The email was welcomed, when it arrived visibly but silently on the screen of Gilbert Fitzwilliams’ computer, like the first crocus of spring; small, insignificant considered by itself, a minor blessing but one to be cherished nonetheless:
Revenge
Wide-Eyed to the World
The farmhouse floats, an island in a sea of rape.
From a bus labouring on high roads you gaze down
at a boreen, visible now, snaking through an ocean of amarillo.
Watch What Develops
I have never been to Coney Island
yet the Ferris wheel in sepia-drenched
pictures, the greenish tint of old Polaroids,
Carousel Court by Joe McGinniss Jr.
John Cheever was a surrealist but I think the suburbs made him crazy which allowed him to write they way he did. Raymond Carver presented a sculpted world littered with chiseled drunks, sloppy whores, baby killers, lovesick lovers, unwashed truckers, and belligerent bakers – never mind the loners down to their last bone marrow transplant. I re-read Carver’s Vitamins whenever I get down in the mouth about my fiction and that fills me with hope. I dare add, A.M. Homes is an heir to these suburban chestnuts, a daughter born out the bonfire they created.
Vinegar Girl by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler’s opening line: “Kate Battista was gardening out back when she heard the telephone ring in the kitchen.”
Bird Brain – Editor’s Pick
Birds were nesting inside the two ‘O’s of COOPER’S HARDWARE. I could see the mother bird fly in and out, she fluttered from one ‘O’ to the other—sticks and feathers and leaves occasionally spilling out with her back-and-forth movements. I couldn’t see details from the ground, but I envisioned her spitting worms and slugs—and whatever else birds eat—into the squeaking, pink beaks of her young.