“Go ahead and deal, Cyril,” I say. “We’re here to play. We’re here all night.”: “Casino” by Alix Ohlin is featured fiction at Guernica.

The N.Y. Times Magazine offers “The Great Pulitzer Do-Over.”

Check out the Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions as judged by Dan Chaon.

Beatrice has an Author2Author exchange between Nick Antosca & Blake Butler.

The Morning News is holding a Paris, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down Cover Remix Contest.

The Baffler magazine, whose relaunch was recently discussed here, is raising money on Kickstarter.

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons via Guernica.

Identity Theory

1.

It happens quickly, this fondness for a spider living in a corner of my bathroom. She’s been there for weeks, and one day, I look down and watch her. And we come to an understanding, or at least, I pretend to understand her, as if I’d just misunderstood a reflection of myself in a mirror and was shocked for a moment to discover a twin.

2.

When I began grad school, I moved into a garden-level apartment within walking distance of campus. The apartment flooded occasionally and let all kinds of insects in its windows. Its neighbors made endless batches of curry, the smell of cumin and turmeric always in the hallway. I got a job at a café several blocks away and worked evenings, walking home after midnight with a large cup of leftover coffee I warmed on the stove and drank while I did my homework.

3.

I’m sick much of that summer, with migraines, with stomachaches caused by statistics classes and eating only food from the café. At night, when I sit on the bathroom floor with my legs tucked under me, rubbing menthol on my throbbing temples or curling my chest over my sore middle, I am nearly eye to eye with the spider. What does she do all night? I am only learning to live alone, to trust the long moments of quiet, the afternoons reading with my legs on the top of the couch, the walk down the dark and narrow hallway at the end of the day, fumbling with my keys and pretending I am being chased as I did climbing the basement stairs as a child.

I’m fascinated by the spider’s choice of a solitary life, or whatever it is that choice is called when it’s governed by instinct in a species that must follow certain behavioral rules. Funny to think I would overcome arachnophobia with a healthy admiration for a spider’s lifestyle. I watch her like other girls listen to Bikini Kill or analyze feminism on Sex and the City. I want an example, a model for how to live independently, with the smallest bit of indifference and anonymity, without fear, for a while, for the summer.

4.

Morning customers at the café are all students and professors on their way to summer classes. Evening brings in the regulars. Every night, a motley group of men push tables together, spread out a chessboard, and play until the cafe closes. On any given evening, the chess players include:

An African-American man with a high voice who wears loose, thrift-store t-shirts and eats chocolate cake;

A physics professor, ten kinds of skinny, hair bleached and spiked like Billy Idol, always black leather pants, always a red leather jacket;

A man with dark and floppy hair, large plush features, uses his forefinger and thumbnail to flick a quarter into the tip jar after ordering (I hate him a little for this);

The boy, at least fifteen years younger than the rest, awkward, needs a haircut even when he’s just gotten one, loose hands.

Two of them play while the group, sometimes larger, offers ongoing commentary and advice. A playwright, handsome, with a strong jaw and a shy way of flirting with the waitresses, sits at the table nearest the bathroom and records snippets of their conversation for his next play.

The other regulars:

A student here from the Netherlands for the summer. We are attracted to each other, but neither of us can overcome our shyness to do much about it. I know I like him because I spill things when he’s around. He orders coffee after coffee and frowns at his book. I spill more coffee beans, a cupful of ice, a bowl of orange pulp. He occasionally wears a kilt, a long tan-and-red pattern that drapes past his knees.

The biker, tall, a dark beard, leather jacket adorned with chains. He comes in ten minutes before closing, orders a bottle of root beer, and tips a dollar for it. He opens it quickly with a turn of his large wrist. It is not a twist-off.

The man with hair spaced shorter and longer, lighter and darker, across his scalp. He said they had to fix his head from the inside out. He talks about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and his voice is hedged with genuine pain. He wants to move to a peacenik commune in Indiana after this summer. Sometimes his eyes are bloodshot, and sometimes he hasn’t appeared to have slept in days. Usually he is talkative, sexually inappropriate in a vague way. When he doesn’t feel like talking, he reads stacks of anatomy books, like the beauty of a vessel, an organ, is the only thing for making sense. Some nights, he sits with his daughter and buys her caramels.

