The Lonely Voice #27: William Trevor, What Haunts Us Is Us
And this is the majesty of William Trevor. He creates—and at the same time affirms—the dark we’ve all got inside us. He gives our nightmares flesh.
...more
Peter Orner
The Lonely Voice #32: The Last Lonely Voice
That’s what the Lonely Voice has always been to me. It was a privilege to be allowed to have a private conversation with myself in public.
...more
The Lonely Voice #31: So Long, James Salter
But our bodies and our brains don’t seem designed, ultimately, to cooperate and Salter joins the ranks of the dead where he doesn’t belong.
...more
The Lonely Voice #30: Brief Early Morning Thoughts on Ahab
I find that lately I do more reading than writing, and more thinking than either.
...more
Jane Byrne (1934–2014)
Jane Byrne, Fighting Jane. Mike Royko called her Mayor Bossy. She ran against the machine and squashed it, the whole goddamned machine.
...more
The Lonely Voice #29: Feels like the World, On a Story by Richard Bausch
Richard Bausch can take your head off with a plain sentence. He’s direct, no frills, no pirouettes. A writer who says what he means and not a word more.
...more
The Lonely Voice #28: All Lives Are Interesting: My Father and Mavis Gallant
Alive, dead, what’s it matter to me, truly? I had her books then, I have her books now. Let others sing her praises today from the rooftops. For me, Gallant is all days.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Chris Abani
Chris Abani sits down to talk about the dangers and seduction of fiction, literature as transformation, growing up in Nigeria, and how “our every justification is a story.”
...more
The Lonely Voice #26: Brief Thoughts on Alvaro Mutis’s “The Tramp Steamer’s Last Port Of Call”
The Lonely Voice was sorry to hear of the passing of the great Alvaro Mutis who died last month in Mexico City.
...moreThe Lonely Voice #25: Winter in September, On Breece D’J Pancake
Stories fail if you only read them once. You’ve got to meet a story again and again, in different moods, at different eras of your life.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with Leigh Newman
Balancing love and truth probably requires a very rigid, if not anal avoidance of glory and shame, when it comes to the portrayal of the people in the story—be they family members or characters.
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more
THE LONELY VOICE #23: It Doesn’t Fit, It Will Never Fit, It Fits
Of Jean-Claude Van Damme, Haiti, and V.S. Pritchett…
...more
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.
...more
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.
...more
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. I was reading at a red light. This occurred at approximately 10 A.M. at the corner of Mission Street and Como Avenue in Daly City, California. I was on my way to the Red Wing Store in the Westgate Shopping […]
...more
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,
...moreIn Memory of Victor Martinez
Peter Orner remembers his friend, the late poet and novelist Victor Martinez.
...moreLONELY 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.
...moreLONELY 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, […]
...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…
...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,”
...more
THE 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.
...moreCensus, 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):
...moreTHE 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.
...moreTHE 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.
...moreTHE 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.
...moreTHE 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.
...more