Not many people have sat and read two anthologies of contemporary Southern short fiction in one weekend, but I just did. Fifteen minutes ago I was startled awake at my table by the sound of tapping. I thought someone was at my door but it was the neighbors hammering something into the party wall. I had been dreaming about rock-climbing around an enormous, round, polished-granite fountain. I remember thinking in my dream, why do I always dream about this fountain? though I know I never have before. But I fell asleep on top of the ms of the second of the two Southern short story collections. I fell asleep with violence; I remember my head actually bobbing. So far in these collections there's one story that blows me away. It's the lead story in the second collection, and I am crazy about it. I almost cried reading it. There's a lot of dog-killing in the South, in other news, and people have incest a lot.



At this point, if the short story doesn't end (a) in a tragic sexual misunderstanding (b) in an epiphany during fireworks or (c) at the grave of a dog, I find it fresh. Even the dumbest of books can leave you with one great image.



I don't like twist endings. It frustrates me when the Southern voice is so clearly a put-on that the characters can't resist saying "purportedly." I also hate the construction "adding that" after a quote: "I love her," he said, adding that she was the only woman for him. [Unless "he" here is Smoove B.] I also hate foreshadowing. One of the stories contains a phrase that goes like, "At last he'd done a purely good deed, something no one could take away from him." Cue the tragic sexual misunderstanding and you better believe this one ends at the grave of a dog. I also just hate stories that revolve around one semi-nonsensical act that the main character performs in the belief that the act will clear his mind or is foreordained for him to do. How did you, Mayron T. LaCutcheon, president of the Buck Ankle Federated Bank, get it into yer haid to try 'n catch that ol' panty thief?



There does seem to be a short-story industry that turns out these paint-by-numbers jobs. He's divorced. She's around. Tragic sexual misunderstanding. As he drives home in the rain he has an epiphany and ends up throwing a trash can through the window of a 7-Eleven. If this were a New York short story collection you could flip the sexes and replace the TSM with a comic sexual understanding and you might have "Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York."



You know what I would read is a Connecticut townie collection. Connecticut townies are the most fascinating people on the planet. I would also read any short story written by Boston Rob from Survivor.

On top of all this nonsense I am doing the most bizarre job I have ever done. My job is to go through this novel set (and already published) in Canada and remove all the traces of it being set in Canada.

Two interesting questions at the bookstore Tuesday. First, two women came in looking for romances with African American themes. We were out of Terry McMillan, and I spent the next fifteen minutes pulling likely-looking books off the fiction shelves and checking the cover art and author photo. If I never see another white woman again ... there should be more books than we have, that's for sure.



Then a man came in looking for a book by Cecil Brown; he got out a little notebook and read, slowly and carefully, "The Life and Loves of Mr. --" and I cut him off: "Oh, I read that book." I think he was relieved, and I know I didn't want to make him say the whole title. We didn't have a copy in either the new or old edition, and the guy said he couldn't find it anywhere. I know Robin's will help him out.