SHORT STORY REX Jan 2024
Happy new(ish) year everybody! Here, have some short story recs!
1. “Cardboard Faces”, Jack Klausner
I mean to continue this year of short story recommendations much as i’ve been doing up to now, ie recommending excellent work from ergot., specifically this excellent piece by Jack Klausner
Short and to the point, told with laconic matter-of-factness, this is a story you can hold in your head and rotate: the feeling you’re being left behind, the desperate scrambling to adapt, culminating in a most off-putting affirmation, a sad and hollow Yes that the reader can almost hear muffled by the mask.
2. “The Advent on Channel Twelve”, C.M. Kornbluth
The three kings have come and gone, Steamboat Willie-posting is already a distant memory but its probably still a good time to talk about "The Advent on Channel Twelve" by CM Kornbluth (which i first discovered on a podcast called Reading Short and Deep).
In it the creator of an alliteratively-named cartoon character is commanded by powerful financial interests to take his commercial empire to the next level, to which he responds "O ye bankers, this last command will I never obey"
Ultimately though the creator relents, resulting in a moment of transcendent TV that forever changes the history of human spirituality. Written in delightful King James pastiche, this story might seem prophetic today though it was probably clear as early as 1958 where its inspiration was heading, tbh
(also RSD is a nice podcast, i put it on when im having trouble sleeping and when it doesnt take and i don't doze off at least ive heard an old public-domain story or poem id probably never hear otherwise)
3. “The Mub”, Thomas Ha
Continuing to play catch-up with great stories from the past couple of months…here’s a fantasy story from the November issue of Clarkesworld by Thomas Ha about a traveling artist being pestered by a creature with big brass-colored eyes that clicks and beeps and wants to “share” his own “artwork”…i dont want to spoil it too hard but Ha deciding to write a story about how AI is shitty and how obnoxious and stupid AI-bros are, is a 100% chad move
“They fixate. Copy what they can. Try to do what we do with our real intelligence, but they don’t do what we do because they suck shit”
lol owned
4. “Mei Bao’s World”, Can Xue
The experience of reading Can Xue mystifies and fascinates me and in this story in The Baffler, appropriately enough, the bafflement continues
Can Xue first came to my attention in one of Alex Shephard's Nobel Prize prediction pieces for the New Republic: “As for Can Xue? Imagine the citation: ‘For her uncategorizable and strange works that read like a Benadryl fever dream.’” I sought out a copy of Dialogues in Paradise on the strength of that description alone and of course loved it
Her writing process, as described in interviews, is improvisational and involves no revision. “As soon as I start the performance, the beautiful pattern of Great Nature gradually unfolds. What I need to do is just concentrate on my acting, indulging in the wildest fantasy.”
Or, as an old man tells the titular protagonist of “Mei Bao's World”:
“When you meet a wolf, you attack the wolf. When you see a dolphin, you ride the dolphin. And when you see a deep ravine on the mountain, you leap inside.”
Not-story rex: “Vital Transformation”, Mahavishnu Orchestra and “The Crunge”, Led Zeppelin
Drum nerd shit incoming: it took a recent Adam Neely video to remind me of how hard the first Mahavishnu Orchestra album goes (historically, i’ve always defaulted to Birds of Fire to scratch that particular itch for some reason). Specifically, Neely looks at the classic “Vital Transformation”—both the studio version and the ludicrously fast version recorded live in Central Park in August 1973 which i was not previously familiar with:
YouTube proceeded to suggest (helpfully, for once) a video (highly recommended btw if that’s your thing) from Youtube channel The Creative Drummer breaking down Billy Cobham’s notorious 9/8 groove which included this transcription:
…and something about watching this pattern being played much more slowly than in either Mahavishnu recording reminded me of another, very different 70s rock drumming legend whose last name also has six letters, the last three of which are also -ham (John Bonham), and another very famous 9/8 drum intro, Led Zeppelin’s “The Crunge”
…which looks like this (transcription from a great explainer video on Youtube channel thegoodfoot)
“Hold on,” i said, “thats kinda similar isnt it” — as in, the way both patterns end with the exact three-sixteenth-note figure of a kick/open-hat accent followed by two strokes on the snare:
Checking the release dates of The Inner Mounting Flame and House of the Holy, I found they were released in 1971 and 1973, respectively. Now is it possible that Bonham was unfamiliar with his contemporary Cobham, one of drumming’s all-time greats, and with Cobham’s work with probably the most important jazz fusion group of the early 70s? Could it be that “The Crunge” 9/8 groove is one Bonham arrived at spontaneously from first principles? Sure, I guess, but could he also have heard and cribbed the idea for his own 9/8 drum intro groove from the earlier Mahavishnu recording? i guess what i mean is WHAT DID BONHAM KNOW AND WHEN DID HE KNOW IT
like i said drum nerd shit
***By the way, I know I said i’d be moving Short Story Rex off of Substack and I’m still planning to, but January’s been kinda nuts and I haven’t gotten all those ducks in a row. I will let everyone know what is up as soon as I myself know what is up