The bouncer from the club across the street, the biggest man I have ever seen. He wears long dreadlocks and asks me about the books I’m reading. He likes blended drinks with lots of sugar, cream and caffeine. He watches out for the waitresses when we close up at night, makes sure we are safe, that no one is bothering or threatening us as we try to lock the doors and walk home. It is a college campus surrounded by bars, and someone is always bothering us. We give him all the free, heavily sweetened drinks he wants. It’s unspoken, of course, this exchange of frappe for protection.

They are all men, the regulars. I like to watch them, learn what brings them into this warm space every night. Most are men from the neighborhood, the campus, men with joking voices, ways of flirting with the waitresses, ways of wanting company and coffee, ways of wanting to be left alone.

5.

The Dutch man stays late one night until everyone has gone, and we talk as I clean. I spill an entire plastic tub of coffee beans. He finds this funny and smirks as I stare at the mess. He helps me clean, although we must look silly, me with a broom and dustpan, him scooping handfuls of coffee beans from the just-mopped floor. He asks me if I like movies, and I can’t think properly. All that I have in my mind is that day several months ago in the woods, with the man I trusted, the man I couldn’t get away from, the man around whom I froze and tried to be nice so he wouldn’t get angry, why didn’t I fight? And I’m shaking my head, no, I don’t like movies. He looks perplexed, and I feel awful. It wasn’t a lie. I really don’t like movies. He hangs around until I lock the doors, and he waves goodbye. The bouncer lifts an eyebrow, and I grin and wave him off.

6.

After coming home from class one afternoon, I notice another spider in the web. Because I have never seen mating or killing look like this, I can only describe what the spiders are doing as a dance comprised of beautiful, painful movement. I don’t know it is painful, but if I were in pain, this is how I would move – slowly, reaching toward something that might help – the kinetic equivalent of keening. The larger spider – my girl – is leading, instigating movement from the smaller form. She plucks the end of a leg, guides motion with a vague stroke, backs off for a moment and comes back to touch and roll and slide her partner again. The smaller spider is – do spiders writhe? Do spiders undulate? Picture a spider in space, falling over itself in heavy movements, its legs splayed and squirming outward, away, trying to escape, its body caught in the command of something larger, something that is barely touching it at all. I can’t stop watching, and it seems like it will never stop. I don’t know if this is sex or death or both.

I leave to eat dinner, and when I come back, the only thing left of the smaller spider is a few shards of black. I shut the door and wait until morning to take a shower.

7.

These are the only places I go: the café, school, my apartment. For a while, for the summer. The neighborhood becomes the universe, and on the sidewalk, it’s nice to be known as the girl who serves coffee from five to midnight. It’s nice to watch the men straggle in every night, to watch, to oversee from the counter. To give them sweet pastries and warm coffee, to add extra whipped cream because I know they are too embarrassed to ask for it, to prompt a smile when I have jasmine tea ready for the Egyptian cigar shop owner before he can ask. To watch their faces soften because I care about how they wish to eat and drink.

I love that they want only small things, only a spot of sweetness or warmth at the end of the day. When I lock up at night, I put my headphones in and walk the eight blocks to my apartment, ignoring the frat parties, ignoring the drunk college students. I wear my apron home. It’s a talisman, I suppose. It tells people I’m a fixture in this neighborhood in a way they aren’t, that I’m the girl who serves them coffee. It is a terribly powerful thing to be the girl that serves coffee.

8.

I want only small things. For a while, for the summer. I want to eat leftover chicken Caesar wraps from the café and drink warmed coffee in the middle of the night, and I want to sit on the bathroom floor and watch the spider.

I was terrified of spiders as a child. At night, I lined up stuffed animals along the edges where my bed met the wall to impede their imagined progress onto my sleeping body. When he found them in the house, my father killed them and chased me with the tissue containing their crushed forms. He meant no harm. It is the way of boys and men, I think, to tease fear, to be encouraged to face and overcome fear so often that laughter is the default response.

