Fakes: An Anthology of Pseudo-Interviews, Faux-Lectures, Quasi-Letters, "Found" Texts, and Other Fraudulent Artifacts (27 page)

36

Primary Sources

Rick Moody
1

Abbe, William Parker.
2
A Diary of Sketches
. Concord, New Hampshire: St. Paul’s School, 1976.

Bangs, Lester.
3
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
. Edited by Greil Marcus. New York: Knopf, 1987.

Barnes, Djuna.
Interviews
. Washington, D.C.: Sun & Moon, 1985.

Barrett, Syd.
4
“Golden Hair.”
On The Madcap Laughs
. EMI Cassette, C4-46607, 1990.

Barthes, Roland.
A Lover’s Discourse
.
5
Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang, 1978.

Bernhard, Thomas.
The Lime Work
—. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church, According to the Use of the Protestant Episcopal Church
6
in the United States of America, The
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944.

Borges, Jorge Luis.
Labyrinths
.
7
Edited by Donald A. Yates and James E. Irby. New York: New Directions, 1964.

Breton, André.
Manifestoes of Surrealism
.
8
Translated by Richard Seaver and Helen R. Lane. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press (Ann Arbor Paperbacks), 1969.

Carroll, Lewis.
The Annotated Alice
. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by Martin Gardner.
9
New York: Clarkson N. Potter (Bramhall House), 1960.

Carter, Angela.
10
The Bloody Chamber and Other Adult Tales
. New York: Harper & Row, 1979.

Cheever, John.
The Journals of John Cheever
.
11
New York Knopf, 1991.

The Wapshot Chronicle
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957.

Coover, Robert.
In Bed One Night & Other Brief Encounters
. Providence, Rhode Island: Burning Deck, 1983.

Daniels, Les.
Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics
.
12
With an introduction by Stan Lee. New York: Abrams, 1991.

Danto, Arthur C.
Encounters & Reflections: Art in the Historical Present
. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1990.

“Darmok.”
13
Star Trek: The Next Generation
. Paramount Television, 1991.

Davis, Lydia.
Break It Down
. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986.

De Montaigne, Michel.
The Complete Essays of Montaigne
. Translated by Donald M. Frame. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1958.

Derrida, Jacques.
Of Grammatology
.
14
Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press, 1976.

Elkin, Stanley.
The Franchiser
. Boston: Godine (Nonpareil Books), 1980.

“Erospri.” On
The Whole Earth ’Lectronic Link
,
15
modem; 415 332-8410, Sausalito, California, 1985.

Feelies, The.
The Good Earth
.
16
Coyote Records, TTC 8673, 1956.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott.
The Crack-Up
. New York: New Directions, 1945.

Foucault, Michel.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage, 1979.

Gaddis, William.
The Recognitions
.
17
New York: Penguin, 1986.

Genet, Jean.
The Thief’s Journal
. Translated by Bernard Frechtman. New York: Bantam, 1965.

Gyatso, Tenzin, the fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet.
Freedom in Exile
. New York: HarperCollins, 1990.

Hawkes, John.
18
Second Skin
. New York: New Directions, 1964.

Hawthorne, Nathaniel.
Hawthorne: Short Stories
.
19
Edited by Newton Arvin. New York: Knopf, 1946.

Hogg, James.
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
. New York: Penguin, 1989.

Johnson, Denis.
Angels
. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Joyce, James.
Ulysses
. New York: Vintage, 1961.

Jung, C. G. “Collected Works.” No. 12, Pan II. “Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy” (1936). Translated by R.-F. C. Hull. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press (Bollingen Series), 1968.

Kapuscinski, Ryszard.
The Emperor
. Translated by William R. Brand and Kitarzyna Mrockowska-Brand. New York: Vintage, 1989.

Lewis, James. “Index.”
20
Chicago Review
; 35: I, 33–35 (Autumn, 1985).

Marcus, Greil.
Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century
.
21
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Marx, Groucho.
The Groucho Letters: Letters from and to Groucho Marx
.
22
New York: Fireside, 1987.

Mitchell, Stephen.
The Gospel According to Jesus
. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Pagels, Elaine.
The Gnostic Gospels
.
23
New York: Vintage, 1989.

Paley, Grace.
Enormous Changes at the Last Minute
. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux (Noonday Press), 1991.

Pärt, Arvo.
Tabula Rasa
.
24
ECM New Series 817 764-4 (1984).

