Summer, 1971, was a breakthrough moment in my literary career. The Literary Review published my short story "Fragments Before the Fall," (http://www.ibiblio.org/cdeemer/frag.htm), validating me as an artist more than anything I had published earlier. This story had a unique birth.
I had dropped out of a PhD program (Amer Lit, Melville) at the Univ of Oregon in the summer of 1967 in order "to become a writer." With my new lover, I moved to Portland and began the effort. I was focusing in two directions: to publish in literary magazines I admired, particularly those with international audiences (Prism International, The Literary Review); to publish in Northwest Magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement and the best local paying market. I accomplished both goals and returned to grad school on an MFA program.
But it was a struggle. I was receiving rejection slips like crazy because I was writing and submitting like crazy. One afternoon in particular summarized this effort: I opened the mailbox to find four returned stories, two of them from The Literary Review. This was the last straw.
I vividly remember my reaction. I rushed inside and tossed the envelopes across the room. I sat down at my manual Remington typewriter and started typing. Some 30 or 40 minutes later I had something called "Fragments Before the Fall." I immediately drove to the post office and mailed it to The Literary Review.
It took them almost a year to accept it and over a year later to publish it, by which time I was back in grad school. This story, born of frustration and arrogance, is still the closest I've come to writing a "writer's manifesto."
All this comes to mind because this morning the title Fragments After the Fall entered my head: a final statement in fragments, a bookend to close my career, which can be open ended, ending when it's over.
Hmm.
I had dropped out of a PhD program (Amer Lit, Melville) at the Univ of Oregon in the summer of 1967 in order "to become a writer." With my new lover, I moved to Portland and began the effort. I was focusing in two directions: to publish in literary magazines I admired, particularly those with international audiences (Prism International, The Literary Review); to publish in Northwest Magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement and the best local paying market. I accomplished both goals and returned to grad school on an MFA program.
But it was a struggle. I was receiving rejection slips like crazy because I was writing and submitting like crazy. One afternoon in particular summarized this effort: I opened the mailbox to find four returned stories, two of them from The Literary Review. This was the last straw.
I vividly remember my reaction. I rushed inside and tossed the envelopes across the room. I sat down at my manual Remington typewriter and started typing. Some 30 or 40 minutes later I had something called "Fragments Before the Fall." I immediately drove to the post office and mailed it to The Literary Review.
It took them almost a year to accept it and over a year later to publish it, by which time I was back in grad school. This story, born of frustration and arrogance, is still the closest I've come to writing a "writer's manifesto."
All this comes to mind because this morning the title Fragments After the Fall entered my head: a final statement in fragments, a bookend to close my career, which can be open ended, ending when it's over.
Hmm.
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