• My mother, who lived through the Great Depression, and my brother are two of the more frugal people you could ever meet, so frugal, in fact, that they enjoy browsing at their local Goodwill, and sometimes I’ll go along, both to spend some time with them and because I occasionally nurse the fantasy that I’ll stumble across some unexpected find when sorting through the dollar books. Ninety-five percent of those book piles are exactly the sort of battered and dispiriting bestsellers and self-help books you’d expect, but the other 5 percent can feature the truly arcane and strange. Out of one such pile, for example, I pulled Sidney Perley’s fantastically bizarre Historic Storms of New England, a chronological compendium of eyewitness accounts of the most destructive storms to hit the region, from the first settlements to the late nineteenth century. Nearly all of those accounts, unsurprisingly, were from the point of view of farmers whose entire livelihoods had been threatened by what they’d experienced. The inability to predict such catastrophes—and the sense that you might work hard yet never know what was rolling toward you over the next set of hills—stuck in my imagination for years. I started thinking about writing a story about such a life.
That led to books on nineteenth-century farming, the sort of texts that almost no one in their right mind would check out of a library: things like Jared Van Wagenen Jr.’s The Golden Age of Homespun or T. B. Terry’s Our Farming. And it was in one of those texts that I came across a forlorn little emotional moment that spawned “The World to Come” in its entirety: a notation in a farm wife’s daily journal that the one friend that she had had in the entire valley, to whom she had been utterly devoted, had been forced to move away. And suddenly a whole vista of desolation and loneliness and foreclosed options seemed to peep forth.
ELIZABETH TALLENT teaches in Stanford University’s creative writing program.
• While I was working on this little essay I called the Word document Wilderness_Explanation, and that was a mistake—I kept opening it, thinking I can’t explain, and closing it. My mistake, but one of those mistakes that reflect flatteringly on the mistaker, since each time the doc winked shut, I felt I had honored some essential obscurity in my relation to the story. I don’t want to take an authoritative stance toward something inexplicable, partly out of fear that if I do, nothing inexplicable will happen to me again as a writer.
So, my none-too-sure guess is that this story began with bewilderment, and that the source of the bewilderment was one of those ordinary, small-scale, recurrent rifts between what you know you feel and what you are willing for others to see. It was this: even with teaching colleagues I know and trust, I’d rather keep my mouth shut than confess to the absorption, connection, and intimacy it’s possible to feel while teaching. Delight regularly figures in my dealings with students, but that delight couldn’t be declared, or it would reflect badly on me. Only, where did that notion come from? I picked it up somewhere. I picked it up everywhere. Teaching is not supposed to be about delight any more than the books on the syllabus are there for delight. I was dissembling about pleasure and whenever there’s dissembling about pleasure, there’s the hint of a story.
Once there was that hint, I began watching for any bits or pieces belonging to the story, for details or phrases or any experience of incongruity that would belong with the other pieces. I liked this because it was a collagelike, collecting way of working whose progression was less like carpentry than like browsing, with browsing’s readiness to like. I might as well have been on a beach looking around for stones that struck me as individuals. That sounds—simple! When I teach, what I want to encourage in young writers is some internalizable Winnicottian/Keatsian willingness to tolerate uncertainties, errors, etc., while they’re working, but my own unwillingness is a problem for me. With this story, for whatever reason, a door opened in perfectionism’s wall. There was also the weird, refracted pleasure of being in the process of writing this story when I’d run into some fresh bewilderment in teaching because I could think, Ah, this is my real life giving me a piece of my fictional life. Which it (my real life) suddenly seemed very happy to do.
Maybe it mattered less, but there was also the grain-of-sand/oyster vexation of fictional professors’ almost always being assholes, with Pnin as the fantastically lovable exception to the rule. In fiction, professor is predatory, student is prey. This ironclad dyad goes to bed without caring much about the intricacy, anxiety, and comedy of teaching. So there’s room.
JOAN WICKERSHAM’s most recent book of fiction is The News from Spain: Seven Variations on a Love Story. Her memoir The Suicide Index was a National Book Award finalist. Her short fiction has appeared in many magazines as well as in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She also writes a regular op-ed column for the Boston Globe, and her pieces often run in the International Herald Tribune. She lives with her husband and their two sons in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
• A few years ago I got an idea for a story called “The News from Spain.” I never got a chance to write it, and the next time I thought of it, I realized I’d forgotten everything except the title. The loss was maddening but also somehow evocative. And suddenly I imagined a book: a suite of asymmetrical, thwarted love stories, each of which would be called “The News from Spain.” I wanted the title to feel central to each story and to mean something different in each, but to acquire more resonance—an accrued sense of something deeply felt and elusive, impossible to put into words—as the book went along.
So this is one of those stories. (In the book it, like all the others, is called simply “The News from Spain,” but in order to publish different stories in different magazines I had to differentiate them somehow—hence “The Tunnel.”) I wrote it soon after my mother had gone to live in a nursing home; her physical condition was dire but her mind was still sharp. And our relationship was prickly but close.
Rebecca’s romantic history has nothing to do with mine. But the central love story here, between the mother and the daughter, was pretty much a straightforward example of “Write what you know,” which I always amend to read, “Write what matters to you.”
