I first came to Hempel's work through Terry Wolverton -- founder of Writers at Work and author several novels and poetry collections. I was working on an ill-fated and since discarded novel about obsessive fear and, ultimately, death. I wanted it to be funny. Most of my writing workshop participants didn't quite get why fear and death needed to be funny -- but I felt sure that there was a way to do it. That I had to do it. My favorite writers do this thing very well -- capture both the sadness and humor, humanity, that is life. If there is a theme running through my short story collection picks this month -- and even the novels I truly love -- it is the humor. I like things to get serious, but with a side of funny. What's wrong with that?
I was having such a difficult time getting the voice right, the humor amidst all the intense fear and sadness and death. Terry suggested I read Amy Hempel. I now bow at the feet of Terry Wolverton. I don't know that I've ever properly thanked her for turning me on to Hempel's work. Reasons to Live is all these things (serious + funny) delivered with bristling prose. Taut sentences. Some stories are only two pages. A whisper of a story in length, but no less powerful than an 80 page novella. Her stories always represent a challenge to me: how to say it right with as few words as possible, yet communicate whole worlds (much like James Salter is a challenge, although I would argue his touch is decidedly darker, more serious...more on him later this month) while doing so.
To give you a taste of this essential collection, I'll give you the intro bits to my favorite stories contained between the watery covers:
Tonight is a Favor to Holly: "A blind date is coming to pick me up, and unless my hair grows an inch by seven o'clock, I am not going to answer the door. The problem is the front. I cut the bangs myself; now I look like Mamie Eisenhower."
Going: "There is a typo on the hospital menu this morning. They mean, I think, that the pot roast tonight will be served with buttered noodles. But what it says here on my breakfast tray is that the pot roast will be severed with buttered noodles. This is not a word you want to see after flipping your car twice at sixty per and then landing side-up in a ditch."
Three Popes Walk into a Bar: "Sydney Lawton Square is a park for a transient population; there are no benches. You can walk it end to end in minutes. The architect for the Gateway Condominiums squeezed it in between the barbecue place and the parking garage. You would put quotes around this 'park' the way you might send traffic fines to the Hall of 'Justice.' But this feeble attempt at nature is walking distance from the club--so that's where I meet Wesley, at the Fountain of Four Seasons."
