MN State Fair On-A-Stick (F. Scott Fitzgerald — A Night At The Fair)

MN State Fair — Fairborne & Fairchild, MN State Fair, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 2010, all photos © 2009-2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

The Minnesota State Fair kicked off this week and it’s time for our annual State Fair post on red Ravine. We’ve covered a lot of history over the years, including the debut of Peach Glazed Pig Cheeks On-A-Stick, the fine art of Princess Kay of the Milky Way (and the Butter Queens), Minnesota State Fair poster artists, the history of Fairborne and Fairchild, and the tradition of Tom Thumb Donuts.

This year we honor the work of two writers who have written about the Minnesota State Fair. In 1928, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his classic short story “A Night at the Fair.” And this year, Debra Frasier, author of On the Day You Were Born and the Minnesota State Fair Foundation’s current Author-in-Residence, has written and illustrated A Fabulous Fair Alphabet.

Debra Frasier — A Fabulous Fair Alphabet

What started as a collection of photographs taken by Minneapolis author Debra Frasier on daily visits to the Minnesota State Fair, has turned into a work of book art. A Fabulous Fair Alphabet is Frasier’s tribute to the “Great Minnesota Get-Together” and the impetus for the State Fair Alphabet Project, a labor of love for hundreds of Minnesotans who are passionate about early learning. The book has also gained national acclaim, with the New York Times noting,  “Frasier brings to life a jaunty Ferris wheel, a sunburst-yellow pitcher of lemonade and a swirling roller coaster.”

The book is interactive and there is a wonderful article about Frasier’s process in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She intentionally left the front-piece page blank in hopes that families will use the page to personalize their copies of the book as a keepsake, a place to store their own Fair memories, images, and words:

Going to the State Fair together is a ritual for many families. Grandparents have passed along their favorite Fair traditions to their grandchildren. The book is a place for all generations to record their experiences together. Imagine if we had a list of favorite words from our relatives’ 1901 trip to the Fair, or 1945, or 2010 for fairgoers of 2060!

-Debra Frasier

Debra Frasier will be giving book signings from Noon to 2 p.m. daily at the J.V. Bailey House (across from the Space Needle) and I plan to visit her there. You can also visit the Alphabet Forest at Baldwin Park, across from the 4-H building. There are teaching materials based on the book, coloring sheets, instructions on making animals-on-a-stick or a cereal box stage, a bibliography of fair-themed books, display letters, a script that deepens the story and a look at how Frasier created the book at her official website.

F. Scott Fitzgerald — A Night at the Fair

F. Scott Fitzgerald is a Twin Cities icon who continues to live on through art and author happenings at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Most Minnesotans know that he penned the short story, “A Night at the Fair,” but after a comment from one of our readers, I started to wonder how many had actually read the story (myself included).

It begins like this:

The two cities were separated only by a thin well-bridged river; their tails curling over the banks met and mingled, and at the juncture, under the jealous eye of each, lay, every fall, the State Fair. Because of this advantageous position, and because of the agricultural eminence of the state, the fair was one of the most magnificent in America. There were immense exhibits of grain, livestock and farming machinery; there were horse races and automobile races and, lately, aeroplanes that really left the ground; there was a tumultuous Midway with Coney Island thrillers to whirl you through space, and a whining, tinkling hoochie-coochie show. As a compromise between the serious and the trivial, a grand exhibition of fireworks, culminating in a representation of the Battle of Gettysburg, took place in the Grand Concourse every night.

–F. Scott Fitzgerald,  A Night at the Fair

If your imagination is captured, you can read all 15 pages at Project Gutenberg. One of my favorite parts is when Scott writes about Ye Old Mill. The same Ye Old Mill at the Fair today. Located at the southwest corner of Carnes Avenue and Underwood Street, and touted as the “original tunnel of love,” Ye Old Mill is the oldest ride on the fairgrounds and is owned by the same family who first operated it in 1913.

The ride runs on a 40-horse power engine that turns the mill wheel and keeps water running through the 1300-foot channel. When you read Fitzgerald’s descriptions, you can imagine Basil and Riply chugging along on the Fair rides and Midway of the 1920’s. Memories preserved through story.

F. Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour — St. Paul, Minnesota

I’m a writer who has lived in the Twin Cities for over 20 years. Until this summer, I had never seen the place where F. Scott Fitzgerald was born, walked on the steps of St. Paul Academy where he went to school (with a Fitzgerald statue created by Aaron Dysart), or taken a photograph of the sign at the Commodore Hotel where Scott and Zelda lived when their baby girl, Scottie, was born. Those old hotel walls have breathed in tales we can only imagine, real life stories of their drinking and partying at the Commodore bar.

For my birthday this year, our Poetry & Meditation Group walked the 13 stops of a self-guided Fitzgerald tour, from 481 Laurel, where Scott was born, to Mrs. Backus’ Boarding School at 586 Holly, the building where Scott enrolled in dance class. However, the heart of the tour is a four-block radius surrounding the intersection of Kent Street and Summit Avenue, “one of the grandest rows of Victorian Boulevard architecture anywhere in America.” From there, Summit stretches nearly five miles to the Mississippi River in the country’s longest span of residential, Victorian architecture.

Slip on a comfortable pair of shoes, and walk in the footsteps of the writers who came before us. Francis Scott Fitzgerald (named after Francis Scott Key) has a birthday coming up on September 24th; take the tour to celebrate his birth, brushing oaks along streets his parents walked in 1896. At the time he lived in St. Paul, F. Scott visited with writers like Sinclair Lewis and Donald Ogden Stewart. Here’s a link to every stop on the F. Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour.

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Spaghetti & Meatball Dinner On-A-Stick, Fried Fruit On-A-Stick, Macaroni & Cheese On-A-Stick, Bull Bites, Deep Fried Tater Tots On-A-Stick, Grilled Shrimp On-A-Stick, Vintage Kids & Fair Food!, Leprechaun Legs, MN State Fair, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 2008, all photos © 2008-2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

MN State Fair – Foods On-A-Stick

Our Minnesota State Fair post wouldn’t be complete without the annual foods on-a-stick list. Here’s the lineup for 2010. If you are looking for the location of specific foods at the Fair, here’s a link to their FoodFinder with a map of the Fair. The Minnesota State Fair runs through Monday, September 6th. From the 20,000 gallons of milk served by the the American Dairy Association, to the 338,000 dozen mini-donuts consumed, and the 22,000 rolls of toilet paper used at the Minnesota State Fair, there is nothing else to do but ENJOY!

1. Alligator Sausage on-a-stick
2. Baby Potatoes on-a-stick
3. Bacon (Fried) on-a-stick
4. Bananas (chocolate covered) on-a-stick
5. Beef Kabobs on-a-stick
6. Bologna (deep-fried) on-a-stick
7. Bomb Pops on-a-stick
8. Butterscotch Cake on-a-stick
9. Camel on-a-stick
10. Candy Apples on-a-stick
11. Candy Bars (deep fried) on-a-stick
12. Caramel Apples on-a-stick
13. Caramel Apple Puppies on-a-stick
14. Catfish on-a-stick
15. Cheese on-a-stick
16. Cheesecake (chocolate covered) on-a-stick
17. Chicken on-a-stick
18. Chicken Bites on-a-stick
19. Chocolate Tornado on-a-stick
20. Coffee (frozen) on-a-stick
21. Corndogs on-a-stick
22. Cotton Candy on-a-stick
23. Dessert Pizza on-a-stick
24. Dixie Wings on-a-stick
25. Espresso (frozen) on-a-stick
26. Fruit (fresh) on-a-stick
27. Fruit (fried) on-a-stick
28. Fry Dog on-a-stick
29. Fudge Puppies on-a-stick
30. Hot Dago on-a-stick
31. Hot Dish on-a-stick
32. Hot Dogs (wrap) on-a-stick
33. Jerk Chicken on-a-stick
34. Key Lime Pie Dipped in Chocolate (frozen) on-a-stick
35. Kufta Kabob on-a-stick
36. Lamb (leg of) on-a-stick
37. Macaroni & Cheese on-a-stick
38. Marshmallows (Chocolate-dipped) on-a-stick
39. Mashed Potatoes (deep-fried) on-a-stick
40. Meatballs (porcupine wild rice & ground pork) on-a-stick
41. Meatballs (Scotch) on-a-stick
42. Meat Kabobs on-a-stick
43. Nut Roll (chocolate-dipped) on-a-stick
44. Pickles on-a-stick
45. Pizza on-a-stick
46. Poncho Dogs on-a-stick
47. Pork Chops on-a-stick
48. Pronto Pups on-a-stick
49. Sausage on-a-stick
50. Sausage and cheese stuffed jalapeno poppers on-a-stick
51. Scotch Eggs on-a-stick
52. Shrimp on-a-stick
53. Shrimp (grilled) on-a-stick
54. S’mores on-a-stick
55. S’mores (deep-fried) on-a-stick
56. Spaghetti & Meatballs on-a-stick
57. Spudsters on-a-stick
58. Steak on-a-stick
59. Taffy Pops on-a-stick
60. Tater Tots (deep-fried) on-a-stick
61. Texas Steak Dinner on-a-stick
62. Texas Tater Dog on-a-stick
63. Tornado Potato on-a-stick
64. Turkey Tenderloin (bacon-wrapped) on-a-stick
65. Turtle Puppies on-a-stick
66. Vegie Fries on-a-stick
67. Vegetable Kabobs on-a-stick
68. Waffle (Belgian) on-a-stick
69. Walleye on-a-stick
70. Wild Rice Corndog on-a-stick
71. Wonder Bar (chocolate-dipped ice cream) on-a-stick