I suppose there are many reasons for fear, especially unexplained fear of beings that rarely cause harm. We find their movements uncanny, our genes are wired to protect us from animals that could be venomous, phobias are implanted in the same way as a distaste for carrots or a love of chocolate. I lose my fear of spiders that summer, and I don’t know why, other than that I identify with this particular, solitary spider. I see in her that my current way of being is okay, that it is fine for a while, for the summer, to live in a corner of the world, to venture out only when it is desirable.

I hope she isn’t frightened of me. The more I think about my arachnophobia, now draining away, I think I was more afraid of the crush, the fragility, the killing of a life, the total destruction of its form, than I was of a living spider. It’s too easy, to eradicate what they are. To be big, to be something they cannot get away from, to be a threat from which they cannot run fast enough. It’s easy to take their lives, and to take their bodies, their structures, to leave them only a stain on the floor, a dark smudge on the phone book. More girls than boys are afraid of spiders. More girls than boys fear their bodies’ permeability, its potential to be rendered into something broken.

9.

The Dutch exchange student asks me out again. He has tickets to A View from the Bridge, and for a moment, I know he sees my eyes light up, because I love Arthur Miller. I tell him I have to work that night, and he’s disappointed. He sees me walking around campus that night. I smile as if I were just taking a break and heading back to work, but he ducks his head and drops and his eyelashes because he knows I am not working. He comes into the café only rarely and does not talk to me. I try not to catch his eye when he looks up from his book. I wish I could tear my belly open, tell the truth, let him look at the panic still sitting inside me, make him know that sometimes there are days in cars with men where you don’t know why you didn’t yell. I wish I were just the girl who serves coffee. I wish everyone only wanted small things, a slice of cake, a warm-up for their tea, a date to a play. I wish the small things didn’t have so much potential to break open. I wish I were not just the girl who serves coffee. I wish I wanted only small things.

10.

There are different kinds of fear. There is phobia that floods your body with chemicals even as you try to reason it away. There is panic like a white light illuminating your muscles, charging you with electricity and liquid muscularity, a way to run, a way to lift and push and fight. There is terror that pulls your reason and your thinking mind out of your body, hustles it away to safe space while your body can’t think to move. There is dread that drips out of your past, a drop into the bloodstream here, a hold on your actions there.

No one will talk about it, but there is fear you deserve and fear you don’t, the fear that gets compared, the what really happened? how bad was it for you? are you worth what keeps you stuck to the floor of your bathroom? There are good reasons for wanting to be alone, for wanting to watch, to bury understanding of how the world behaves into your mind, to learn to love the men and spiders that fill your nights. There are good reasons to want only small things, to want to observe, to learn. There are good reasons, for a while, for the summer.

Identity Theory

Meta: This is a novel by John Irving to be published May 8, 2012 by Simon & Schuster. The hardcover version spans 425 pages. It is Irving’s 13th novel.

Keywords: bisexual narrator, “sexual suspect,” Vermont, amateur theatrical society, AIDS

Random Jacket Copy: “His most political novel since The Cider House Rules.”

Random Quote: “In the fabulous seventies, when I picked up a guy, or I let myself be picked up, there was always that moment when my hand got hold of his butt; if he liked to be fucked, he would start moaning and writhing around–just to let me know I’d hit the magic spot.” (p. 115)

Author Website: http://john-irving.com/

More by John Irving: The World According to Garp, The Hotel New Hampshire, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Imaginary Girlfriend, Setting Free the Bears

Further Viewing: “How to Tell if You’re a Writer” by John Irving

Buy In One Person at Powell’s

Identity Theory

“You could say these stories are meant to shock, but we all know that we live in an unshockable age.” -The Internet is the Machine, a review of Elizabeth Ellen’s Fast Machine

A Conversation: “Cataclysm Baby” Author Matt Bell On Apocalypses, Fairy Tales, And Much More

Another Conversation: Jonathan Lethem on the Talking Heads’ Fear of Music

And Another: Neil Gaiman interviews Stephen King.

E.L. Doctorow’s contribution to the N.Y. Times‘ “Writers of the World: Looking at America” series: “Unexceptionalism: A Primer”

And then there’s this Judgmental Bookseller Ostrich meme.

