Masterpiece Theater

Let's see how this goes. I've got 3 books - The Art of the Tale - An International Anthology of Short Stories (~800 pages), Gotham Writers Fiction Gallery - Exceptional Short Stories Selected by New York's acclaimed Creative Writing School (~300 pages) and Paradise Lost, by Milton. I'm going to try and read them all cover to cover over the next few months. By the end of the summer I guess.

So far I am having mixed results. I've read John Leonard's introduction to Paradise Lost, and some spark notes stuff on it, but haven't started the poem itself. It's a little less than 300 pages. Hopefully I'll be able to understand it.

The Art of the tale isn't starting out so good. I just read The Sacrificial Egg, by Chinua Achebe, and The Bound Man by Ilse Aichinger, both of them not very good.

In the Sacrificial Egg a man, Julius Obi, lives in a port city, Umuru, in Nigeria and pretty much nothing happens. It's about 4 pages long. Oh yeah, he stepped on a 'sacrificial' egg in the road towards the end. Not sure what that meant.

In The Bound Man a guy wakes up to found himself tied up, apparently the victim of a crime. He manages to get himself to his feet and hobble down the road. He tries to get to the nearest village. He meets up with a traveling circus and joins them, becoming The Bound Man attraction - "Ladies and Gentleman, the bound man!" He stays with the circus for a while, the whole time he is bound. This was about 9 pages.

The Gotham Writers Workshop's Fiction Gallery is faring much better. I've read two stories from it First Confession by Frank O'Connor, and Brownies by ZZ Packer.

First Confession is about a young kid who's facing his first confession at church. He's scared of going to hell and his sister keeps reminding him of all the 'sins' he's committed. Unpretentious, humorous slice of life. Told in the first person.

Brownies is about some girls at a Brownie camp. The girls are black and they have an incident with a group of white brownies. It's largely humorous and told in the first person as well.

So, one story where nothing really happens, one derivative Kafka absurdity, and two semi humorous recollections. I'm batting .500. Not bad.

RIP - Rocky Mountain News

The Rocky Mountain News had it's last edition last Friday. I feel for all the people who are now out of a job, in particular the ones who weren't the writers, just the average Joe printer or whatever.

That said, I didn't generally read it. They were offering damn near free subscriptions last fall. Actually had people going door to door in my apt, (which is against our rules and possibly illegal) last fall. Guy knocks on my door and said I could get the RMN free for six months or something. I just told him I wasn't interested and closed the door.

The paper kind of sucked. The endless coverage of Columbine, Elway, that dead Boulder girl Jon Benet Ramsey and whatever other local disasters. Mike Littwin and Tina Griego - politically correct shills. You knew what their opinion on anything was before they did. I need this shit? What wasn't this crap was AP wire stuff and ads.

All that said, a general purpose Denver news web page might be worth checking out.. I'll have to see what's out there.