Total Number of Foods-On-A-Stick: 71*

New Minnesota State Fair Foods In 2010
(including *2 new foods on-a-stick not on list above)

• Caramel Apple Puppies (a Fudge Puppy with baked apple and covered with caramel)
@Fudge Puppies, located on the outside west wall of the Food Building
• Cheese Pizza Served With Corn Dogs (a cheese pizza topped with corn dogs sliced the long way)
@Pizza Shoppe, located inside the Food Building
• Chicken Fried Bacon (thick cut bacon, battered, breaded and fried, and served in a boat covered with gravy)
@Giggles’ Campfire Grill, located on Cooper Street and Lee Avenue
• Chocolate Tornado (spiral-cut Tornado Potato dipped in chocolate)
@Sonny’s Spiral Spud, located inside the Food Building
• Cincinnati Chili (spaghetti noodles smothered with chili and topped with shredded cheddar, beans, and diced onions)
@Sabino’s, located inside the Warner Coliseum
• Danny Boy Burger (burger made with corned beef and covered with kraut, Swiss cheese, and Thousand Island dressing)
@O’Gara’s, located on the corner of Dan Patch Avenue and Cosgrove Street
• Deep-Fried Avocado (avocado pieces batter-dipped, deep-fried, and served with Ranch dressing)
@Tejas, located in The Garden
• Deep-Fried Bacon Cheddar Mashed Potatoes On-A-Stick
@Potato Man and Sweetie, located on Liggett Street, south of Carnes Avenue
• Deep-Fried Bologna On-A-Stick
@Netterfield’s Food Court, located on Cooper Street, north of Dan Patch Avenue
• Deep-Fried Breakfast Wrap (scrambled eggs and bacon in a soft shell wrap, deep-fried and smothered in cheese)
@Axel’s, located outside on the southeast corner of the Food Building
•Deep-Fried Shortcake (shortcake batter deep-fried and covered with strawberries and ice cream)
@Granny’s Cheesecake and More, located on Dan Patch Avenue at Underwood Street
• Fresh Fruit Salsa and Chips (salsa made on-site with fresh fruit and covered with tortilla chips)
@Fried Fruit, located in Carousel Park on the east side of the Grandstand Ramp
• Fried Pig Ears (thinly sliced pigs ears dusted in seasoned flour, fried until crispy, and served with lime chipotle glaze)
@Famous Dave’s, located on the corner of Dan Patch Avenue and Liggett Street
• Ghost Wings (chicken wings covered in a habanero pepper sauce)
@Wings and Things, located inside the Warner Coliseum
• Grilled Marshmallow Chocolate and Banana Sandwich
@Moe and Joe’s, located on Judson Avenue by the CHS Miracle of Birth Center
• Korean Moon BBQ (Korean “street vendor” style tacos with beef short ribs, spicy/sweet pork or chicken)
@Blue Moon Dine-In Theater, located on the corner of Carnes Avenue and Chambers Street
• Sausage and cheese-stuffed jalapeno poppers
@Sausage Sister & Me, located inside the Food Building
• Sloppy Joe served over spiral-cut potato chips
@Sunny’s Spiral Spuds, located inside the Food Building
• Turtle Puppies (Fudge Puppy covered in caramel and nuts)
@Fudge Puppies, located against the outside west wall of the Food Building