Finally, if you have a few extra hours a week to spend manipulating words, you should apply for one of our updated editorial staff openings.

Identity Theory

“I like going to a show where everyone is into the music…Everyone’s on the same page for whatever, how long, twenty minutes. That feeling’s pretty cool.”

This interview took place on a bluff overlooking the Puget Sound in the spring of 2011. Mike Dumovich and I had just met at the first Vashon Island Round, where three songwriters are brought together to take turns playing songs and improvising with each other. Having a lot of musical tastes and personality quirks in common, we started playing music together, and I asked if I could interview him while he was writing his third album. We spent one of Seattle’s sunniest days sitting on the grass in his backyard, drinking coffee and passing a guitar back and forth.

Unfortunately, one of my hands was taken out by tendinitis a few weeks later, so I wasn’t able to transcribe the interview until now. In the meantime, he finished recording his new album, Acres, in a shack on his friend’s farm on the island, with a handful of Seattle’s best musicians backing him up. His sound is skillful and unpolished at the same time, gritty-sounding instruments and smooth, rich vocals, aggressive guitar solos followed by pretty ballads. Talking to him with the tape recorder running revealed that Mike holds a similar combination of vitriolic and sensitive opinions.

Anna-Lynne Williams: What’s the first show that you can remember ever playing?

Mike Dumovich: Oh man. I remember it. I wasn’t playing guitar yet, and then I got really into this one record by Mark Lanegan. And Mazzy Star. And I started playing slide guitar, especially after the Mazzy Star record. And there was a young singer out here on Vashon. And a guy that kind of looked like the guitar player from Mazzy Star. So we decided to start a band. But we kind of sucked. But we weren’t that bad. We played at the VFW Hall. And I’ve seen pictures, and it’s horrifying what I wore.

AW: (laughs) How old were you?

MD: I’d say 19.

AW: What did you wear?

MD: It’s horrifying. I had…oh boy…OK, I had long johns under camouflage shorts, hiking boots with wool socks, you know…pulled up…kind of that ’80s hippie purple color. Like those Nike hiking boots, you know what I’m saying? And a t-shirt and some beads. And a hat that I thought made me look like Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction — but it really made me look like I took too much acid at the Oregon Country Fair.

AW: Were you a hippie, or were you a punk rocker?

MD: I didn’t know what I was, actually. I was really confused. I had a mullet until I was 18. I was lost.

AW: So you said you weren’t playing guitar back then?

MD: I was playing guitar, but I’d just started to play. My dad played blues, so I learned some slide tricks in open G. And there was another guy going strum strum strum. And there was a girl going la la la.

AW: And you’ve been playing music ever since then, or have you ever taken some time off from it?

MD: I took a little miniature time off when I went to Colorado for a summer.

AW: Did you live in the wilderness?

MD: No, I was going to go to school at this place that…sucked. It’s called Naropa, and I was really impressed with it because it had this impressive title, called like The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics or some shit. And Allen Ginsberg was involved with it, so I was like “Oh man, I’m going there.” And I went down there and then I didn’t end up going cuz every time I went to talk to any of the kids that were going there they were all just totally rich kid…spoiled…fakers.

AW: (laughs) So how long have you been playing your own Mike Dumovich solo music?

MD: I guess I started pretty much at 19 or 20.

AW: Soon after you started…

MD: Yeah I just started writing my own songs.

AW: Do you like working with other people?

MD: I love it.

AW: But you’re not right now?

MD: Oh, you mean like me playing other people’s stuff?

AW: Like, have you been in any other bands recently?

MD: I would love to actually do more of that, where I’m not the writer and I’m just playing guitar, because I really like playing electric, too. I don’t do that very often — out. But I love it. It’s refreshing. Music can be really fun. And if you write stuff it’s really more rewarding, I guess. But it’s also painful somehow.

AW: Do you have any period of your songwriting that you don’t like to play anymore because it reminds you of anything, or…

MD: Hmm…yeah. And I don’t like to play stuff that’s too old. I get sick of my own stuff pretty quick.

