This Production Team Thing

Hi Dan,

(Josh, I’ll copy you on this, although it’s mostly directed to Dan. But let’s get going on this production team thing, we’re running out of time! Yes, you have a few extra years before hitting fifty, but we want to hear from you!)

Finally, I have given myself the time to sit down and read your Glassworks story. At three pages I should not have taken two weeks to do so, but for some reason I wanted to save this for part of an unrushed afternoon. I am not overwhelmed with my single parenting obligations, my work schedule and my housekeeping, but whole afternoons in the easy chair are rare enough to be appreciated. And it is good to have an appreciable moment to read a story, however long or short.

Yesterday afternoon was just right, too. I spent the morning carting Andrew back and forth to a fencing class, stealing a couple of hours at the office in between, and then my day was free. Kirsten has come down with a nasty cold, so there was no chance on impulsive afternoon activities, and I had nothing else planned. Today will be a contrast: I write this early in the morning, then there is breakfast and church and annual meeting, then lunch and a Bears-Packers game for all time, then Kirsten’s choir practice, if she’s up to it. But yesterday, I not only read your story but finished the novel I was reading, and then we watched two movies and called it an early night.

Glassworks. I like it best for its structure, with a close second going to the silver-haired man. Maybe I notice this because your single mood-setting Vanuska and your flashbacking Side-swiped tale have their own structural identities, and I like your change-up to an episodic story. Not easy to do in three pages, either, but you have very distinct parts that could even have titles of their own: The Hart, The Factory, and The Call of Nature. No, don’t add those titles, just my observation. And I find I don’t even care how the parts go together, because they just do.

I also like the shift in voices, but I want to make sure I am getting something here: the silver-haired man is not the one actually giving the factory tour. He should not be anyway, and maybe this is even obvious, but I was thrown off by the bathroom question to the guide and the response of stopping in the next town. Let the tour guide be a factory fixture, and the silver haired man —also a guide, but don’t call him that —be the one they have lunch with.

And it is because of the silver-haired man’s voice that I like him, but how about leaning even a little more into caricature with his dialect. You would know the true nuances best, but give the reader just a little more to appreciate in this “willager.” How about getting rid of the word “it”, for instance. Try it in the first paragraph.

I also like how the old man forgets to finish his stories, as if every breath is a separate remembrance. To this end, too, lean a little further. In the second paragraph, for instance, don’t let him pick up where he left off, try changing “But after I stopped, a...” to “I remember, was a...”. Or you can prematurely end The Hart story with an exclamation, kind of announcing the second story — “This is the Glassworks!” —before he has to be reminded to finish the first.

I guess I like the silver-haired man, too, because he is the story’s muse, balancing the instructional voice of the second part and the diversional voice of the third. I am reminded of two books: one, the book I recommended in last summer’s family trivia game: Peter Matthieson’s Shadow Country, which had a great way of telling each chapter from the perspective of a different character, never letting one character set the pace and tone. The book I just finished also does this: American Rust, a first novel by Philipp Meyer, which follows my recent interest in Americana settings, this one in economically depressed central Pennsylvania, present time. A good read, maybe slightly less enduring than Shadow Country but quite remarkable for a first effort. Anyway, this device of switching up the voice probably works better in a longer story, but it’s neat to see it in the smaller scale of Glassworks. Keep crafting!

I will share more of my 1990 papers, but I am still trying to fill in some blanks, if only for my own understanding. Josh told me more about Rod Broding, and while much of that would have to remain his own story to tell it helps me start to understand a 20 year old conversation I was having with Josh. For your part, I have notes that refer to Dad’s appreciation at Christmas 1988 of two things you wrote: a sonnet and your Clown Story. Any chance you have either of these?

What I will share, for now, is something you will hopefully appreciate as a literature teacher and Dostoevsky fan: the final take home exam for my 1990 Dosty class. In my journal I mention wanting to be sure to save all my notes from this class. Unfortunately I didn’t, and didn’t even save the question part of this exam, but here are the answers along with the teacher’s transcribed comments.

Go Bears!
Love, Jon