CALLAN WINK’s stories have appeared in Granta, The New Yorker, Ecotone, and others. He lives in Livingston, Montana.
• This story, especially the setting, stems largely from the farm of one of my childhood friends. I would go there on the weekends and we would just run wild around the place—play in the barns, climb the hay, etc.
Once, I saw a cat, a small calico, dead on a pile of manure that was going to be spread on the fields. I think, in large part, this story developed as some sort of justification for this image, one that twenty years later I still can picture very clearly.
Other Distinguished Stories of 2012
ALMOND, STEVE
Gondwana. Ploughshares, vol. 38, no. 1.
APPEL, JACOB M.
The Price of Storks. Western Humanities Review, vol. 66, no. 2.
BAKER, MATTHEW
Everything That Somehow Found Us Here. New England Review, vol. 33, no. 2.
BARRETT, ANDREA
The Particles. Tin House, no. 51.
BEAMS, CLARE
World’s End. One Story, no. 166.
BEATTIE, ANN
The Astonished Woodchopper. Paris Review, no. 201.
BERGMAN, MEGAN Mayhew
Phoenix. Ploughshares Pshares Singles, no. 3.
BLACK, ALETHEA
You, on a Good Day. One Story, no. 163.
BOSWELL, ROBERT
American Epiphany. American Short Fiction, vol. 15, no. 54.
Boyle, T. Coraghessan
Birnam Wood. The New Yorker, September 3.
BRADLEY, DAVID
You Remember the Pin Mill. Narrative Magazine, Spring.
BROWN, KAREN
Stillborn. Epoch, vol. 61, no. 2.
CARLSON, RON
Line from a Movie. Zyzzyva, no. 96.
CELONA, MARJORIE
The Everpresent Hell of Other People. Ha
rvard Review, no. 42.
CHABON, MICHAEL
Citizen Conn. The New Yorker, February 13 & 20.
CLARK, GEORGE MAKANA
The Incomplete Priest. Ecotone, no. 114.
COOPER, RAND Richards
Tunneling. Commonweal, July.
CORE, LEOPOLDINE
The Underside of Charm. Joyland, vol. 1, no. 2.
CREWS, HARRY
You’ll Like My Mother’s Grave. Georgia Review, vol. 66, no. 3.
DAHLIE, MICHAEL
The Pharmacist from Jena. Harper’s Magazine, January.
DARK, ALICE ELLIOT
Rumm Road. The Literarian, no. 7.
DE JARNATT, STEVE
Mulligan. Cincinnati Review, vol. 8, no. 2.
DEWILLE, JAMES
Last Days on Rossmore. American Short Fiction, vol. 15, no. 55.
DÍAZ, JUNOT
The Cheater’s Guide to Love. The New Yorker, July 23.
DONOGHUE, EMMA
Onward. The Atlantic, September.
DUVAL, PETE
Orchard Tender. Meridian, no. 28.
EDOCHIE, CHIDELIA
The King of Hispaniola. Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 51, no. 1.
EGAN, JENNIFER
Black Box. The New Yorker, June 4 & 11.
ELLIOTT, JULIA
LIMBs. Tin House, no. 51.
ERDRICH, LOUISE
Nero. The New Yorker, May 7.
FRISCH, SARAH
Housebreaking. Paris Review, no. 203.
GALCHEN, RIVKA
Appreciation. The New Yorker, March 19.
GENI, ABBY
Dharma at the Gate. Glimmer Train, no. 83.
GILSON, WILLIAM
At the Dark End of the Street. New England Review, vol. 33, no. 1.
GROFF, LAUREN
Abundance. Ecotone, no. 13.
A Season by the Shore. Glimmer Train, no. 82.
HAIGH, JENNIFER
A Place in the Sun. The Common, no. 4.
HARDY, EDWARD
Hole in the Sand. Glimmer Train, no. 85.
HEMPEL, AMY
A Full-Service Shelter. Tin House, vol. 13, no. 4.
JAMES, TANIA
Lion and Panther in London. Granta, no. 119.
The Scriptological Review. A Public Space, no. 15.
KADETSKY, ELIZABETH
An Incident at the Plaza. Antioch Review, vol. 70, no. 1.
KING, STEPHEN
Batman and Robin Have an Altercation. Harper’s Magazine, September.
KRAUSS, NICOLE
An Arrangement of Light. Byliner, August.
LA FARGE, PAUL
Another Life. The New Yorker, July 2.
LANCELOTTA, VICTORIA
So Happy. Hayden’s Ferry Review, no. 50.
LERNER, BEN
The Golden Vanity. The New Yorker, June 18.
LIPSYTE, SAM
The Republic of Empathy. The New Yorker, June 4 & 11.
LODATO, VICTOR
P.E. The New Yorker, April 2.
MARTIN, JEFF
When the Water Rises. Greensboro Review, no. 92.
MCCANN, COLUM
Transatlantic. The New Yorker, April 16.
MCCRACKEN, ELIZABETH
A Dream of Being Sufficient. Zoetrope: All-Story, vol. 13, no. 3.