Peacock, Thomas Love.
Headlong Hall and Gryll Grange
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Plato.
Great Dialogues of Plato
. Translated by W. H. D. Rouse. New York: Mentor, 1956.

“Polysexuality.”
Semiotext(e)
25
4:1 (1981).

Sacks, Oliver.
Awakenings
. New York: Summit, 1987.

Schulz, Bruno.
Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass
.
26
Translated by Celina Wieniewska. New York: Penguin, 1979.

Sebadoh.
Sebadoh III
.
27
Homestead Records, HMS 168-4, 1991.

Thomas à Kempis.
The Imitation of Christ
. New York: Penguin, 1952.

Williams, William Carlos.
The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams
.
28
Volume 11; 1939–62. New York: New Directions, 1988.

Zappa, Frank. With Captain Beefheart and the Mothers of Invention.
Bongo Fury
(1975).
29
Barking Pumpkin Records, D4-74220, 1989.

37

Contributor’s Note

Michael Martone

MICHAEL MARTONE
was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and grew up in a small house, white with green trim, 1812 Clover Lane, in the neighborhood known as North Highlands. His neighbors across the street were the Mensings, Ed and Mildred. Mr. Mensing was a fireman, but he no longer lived and worked in a firehouse. He was an assistant chief, which meant he had a white helmet he kept on the back shelf of his fire-engine red department car he drove home at night from work. His work was fire prevention. In his dress uniform, he left each day just as Martone was leaving to walk to school (Price Elementary, Franklin Junior High School, North Side High School), got into his bright red and polished chrome car and drove to inspect factories, offices, theaters, and schools. Martone saw him inspecting his schools and would say hello as Mr. Mensing checked the panic bars on doors or the recharge records of extinguishers. Mr. Mensing also went to construction sites and ran tests on the new automatic sprinkler systems, the dry standpipes, and the emergency overrides on elevators and escalators. Martone saw him at the high school basketball tournament games at the Memorial Coliseum, counting the cheering fans sitting in the stands and standing in the aisles and hallways. Probably most exciting, however, was that every fall, Martone saw his neighbor on television during Fire Prevention week when all the schools in the city school system participated in one huge fire drill, the only fire drill that wasn’t a surprise. Martone watched as Mr. Mensing (surrounded by the mayor, the school superintendent, other fire chiefs, insurance agents, radio announcers announcing and television weathermen commenting) pushed a button after all the other officials made speeches about fire safety. When Mr. Mensing, dressed up in his formal white hat and gloves, pushed the button, the fire alarms sounded all over the city, the sirens, whistles, horns, buzzers, bells. Everyone pretended the whole city was ablaze. And, each fall, no matter what school Martone was attending, he would get up from his desk and walk quickly yet orderly to the designated exit, clear the building, and assemble with his classmates at the safe specified distance away from the school, then turn and face the building and wait for further instructions. Usually on those days there was a fire truck nearby the students inspected during their lunch breaks or recesses. It was still warm, and the sun reflected off of the bright polished hardware of the fire engines or ladder trucks and blazed on the reflecting stripes taped to the helmets and coats of the bored firemen. Mr. Mensing always had extra badges and plastic fireman’s hats left over from the event. The hard red plastic badges and hats were donated by the Hartford Insurance Company and featured a picture of a deer with huge antlers. He gave them out as treats for Halloween, pinning a badge on a ghost or pirate, who might also don a helmet that became part of the costume for the rest of the night. Mr. Mensing did not like to turn on his lights in his house on Halloween or on any other night of the year. He delayed turning on a light and when he did it was a single fixture, dim and dull. Martone never knew if this habit hoped to save money or demonstrated some basic mistrust of electricity or revealed some knowledge of its inherent danger. For as long as he could, Mr. Mensing read the evening newspaper,
The News-Sentinel
, while sitting in a lawn chair just inside his glass storm door, his back to the door, what little light there was falling over his shoulder to illumine the open pages he held up. He was there in the morning too, reading the morning newspaper,
The Journal-Gazette
, sitting in the webbed lawn chair inside his door. Even in winter, he sat in the doorway, collecting what little light there was through the frosted glass. When the winters were cold, Mr. Mensing would have to climb the city’s water towers and make sure the elevated water in the tanks that put pressure on the system, pressure that the fire department needed at the hydrants, hadn’t frozen. One particular cold spell, he spent several nights in a rubber dinghy floating inside one of the huge tanks that read on the outside FORT WAYNE, agitating the water with an oar so it wouldn’t skim over with ice and then freeze solid and shut off the water. In the spring, there would be floods in Fort Wayne, and Martone, when in high school, helped fill sandbags to shore up the leaky levees. Mr. Mensing spent the floods wading beside and guiding boatloads of rescued people to dry land. He told Martone that floods were worse than fires. Manhole covers popped out of place from the pressure of the rising water, and the muddy water prevented someone walking a boat or raft from seeing the ground below. Suddenly, the solid street wasn’t there, and you fell right through the hole, down under the street, impossible to see the way back up to the surface. Not like falling through ice, Mr. Mensing told Martone. With ice you swam up, escaping by ignoring the light, the solid ice illuminated by the sun. The way out was the only one above you not lit up. Against your instincts, he told Martone, swim to the spot that looks the blackest.