State Fair photos on Flickr.

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, August 29th, 2010

-related to posts: MN State Fair On-A-Stick (Happy B’Day MN!), On-The-Go List Of Must-Haves (MN State Fair), Nightshot – Carousel, MN State Fair On-A-Stick II – Video & Stats, food on-a-stick haiku, F. Scott Fitzgerald: On Money & Mess, Runes, Oracles, & Alphabets

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The Short Story & Spring Writing Contests

A story is a way to say something that can’t be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell him to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experience meaning, the purpose of making statements about the meaning of a story is only to help you to experience that meaning more fully.

~Flannery O’Connor, from “Writing Short Stories”

I’ve always been a fan of short stories. I subscribe to The New Yorker just to get a new one each week to read.

Short stories are magical. So compact and full of emotion. The good ones draw you in immediately without you realizing it. They’re a mystery, really. I’ve wondered what it takes to make a good short story work ever since the first time I tried writing one, over 20 years ago.

I can still remember the ancient-seeming Sabine Ulíbarri, one of my favorite Literature professors in college, raising a crooked forefinger into the air and saying that the short story began when something extraordinary happened in an otherwise ordinary life. Professor Ulíbarri’s seminar was held in a dim room—he didn’t like florescent lights—where a dozen or so students sat around a conference table and were so rapt by this physically small yet intellectually giant man’s charms that we endured his chain smoking.

He took his shaky hand and drew on the chalkboard an X in the straight-line trajectory of the life of a typical protagonist. Then he drew a bolt of lightening coming from the heavens above and hitting the X. “This,” he said in his booming voice, “is where the story begins.”

∞ ∞

Loving to read short stories and figuring out how to write them are two different things. The short story is a masterful art form, one that Alice Sebold in her stint as editor of The Best American Short Stories 2009 said provides

…endless access into another world, brought forth by an infinite number of gifted minds. A story about grief can comfort; a story about arrogance can shock and yet confirm; a story populated largely by landscape, whether lush or industrial, can expand the realm that we as individuals inhabit.

The dilemma for someone like me, who would love to comfort, shock, confirm, or expand a reader’s realm, is how to make my stories do exactly that. I don’t have an answer. I haven’t succeeded yet, although, if the truth be known I haven’t tried to hard enough either. However, all that is about to change.



If at First You Don’t Succeed…

I just refused to die as a person who had 30 pages of a novel in her drawer.

~Elizabeth Gilbert, answering a question during an Albuquerque appearance

The rest of this post is targeted to people like me who write and write and write yet rarely venture to send our works out into the world where those who’ve succeeded in the literary arena might judge them. I can understand the resistance. Writing is hard enough. Getting our work published is a whole ‘nother matter. But if like me you want to accept yourself as a writer, you may want to consider seriously pursuing getting your writing published in literary magazines.

Right now I’m focused on the short story, but editors of literary magazines care about all kinds of writing. Literary magazines contain fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry, and some even publish haiku, photography, the graphic narrative, and other art.

Why should we try to get our writing published in literary magazines? According to Poets & Writers, “most writers get the attention of editors, agents, and other writers by publishing first in literary magazines.” Not to mention, many of these venues offer great motivation in the form of cash awards. In fact, this is one of the best times of year to compete in writing contests—the stakes can be anywhere from a couple of hundred dollars to one or two or four thousand.

I just spent a large chunk of this past three-day weekend submitting a short story to several contests. I wrote the story a few years ago and even though I wasn’t happy with it then, I sent it out back then to a half dozen literary magazines for consideration. Not surprisingly, it didn’t get picked up, so I stuck it into a drawer where it sat for a few years.

