead of just one on her cone. When she relented (she had her arms crossed over her chest—a very defensive position) the mother proceeded to make fun of the fact that she’d never get a boyfriend with all of that belly fat she had around. I stood there with my mouth open. I felt an instant stab in a vulnerable place inside of me. How awful.

PE: Such a staggering, loaded moment. It’s definitely one where your guts kind of clench from the emotional impact, even as part of your mind recognizes something that applies straight to fiction. It also sounds like a moment right out of one of your stories.

MR: I went home and wrote about it. It hasn’t made its way into a story—yet, but it will surely surface somewhere. Think of all the strange (and sad) dynamics going on there. There is a truth there somewhere. And my fictional truth may not be that family’s truth, of course, but it is fiction, after all.

PE: What are your thoughts on writing in longer forms? I find it fascinating how writers are drawn to different forms, like visual artists using certain materials, or singers working in different keys. Do you have any plans for longer works or any in progress?

MR: I hear this debate a lot with writers: whether to write in longer form or not, especially if they’ve been writing short, short prose. No one ever asks a poet that question! I have long considered myself a miniaturist—even when I was writing (awful) stories that were 10–12 pages long. What I was trying, all that time (I now realize) was to get to the shorter form.

PE: Sure, that makes sense—and it isn’t a matter of right or wrong, but one of personal inclination. I remember Joyce Carol Oates writing somewhere that any literary idea can be expressed in a poem, a short story, or a novel—it’s just a question of how you want to feature it stylistically, what kind of effect you’re going for, etc. I completely agree. You’ve got to go where your interest takes you and trust that.

MR: I am more and more interested in distillation, how to use fewer words. I use Virginia Woolf as my guide and concentrate on those “moments of being”—when I can see and feel an entire world in a gesture, or the look on a face. I also work in themes. Right now I am pursuing a certificate in Peace Studies because I am interested in all of the conflicts and revolutions in the world. As a result, I am writing prose poems about my experiences abroad and my encounters with immigrant populations, fleeing turmoil in inhospitable places. I was in Sicily twice in April and witnessed the not-so-ambivalent feelings the Italian government has toward those fleeing their countries (especially North Africa) to its shores. I am Italian-American and this moved me profoundly. I had the opportunity to speak with men from various countries that have been stripped of dignity, trying to make a new life there. I saw with my own eyes the confiscated boats where they seize these people (mostly men) and detain them or make their lives miserable enough until they leave for somewhere else, other places that also don’t want them. I cannot, for instance, write a novel about something like this, because I do not have the interest in a sustained narrative about a certain number of characters. What I do have is an interest in writing many, many prose poems that I feel will be more powerful for their “staccato” succinctness and that represent a wide variety of encounters, impressions, and especially strong images. I could change some day and decide to challenge myself and write a novel, but I am not sure that I even have the capability, to tell you the truth. The intersection of prose and poetry is where I really like to be right now. In fact, I have felt more comfortable in this form than in any other. I plant my feet firmly in this place, write, and get better and better. I still have so much to learn, but I am nothing if not a very patient person!

Michelle Reale is an academic librarian on faculty at Arcadia University in the suburbs of Philadelphia. Her work has been published in a wide variety of venues, including Eyeshot, elimae, Pank, JMWW, Gargoyle, Word Riot, Monkeybicycle, Moon Milk Review, and many others. Her work was included in Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010. She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Paul Elwork lives on the outskirts of Philadelphia and is the father of two sons. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Philadelphia Stories, Short Story America, SmokeLong Quarterly, and Word Riot. His novel The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead (Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin Group) is available online and in bookstores everywhere. For more information and links to short fiction and other content, please visit www.paulelwork.com.

