My struggles with staying on top of posting here are
primarily due to a block. I haven’t isolated it completely – just that it
originates with my change in life. We
all work through our blocks. We fall off
our horses and climb back on. In this
case, I do not resent the origins of the change in my life one bit. It’s just a stage, and as I progress forward,
I will be able to pull good parts of my old life into the life I now live.
The Fireman’s Wife is the second story in BASS 1990. The author is Richard Bausch who I’ve read
before in BASS 1988 (Police
Dreams) back in the summer of 2012.
We’ll have the treat of reading more Bausch in my next entry as he is featured
twice in this anthology.
Of his decision to include Bausch twice in this volume
editor Richard Ford states: “I’d have felt more balanced by seeming more
balanced, but I simply couldn’t believe I was publishing the best stories I
found if I ignored these”.
Bausch is also in BASS 1997 – I look forward to reading him
several months from now (er…could be years at my rate of reading and writing).
Bausch was born in 1945 and presently he is a professor at Wilkinson
College of the Arts & Humanities at Chapman University in Orange,
California. He spent some time in
Virginia attending college and later teaching just up north at George Mason.
Bausch has a great section on his website – where he lays out his Ten
Commandments for writers.
They are great and worth re-posting here:
Ten Commandments of
Richard Bausch
1. Read: “You must try to know everything that has ever been
written that is worth remembering, and you must keep up with what your
contemporaries are doing.”
2. Imitate: “While you are doing this reading, you spend
time trying to sound like the various authors — just as a painter, learning to
paint, sets up his easel in the museum and copies the work of the masters.”
3. “Be regular and ordinary in your habits, like a Petit
Bourgeois, so you may be violent and original in your work.” — borrowed from
Flaubert
4. Train yourself to be able to work anywhere.
5. Be Patient. “You will write many more failures than
successes. Say to yourself, I accept failure as the condition of this life,
this work. I freely accept it as my destiny. Then go on and do the work. You
never ask yourself anything beyond Did I work today?”
6. Be Willing. “Accepting failure as a part of your destiny,
learn to be willing to fail, to take the chances that often lead to
failure in the hope that one of them might lead to something good.”
7. Eschew politics. “You are in the business of portraying
the personal life, the personal cost of events, so even if history is part of
your story, it should only serve as a backdrop.”
8. Do not think, dream.
9. Don’t compare yourself to anyone, and learn to keep from
building expectations.
10. Be wary of all general advice.
In an interview with Jack Smith published in “Writer” - Apr2007
Smith in his introduction writes:
The Virginia Quarterly Review said – “With
any luck, Richard Bausch's genius will be recognized now as heir and equal to
Carver's."
I feel bad that I didn’t look further into Bausch back in
July of 2012. I’m a huge fan of Carver
and have been reading What We Talk
About When We Talk About Love which is such a bad-ass
collection of tightly written stories.
So if Bausch lines up with Carver – I’m stoked.
Later in the interview Smith goes on to write “Familiar
Bausch themes include marital stresses and breakups, the problems of aging, and
the complex relations between parents and children. Like his literary kinsmen
Carver and Richard Ford, he tends to produce work that is often very dark,
ironic and bizarre.” And then “Bausch masterfully zeroes in on the oddities and
quirks in people, and the bizarre ways in which human beings clash as they try
to conduct their lives the only way they know how.”
And the above pretty much sells it for me on Bausch.
I enjoyed this story.
I enjoyed the depth of characters and as a fan of Carver; I enjoyed the
misery in which the characters lived.