I sent a book you might find interesting to decipher. Deciphering it can be done in small pieces and without a schedule, or you can read the book without deciphering it at all. People with no knowledge of symbolism wait for this book to come out each year. It has a Foreword, an Introduction and twenty stories from 2013, including one by Alice Munro. I bought two copies, one for you and the other for myself. I’ve read only a few pages hoping to find something worth sharing. Time permitting, I will read much more before long. The style of writing in the Foreword and the Introduction seems less than striking, but if only a few stories emerge as truly well written, then perhaps this book will have performed its function. Of course, it has multiple functions. I’ll provide a few hints about the Foreword and perhaps you can then follow through on your own, or perhaps share what you find. I should also say that many of the authors I currently read were first discovered in the pages of The Best American Short Stories, though the authors I’ve spent the most time with have not been American. I’m sure this says much more about me than the authors, but there’s no reason why you should end up with the same bias, if that’s what it is. Perhaps I just long to be somewhere else.
Heidi Pitlor mentions “something horrific” in the first line of the Foreword. She then mentions 9/11 and goes on to Sandy Hook Elementary School. A reference to 9/11 is automatically a reference to the twin towers, even if the towers themselves are not mentioned. This should be enough to send you in the right direction. The twin towers are found on the Moon card. Richard Cavendish (I’m not sure you have his book. If you’re really interested, perhaps we could work on that.) begins his description of the Moon card with, “In most packs the Moon’s card is grim and nightmarish, though there are some less sinister varieties of it.” Nothing more sinister, perhaps, than 9/11 and elementary school shootings. So the nightmarish qualities of both are central to Pitlor’s Foreword. A blood spattered elementary school brings to mind the drops of blood falling from the moon. Cavendish again, “The drops of blood falling from the moon are a menstruum, a fluid in which a solid body is dissolved, and stand for the breaking down of the reassuringly solid structures of accustomed convictions and pretensions.” A rather convincing echo of what Pitlor is saying. “[T]he sixteenth mass shooting of 2012” is a clever reference to the related card 16, the Tower. Taking her twins to school is summed up in the image of two dogs and a “crayfish, crab or lobster.” The author herself, rather interestingly, is the “nasty crawling creature” in the pool, which represents according to many writers the subconscious. She is analyzing the subconscious problems for authors attempting to write in the post 9/11 era. There is so much more, including numerous references to time — the moon is the original basis for our concept of time. For example, “…and in what seems like a minute, this something changes us.”, and “A few months [moons] later, I write this with a still-jumpy heart.” And the association of alchemy, which is also time related, and the moon. “‘[T]here must be a period of distillation [my italics] before the real impact of some tremendous event, either historical or personal, can emerge in writing.’” “[T]he actual distillation time has shrunk…” And so forth. I hope you still enjoy this sort of thing.