Why I Write: The Battle of Right Hand, Left Hand By Alan Heathcock

Alan Heathcock's stories have been published in many of the country's best journals, magazines, and anthologies, including Zoetrope: All-Story, VQR, Kenyon Review, Harvard Review, Five-Chapters, Best American Mystery Stories, and others. He's the winner of the National Magazine Award in fiction. A native of Chicago, Illinois, he lives in Boise, Idaho, where he teaches fiction writing at Boise State University, and is a Fiction Fellow for the state of Idaho. His story collection, VOLT, will be published by Graywolf Press, March 1, 2011. You can find him at http://alanheathcock.com

     
                                                Why I Write:                         The Battle of Right Hand, Left Hand

            My writing studio is a 1967 Roadrunner travel trailer, packed with books, trophies, and random oddities.  My favorite piece is a vintage movie poster from the 1955 Charles Laughton classic, The Night of the Hunter.  The picture is of Robert Mitchum, who plays Harry Powell (a.k.a. The Preacher).  In the poster, the preacher is leaned forward, his eyes locked on the viewer.  His right hand rests atop a porch post, and across his knuckles are the tattooed letters: L-O-V-E.  His left hand is down the railing, held close to his heart—those knuckles read       H-A-T-E.

            In a famous scene from the film, the preacher holds court in a little country diner, telling the patrons the “story of life”, the eternal battle between the left hand and the right hand. 

“H-A-T-E,” the preacher bellows, holding forth the spread fingers of his left hand.  “It was with this left hand that old brother Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low.”

He lifts the right hand.  “L-O-V-E.  You see these fingers dear-hearts?  These fingers have veins that run straight to the soul of man.  The right hand.  The hand of love.”

            The preacher then interlocks the fingers of his two hands, twisting them, wrenching them back and forth.  Which hand will claim victory?  At first, it looks like the left hand, but then, “HOT DOG, loves a-winnin’!”  The right hand puts ol’ brother left-hand down for the count.

            It’s a strange and brilliant scene, and one that on its own merit tells the story all of us hope is true: love wins out over hate.

            I believe in the right hand.  I live my life, raise my kids, travel about with my wife through the world at large, all with a fervent, evangelical, belief in the enduring might of love.  My greatest hope is that the preacher’s tale is true.

            Yet the movie, like life (my life, at least), is more complex than the parable would have us believe.  The truth of the movie is that the preacher is not a preacher at all.  He’s an ex-con, a thief and murderer masquerading as a preacher to win favor with a widower and her two children, in the hopes of stealing a large sum of money he knows they have hidden somewhere on their property.  So where does that leave us?  Can we believe the preacher’s pitch, knowing the man is not, in fact, “good”?  Can a message of love be delivered via the left hand?

            When I was young, maybe seven or eight, my Grandpa Heathcock sat me up on his lap and told me a story about a time he was working as a foreman for Sinclair Oil.  He said he was driving a one-lane road through the oil fields when his truck came nose to nose with another truck.  The road was too narrow, the ditches too steep, for either truck to turn around.  One of them would have to back up the way they came.  My grandpa said he got out of his truck and told the other driver he was trespassing on company land and had to put his truck in reverse.  The man refused.  I remember clearly that my grandpa balled a fist, and told me, “So I went and got me a tire iron and I hit that man.  Then that man backed up his truck.”

            Likewise, while growing up in the Southland area of south Chicago, I was confronted on almost a daily basis with situations that confounded my sense of moral truth.  I knew good people, people from church, who spoke of hate--racism, sexism, religious intolerance, homophobia.  I knew people who did bad things, terrible things, who were also generous and loyal, who did tremendous good for the community.  I’ve seen people beaten, stabbed.  I’ve seen gun play.  I’ve seen people robbed, been robbed myself.  I’ve seen everything you think would reside neatly in the right or left palm, and yet judgment has often been unclear to me, like looking in my grandpa’s eyes and not knowing what to feel, like looking at the palm of a thumbless hand, a hand with four fingers all of equal lengths. 

Once, a group of friends asked me to escort a guy out to an old rec. center at the end of a dark road, making him believe we were going to a party, but knowing I was leading him into a terrible beating.  The guy had done awful things, things I won’t describe here other than to say I thought he might deserve his fate.  Yet what I did still troubles me, one hand brutally wrenching back the wrist of the other.  But which hand did the wrenching, and which did the hurting?  Was I an instrument of justice?  Of right?  And what if I didn’t lead that guy out to the rec. center?  What if he went unpunished?  Doesn’t the right hand, sometimes, have to subdue the left?  Isn’t that the very definition of war?  But also, in that sheer ferocity with which the right attacks the left, do they not become the same?  In the moment I decided to take on the task, already knowing its end, did I not take on the role of Cain?