Well, as often happens when you step back and stop thinking about a piece for a while (be it art or writing), I could see the weaknesses in the story when I looked at it anew. I spent several hours rewriting and editing until finally I had a piece I could be proud of. The next step was to send it out in to the world.



…Try, Try Again

I take writing and competition very seriously. I believe that all writers should compete—even if I now know this to be a quixotic quests—on a level playing field.

~Alice Sebold, Introduction to The Best American Short Stories 2009

The Poets & Writers website is an amazing place, well laid out and chock full of excellent information for figuring out where to send your work. The site has a “Tools for Writers” tab that shows deadlines for Writing Contests, Grants & Awards in both a Submission Calendar format and in a searchable database where you can filter by genre, entry fee, and timing. There’s also the Contest Blog, with frequently posted gems, including interviews with authors who have won contests in the past.

NewPages.com—a website that touts the goodness of independent bookstores—also carries a list of Writing Contests categorized by monthly deadline. It has a list of hundreds of literary magazines—aptly named “Big List of Literary Magazines”—so that you can get a feel for those that fit your writing style and vice versa.

A source I didn’t find in either Poets & Writers nor NewPages.com is A Room of Her Own (AROHO) Foundation, a non-profit organization that helps women achieve their artistic goals by providing prize and grants, including a $50,000 biennial grant “to an American woman writer of merit working under financial hardship.”

It should be said, contests are not the be-all end-all of writing. Most important is getting your work published, which these sources provide just as much information about as they do contests and awards. But in the event you need that extra boost, now is an excellent time to vie for prizes.



Your Countrymen (and Women) Need You

It’s tough for writers to write (and editors to edit) when faced with a shrinking audience. Once, in the days of the old Saturday Evening Post, short fiction was a stadium act; now it can barely fill a coffeehouse and often performs in the company of nothing more than an acoustic guitar and a mouth organ.

~Stephen King, “What Ails the Short Story,” in The New York Times, 9/30/2007

When he was editor of The Best American Short Stories 2007, Stephen King declared that short stories were alive but not well. Literary magazines have over time been relegated to the bottom shelves of magazine sections in most big bookstores, and even there only a few titles can be found.

So do your part. Read, write, edit, and submit. Then do it again and again.



Hints & Tips



Poets & Writers offers these common sense tips for submitting to literary journals and/or vying for writing contests:

• Do research to determine which publications are right for you. In other words, know your market.
• Each literary magazine has “a unique editorial voice, tone, viewpoint, mission.” Make sure that you read any literary magazine before you submit your work to it. (Many literary magazines have websites with archives where you can read past winning stories or other published pieces.)
• Read about the contributors to compare their backgrounds and interests to yours.
• Make sure to read the Submission Guidelines for each magazine. They differ. Some will accept only online; others only accept hard copies sent by mail. Some want 12pt. font with one-inch margins. One might have a word count, another a page count.
• Specifically look for guidance on simultaneous submissions, meaning submissions of a single work to more than one journal or contest at a time. Most of the literary journals that I submitted to allowed for simultaneous submissions but asked to be informed immediately if the submission gets picked up by or wins somewhere else.
• Some literary journals request cover letters and others do not. Some contests are done as a “blind review,” meaning that any identifying information about the author is stripped off during the actual reading/review. Poets & Writers suggested that where a cover letter is requested, try not to “discuss the merits or themes of the work you are submitting” but use the cover letter instead to provide a short bio and any past publication accomplishments.

Finally, beware of Writing Contest scams. My advice, and mind you this is only my advice, is to use a source that you trust (the way I trust, for example, Poets & Writers) to identify true literary journals and the contests they run. Others may be designed to simply get your dollars for a submission or reading fee.



