Four Stories
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This was my second major effort at a novel, and I think that “experimental” is perhaps an apt description. I wanted to spend some time with structure, so I decided to write a series of vaguely connected stories where the point-of-view shifts from basic to complex. I whittled it down to four distinct settings and arranged the stories in order of antiquity and complexity — we begin with the oldest and simplest, and move toward the intricate present.
The initial tale in the sequence, titled Round Moon, Horned Moon, takes place in the Third Millennia BC, and follows the travails of an orphan boy from a stone-age village in mountainous Anatolia whom the Fates abduct downriver to the towering civilization of Mesopotamia. Stylistically, this is third-person stripped to the bone. You are only told what you could see, hear, or smell if you stood there at that very moment. You can find it here.
The second story in the series, Cicatrix, occurs high in the Alps in the dark times after the collapse of the Roman Empire. It focuses on a disfigured recluse who is eking out a squalid existence in a stone hovel clinging to a cliff beneath a remote monastery. Here he is desperately trying to escape a regrettable past. However, in the tiny village abutting the monastery — marginally subsisting on the occasional caravan of Christian pilgrims — there is a meddling tavern-wench who will not let this happen. This story is written in third-person omniscient, with internal exposition. You can find it here.
River of Swamps, the third story in this series, alternates between two settings that are widely separated in time and space. Initially, we encounter a pair of twentieth-century treasure-hunters hunkered down in a forgotten corner of a dusty archive in Seville, Spain. They have stumbled upon a jar containing a crumbling manuscript written on faded pages ripped from a Bible. This is certainly not what they were searching for — it’s in Portuguese and it has nothing to do with the Caribbean treasure they’re after — but indeed it is an intriguing tale. They break out some wine and begin to read into the night. As they do, we are transported back to the fifteenth century and an island at the mouth of the Amazon River. There we see a lone man standing on the shore with a ceramic jar, a cage full of rabbits, and a Bible. However, as the story unfolds, what the researchers read is not what we see in the flashbacks. The style could be called third-person-conflictory. The story begins here.
The final story, Going Down to the Corner, happens tomorrow evening as you stroll down the sidewalk to the local watering hole. The point-of-view is second-person-stream-of-consciousness. (Who is paying for these hyphens?) Thoughts cascade (life, death, cigarettes, dentists, Mexican silver mines, kleptomaniacs, cheap mufflers, and getting old) while you belly up to the bar. You make small talk with the bartender (The fuckin’ Yankees! The fuckin’ President!) You go to the urinal. You’re exactly as drunk as you wanted to be for this momentous occasion. You pay up and step out into the street… Into traffic…
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These stories will be serialized and I will add new chapters periodically. Click here to begin the journey.
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