50 Word Story Segment, Part 2

Today’s 50 Word Segement brings us to Spencer Dew, Chicago scribe and author of Songs of Insurgency, a collection of shorts. BUY HIS BOOK! It’ll knock your socks off.

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All Saints

By Spencer Dew

Donna’s on her period, hungry for pancakes, dazed, with a bruised eye, puffy – yellow, purple. We sit in the smoking section, still in costume, looking out at furniture stores and listening to the radio – weather, sales, a hostage crisis. Our plates come. Our plates go. At some point she cries.

 

1). Where did this story come from? Describe it’s genesis?

About a thousand things go into a sentence of a story, I think. One memory, for instance, that I’ve been turning over in my mind for a long, long time is this place in Denver, or at the edge of Denver, Breakfast King, I think, a place that is somehow surrounded by air that is even more polluted than the rest of Denver’s filthy air and from which the view of the mountains looks particularly cheap, hazy and miniscule, and, worse, most of the booths look out at warehouses or furniture wholesalers or something like that, and from the back, dumpsters and loading bays. The place is thick with smoke and the food is disgusting, rendered even worse by the liberal application of diced, dehydrated peppers and cubes of likewise artificial-tasting ham. There’s something, too, about Halloween, about masquerades and what they permit, their wake… If it’s liberating to put on a mask, it’s crushing to take it off. Also, honestly, the constrictions of a fifty-word “story” shaped what could or could not “happen” in this one… Here I tried to set a certain tone as I set a scene: the morning after something horrible, the numb moments of dawn, a place of real decision and, thus, the silence right before.

2). Who are you? What makes you so amazingly cool that we just had to interview you?

I’m the author of a collection of stories, Songs of Insurgency (Vagabond Press, 200 and I’ve published a number of stories, essays, a few poems, etc.

3). What are you working on right now? Can you tell us? Stores? Poems? Novels? One of those tiny ships in a bottle?

I’m working on a novel, yes, and more stories, more poems. I’m working on a book-length study of Kathy Acker, which I intend to follow with a study on, more largely, claims of literary functionality. I’ve got a draft of a chapter on Norman Mailer I’ll likely revise again this week.

4). Think fast: favorite short story or novel at the moment? Of all time?

Across the River and into the Trees is very good. The Bell Jar. I’m indebted to Anais Nin and Kathy Acker, Kenneth Patchen, Carole Maso, Joy Williams, Mark Strand. I think Adrian Tomine has some excellent stories.

5). If you could start a band full of writers, of literary greats and contemporary stars, who would be in your band and what instrument would they be on (four or five members only, otherwise the van gets too crowded and smelly)?

The trick here is, I think, picking folks who’d be pleasant to share a vehicle with, folks who would really be interested in working together, not to mention having a good time. So… That being said, Philip Gourevitch and Ryszard Kapuscinski would be astonishingly good travel companions.

6). What’s on the horizon for you? What’s next—i.e., publications, events/readings, etc.

I’m reading with the great Nick Ostdick and the likewise great Jill Summers, Jeremy Biles, and Christopher Pusateri at Quimby’s, 1854 W North Avenue, next Friday, April 4th at 7 pm I read at the University of Chicago, 1156 East 57th, Monday the 8th, also at 7 pm, then the next day, Tuesday the 9th, I’m reading as part of the “Quickies” series at the Intertown Pub, 1935 West Thomas, 7:30…

Thanks, Specner. You rock it!