The Art of the Story

As we enter the holiday session of neurotic family dinner conversations and the same old boring stories from Uncle Ed, you'll quickly come to appreciate the art of a good story. One that not only has a beginning, middle and end, but retains your interest throughout… and keeps you thinking long after you're done reading.

And a good story poses questions—though it may leave the answering to the reader. So in our interview with acclaimed novelist Alice McDermott, we couldn't help but ask, After This…After what exactly? And this issue's fictionists pose their own questions: What is so "Amazing and Beautiful", Suzanne Abbot? What's going on in Roe's "Mexico"? And what's the story in Svoboda's "The Story"? So too do our poems tell tales. Donald Illich documents a "Disaster," we stand witness as a "Patient Has a Moment Alone" in Mitchell's work, VanderMolen offers both a "Confession" and a "Joke," and the title alone of Matthew Roher's "Statistics of Deadly Quarrels" is intriguing enough to warrant a closer look. And of course the visual can tell a story in a way words can't.  Look again at Amie Oliver's "Angels and Infidels" ...at those tortured souls.  Look long enough and you'll likely see more than one soul staring right back at you.

TD