AW: So when you play a show now, do you pretty much play all new stuff that you’re working on?

MD: I try.

AW: That’s very Animal Collective of you.

MD: Is it? I just think it sucks to play songs when you’re flat bored on them.

AW: Yeah I like playing a lot of covers at shows, too, just cuz it’s like the first time I’ve ever played them. And obviously with my own songs that could never be the first time…

MD: Yeah. I’ve done a few covers. I kind of pound covers too much, I think.

AW: You pound them?

MD: Like, if I learn a cover I’ll play it too many shows in a row. Cuz I don’t learn many. So I’ll learn one and I’ll really love it…

AW: What are some favorite ones that you cover?

MD: I really love that Bert Jansch one. Well, Anne Briggs wrote it and then Bert Jansch covered it, with his crazy guitar stuff on it…

AW: What’s the title?

MD: “Go Your Way My Love.”

AW: Ok, yeah. Do you feel when you perform other people’s songs live, does it feel as emotional and personal as when you do your own?

MD: Sometimes more. Well that song, when I first heard it, it really emotionally hit me. And then every time I’d play it, I’d get really emotional about it. And it’s fun to play. Just the guitar and the way the vocal line…At first it was more the emotional things, it fit what I was feeling at the time. But now it’s just really fun to play. It might be the first thing I play if someone says, “Oh, play a song,” or something. My fingers get addicted to that feeling of like multi picking strings.

AW: So what sort of things make you want to write? Like, what are some things that generally inspire you or give you ideas?

MD: That’s hard. It depends. It happens differently…

AW: So are you an autobiographical writer, or do you find yourself sort of thinking like characters or…

MD: I rarely sit down and go, “I’m gonna write a song about yadda yadda.” In fact, I’m trying to do one about my grandma who just passed away, and it’s fucking brutally hard because I just…I don’t usually do that.

AW: You mean having a goal when you set out?

MD: Yeah, just a specific topic. Like I had my dad write down a history about her because I didn’t know enough about her. And then I had him send me a bunch of pictures of her. But the words still haven’t…There are lines of the song I’m working on that are there. But the rest of them…It’s just been really, really hard.

AW: Was she an artist too?

MD: No, she was a badass though. Really, really truly. Cool lady.

AW: Did she make pie?

MD: No. But she did turn me onto peanut-butter-and-mayonnaise sandwiches.

AW: I haven’t had that.

MD: It’s really good.

AW: Oh yeah. So I wanted to ask you about what it was like playing a show with your dad recently. Because you were on the same bill…

MD: Really fun.

AW: Have you done that before?

MD: Yeah, we did it two other times.

AW: So what is it like being a musician in kind of an isolated environment? I mean, you’re close to Seattle. But living on an island…

MD: Well I’ve only been out here for like six months this time.

AW: Ok.

MD: It’s good and bad. It’s good because I grew up out here. And it’s bad because I grew up out here. The isolated part…it’s good and bad. I get a lot out of it but…I was just telling someone that Vashon’s kind of like, it’s either this really green, misty, wonderful, beautiful place. Or it’s like literally the Swamp of Despair from The NeverEnding Story, and you can be drawn down into it, and Atreyu is trying to save you…You’re like a big horse, you’re like sad and sinking…No, no, it’s not that bad. But it can be. (laughing)

AW: So what are you working on right now, musically?

MD: I have to get words done for two songs. And after that I’ll be two or three songs short of another record. I want to record it in a couple months. I’m gonna record it with Johnny {Goss} from Cock & Swan. Johnny’s really knowledgeable. He has an amazing sound that he gets out.

AW: How long have you known that you were a musician, and that you wanted to do this? By the time you played that…show in the shorts? (laughs)

MD: Well, I was originally going to be an actor, out of high school. And I had a potential full ride at Cornish that I was gonna go do. But I didn’t like other actors that I met that were theater students. I just didn’t like them.

AW: This is interesting. So you didn’t like the other students at that other school, and you didn’t like the other actors. But you do like other musicians.

MD: For the most part. Well I mean…just back then. But fake people always bothered me.

AW: Did you study music at any point?

