A Clairvoyant Selfportrait of the Artist as a Published Author

Stephen R. Covey recommends this exercise: write your own obituary and live up to it.

The other day, after reading Ron Carlson's "The Tablecloth of Turin" in Robert Shapard and James Thomas's Sudden Fiction (Continued), I had the idea of describing a press conference for some sort of suddenly successful artist, probably an author. I decided to tell the story through one of the journalists. As I wrote, it made sense to present everyone in attendance as physically flawed. The artist, an author, has "tired eyes, formless cheeks and present but indadequate chin" and one of the journalists, a woman, has a torso that is "distressingly long" while another journalist, a man, is balding, "pudgy, poorly dressed, an eyesore and a brazen one".

I started out with the title "A Dream of Fortune", since I recognized that I was in fact daydreaming about my own success. Then the first question was asked, by the woman with the distressingly long torso, a question about the author's meteoric rise, to which the author replied that "The fate of meteors is not to be envied" and I added "The Fate of Meteors" to the title, after a forward slash. I thought "A Dream of Fortune/The Fate of Meteors" gave an intriguing hint of the story's contents and theme.

The press conference continued, taking on the characteristics of an interview, only three of the qestioners being identified, and only two of them described. The author spoke of his and his family's coping with his success, voicing for me my concerns about what to do with my current studies and career if I ever make it big enough in literature to have the option of doing nothing else but write. Then the narrator rose to ask a question.

This was where the story took an unexpected turn. Up to this point I had focused on the author, my "shadow" (when I read the story to a student, he said he could see my shadow in it). Suddenly, as has often happened, especially with female characters, in my stories, a minor character wrested the story from me and announced a larger and more interesting role for him- or herself than I had intended. The narrator asked, "What do you say of your critics, those who say your views are too conservative, that you are not sufficiently accepting of alternative lifestyles?"

This question did not come entirely out of the blue. Alternative lifestyles are of interest to me and I have begun writing or planning a few stories that involve them, but I did not begin this story with any notion of bringing them up.

The author's reply summed up my position fairly well, but then I was left with the curious matter of the narrator's internal response to the reply. Imagine my surprise when it came: "I am not satisfied. I suppose I can never be. I love his work–what I have seen of it, but I am wounded deeply by its undertones".

Wow! The narrator was gay! Granted, gender and sexual orientation are never stated and other readers may give the character a different gender and a different "alternative", but for me he was gay.

The story starts with the line "We are all assembled in ranks like a tray of chocolates". I nearly wrote "like a box of chocolates", but that phrase was taken and would have lent a droll tone that I didn't want. Besides, "a tray of chocolates" has a nice formality to it, an echo of the occasion. It also suggests that some other power than our own groups and orders us and puts us forth–and that all choices are in some measure ranked for us by circumstances.

The idea of choices is key in this tale. I knew it would be, in fact, I had already chosen the last line: "It's nice to have choices," he says. I had meant that in a very personal way. Like most people, I feel somewhat, well, boxed in by circumstances. I am not displeased with my lot as it has fallen (or been shaken) out, but I want more. I want more choices. I want to be able to choose to keep teaching, not forced to teach.

That was how I understood the line when I began writing, but by the time the time came to use the line, it had taken on a new meaning. Sexual orientation is also a choice, one that has become increasinlgy varied and ever more widely available. The author clearly intends his choices of career, but the story suggests choices of all kinds, especially of "lifestyle".

The experience of writing "A Dream of Fortune/The Fate of Meteors" was somewhat akin to the experience of writing "Into the Fire". The narrator and protagonist of "Into the Fire" is a woman. She was originally a minor, nay, a marginal character in "Auld Lang Syne". There was more to the background of "Auld Lang Syne" than "Auld Lang Syne" could handle, so I opted to write an offshoot, the story from the wife's perspective. That meant trying to think like a woman, like a wife and mother. It was revealing. I have learned a lot ("Into the Fire" is still on the desk). I think my relationship with my wife has improved greatly because of my new perspective on her lot.

As the author says of his career choices, sexual orientation is "a tricky issue with many perspectives to be considered". One of the issues is that "we are not all the same in terms of what makes us happy or in the degrees or tones of happiness we seek".

I enjoyed writing it and have enjoyed thinking about it. I hope you enjoy reading it and thinking about it.