38

The Year’s Best Fiction 2008:
The Authors Speak

J. Robert Lennon

GUTMAN KLAMATH,
“The Epiphany of Palmer Weiss”

The idea for “Epiphany” came to me while standing in line one morning at Starbucks. The man in front of me was typing out an e-mail on his BlackBerry, and I suddenly thought, how would this fellow react if he suddenly got a message from his mother—
who had died three years before?
And what if the message told him to leave Starbucks right now, and track down a certain vice-president of human resources for a certain investment firm, and kill him bare-handed? And what if every day, the dead mother sent this fellow a new e-mail demanding that he kill somebody, and that each of these victims was some man who had wronged the mother in her long, tragic life? And what if I then made each of these victims have some unique occupation, like candy-maker and priest? And what if, at the end, the mother
asked the fellow to kill himself
,
because he himself had betrayed her herself, the mother, when he married a woman she didn’t approve of? And what if, in a final assertion of his independence, the fellow smashed his BlackBerry on the ground—and then slipped on the pieces and died!

By the time I finished my soy latte and lemon-currant scone, I had my story.

JIM BURR,
“Absence”

“Absence” is a reaction to the seemingly endless deluge of “readeroriented” fiction constantly being published by the simpering, approval-seeking mass of semi-literate so-called “literary” magazines one finds one’s libraries and bookstores hopelessly inundated with. One becomes horribly tired of the dreary conventions of the genre—plot, character, setting, &c.—and wishes, once and for all, to not have one’s hand held by some mush-mouthed mommy-like “author” smugly leading one down the well-worn paths of storied cliché. And so one attempts to create a work unburdened by the in-name-only “rules” and “conventions” of “literature” and eschews the supposed “traditional” crutches of “punctuation” and “grammar” and the tyranny of standardized spelling.

“Absence” was rejected by 172 self-described “magazines” whose “editors” complained that they “didn’t get it” before João Hooten of
Mumpsimus
finally “got” that “getting it” wasn’t the point.

One is grateful to João Hooten, to the editors of this anthology, and to one’s dog, Bakhtin.

JAMIE SPRINGBOTTOM,
“Adrianna’s Wedding”

It was while vacationing in Key West with my husband, the food photographer Merwin Fanks, and our two beautiful children, Gary (an animal rights lawyer) and Felicia (now a sophomore at Harvard), that it occurred to me that today’s fiction, with its dreary glorification of death, misery, and hatred, was insufficiently expressive of the great beauty and joy that is all around us. And so, as I paddled back to shore (for at the time of this realization I was canoeing on the small lake we co-own with the architect Jeffers Paul and his wonderful family) I conceived of the most striking elements of “Adrianna’s Wedding”—Adrianna’s beautiful hairdo and gown; the way her bouquet, drifting through the air as though in slow motion, appears etched against the sky’s pale blue; the look of deeply committed love in the eyes of Hunter, her husband-to-be; and her lovely and respectful relationship with her mother, Paulette, which has grown into more of a mutually satisfying friendship than a mere mother–daughter bond.

The story took about a week to write, as I did so using my great-grandfather’s fountain pen, on pages handcrafted with a tabletop paper press by Jennifer, Gary’s beautiful and thoughtful fiancée. I am grateful to the editors of the CanadAir in-flight magazine,
Drift
,
for taking a chance with my story, and to the Good Earth Trading Company for their wonderful line of delicious and life-sustaining teas, which I sipped with delight as I composed.