MD: I just taught myself, yeah. You know, you learn some chords. And then you get — like I was saying — that addicting thing. You just get into the sound. I remember when I first started playing I would get really stoned and pluck a chord on my acoustic guitar and just listen to it ring out for a long time. And think, wow it’s so cool that you can take your hand and do that and this thing would come out of it. But acoustic guitars…I’m starting to lose that energy towards them.

AW: Yeah I’ve never really had that with acoustic guitars myself. I guess I kind of feel that with weird little small guitars or…I’ve always felt really drawn to pianos. I guess that kind of finger/muscle memory. Like it’s the way it sounds and the way it feels that’s also rewarding. Where playing acoustic guitar I’ve never had that. So what are some things that make you happy?

MD: (whistles)

AW: Some things that you like. What do you love?

MD: I love…musically?

AW: In the world.

MD: It’s pretty cheesy, you know? I have some really basic things that make me happy. Like when I see people being nice to each other I’m really moved. Or when people are really strong in the face of bad stuff. Or I also like going to a show where everyone is into the music. Playing it or just going to it. Everyone’s on the same page for whatever, how long, twenty minutes. That feeling’s pretty cool. And I like not being angry.

Interview and photographs by Anna-Lynne Williams

Recommended listening: “Norway” and “Are You Sith” from the new album Acres by Mike Dumovich.

Listen here: http://mikedumovich.bandcamp.com/album/acres

Identity Theory

Matt Borondy, Publisher: A Moveable Feast by Hemingway, Just Before Dark: Collected Nonfiction by Jim Harrison, All I Did Was Ask by Terry Gross, Zazen by Vanessa Veselka, The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore, Hobart #12: The Great Outdoors (May 2011).

Robert Birnbaum, Editor-at-Large: Canada by Richard Ford, Mission to Paris by Alan Furst, The Cove by Ron Rash, Prague Fatale by Phillip Kerr, The Life of a Fact by John D’Agata and Jim Fingal, In Search of Small Gods by Jim Harrison, Baffler #19, Grantland #2, The Wet Engine by Brian Doyle. I stumbled across Brian Doyle’s 1st novel (of 12 published books) last year and have been avidly interested in his writing since then. His story collection Bin Laden’s Bald Spot was also a fictional high point last year.

James Warner, Fiction Editor: Daughters of the Revolution by Carolyn Cooke, What I Didn’t See by Karen Joy Fowler, Fun With Problems by Robert Stone, Through the Valley of the Newt of Spiders by Samuel R. Delany

Hilarie Ashton, Assistant Editor: DFW’s Pale King, Carver’s Where I’m Calling From, James Wolcott’s Lucking Out, and Gary Lutz’ I Looked Alive. Just finished J. Franco’s Palo Alto. Stay far, far away from that one. His genius in Pineapple Express does not translate to readable prose.

Alexandra Tursi, Visuals Editor: Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn, The Sorrows of an American by Siri Hustvedt, The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits.

What are you reading?

Identity Theory

Even students who love writing aren’t thrilled about first-year composition. If not taught well, the classwork and assignments feel routine, like practice with no chance for game time.

I was unusually lucky. On the first day of my Writing and Research class at Brookdale Community College, in walked a guy in a tee shirt and jeans, a hey-dude sense of relaxation all about him. He discussed the course requirements, out of obligation, and soon revealed the true nature of the class. It would be an informal seminar to explore anything worth writing about. After asking us to call him Jeff, he scored more approval by noting that the class was in the English language, and we’d be using all of it (i.e., give profanity its due). In a style aimed right at his audience, he touched upon a variety of topics to get our interest. His discussion of nature according to Plato and Aristotle was right at our level. He noted we’d have a unit on underground comics, featuring the artist R. Crumb.

Like most late adolescents, I knew little about myself and the real world – but I knew I liked this class. Before, I always thought I’d may like teaching. Yet teachers seemed too bookish, showing what the parents and principals expected. I didn’t know what kind of teacher I could be until I met Jeffrey Ford.

