The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore - Harlan Ellison

From the mind of man…human. 

Some of these stories hit harder than others…leaving a psychic mark that I’ll carry for years. Others pass away and fade, and I’m surprised to read what I wrote about them years later - really having no recollection of the story. 

I usually don’t tilt towards experimental writing in terms of structure; perhaps I think there is a layer of gimmick thrown in there by the author. And I don’t think there have been many non-traditional short stories contained in the BASS. 

I read this story twice (mostly because I finished this volume, BASS 1993, a couple of months ago, and now I have to refresh my memory when it comes time to write about the individual stories). Even though I have gradually started ingesting more sci-fi and speculative fiction into my reading diet - mostly over the past 5 years- incredibly, this was the first time I came across Harlan Ellison. The story didn’t really move me in any way the first time I read it, but it was after reading something else, perhaps a book review…or an interview with an author…I can’t really remember; it was then that I recalled Ellison’s name and decided to do a bit more research on him. I ended up purchasing “The Last Dangerous Visions” - an anthology edited by Ellison and spliced reading some of those stories into my normal reading pattern. 

After learning more about Ellison - he lived a life free of gimmick. He was genuine - perhaps to a fault. 

Last week, I sat in a car dealership’s service department during an oil change and discovered what an incredible story this really is. I’ve thought about this story quite a bit over the past few days…even mentioning it to my not-yet-teenaged son, who responded with a “huh…ok” after I kinda detailed the plot (honestly understandable - I would’ve responded the sme way at his age).

What I’ve been coming back to in my thoughts more and more these days after I finish these stories is that each of these sprung forth from the mind of a human. That squishy grey goo in our skulls. A human picked up a pen or pencil…maybe they sat down at a typewriter or word processor (1990s) or a computer, and the flashes of creativity were transferred into symbols that our brain could understand and ruminate over as we unloaded the dishwasher or lay in bed before drifting off to sleep. Ellison…a human created sentences out of words from thoughts that traveled through time and landed in my brain decades later.

This story and so many others that I encounter in this exercise have such power, and now that the written word has become what it is today, the value of the written word created by a human holds more value, in my opinion. 

Human creativity will beat the machines.

 

     

Queen Wintergreen - Alice Fulton

I’m not exactly sure how we ended up in their kitchen. Perhaps we were brought there, just a few doors down from my father’s apartment, by one of the twin sisters who happened to be watching my sister and me for the afternoon. 

Philadelphia summers are hot, but their kitchen was spotless and cool. I remember it feeling shiny. There was a porcelain plate with a picture of the Pope on it above the small table that was placed along a wall where we sat. I remember glancing at it several times during our visit. I don’t know how long we were there. But I do remember the voice of the twins’ mother. I had only heard a sound similar to it in movies or on television. I recognized English words, but he accent turned her sentences into a song made up of foreign-sounding syllables. I recall my father saying that their family was Irish…only Irish lived on that side of the street (Italians lived on the other side of the street). I noticed that the twins, when they spoke with their mother, their voice changed. It too took on the rhythm of a song. I remember how pretty I thought the twins were, and now, the songs that they “spoke” enhanced their beauty. 

Queen Wintergreen dredged up this memory…one that may have lasted only a few moments, from more than 40 years ago. Irish accents emerged from the pages. Sing-songy sentences uttered in an Irish-American kitchen decades ago found their way out of my memories and married themselves to Fulton’s story. 

Silent Passengers - Larry Woiwode

A portion of the final sentence in this story, placed there perfectly by Woiwode, wrapping up all the story’s words placed into a perfectly concise bullet shot directly into that spot in your mind holding memories, blasting it back into your active consciousness…directly connecting you with…” them”. 

“--- all of them suspended for a second against the horizon, silent in the wind.”

You’ve witnessed the scene - I’ve witnessed it -  “Them,” of course, in the sentence can be swapped out to fit your recalled scene, but for many of us, after reading this story, the “them” are our children. 

It took less than 5 minutes into reading this story for my mind to drift back to reading and rereading the David Foster Wallace story Incarnations of Burned Children. The story shook me, and I shared my feelings with a coworker during discussions of life as new parents, as well as our mutual admiration of DFW. 

This is another story where the point in life when you encounter it is so important. It does what great fiction does: offer an alternative perspective, placing you into the mind of another. But, as I’ve written about before, if I encountered this story at the age of 20, it perhaps might have impacted me differently. Even at the ages that my kids are at now, I know that if I come across this story again in a few years, my experiences would surely color its re-read. 

Once again, I’ll pull a quote from the author featured in the anthology’s Contributor’s Notes 

“I used to say (and so used to think, I would hope, that if fiction had a salubrious effect, that was secondary. Art, you know, art. But after living through many different sorts of responses over the years to my work, and especially to this particular story, I'm not so sure about that.

Isn't it important for fiction to bring about moments of stasis, of restoration — of healing, if you will? It was largely people who underwent some such experience who responded to "Silent Passengers" by writing to me.”

I was happy to encounter Larry Woiwode again. Incredibly, the last time I read him was 16 years ago. 

Change - read in February 2010

First Born - read in June 2010

Reviewing my writing from 16 years ago, how his stories impacted me at that point in my life…man, it’s staggering how much the world and (selfishly) my life have changed. 

I suppose that’s all a part of living, though. 

Larry Woiwode died in 2022. 

The picture of Woiwode at the top of this post is from 1976. I think he looks badass.