LUPA PRZYREWSKI,
“How Do You Say”

I only live in America six month, and English not so good. Therefore, I very gratitude to editor of making story in book. I very difficult try write story of emigration to America and tales of great hardship in New York and of struggle with mother and father and finding fortune and having loss of self on subway. With money of book selling soon I take English class. Thanking.

RUPERT G.
B. SCHIPP
, “The Assistant Lion Tamer’s Wife”

Whence this shimmering urge, this shuddering desire, this longing? What makes us write? For me, it is the feeling of the revealing of truth—not the mere truth of saying what is so, but the truer truth of invention. This story was inspired by a trip to the circus, where I witnessed the profound vision of a lion tamer plying his risky art, and I imagined that he had an assistant, and that assistant was married, and the lion ate the assistant, and his wife was bereft. What, then, of the assistant’s wife? Is she doomed to loneliness and grief? And what of their child, still unborn and quickening beneath the flawless creamy flesh of her belly? And of her soft, round, full breasts, yet unsuckled by the rosy lips of her incipient offspring? What of them?

It is the undeniable reality of such questions, conceived by chance, birthed by the imagination, for which I took pen in hand and scried the glittering crystals of the unseen mind.

McKensie Keene,
“Boomer and Hank”

Through my dedication to volunteer work and to helping others, I arrived at the idea of writing a story that addresses our collective willingness to ignore the silent and invisible nation around us: the homeless. There have been stories of the homeless before, but I decided to up the ante by wondering, what if my homeless protagonist were the second coming of Jesus—
and nobody noticed?
I went through many drafts of the story over many months, but it was my husband Phil who made the suggestion that changed everything: make the story from the point of view of the dog—and make the dog be the Holy Father Himself. After that, it was easy. The scene where Boomer–Hank/father–son stop to view the weeping statue of Mary–mother really touched me—I was crying at my desk—and it was my editor, Linda Guber, at the
Last Prairie Review
who suggested the great scene where the friendly shopkeeper gives Hank the free bag of dog food, and he and Boomer see their reflection in the shop window, and the bag reads
God Doof.
The story wouldn’t have been the same without it!

ARTHUR MAURITIUS,
“The Travails of Ezra £”

All I can say is, it’s about time. Graphic fiction has been much in the spotlight these past few years, but scant attention has been paid to the much more difficult and far purer art form of ASCII fiction—that is, graphic storytelling using only computer keyboard symbols as visual elements. As an engineer at IBM in the seventies, I invented ASCII fiction, and when I was laid off in 1983 I began to devote myself to it full-time. This sad graphic tale of an ASCII poet and his search for meaning in a world that cares little for anything more challenging than emoticons took me more than twenty years to write, and if I say so myself fully deserves the attention it is finally getting. If for only today, I no longer feel like the “mime-in-a-box” that serves as Ezra £’s signature:

JUNE WATTS,
“Thirty Below”

My goal in writing “Thirty Below” was to pull back the “testosterone curtain” of the privileged, male-dominated publishing world and address three subjects rarely seen in contemporary fiction: sexual abuse, eating disorders, and stripping. The character of Candee is inspired by my sister Kelly, who is not anorexic, abused, or a stripper, but has gone through her own issues, including the same scalp rash Candee gets from a back-alley dye job. Candee’s cat Purrcival, who survives being locked in Candee’s apartment for two weeks after Candee’s suicide by devouring his once-beloved owner’s forearms, is inspired by my own Mister Mittens, who, though he has never had to endure such an ordeal, I am sure would acquit himself wonderfully should such a thing come to pass. Candee’s drug-addicted mother is not inspired by my own mother, in spite of her many emotional problems, but by her sister, my Aunt Merry; her alcoholic pedophile father comes from some suspicions I have about our former neighbor, my high school chemistry teacher, Murray Whelm. And as for Candee’s three tormentors, Q-Man, Lyle, and Backdoor Joe, you know who you are.

FREDERICK PAINE
PAULUS
, “Three Scenes: Nova Scotia 1934”

Mr. Paulus declines to comment.

LIONEL MEEKS,
“Incident at Fortieth and Vine”

This is all true, yo. It all happened just like I said. Zilch is me and Yellowman is my buddy Bo, and the times when killing got done, well, that’s just how it went down, and if you don’t like it, too bad. Because it’s real, it’s street, and it’s life.