At the time I was moping around my hometown, Freehold, an ex-Division I football player who didn’t make it. I was working part-time delivering pizza and attended local clubs to see metal and punk bands, the “mosh pits” offering a chance to vent and capture my lost sport. I didn’t take too well to my parents’ divorce, and wondered if I should forget the college thing and work full-time. Then I finished with an A in Jeff’s class (a surprise, actually). I didn’t realize how that class turned things around for me, until about a year and a half later.

I had began to read and write outside coursework. Along the line I recalled Jeff briefly mentioning he was a writer, all too modestly just to encourage the practice. (His class was one of the rare occasions when one wants to remember everything.) I was thrilled to learn, through my journalism professor my second year, that Jeff had a novel coming out. And I jumped at the chance to interview him for the school newspaper. His novel was speculative science fiction, the kind of thing I was into then. During my talk, he showed what a guy with experience and energy could accomplish. I got the hint that he wrote through the night after teaching all day. As in class, he spoke like a bar-stool raconteur, his Long Island tongue speaking simply with casual insight. I noticed that his book was published by Tor, Ray Bradbury’s publisher at the time. Jeff shared his love for the author’s Dandelion Wine, which had a style that would emerge in Jeff’s 2008 novel, The Shadow Year. He told me I should check out Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the works of Italo Calvino and Philip K. Dick, all of whom became personal passions as I awaited Jeff’s next book.

I later ran into him at a local bar, a rewarding chance to get to know him further. He mentioned that he commuted from outside Philadelphia to Lincroft, preferring the back roads even if they meant two hours each way. The drive allowed him to think fiction by day and write it by night. I loved being in the company of a writer. But what I learned to love more was his place as a teacher-writer, how one could play by the rules and later silently break them. I wasn’t too keen on dropping steady work to go for my dream of writing. But I could go for this.

As the years passed, I kept up on Jeff’s work. I loved its playful sense of fantasy, how it reflected the joys of creation and fashioning language to deliver it. The title of his short story collection, The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, proved that he loved the job and all its demands. To me the book seemed his most enjoyable and revealing work. I appreciated his short commentaries after each piece, though Jeff dismissed them in his charismatic irreverence: “The publisher made me do it.” His approach was a real treat since I was dabbling in fiction, a dream I’ve since let go for film criticism and scholarship. His stories “Creation” and “The Honeyed Knot” would garner appreciation from the most fantasy-wary literary readers. Each left me near tears and chills.

One of the stories made a chilling discovery for me. I learned that Jeff had the misfortune of having Kevin Acquino, convicted child murder and an instigator of Megan’s Law, in his class. The reported crime wracked Jeff, causing in him the unavoidable sense of guilt that any teacher feels in such a situation. In his commentary he noted that the event left him cold to teaching, a job he had loved for years. During the time I had him.

This had to be incorrect. Jeff Ford, hating teaching? It never once showed. In fact, he was more inspiring than most teachers. As a community college professor at Camden County College, I realized the lesson here. A prof’s personal issues need not emerge as long as one stays focused on the job and the deep love for it. Teaching, after all, is performance as much as mentorship. Juggling two jobs – a instructor of 100 writing students and writer – taught Jeff to juggle grief with duty. I keep that in mind whenever things seem to start spilling over.

I sought out Jeff’s early fiction in literary journals, as any fan of a writer does. I learned a great deal about his own mentorship, referenced frequently but rarely discussed. Jeff met the novelist John Gardner (Grendel) and soon became friends with him (though Jeff assured readers, in a tribute piece after Gardner’s death, that they weren’t). Jeff would leave stories for him to review, which he’d return with all the lines crossed out except “one or two good sentences.” This proved that Jeff honed his work into mastery though continual practice. He shows that creativity and success belong to any of us.

His experience assured me that teaching could compliment my career as a writer and, one day, a parent. I learned he was retiring from Brookdale Community College, after 21 years of service, right when my first book, The New American Crime Film, would see publication and I learned that I would become a father. As Jeff departs the college for life in Ohio, it’s bittersweet. I channel his inspiration at Camden County College and Rutgers-Camden by day and his determination over the keyboard by night.

