THE LONELY VOICE #24: ON KAWABATA, MORE SEX THAN SEX, THOUGHTS ON A PALM OF THE HAND STORY
Not long before his suicide in April 1972, Yasunari Kawabata did something that has perplexed me for years.
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Posts by: Peter Orner
The Rumpus Interview with Joe Mozingo
Journalist Joe Mozingo digs deep into his ancestral history to uncover the origin behind his surname, and discovers it’s one of the few African names to survive not only the Middle Passage, but the history of American slavery itself.
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THE LONELY VOICE #23: It Doesn’t Fit, It Will Never Fit, It Fits
Of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Haiti, and V.S. Pritchett…
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The Lonely Voice #22: RIP Richard Stern
Richard Stern has died. Stern was a short story writer, novelist, and essayist. I’ve always been particularly fond of Stern’s short stories, which are as emotionally raw as they are comic.
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The Lonely Voice #21: So Long Adobe Books
Another bookstore closes and San Francisco yawns. But Adobe Books on 16th Street, between Valencia and Guerrero isn’t another bookstore. It is a haven, a port for lonely souls, readers.
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THE LONELY VOICE #20: WILLIAM MAXWELL IN THE DECEMBER RAIN
This morning I threw Julian Barnes’ Sense of an Ending out the window of my car.
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THE LONELY VOICE #19: On the Beauty of Not Writing… A Reluctant Homage to Juan Rulfo
I would like to be even more silent. The need to write thankfully only comes once in a while,
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LONELY VOICE #18: Kafka the Dad (Part Three of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
In an essay called “The I Without a Self,” W.H. Auden tells us about a rumor “which if true might have occurred in a Kafka story.” That is that Kafka, without knowing it, fathered a child.
LONELY VOICE #17: In Love Again and Doomed (Part Two of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
My lung was fair at least out there, here where I’ve been for the last fortnight. I’ve not been able to see the doctor. But it can’t be so bad considering for instance that I was able – holy vanity! – to chop for an hour and more without getting tired, and yet was happy, for moments.
...moreTHE LONELY VOICE #16: Between the Public and the Sky (Part One of Five Stray Thoughts on Kafka)
Whoever leads a solitary life and yet now and then feels the need for some kind of contact…
The Rumpus Interview with Christopher Goffard
Wherever he went, the man of God carried his shotgun…
Christopher Goffard’s You Will See Fire is a tense and harrowing look at the life and mysterious death – of a brave, at times, recklessly so – American priest living and working in Kenya.
...moreTHE LONELY VOICE #15: Be Aware of Your Own Ridiculousness, A Small Tribute to Václav Havel
That Václav Havel’s death was overshadowed by Kim Jong Il, that loopy coward, is a joke that might have made Havel, the writer, laugh. Idiot tyranny finally pays him back a little.
Over New Year’s (yeah, a lonely voice likes to party), I re-read one of Havel’s plays, “Largo Desolato,”
...moreTHE LONELY VOICE #14: Isaac Babel, Every Grief Soaked Word
I mourn him like a lost brother. I’ve no right to say this. It’s ridiculous. Yet some voices, we convince ourselves, can’t be lived without.
...moreTHE LONELY VOICE #13: Walser on Mission Street
I confess I like reading stories about people who are more depressed than I am. Other people’s misery has a way of lifting the soul a little. Happy stories? They’re even duller than happy families.
Census, 1980
An excerpt from Love and Shame and Love by Peter Orner, our November Rumpus Book Club selection (which is already receiving wonderful reviews, so now’s a great time to join the RBC if you aren’t already a member):
THE LONELY VOICE #12: Cheever in Albania Or The Lonely Voice Hates Travel Writing
There are few things more riveting than watching people gossip in a language you don’t understand.
THE LONELY VOICE #11: Eudora Welty, Total Bad Ass
Greatest American short story writer? Ever? For me, it’s not even an interesting question. Welty in a landslide.
THE LONELY VOICE #10: Two Boys Fighting, Omaha Nebraska
Two boys are fighting. Neither is especially interested in beating the other up but once these things start, sometimes you’ve got no choice but to go ahead with it.
THE LONELY VOICE #9: We Don’t Have to Live Great Lives
I spent most of today re-reading Andre Dubus’s “Voices From the Moon”.[1] It is one of those stories. When you finish it you concentrate a little harder on your own breathing because you feel a little more alive. Because you’re reminded that you’ve got only a finite number of breaths left.
THE LONELY VOICE #8: In Praise of Inaction, Bellow’s “The Old System”
I’ve been hearing the short story is dead again. The real money is in novels. Screenplays! A short story? Why don’t you go and write a haiku while you’re at it.
Underground America: Permanent Anxiety
“The Arizona law is not the problem. The problem is that we continue, on all sides of the political spectrum, to not listen to those most directly affected by immigration policy: immigrants themselves.”
THE LONELY VOICE #7, The Rumpus Short Story Column: My Son the Murderer
In honor of Governor Mark Sanford and Michael Jackson’s (bless his Indiana soul) favorite holiday, today’s Lonely Voice is devoted to dads
...moreTHE LONELY VOICE #6: The Rumpus Short Story Column, Death and the Dying Chekhov
The lonely voice is coming to you today from San Francisco General Hospital. I’m in the cafeteria. I come here sometimes. It’s a nice place to be distracted and the pudding is good. I’m thinking about Chekhov, or trying to, I keep getting distracted.
THE LONELY VOICE #5, The Rumpus Short Story Column: We Are All Lizzie Borden
This happens sometimes. I got murder on the brain this morning.
THE LONELY VOICE #4: John Edgar Wideman Confronts
Some stories cut so close you can only tell them in shards. Try getting at it directly and the thing – call it some kind of unspeakable personal tragedy – breaks apart on the page.
THE LONELY VOICE, a Column About Short Stories: “Around the Dear Ruin”
One of the great stories of my adopted city, San Francisco, is without a doubt “Around the Dear Ruin” by Gina Berriault. It also might be one of the saddest and cruelest.
I’ve probably read this brief story twenty, maybe thirty, times, and each time I am taken in by Leo Brady’s bottomless sorrow, his love for a woman who never, ever loved him back.
...moreA Column About Short Stories—Waterboarding Leonardo Sciascia
I sometimes wonder if the precarious place that short stories hold in the world of publishing (and reading) is because good stories are inherently threatening. They can cause a lot of trouble in a few pages and knock a reader’s complacency for a serious loop.
...moreTHE LONELY VOICE: A New Column About The Short Story by Peter Orner
The difference between a short story and a novel is the difference between a pang in your heart compared to the tragedy of your whole life. It’s all a matter of how you feel the pain. Read a great story and there it is—right now—in your gut.
Brief Thoughts on Alvaro Mutis’s “The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port Of Call”
There is a line of James Wright I have always loved: “Where is the sea, that once solved the whole loneliness of the Midwest?”
Re-reading one of the great modern sea stories, “The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port of Call,” by the Columbian writer Alvaro Mutis, I thought of this line of Wright’s.
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