For a related blog entry, see "A What?" below
February 27th, 2006 A What?
Some friends, a couple, had us over for dinner one cold, cold evening in New York. We were having the usual catching-up chit chat over wine and preliminary finger food — trips taken, health of elderly parents, the usual. The husband, a doctor, mentioned a friend who had found himself in a terrible situation: The man had been driving upstate, had fallen asleep and his car had overturned. The man’s girlfriend, a woman he was on the verge of leaving, was very seriously injured.
You know how it’s said that a writer in an accident will note exactly how the blood pearls as it pours out of a wound, will record the precise angle of a broken limb? I knew instantly that I would write about this incident. Man, I took in every fine detail. It was so Ethan Frome.
Five years later, I took the basic frame of the facts, added a bit of fiction, and forged the language of one medium on to another. I’m not sure what to call the resulting piece. It’s a deliberate weird hybrid. A long mixed metaphor. A kind of catachresis.
The piece seemed so odd to me that I’d kept it on my hard drive since the spring of 2003. I recently sent it out, and it was published. You can read it here in Switchback, an online literary magazine.
Some friends, a couple, had us over for dinner one cold, cold evening in New York. We were having the usual catching-up chit chat over wine and preliminary finger food — trips taken, health of elderly parents, the usual. The husband, a doctor, mentioned a friend who had found himself in a terrible situation: The man had been driving upstate, had fallen asleep and his car had overturned. The man’s girlfriend, a woman he was on the verge of leaving, was very seriously injured.
You know how it’s said that a writer in an accident will note exactly how the blood pearls as it pours out of a wound, will record the precise angle of a broken limb? I knew instantly that I would write about this incident. Man, I took in every fine detail. It was so Ethan Frome.
Five years later, I took the basic frame of the facts, added a bit of fiction, and forged the language of one medium on to another. I’m not sure what to call the resulting piece. It’s a deliberate weird hybrid. A long mixed metaphor. A kind of catachresis.
The piece seemed so odd to me that I’d kept it on my hard drive since the spring of 2003. I recently sent it out, and it was published. You can read it here in Switchback, an online literary magazine.
2 Comments »
2 Responses to “A What?”
- I love this piece, especially knowing how it came about. I hope you are well! Will you be reading at the Switchback reading on Lone Mountain next week?
All the Best!!
Cheryl
By Cheryl Czekala April 24th, 2006 at 2:44 pm e
- Thanks, Cheryl! Yes, my first reading in a while. Tuesday, May 2, @ 5 pm in Lone Mountain 216.
By Jennifer May 1st, 2006 at 6:01 pm e
