Catching up on some magazine reading I came across a reprint in the July/August Utne in which the editors of Black Book asked 25 well known writers to write an original six-word story. The idea came from Hemingway who supposedly wrote, "For sale: baby shoes, never used." The article does not appear to be online so I offer you a few of the more interesting "stories."
- John Updike: "Forgive me!" "What for?" "Never mind."
- Norman Mailer: Satan--Jehovah--fifteen rounds. A draw.
- AM Homes: He remembered something that never happened.
- Edward Albee: Poison; meditation; skiing; ants--nothing worked.
- Michael Cunningham: My nemesis is dead. Now what?
- Augusten Burroughs: Oh, that? It's nothing. Not contagious
- Bruce Benderson: Mother's Day came, doubling Oedipus' pleasure.
The July/August issue of
Pages magazine had some entertaining tidbits including an article about the yet to be released at time of printing
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. In it they make some speculations about what would happen in the book. They only got a few right and some were hilariously off base. Particularly good for a chuckle was their guess that the half-blood prince was Felix Felicis and that Hogwarts has a graveyard that would play a key role in the narrative. Hopefully they got the release date for
Goblet of Fire, November 18, right.
Also in Pages is an article about historic author homes with all of the visitor information. Some of the authors included are
Willa Cather,
Ernest Hemingway,
Carl Sandburg,
Emily Dickinson,
Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Washington Irving,
Mark Twain,
Edith Wharton,
Kate Chopin and
Jack London.
In the August issue of
The Writer there is a short mention about short story writer Bruce Holland Rogers. For $5 a year you can receive, by email,
three short-short stories each month. The stories range in length from 500 to 1,500 words and are a mix of literary fiction, science fiction, fairy tales and mysteries. There are some free sample stories available for your perusal. He currently has 535 subscribers from around the world.
And finally, not from a magazine, the ACLU has a
blog to help you keep track of what's going on with the Patriot Act.
