I’ve been thinking about this story ever since I first read it like 20 years ago. But I’ve never been able to remember the title. I do recall that I came across it around the same time that I first read Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. These two stories have been very influential for me.
I'm overwhelmed. Incredible storytelling. Got so lost in it I have to retrospectively think of it in terms of pointillism, but yes. The blizzard is like a centipede with each vignette acting as a leg carrying it along.
Not done yet but the story is already bringing back Southern stories. The South is so lawless in a way. You simply cannot call the cops or an ambulance for help when you're in the deep South and in serious trouble. You are simply too far away and there are too few people around. You are on your own. This is why us Southern folk are half crazy and like guns. My bad.
Has anyone else read "Hand-carved Coffins" by Mr Capote? Same vibes. "Music for Chameleons" is one of my favorite things. Death by methed-up rattle snakes. If that's not southern I don't know what is.
This is an unforgettable story. It reminds me of a story in McSweeny’s about 20 years ago that featured a man riding a bull, then the bull’s back breaking. I never forgot that and I still haven’t been able to locate that story.
Thank you for sharing that. Years ago I wrote a bunch of paragraphs, one each, of the worst 9-1-1 calls I heard as a dispatcher. Brought it to writing group but we didn't know what it was. Not a story. Just this morbid MARCH of death: the alcoholic spews so much blood out of every orifice onto the walls and ceilings of an apartment where drunks go to die that his cirrhosis death is investigated as a homicide; the bi-polar who lives in a van with a llama he walks on the beach every day gives up and handcuffs himself to a buoy down near the ocean floor; the old man reports, "I just killed my wife with an axe," says, "Hold on, she's still breathing ..." chop! chop! chop! "Okay, now she's dead." And so forth. The stories don't have a connecting piece like different stories from the same blizzard, but I see some potential now that they could be made into a quilt of some kind. A blanket to warm the Grim Reaper between harvests perhaps ...
I thought to listen to it at first but then realized this is one to be savored with the eyes.
My biggest takeaway after retyping this was that I'll never be as good a writer as Ron Hansen.
*sigh*
Thanks for keyboarding Colton!
:gasps:
I’ve been thinking about this story ever since I first read it like 20 years ago. But I’ve never been able to remember the title. I do recall that I came across it around the same time that I first read Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff. These two stories have been very influential for me.
I'm overwhelmed. Incredible storytelling. Got so lost in it I have to retrospectively think of it in terms of pointillism, but yes. The blizzard is like a centipede with each vignette acting as a leg carrying it along.
Not done yet but the story is already bringing back Southern stories. The South is so lawless in a way. You simply cannot call the cops or an ambulance for help when you're in the deep South and in serious trouble. You are simply too far away and there are too few people around. You are on your own. This is why us Southern folk are half crazy and like guns. My bad.
Has anyone else read "Hand-carved Coffins" by Mr Capote? Same vibes. "Music for Chameleons" is one of my favorite things. Death by methed-up rattle snakes. If that's not southern I don't know what is.
"Every window view was as white as if butchers’ paper had been tacked up. " What a fantastic line!
This is an unforgettable story. It reminds me of a story in McSweeny’s about 20 years ago that featured a man riding a bull, then the bull’s back breaking. I never forgot that and I still haven’t been able to locate that story.
Thank you for sharing that. Years ago I wrote a bunch of paragraphs, one each, of the worst 9-1-1 calls I heard as a dispatcher. Brought it to writing group but we didn't know what it was. Not a story. Just this morbid MARCH of death: the alcoholic spews so much blood out of every orifice onto the walls and ceilings of an apartment where drunks go to die that his cirrhosis death is investigated as a homicide; the bi-polar who lives in a van with a llama he walks on the beach every day gives up and handcuffs himself to a buoy down near the ocean floor; the old man reports, "I just killed my wife with an axe," says, "Hold on, she's still breathing ..." chop! chop! chop! "Okay, now she's dead." And so forth. The stories don't have a connecting piece like different stories from the same blizzard, but I see some potential now that they could be made into a quilt of some kind. A blanket to warm the Grim Reaper between harvests perhaps ...
Can't wait to read it!
So did Axl Hansen and his wife make it?????