When I was in college, you’d have to drag me kicking and screaming to get me into the school auditorium for an author reading. I really couldn’t imagine sitting through something like that without falling asleep in my chair. Fast forward ten years and last night, I was happily sitting in the Tishman auditorium of the New School, at The Story Prize, listening attentively as Rick Bass, Mary Gordon, and George Saunders, three of the country’s finest short story writers, read from their most recent work.

Here are some of my favorite excerpts from the evening:

From Rick Bass’ “Her First Elk,” in The Lives of Rocks.

“Now the herd was drifting like water, or slow-flickering flames, out of the giant pines and into a stand of aspen, the gold leaves underfoot the color of their hides, and the stark white trunks of the aspen grove making it look as if the herd were trapped behind bars; though still they kept drifting, flowing in and out of and between those bars … The rest of the herd turned and followed him into the timber, disappearing into the forest’s embrace almost reluctantly, still possessing somehow that air of disbelief; though once they went into the timber, they vanished completely, and for a long while she could hear the crashing of limbs and branches — as if she had unleashed an earthquake or some other world force — and the sounds grew fainter and farther, and then there was only silence.” (pg. 28-30)

From Mary Gordon’s “My Podiatrist Tells Me a Story About a Boy and a Dog,” in The Stories of Mary Gordon.

“Well, the end of summer came and I begged my father to take Brownie home. But he said no, she was a country dog, a woods dog, she’d be miserable in the city, she’d pine away. Well, I was miserable, but what can I do? I get in the car and put my head against the seat and cry my heart out.

Now in those days, they didn’t have the superhighways of today, so the fastest my father could go was forty-five miles an hour. After we’d been traveling about an hour and a half, my father yells out, ‘Oh, my God.’ We didn’t know what happened. ‘Look out the back,’ he says. And there’s Brownie, running along the side of the road keeping up with the car.

So of course father opened the door. The dog got in. She was so big she had to lie full length on the floor and still there wasn’t room for her. She threw up, then slept all the way home.

Fortunately we had a townhouse with a backyard, so she could sleep outside. We just left the back window open and she came and went as she pleased. It wasn’t like now, with the crime, which is why I live in Westchester.” (pg. 24-25)

From George Saunders’ In Persuasion Nation, “Jon.”

“I do not want to only speak of my love in grunts! If I wish to compare my love to a love I have previous knowledge of, I do not want to stand there in the wind casting about for my metaphor! If I want to say like, Carolyn, remember that RE/MAX one where as the redhead kid falls asleep holding that Teddy bear rescued from the trash, the bear comes alive and winks, and the announcer goes, Home is the place where you find yourself suddenly no longer longing for home (LI34451) — if I want to say Carolyn, Carolyn, LI34451, check it out, that is how I feel about you — well, then, I want to say it! I want to possess all the articulate I can, because other wise there we will be, in non-designer clothes … and I will turn to her and say, Honey, uh, honey, there is a certain feeling but I cannot name it and cannot cite a precedent-type feeling, but trust me, dearest, wow, do I ever feel it for you right now. And what will that be like, that stupid standing there, just a man and a woman and the wind, and nobody knowing what nobody is meaning?” (30-31)

At the end of the evening, Mary Gordon was presented with The Story Prize. She gave a touching speech on the craft of short-story writing that was so rich in metaphors and imagery, and so different from her humorous, offbeat story about feet, doctors, and childhood pets. When I found out that she teaches at Barnard, I kept thinking gosh, I used to go to school right across the street (at Columbia) and I could’ve taken one of her classes and it would have been so fun — but then changed my mind, remembering that the college-version of me would have fallen asleep and not appreciated it. Ahh, how we grow a little wiser with time. Now I’m putting my three new story collections on our bookshelf, and I can’t wait to start reading!

March 1st, 2007