Special Bonus: Sabine Ulíbarri

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haiku for The Swimmer (John Cheever lives on)

Continuity, BlackBerry Shots, pool near Clarks Hill Lake, Georgia, October 2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

streaks of Southern light
splash across concrete pool deck
sink to the bottom

wading through memoir
old gravestones crack and crumble
worn secrets revealed

John Cheever lives on
fine art of the short story
distant memories

pool to pool to pool
we have all been The Swimmer
fighting for our lives

When I travel to Georgia with Mom, we stay at my Uncle Bill’s place on Clarks Hill Lake. Mom likes the wicker room on the first floor with a view of the lake and grounds. This year I stayed in the only upstairs bedroom in the wing of the house dedicated to recreation, exercise, and watching movies. In the past, I thought it a little strange to be the only person sleeping on the whole second floor. But this year, I grew to love the room. It’s quiet. No widescreen TV on the wall, no noise. And it looks out over a sea of Georgia pines on the shore of Clarks Hill Lake.

The dividing line between Georgia and South Carolina runs right through Clarks Hill Lake. I stay on the Georgia side with my uncle; my paternal aunts, Annette and Brenda, live not far from my uncle on the South Carolina side. I reconnected with my blood father’s sisters a few years ago after nearly 50 years. They had not seen me or my mother since I was 2 years old. Small world.

One morning I awoke and saw these streaks of light pulsing through the pool below me. It struck me how they hit the concrete first, then jumped into the water and immediately sank to the bottom. One thing I like about outdoor pools is the way the sunlight plays through the water during the day. Another thing about swimming — you get really good at holding your breath.

My grandfather had a pool when I was growing up. It wasn’t far from the bomb shelter he built outside his new home; it was the 1950’s. Among the things I remember clearly are the few sultry evenings when we swam at night. I also associate pools with John Cheever’s short story, The Swimmer. Ever since Natalie Goldberg had us read it for one of her Taos workshops, I’ve never forgotten it. Neither has writer Michael Chabon. In Salon, he calls The Swimmer “a masterpiece of mystery, language and sorrow.”

Who is your favorite short story writer? Have you ever written or published a short story? What do you associate with swimming pools? Exercise, relaxation, water polo, relief from the heat, family fun? Do a Writing Practice on Swimming Pools….10 Minutes, Go!

Lifeline, Lightbending (3), BlackBerry Shots
of pool near Clarks Hill Lake, Georgia, October
2009, all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All
rights reserved.

-posted on red Ravine, Saturday, November 14th, 2009, with gratitude to Natalie for all the writers she has introduced us to and made us read in spite of our resistance!

-related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day), PRACTICE — Holding My Breath – 10min, The Vitality Of Place — Preserving The Legacy Of “Home”

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Envy

By Anonymous

 

 

As unaccountable as feeling, as inevitable, inconvenient and beautiful as tumultuous weather, a circumstance has arisen in which I am envied by a woman far more successful than I.

The Woman Who Envies Me, or let us call her WWEM for short, like a radio station, decided at some point that my life, my spirit, I don’t know what, I don’t know what, I don’t know, my circumstances, were, in their beauty, a source of personal torment to her, a sign of the complete arbitrariness of the universe in the handing out of sweet things, and began to torment me mercilessly, even as she tormented herself, with outbursts in my direction. As we were frequently thrown into artistic situations together, working on the same movie, being in the same play (both of us are comedians and actors), she would never come to the workplace intending to torment me. Rather she would be overtaken by this feeling of envy, never the master of it. Envy has no master! It operates with a terrible independence, diminishing the spirit even as it enlarges and bloats the sense of self! Once, during a rehearsal, the WWEM shrieked, without warning to herself or to me that anything was coming:

O who do you think you are! With all that! With all that! Just because you went to some Ivy League school! You think you’re all that!

I was obliged to point out to her that it was she who had attended an Ivy League university; I had been a high school flunkie who barely got into any college, and would be shaking a cup in front of the F train were it not that my father had been a professor at a college that felt more or less obligated to admit me.

Another time, having attended a solo show of mine at a New York theater, she followed me around the lobby of the theater after the show whispering frantically in my ear, wherever I walked:

fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you

The woman in question is a known screenwriter and actor, a mother, a wife, the author of two successful books, a person of financial means and connections, and enjoys excellent health.

Except for her envy.

The beauty of this story, the lesson for me, lies in its mystery. It is quite clear that she envies me desperately (the symptoms are all there; I recognize them from my own inner life). If I could find her in a moment of quiescent spirit, I could try to ask her why. There is no doubt in my mind that the answer would educate me deeply. No doubt whatsoever.
 




