peter orner
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Giving Up
I arrived at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in the fall of 2009 having written only a handful of short stories in my life. Most were from high school. Most had puns for titles.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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THE LONELY VOICE #4: John Edgar Wideman Confronts
Some stories cut so close you can only tell them in shards.
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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…