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OTHER FICTION by Sylvia Weiser Wendel
“Sandy’s Blue Note” (2004)
Environmental essayist Joan Muir Jones recounts a misguided 1970s romance. Here’s an excerpt:
“The sudden death of Alexander ‘Sandy’ Frazier, of a cerebral hemorrhage at sixty-five, coincided all too neatly with the publication of his memoir, Chicken With a Camera, covering his forty years of wilderness photography. I received his book, and the assignment to review it, only two days before his blood stopped pumping. What follows may or may not be for publication.
“First, an acknowledgement: the young woman in the photo facing page 192 is in fact your correspondent, although at the age of twenty-five I was not yet using my tripartite name. Joanie Jones they called me, until Sandy Fraser learned my famous middle moniker and convinced me to assume it in my writing. When this photograph was taken, I had not written anything except my master’s thesis on the salt pans of the California desert and, once or twice, the word ‘Mrs. Sandy Frazier’ (crossed out) and “Joan Jones Fraser” (allowed to remain) in the margins of my notebooks.”
“Smoked Sable Lake” (1996 )
In an otherwise idyllic Northwest town, one woman takes on neo-Nazis who threaten outsiders. Here’s an excerpt:
“Joan Muir Jones knew she was about to face her greatest challenge. She was given to exaggeration, a trait both of her ex-husbands had found infuriating, but in the tussle with Burt Sharpstein on one hand and the A.D.O.L.F. on the other, she knew she was looking at war with her own cherished beliefs.
“Which were: preserve the wilderness. Pack it in, pack it out. Never do it onto an animal what you would not have an animal do onto you. These three, with some clarification, had served her well over fifteen years as an environmental activist and essayist, although the critics had been harsh on her last book. She sat on the town council in pastoral Sable Lake, named for that scalloped mirror in the high green peaks, and faced the inescapable fact that this time, taking her usual stance would ally her with the foulest people she had ever known.”
When the A.D.O.L.F. meets the H.E.R.Z.L., which will prevail?
Read the whole story here.
“Love, But Qualify” (2006)
Three college friends with wildly different lives on both coasts reunite in the mid-90s when one of them lands in jail. Here’s an excerpt:
“Melinda drove six hundred miles to surprise him on his birthday, and found him with a whore and a saxophonist. The musician, a youth from the college, was standing with his narrow back to Melinda when she flung open the bedroom door, and his stance and the raucous little tune he played convinced her he did not approve of what had happened in this
room. The woman was already clambering into her clothes, while Gennady sheathed in bedsheets behind her was crooning Ferghana hits of the fifties around his post-coital cigarette. Melinda walked into a fait accompli.”
Ronnie, the caustic critic from LA, and Elinor, the off-the-grid earth mother, deplore academic Melinda’s taste for unsuitable men. Later, however, the worm turns …
Read the whole story here.
“Success is Forgetting” (2012)
When you lie to yourself, there are consequences. Here’s an excerpt:
“The sound she made, a gulping gasp, went off like a bomb above the table, and she dropped the newspaper.
“Eight years ago, they were lovers; six years ago, he became famous; somewhere in there, Stephanie Lilien resigned herself—not to failure, no, but to reality—and went to work in a law firm. Now here was Gershom Sklar (although the caption read G. Hitchcock Scholar), on the front page, and the headline above him read, DIRECTOR CHARGED.”
Stephanie chucked her dreams in a bin. Her ex-boyfriend stole them, and made it big. Who’s sorry now?
Read the whole story here.