“Going the Distance” by Michael Joyce: A Review

Michael Joyce is a master at evoking a sense of loss, memory and how unreliable it can be (the line from “afternoon, a story,” the seminal hyper fiction, is a great example: “I want to say I may have seen my son die this morning.”), and connections.

When I read fiction by Joyce I’m most often reminded of someone who’s woven a fine tapestry. Or a rug. He leaves out the strands from the finished cloth for you, the reader, to grab a hold of, and sometimes he’s woven them in tightly, and it takes some work to ferret them out, to realize that you are slowly unraveling the whole story. In a story like “Twelve Blue” he just comes right out and shows you the story that way, the threads running alongside the text you’re reading and you can leap from strand to strand like some reading, hyper monkey. It’s a method of storytelling he can’t help but do.

 

I’d just finished reading The Genie at Low Tide (Ploughshares Solos) [http://savannahnow.com/arts/2013-09-05/story-savannah-author-released-prestigious-digital-first-series#.Ul837xZYV7H], which is another excellent piece of baseball fiction about a retired pitcher with an angel of mercy appearing on his doorstep, when I got an email from Michael Joyce regarding the re-publication of his novel “Going the Distance.” I used to be an assistant in some of Michael’s classes at Vassar College back in the day, and I consider him a friend and mentor, so I may be a little biased. “The War Outside Ireland” is one of my favorite all-time books, and I’ve collaborated on a web-based hyper fiction called “The Sonatas of Saint Francis” with Michael and his wife and Andrea Morris. But…

 

Going the Distance” is an amazing book. You’re left, along with the protagonist, Jack Flynn, to unravel just what it is he’s doing in way upstate New York with Emma, how he got there, what has happened to his family, his career, and even his fans. Michael portrays an ex-pitcher and the era in which he pitched, the people with whom he shared a clubhouse or field so well you forget, for a second, that Jack Flynn is a fictional pitcher, teammate of Sidd Fynch, for all intents and purposes. I loved these sequences and got lost in the intricacies of how a pitcher thinks about the count: “People misunderstood. Oh-and-two was commonly thought a pitcher’s pitch; it wasn’t, not always, not even usually with the good ones.” You could feel how a pitcher thinks, feels, out there, all alone on the mound, even as Jack’s arm begins to feel the toll of all those violent motions, plate-wards.

Let’s just say I’m a sucker for baseball fiction, whether I’m writing it or reading it. But there has been plenty of commentary on how the game lends itself to literature, and Joyce, himself, quotes from A. Bartlett Giamatti’s “The Green Fields of the Mind” to kick the whole thing off, which is the where I’ll leave the analysis of baseball as a suitable fictional setting:

“The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone.”

But what makes the book amazing is that that’s just one thread. It could stand as a pretty good book all on its own as a baseball story, if that were all there were to it. But he weaves in Emma’s story, Wolfman, Restless, the story of aunt Bertie, living life in front of the TV, the story of the whole of Jack’s family, left behind in North Country New York along the river, fastened to the river, it seems, which becomes a character in its own right.

 

It’s a beautiful, lyrical novel, and well worth your time as the baseball season draws towards its conclusion. Or anytime, really.

“The Long Dark Voyage” for Your Reading Pleasure

All this talk of baseball writing and more got me on an archaeological kick the other day, through old Sane Magazine issues, and I found the original of “The Long, Dark Voyage.” So you can read the story that appeared in the excellent Fenway Fiction: Short Stories from the Red Sox Nation for FREE, at what used to be my (and horde of hundreds of employees) weekly creative workout.

Sane Magazine: wonderful rubbish

I’m not going to lie, it’s a little fast and loose. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it was that first Red Sox short story that started a very long relationship with a series of publishers who wanted to publish short fiction by members of Red Sox Nation, God help us all.

Whilst wearing my internet pith helmet and wielding a mean little pickaxe I was able to unearth some other baseball stories, including the sweet, short little ode to the 2003 Red Sox called, with apologies to Stephen King, “The Woman Who Loved Derek Lowe,” which was the other candidate for the first Fenway Fiction collection.

And no one can save you if you get sucked into the old horoscopes, oh no, no one can save you.

LitQuake: Calling Off the Dogs

Hey fellas. How are you doing?

First off, thank you for the phone calls, faxes, emails, and cakes, all inscribed lovingly with the same message of support and care in the wake of my omission from the Batter Up! reading up in San Francisco on October 14th.

But the folks at LitQuake, who seem very nice, except a bit deficient in their knowledge of baseball fiction writers who happen to be in their own general vicinity, gave me a call and informed me that, unfortunately, it’s a bit too late to get me onto the program up at the Sports Basement this year.A writing desk So no more need to call them or email them, begging to get me onto the stage. I appreciate the efforts, but this year you’ll just have to wait.

And, if the Red Sox aren’t still playing, I may be at the reading, so if you catch me there I’d be more than happy to do a personalized reading, just for you.