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An anonymous writer received honorable mention in the Out of The Blue Films, Inc. ENVY Contest at red Ravine for the short story Envy.

Congratulations, Anonymous, from Out of The Blue Films, Inc. and red Ravine!

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red Ravine is not liable for any actions by Out of The Blue Films, Inc., nor the Film. red Ravine has no legal responsibility for any outcomes from the contest.

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Books With A Bang

It’s hard to come up with only 10 books that have had the most impact on my life. I’ve lived long enough to know there are many more than 10. But once I sat down to write, and began crawling through the recesses of childhood memory, a solid list began to form.

It reads to me like stepping stones, cairns on a map of my life:

1. Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Walter J. Black Inc, New York, (1927)  – I used to sit and read his mysteries, rocking away and biting my fingernails. When I saw Galway Kinnell a few weeks ago, I was happy to hear that Poe was one of his favorite authors! See PoeStories.com for the latest and greatest on Poe.
2. Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse – this book had a huge impact on me, along with The Prophet which I read my first year of college. There’s a great e-book of Siddhartha online.
3. The Prophet by Khalil Gibran – I was going through a change in consciousness at the time I started reading this book. Believe it or not, there’s an online fan site for Kahlil Gibran.
4. Nancy Drew Mysteries by Carolyn Keene – what’s not to like about Nancy Drew? I loved the Hardy Boys series just as much, if not more. I have a few originals of each around my bookshelves and in my collections. Books like these kept my sense of wonder intact. Nancy Drew is alive and well!  Check out Nancy Drew Sleuth.
5. Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton – first book I read by May Sarton. My favorite is Kinds of Love. I’ve read everything she’s written. May Sarton changed the way writers look at journals and their relationship to memoir.
6. The Color Purple by Alice Walker – had a big impact. But my favorite book is Meridian. I consider Alice Walker one of my mentors. I’ve read everything by her and saw her speak at Borders a few years ago. She has an amazing quiet and calm about her. A peacefulness I want to cultivate in my own life.
7. Illustrated Book of Bible Stories – One of my childhood mementos. It’s packed in a box somewhere. I ran across it when I moved in with Liz last December. I grew up Methodist and used to read these out loud to myself in my bedroom, marking the pages as I went. I think Aunt Cassie gave the book to me. Back then, it was tradition in our family to gift signed copies of Bibles and Bible story books.
8. Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko – I read this book when I was going to art school. It changed the way I looked at the structure of books and writing. I love the story and her style; I recently read it again.
9. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley – first time I knew a woman could have this much chutzpah, blood, guts, all that and more. I loved this book when I read it at about age 11. I probably knew on some level right then and there that I wanted to be a writer.
10. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut – I read a lot of books of this type in the early 70’s. So I guess for me, this Vonnegut book represents a certain genre that I was reading at the time. It was nearing the end of Vietnam, but war and peace were still at the forefront of campus politics. I remember watching Slaughterhouse-Five (the movie) in a dark college auditorium my 1st year of college. We were having sit-in’s and chanting for peace. We still are.

 -from Topic post: Ten Slam Dunks.

Wednesday, May 9th, 2007

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The 1950’s — What Was America Reading?

It was the 1950’s. Gas was 29¢ a gallon, cigarettes 25¢ a pack, a hospital stay was $35 a day. The Franklin National Bank in New York issued the first credit card, and the World’s first shopping mall in the U.S. – Seattle’s Northgate Mall was built. The First Grammy Awards happened, RCA’s Color Television sets hit the market, and the films, On the Waterfront, All About Eve and An American in Paris were released.

Marilyn Monroe and her husbands Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller were pretty big. So were Peanuts, Mad Magazine, Jonas Salk, James Dean, Fidel Castro, Rosa Parks, Billy Graham, the Korean War, and Israel invading the Sinai Peninsula.

In the decade of blazers, bermuda shorts, saddle shoes, and sack dresses, writers like James Baldwin, Richard Wright, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lillian Hellman, William Burroughs, Sylvia Plath, Susan Sontag, Maria Irene Fornes, Gary Snyder, J.D. Salinger, Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor, and Dylan Thomas were all doing their thing.