Identity Theory

I hope George Romero is a billionaire by now. Having created the most recent horror myth in our culture since Mary Shelley (ok, Tod Browning) ought to earn him a percentage of every novel or film like Dana Fredsti’s Plague Town. The father of the stumbling, hungry, flash mob undead who have trouble with bullets to the head has seen his idea mutated and morphed into many a film and series; the motif is so commonplace and popular now it is almost impossible to think that it all started in 1968 with Night of the Living Dead. Quick, name another recent myth as pervasive? The Matrix? Terminator? Anne Rice doesn’t count, even though Twilight owes her way too much – and for the wrong reasons.

Along comes Plague Town: An Ashley Parker Novel (Titan, 2012, 368 Pages), not only the first in a planned trilogy but also already a movie in production (a series awaits pending sales). Dana Fredsti, novelist and former swordswoman in charge of training on Sam Raimi’s Army of Darkness, manages to squeeze some fresh juice out of an idea that Buffy did better on the small screen, though the idea of smarter-than-thou teens banding together to fight off legions of those brainless, ahem, walking dead, has gotten old even in a culture where something that stays fresh for 48 hours is old school. Romero lives on; tired remixes of his myth, not so much.

So a virus hits a college town that turns the masses into zombies, annoyingly interrupting the exploits of the keggers-and-condoms crowd. Protagonist Ashley, who is – surprise – immune to the virus, sets about to do what kids have done to zombies since the late ’60s – and in increasingly interesting/gross fashion…kill em all! Will she survive? Will the onslaught of demons ever stop? Will she tire of fighting and walk away? My guess is that the answers will be found in later titles of this proposed trilogy…or in any number of movies and books that have already been released in the last twenty years.

Ashley is helped in her battles by other “Wild Cards” (others who are immune to “Walker’s Flu”) including her jock teacher and other teen archetypes. There is gore galore, some of it so wet and splatter-filled it works as humor and horror, but neither the inventive deaths nor overall plot is all that inventive. Surely, the primary market for stories like this are people who will pick it apart more ruthlessly than the casual fan; they will spot scenes and dialogue and most likely shout out what film or show it reminds them of.

Granted, the Zombie genre is now so institutionalized that the trappings are not going to vary much from story to story – you need the staggering turkey shoot, etc. But Fredsti doesn’t try hard enough to inject anything new to sustain interest. She is the author of the inventive Murder for Hire: The Peruvian Pigeon, so she is capable of gripping, quirky work, just not here. Still, Plague Town may improve as the projected series advances. Fredsti will likely develop her characters further, and in getting to know them better may move them beyond the too familiar thoughts and adventures of this book. It is hard because thus far few have ventured beyond Romero in the structure of Zombie stories; fictional vampires have been around over 200 years so there has been time to approach the genre from every possible angle. Plague Town sticks to the same angle others have focused on more successfully. This series needs to get real gone for a change if it is to stand out.

Identity Theory

The 2012 Pulitzer Prize for fiction went to nobody.

HTMLGiant asks: “Does the Pulitzer suck, and if so, whom?”

“It was only when you left it alone that a tree might treat you as a friend. After the blade bit in, you had yourself a war.” -Denis Johnson in Train Dreams

The Millions has a rundown of this year’s Pulitzer winners and finalists with excerpts and other features where available.

“Miss Lora” – New fiction from 2008 Pulitzer winner Junot Diaz in The New Yorker

Identity Theory

Catherine Campbell has been helping us with editing. You should read her PANK story “Ways to Swim.”

Teju Cole draws on newspaper items for his series of “Small Fates” Tweets.

Gregory Lawless speaks with Nate Pritts about his new poetry collection, Sweet Nothings.

David Foster Wallace Writes to Don DeLillo.

This new nonfiction contest isn’t underground, it’s underwater: Immerse Yourself, Briefly

The Rumpus Poem of the Day is “I May Have Made Something Up” by Jennifer Perrine.

Happy Birthday, Charles Baudelaire, wherever you are.

Tom Bissell tells Salon that literary and artistic success have always been a matter of luck.

Longtime friend of Identity Theory Katy Lederer reviews Ted Heller’s online poker novel Pocket Kings in the N.Y. Times.

Feel free to leave your poetry here on the way out.

Identity Theory