I want to give a shout-out to my homies: my agent, Blurbin’-In-Ya-Turban Amanda Urban; my #1 book critic boy from the ’hood James “Do-What’cha-Should” Wood; my main man Salman; Boom-Boom-In-Da-Room Harold Bloom; Julie Kristeva 4 Eva and Eva; the Cock-Jock of Rock, Jacques Derrida-da-da-dum, R.I.P.; my Once-A-Week-O Freak-O Critique-O Michiko Kakutani; Tommy “Tomcat” Lynchin’ Pynchon; Write-Till-She-Moan Toni More-and-Morrison; Abracadabra-Gift-a-Gab Gabriel García Park-It-In-The-Fiction-Market Márquez; Donny Fill-O, Chill-O, Careful-Not-Ta-Spill-O DeLillo; and finally, the Chairman of the Boards, the Original Globe-Trotter, Sir Mike-It, Spike-It, As-You-Like-It, Mistah Bling-Bling-Play’s-the-Thing, the Killa of Fear, William Shake-Bake-and-Take-A-Bow Shakespeare. Word.

M. SPACKMAN
CONE
, “The Frosted Glass Widower”

As always, I am reluctant to demystify my art with one of these notes, but upon this, my eleventh appearance in these pages (starting in 1958 with “Why Harold Parks Rakes Leaves”), I feel duty-bound to extend to you, dear reader, the small gift of my comments.

I do so, then, in the form of a personal anecdote. Late last year, I found myself delivering a lecture at a certain institute of higher learning (it shall remain nameless, but it is one whose reputation has been sullied, of late, by its association with a certain reluctant world leader and failed businessman), and afterward, at an exhausting wine-and-cheese affair of the sort invariably appended to such events, I was accosted by a bright-eyed young person of writerly ambitions. “Mister Cone,” he said to me, “my writing teacher gave my story a C-minus, because I used dashes for dialogue instead of quotes. But Mister Cone, James Joyce used dashes instead of quotes, and he is one of the most celebrated authors in history! Why can James Joyce use dashes, but not me?”

“My dear boy,” I replied with a chuckle,
“because he’s James Joyce, and you’re not!”

The poor child nearly choked on his braised pork medallion!

MISTER CHIMPERS,
“Black Banana Bad”

Mister Chimpers sad he not publish story. Then story appear in
Compunction 34!
Doctor Patterson show Mister Chimpers
Compunction 34.
Mister Chimpers delighted! Now Doctor Patterson say story in anthology. Mister Chimpers famous! Mister Chimpers show world chimpanzees people too! Vivisection terrible crime! It kill Mister Chimpers’ friend Mango! It very bad!

Mister Chimpers prove Doctor Patterson brilliant cognitive researcher! Now maybe she get grant! Also Doctor Patterson very attractive and single! Now she find mate like Mister Chimpers did! Mister Chimpers love Luella, aka Mrs. Chimpers!

Story inspired by experience in jungle before capture. Mister Chimpers can still taste terrible banana. Mister Chimpers grateful to Doctor Patterson for translation!

Author’s note interpreted by Doctor Gertrude Patterson, PhD.

JACK ROOT,
“Feast of Blood”

When I found out my story was accepted into this anthology, my instinct was to tell them to go to hell. I didn’t become “The Modern Master of Terror” by falling to my knees before the literary kingmakers, that’s for sure—I did it by writing my hairy working-class behind off. But my wife told me it would be stingy not to accept, and that the sales of this anthology were probably crap and why not be generous and let them put my name on the cover, so I said okay.

I don’t have anything to say about “Feast of Blood,” because any idiot can understand it, unless they have an Ivy League education and start looking for allegories and metaphors and what have you. Hey Harvard, guess what: there aren’t any. It’s a
story,
not a dissertation. Symbolism is for pussies, you read it here first.

I do want to say something about fear, though, which is my stock in trade. Let me make it clear, this isn’t a scary story. Here’s a scary story: a soccer mom drops her kids off at violin practice, then goes home and cleans the kitchen so her dentist husband won’t be mad. Or how about this: a guy wakes up, puts on a suit and tie, drives to work, has some meetings, makes a bunch of cell phone calls, then goes back to his suburban house and watches the Home and Garden Channel. That’s terror, America: your fat lazy selves, being controlled by the Princeton-educated mass media. Compared to that, my stuff is a walk in the park.