MCDERMOTT, ALICE
Someone. The New Yorker, January 30.
MCGRAW, ERIN
Step. Image, no. 73.
MCGUANE, THOMAS
The Casserole. The New Yorker, September 10.
A Prairie Girl. The New Yorker, February 27.
MELOY, MAILE
The Proxy Marriage. The New Yorker, May 21.
MOORE, LORRIE
Wings. Paris Review, no. 20.
MORRISSEY, COLLEEN
Good Faith. Cincinnati Review, vol. 9, no. 2.
MUNRO, ALICE
Amundsen. The New Yorker, August 27.
Haven. The New Yorker, March 5.
NAIDITCH, DOVBER
The Angel in the House. Prairie Schooner, vol. 86, no. 4.
NELSON, KENT
La Mer de L’Ouest. Georgia Review, vol. 66, no. 2.
NULL, MATTHEW Neill
Telemetry. Ploughshares, vol. 38, no. 4.
OKPARANTA, CHINELO
America. Granta, no. 118.
ORNER, PETER
The Hole. Ecotone, no. 13.
PARAMESWARAN, RAJESH
On the Banks of Table River (Planet Lucina, Andromeda Galaxy, a.d. 2319). Zoetrope: All-Story, vol. 16, no. 1.
PARRY, LESLIE
New Heaven. Missouri Review, vol. 35, no. 2.
PEARLMAN, EDITH
Life Lessons. Cincinnati Review, vol. 8, no. 2.
Stone. Agni, no. 75.
PODOS, REBECCA
The Fourth. Glimmer Train, no. 84.
POOLE, NATHAN
Stretch Out Your Hand. NarrativeMagazine, Winter.
POWERS, RICHARD
Genie. Byliner, November.
RATCLIFFE, JANE
You Can’t Be Too Careful. New England Review, vol. 33, no. 1.
RAWLINGS, WENDY
Tics. Agni, no. 76.
ROW, JESS
Summer Song. Tin House, vol. 13, no. 4.
RUSKOVICH, EMILY
An Impending Change of Heart. Zoetrope: All-Story, vol. 16, no. 4.
RUSSELL, KAREN
Reeling for the Empire. Tin House, vol. 14, no. 2.
SCHAFFERT, TIMOTHY
Lady of the Burlesque Ballet. Ploughshares Pshares Singles, no. 1.
SCHUTZ, GREG
The Sweet Nothings. Carolina Quarterly, vol. 62, no. 2.
SHAPIRO, GERALD
A Drunkard’s Walk. Michigan Quarterly Review, vol. 51, no. 2.
SHIPSTEAD, MAGGIE
The Great Central Pacific Guano Company. American Short Fiction, vol. 15, no. 54.
In the Olympic Village. Subtropics, no. 13.
SIEGEL, ROBERT ANTHONY
The Right Imaginary Person. Tin House, vol. 14, no. 2.
SLOUKA, MARK
Russian Mammoths. Orion, March/April.
SNEED, CHRISTINE
The Finest Medical Attention. New England Review, vol. 33, no. 1.
SPENCER, DARRELL
Squeeze Me, I Sing. Georgia Review, vol. 66, no. 1.
SPENCER, ELIZABETH
Blackie. Epoch, vol. 61, no. 1.
TAYLOR, JUSTIN
After Ellen. The New Yorker, August 13 & 20.
THEROUX, PAUL
Our Raccoon Year. Harper’s Magazine, May.
TOUTONGHI, PAULS
The Limit of the World. Epoch, vol. 61, no. 3.
TROY, JUDY
My Buried Life. Kenyon Review, vol. 34, no. 3.
VAN DEN BERG, LAURA
Lessons. American Short Fiction, vol. 15, no. 54.
Opa Locka. Southern Review, vol. 48, no. 3.
VAPNYAR, LARA
Fischer vs. Spassky. The New Yorker, October 8.
VIERGUYTZ, DINA NAYARI
A Teaspoon of Earth and Sea. Southern Review, vol. 48, no. 2.
VOLLMER, MATTHEW
Advanced Placement Question 3, Free Response. The Normal School, vol. 5, no. 2.
WALTER, JESS
Thief. Harper’s Magazine, March.
WATERS, DON
Full of Days. Southwest Review, vol. 97, no. 1.
WATKINS, CLAIRE VAYE
The Archivist. Glimmer Train, no. 83.
Editorial Addresses of American and Canadian Magazines Publishing Short Stories
Able Muse Review
467 Saratoga Avenue, #602
San Jose, CA 95129
$24, Nina Schyler
African American Review
http://aar.expressacademic.org
$40, Nathan Grant
Agni
Boston University Writing Program
Boston University
236 Bay State Road
Boston, MA 02115
$20, Sven Birkerts
Alaska Quarterly Review
University of Alaska, Anchorage
3211 Providence Drive
Anchorage, AK 99508
$18, Ronald Spatz
Alimentum
www.alimentumjournal.com
$18, Paulette Licitra
Alligator Juniper
http://www.prescott.edu/alligator_juniper/
$15, Melanie Bishop
American Letters and Commentary