Love & Darts (9781937316075)
Read Love & Darts (9781937316075) Online
Authors: Nath Jones
Tags: #darts, #short stories, #grief, #mortality, #endoflife, #chicago authors, #male relationships, #indiana fiction
LOVE & DARTS
~
NATH JONES
ISBN-13:
978-1-9-37316-06-8
Copyright 2012 Nath Jones
All rights reserved. No part of this book may
be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic
form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in
the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or
reviews.
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Previously Published:
Jones, Nath. "Limbic Resonance: Responses to
a Match.com Questionnaire."
The Battered Suitcase
3.4
(2011): 40-41.
Issuu
. Vagabondage Press, 1 Mar. 2011. Web.
29 Dec. 2011. <
http://issuu.com/vagabondagepress/docs/tbs10301
>.
Jones, Nath. "Should: How Mommy Ate Her
Soul."
PANK Magazine
March (2010).
PANK Magazine
.
PANK, 3 May 2010. Web. 29 Dec. 2011. <
http://www.pankmagazine.com/nath-jones/
>.
Jones, Nath. "Tandem."
From the Edge of
the Prairie
8 (2011): 6-13. Print.
PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Cover design by: Ryan W. Bradley:
www.aestheticallydeclined.net
Interior design by: Gin Y. Havard
For Amy & Bill,
most merciful friends
Karen’s Krew
Karen's Krew at F.O.E. #2548 -- L to R: Jim ROOSTER
Wisely, JOELBACON Haskell, Karen SPECIAL K McAleer, BIG JOE
Gembala, & Kayla KATE Reyes
.
Lucille Fridley * Gin Havard *
Jane Friedman * Leah Jones * Anita Jordan * Vanessa Shivla * John
Philip Mcgraw * Andrew Zimmerman Jones * Nate Dean *Dariusz Janecki
* Chris Howard * Becky Holzman * Erin Gunderson * Tammy Servies *
Pepper Burkholder * Xavier Rodriguez * Melanie Callahan Willhite
(aka Mrs. Awesomeness) * Mike Moreth * Chris McGovern * Beth
Prusiecki * Tom Arnold * Tom Martin * Michele Bultman Tracy *
Larisa Parrish * Andres Jimenez * Alan Larson * Jennifer Wohlberg *
Maria Kubiak * Erin Boudreaux * Elizabeth Munroz * Josh Sipes *
Reginald Gibbons * Sandi Wisenberg * Patrick Somerville * the
creative writing faculty at Northwestern University * the Batasses
* the Bowlemics * my Facebook family * Pat Bruce * Robert Sowder *
Darren Mast * Rick Hall (as well as Sally, Crystal, & Sherrie)
* Roger and Judy Beehler * Lila and Jakie Houts * Andrew Groh *
Dorothy Jones
The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
—
William Shakespeare,
The Merchant of Venice
Limbic Resonance: Responses to
a Match.com Questionnaire
There is a full literary spectrum that helps to
capture our most human conditions.
The
On Impulse e-Book Series
is
about exploring the different ways we tell our stories. So I worked
with the media of
catharsis
and technique of
deconstruction in
The War is Language:
101 Short Works.
By contrast,
in
Love & Darts
I'm more interested in the primary narrative
elements of
craft
and in depictions of our assumptive social
constructs.
Catharsis isn't about what’s at stake in a conflict.
A reactionary response is often less than engaging. By the time a
person is freaking out events have already transpired. The
expression is not tempered with reason, with contemplation, with
artistry. Reactive outbursts seem evidence of instability and lack
of control.
Fiction’s narrative elements do
the work of mitigating mood. Plot helps modulate the rise and fall.
Setting orients the reader by creating an experience similar to a
guided meditation. Such provision is much different from what
amounts to a writer’s screaming at a reader. Characterization helps
the self-pity drop away.
Why
me
dissipates while empathy
remains.
Emotive vacillations aren’t received as symphonic
contrast. A writer’s attempt to keep the mood consistent helps the
reader be less jarred, less shocked, less confused, less defensive.
The point of view for catharsis is basically infantile. There can
be very little authority. When a writer chooses this perspective he
or she must beg the reader’s respect.
Of course, if you miss the moment, miss the
expression of emotion, then that tangibility of living a real life
alive in all its changeability is lost.
Fiction conveys meaning better than does catharsis.
Regardless of the intimate access and the visceral presence that
catharsis as text provides, people don't want to parse it, they
don't have time to become possessed by the writer, and the
emotional roller coaster has a deadening effect.
Our interactions in the digital domain invite
expressions of the now. Social media platforms and our
twenty-four-hour news cycle create foment and a seeming imperative
to keep up. There is a tendency toward catharsis and it should not
be denied.
But by using narrative elements fiction keeps the
sense and loses the nonsense.
We are a diverse culture fragmented by convicted
factions. It's interesting to select structural assumptions from
different cultural niches and present them together in one
collection of stories. In some ways I've done that here. Perhaps
the work invites a reader not only to examine the other as an
individual but the other as a collective. By representing the rules
of the world of polyamory in one story and those of religious
monogamy in another the structuralist givens of both communities
are set in contrast to the reader’s own.
Crafting stories based upon cultural givens yields a
relatable understanding of what's real, whether or not a reader’s
critical thinking can dissect the structural underpinning/overlay.
The use of such consensual structures added to plot, setting,
characterization, tone, conflict, and point of view combine to
create a vivid reading experience.
Studying the storytelling impulse
reveals how many constructs exist within literature itself.
Catharsis does not seem worthwhile. So beyond using catharsis as a
medium I attempted deconstruction (and even destruction of
narrative) in
The War is
Language.
The writing style in
2000 Deciduous Trees
perhaps aligns with careless crafts of escape: paper
snowflakes made from newspaper.
Love
& Darts
explores the rudiments of
structuralism that a writer may choose to apply to an inhabited
scene. And my hope is that in
How to
Cherish the Grief-Stricken
I may be
able to find that sweet spot between politicized philosophies—a
place where the writer’s work allows for a reader’s catharsis,
which is likely the best proof we have that any book is a good
one.
2/24/2012
They denied sharing sweet laughter. Romance wasn’t the point.
After one thirty in the morning, she took him inside, down a
shotgun hallway, into the living room, and left him there. In a way
he was an enemy loved. This oil rig welder who’d been all over the
world stood half turning back to see where she’d gone and half
looking around to see where he was in this needs-some-more-wall-art
silence. It was the beginning of the one hour before he found his
way into her smile.
She did not know him, though.
There are those long-faithful loves properly
absent in the world, old minefield loves, where two safe souls
waltz around each other in the well-patrolled confines of a
security setting—picking conversations to have about logistics,
relying on favorites, looking at comfort food photos on 4x6 cards,
giving annual gifts meaning nothing to the rest of the world. But
there are also extreme momentary loves, ready to be smashed and
forgotten, or, more often, intimately eaten alive.