I’ve never been to a LitQuake before, but they have a fascinating list of events lined up, and Christopher Moore alone would be worth the price of admission (free) to the baseball reading. And if it’s anything like a GrubStreet event I’m sure it’ll be well-run with lots of literate-minded folks milling about to get your fires going.

In other news, I’m slogging through the final draft of Butterfly. It’s been a long time in the works, but I think it’s my best work yet, even better than the baseball fiction (some would argue this would not be a very high bar to surpass). So there is a good possibility that someone should just lock me in my room until I finish editing and start getting it sent off like some sort of communicable disease.

A Favor to Ask: LitQuake’s Batter Up! Reading, October 14th, at 7PM

Update: No more: “LitQuake: Calling Off the Dogs

Friends, dear good, great friends. I have a favor to ask of you. Maybe two.

 

“Oh God,” you’re saying, possibly aloud, drawing stares in the internet café in which you’re browsing Facebook. I’ve told you time and time again not to browse Facebook in internet cafés, but there you go, no stopping you. That skeezy guy looking over your shoulder, right now? He was just browsing his portfolio of GE and MSFT stocks seconds ago. I bet that just sends shivers down your spine, doesn’t it? Your spine that he’s likely nearly breathing on, right this very second.

Books, at a reading in Waltham
Books, at a reading in Waltham

 

Anyway.

 

But this favor, possibly two I have to ask of you, don’t panic. It’s the sort of favor that enriches the favor-giver, and, quite possibly, the entire human race. So it’s more like I’m doing a favor, possibly two, for *you*.

 

So I found out, via the incomparable Christopher Moore (@TheAuthorGuy) that the LitQuake folks are holding a reading up in San Francisco that is baseball themed. “Baseball themed!” I can hear you say, “but Matt, oh God, or are you insisting we all call you Matthew now, since that seems to be your writerly brand these days — regardless, Matt, Matthew, *you* write and sometimes read out loud baseball fiction! Surely you’re reading at this event! I can’t wait, I’ll be there with bells on, &c., &c.”

 

But here’s the secret: I’m not. Or, at least, no one’s *told* me I’m reading at this event, and, in my experience, if no one tells you you’re reading at an event you’re probably not supposed to get up on stage and just start reading.

 

Now, I’ll pause for a moment, to let you catch your breath. You okay? You’re not weeping, are you? Look, I’ll be okay. Really. This is part of the favor I have to ask of you. And I am *giving* to you. I want you to help me get on LitQuake’s radar, if that’s what they use, these days, instead of a submission manager like everyone else. I want to be like a tugboat, chugging up the Hudson River of LitQuake’s literary monitoring station. “BLARP!” (That is the literary equivalent/translation of what a tugboat’s whistle might sound like, in print.)

 

I would be honored, chuffed, and over the moon if you would contact the dear folks at LitQuake (http://www.litquake.org/contact-us) and ask them, beg them, promise them your first born (I cannot, sadly, reimburse you for first born children lost as a result of your begging) if Matthew Hanlon, the author of short stories that have appeared in books as diverse as “Fenway Fiction,” “Further Fenway Fiction,” and “Final Fenway Fiction,” all of which happen to be about baseball, could read at this very special, baseball-themed event. The same Matthew Hanlon who has been emailing them and calling them since he found out about the reading two days ago, so they should have his contact info. But, if not, they can email him at sanemagazine@mac.com (yes, this is a throwback for some of you).

 

And that’s it. The end of the first favor, and in which direction I’m still not quite sure it flows, so let’s just say you owe me one.

 

And… speaking of owing me one, hey, how’s about, should I be allowed to read, on stage, at the same general time as the other people reading, about baseball, how’s about you come up to San Francisco, head on over to the Sports Basement, sit down for a while and listen to people read about baseball? Christopher Moore will be there, who is a very entertaining speaker. As will *I*, because of the efforts of good buddies like *you*, who called, faxed, emailed, and semaphored LitQuake to lobby on my behalf. As much as I’ve enjoyed reading to an empty room in such diverse places as the Arlington Center for the Arts and the Charlton Public Library, it would be pleasant to read to friendly faces (and the friendly video phones you’re probably going to be holding up, recording the event like it’s the Dire Straits reunion tour).

 

 

Should all of this work out, I’ll even let you pick what I read! Have a vote in this exciting poll (http://wombatsdigit.com/w/2013/10/poll-reading-material-for-batter-up/) and you, too, can change the very course of history!

 

Thanks for reading.

 

Nin and Ja

So we have a little family story, along the lines of “Verano the Fish” only much, much, much longer running.

It’s called “Nin and Ja,” for lack of a better title. It follows the adventures of these two boys, good friends, and sometimes their sisters, and the boys names are, for lack of a better names, Nin and Ja. As our kids have grown, so have Nin and Ja, usually a step or two behind where our own are. So these guys, they’ve just entered school.

And this is the sort of thing that’s typical of their stories:

Well, that old saying, “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump off it, too?” were “if three of your classmates leapt out the window into a yarn spaceship, would you do it?” the answer would be quite different, as all the kids in the classroom bolted from their desks.

Coming soon to an ebook store near you?