I long wondered why my grandfather told me the story of the oil field and the tire-iron.  For a long time, I thought he was somehow giving me instruction on the true nature of man.  But now that I’m older, I don’t think he was giving instruction at all.  Instead, I believe he was asking a question he couldn’t answer, one he hoped some day I might understand.

            Every story I’ve ever written ponders such questions, trying to make sense of the world described to me by my grandfather, the world I’ve seen with my own eyes, and changed with my actions, struggling to parse out the left hand from the right.  People write for many different reasons.  I write to investigate, to seek out answers, to calm the hurt, to stroke the troubled mind.  Sometimes I’ve found clarity.  Many times I’ve discovered the questions to be unanswerable.  Either way, each morning I take sanctuary in my trailer and scrawl out new words, words I hope take me deeper into the murky lake of truth, the preacher glowering down from the wall, challenging me, daring me, to reveal what’s right and righteous.

Guest Blog from writer Siobhan Fallon

I am thrilled to have Siobhan Fallon here today guestblogging on The Bird Sisters. Siobhan is an enormously talented writer. Her story collection You Know When the Men are Gone will be debuting next January 2011 from Amy Einhorn Books/Penguin. Siobhan's work has appeared in Poets & Writers, New Letters Magazine, among many, many others. She has won more writing contests than I can keep track of. Aside from being a FANTASTIC writer, Siobhan is a fantastic person. I am blessed to know her (and now so are you). Welcome Siobhan...

By Siobhan Fallon

There are times when I mistrust myself. There are times when I cannot differentiate between my fiction and my own memory.

Recently my husband was looking over one of my short stories and started chuckling. “Wow,” he said. “I remember when that happened.”

I bolted upright, fingers hesitating over keyboard. “When WHAT happened?” I asked.

He watched me, sensing that Evil Writer Wife was now occupying the body of his loving spouse. Evil Writer Wife who usually ignored him completely when perched at her computer, or sent squinted ‘how-dare-you-make-noise-when-I-am-working’ glances his way when he sneezed or poured himself a glass of milk.

“I remember when this happened,” he said softly, all humor removed from his voice, pointing at the page in front of him.

“But I made that up,” I said, and I even believed it.

Write what you know is that old writer’s adage. What if you know your own writing so well that parts of it eclipse your own life? The writing becomes more vivid, so reworked, so visualized, so imagined, that it obliterates whatever real event sparked it. It becomes the way something could have been, the more interesting and exciting version of events, but also the version that is separate from the self, the unwounded existence, translated into words on a page, safe at a distance.

Last week, my two and a half year old daughter, dressed in a Snow White gown, climbed up on a coffee table. Before I had a chance to yell, “Get down from there!” she tumbled backward and smashed her head through a window. Suddenly there was an inordinate amount of shattered glass, a gaping wound at the back of her head I could not look at, and my child reaching for me amid the princess tulle and blood.

That night, after the Emergency Room, after the nurses wrapped her in a sheet and held her down (it took two of them to restrain her twenty-nine thrashing pounds), after the doctor cleaned the wound and removed glass shards with tweezers, after he closed the gash with a staple gun reminiscent of Home Depot, after the day was done and my baby was in her crib, safe and asleep and hopefully having non-violent dreams, I had a singular and perhaps terrible epiphany. I stood at her closed door, one hand still on the knob, and I thought, “I can use this.” In an unspooling moment, I imagined the protagonist of my novel-in-progress touching a scar at the back of her head. The scene spun on, how my heroine had fallen through a restaurant window when she was a tiny girl, the glass, the blood, her father holding her in his arms, afraid that he would lose this small being he had created, holding her as her blood wet and then dried on his forearms, kneeling on a sidewalk and waiting for the ambulance to come. As an adult, when she is nervous, my heroine will touch the raised scar at the back of her head, feel the scalp that was once held together by staples, remember staring up at her father and hearing a siren in the distance.

Certainly I won’t forget the day my little kid got ten staples in the back of her head. But it made me aware of how my mind takes hold of reality and shakes it, peels it away from the ordinary. I stole a moment out of my life, a moment from my daughter, and refashioned it, made it something different, made it something I could control.

Made it fiction.