People change and grow. Countries have lives and spirits that change and grow. Would you say America is still in its adolescence?

You can tell a lot about a person by the books they read. You can also tell a lot about a culture. In the 1950’s, here’s what America was reading.

1 9 5 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S

F I C T I O N

1. From Here to Eternity, James Jones
2. Return to Paradise, James A. Michener
3. The Silver Chalice, Thomas B. Costain
4. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
5. Giant, Edna Ferber
6. The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway
7. The Robe, Lloyd C. Douglas
8. Désirée, Annemarie Selinko
9. Battle Cry, Leon M. Uris
10. Love Is Eternal, Irving Stone
11. The Egyptian, Mika Waltari
12. No Time for Sergeants, Mac Hyman
13. Auntie Mame, Patrick Dennis
14. Andersonville, MacKinlay Kantor
15. Bonjour Tristesse, Françoise Sagan
16. Peyton Place, Grace Metalious
17. Eloise, Kay Thompson
18. The Tribe That Lost Its Head, Nicholas Monsarrat
19. The Mandarins, Simone de Beauvoir
20. Rally Round the Flag, Boys!, Max Shulman
21. Blue Camellia, Frances Parkinson Keyes
22. The Scapegoat, Daphne du Maurier
23. On the Beach, Nevil Shute
24. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand
25. Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak
26. Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov
27. Exodus, Leon Uris
28. Poor No More, Robert Ruark
29. The Ugly American, William J. Lederer and Eugene L. Burdick
30. Lady Chatterley’s Lover, D. H. Lawrence

1 9 5 0 ‘ s – B E S T S E L L E R S

N O N F I C T I O N

1. Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book; Betty Crocker’s Good & Easy Cook Book 
2. How I Raised Myself from Failure to Success in Selling, Frank Bettger
3. Look Younger, Live Longer, Gayelord Hauser
4. Washington Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer
5. Better Homes and Gardens Handyman’s Book; Diet Book; Barbecue Book; Decorating Book; Flower Book
6. The Sea Around Us, Rachel L. Carson
7. The Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version
8. U.S.A. Confidential, Jack Lait and Lee Mortimer
9. Tallulah, Tallulah Bankhead
10. The Power of Positive Thinking, Norman Vincent Peale
11. Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Alfred C. Kinsey, et al.
12. Angel Unaware, Dale Evans Rogers
13. This I Believe, Edward P. Morgan, editor; Edward R. Murrow, foreword
14. How to Play Your Best Golf, Tommy Armour
15. The Saturday Evening Post Treasury, Roger Butterfield, editor
16. Gift from the Sea, Anne Morrow Lindbergh
17. The Family of Man, Edward Steichen
18. How to Live 365 Days a Year, John A. Schindler
19. The Secret of Happiness, Billy Graham
20. Why Johnny Can’t Read, Rudolf Flesch
21. Inside Africa, John Gunther
22. Year of Decisions, Harry S Truman
23. Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, concise ed., David B. Guralnik
24. Etiquette, Frances Benton
25. Love or Perish, Smiley Blanton, M.D.
26. The Nun’s Story, Kathryn Hulme
27. Kids Say the Darndest Things!, Art Linkletter
28. The FBI Story, Don Whitehead
29. Where Did You Go? Out. What Did You Do? Nothing, Robert Paul Smith
30. Please Don’t Eat the Daisies, Jean Kerr
31. The Day Christ Died, Jim Bishop
32. ‘Twixt Twelve and Twenty, Pat Boone
33. Masters of Deceit, Edgar Hoover
34. The New Testament in Modern English, J. P. Phillips, trans.
35. Dear Abby, Abigail Van Buren
36. Inside Russia Today, John Gunter
37. Folk Medicine, D. C. Jarvis
38. Charley Weaver’s Letters from Mamma, Cliff Arquette
39. The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E. B. White
40. Only in America, Harry Golden

 

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, May 2nd, 2007

-Resources: 1950’s Bestsellers List from Cader Books, The Literature and Culture of the American 1950’s

-related to posts:  The 1960’s — What Was America Reading?, The 1970’s — What Was America Reading?

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