Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

               Chadwick Spartan's head was ringing as he prepared himself for another day of running the machines. He was in charge of machine number 16, the scrambler, and he was sick to death of the smell of stale popcorn, fried food, and the sickly vomit smell of each sick kid who threw up on the ride after eating cotton candy or elephant ears. He was plain sick of working on the machines, listening to the tired banter of the other carnies as they played drinking games long into the night or discussed the new tattoos they were thinking of getting. His life had become a cliché; when he left home after high school, he fell for the idea that the carnival life would be adventure and fun. He would see the world. He was so damn naïve. Instead, he found himself bored on the road, wishing for all the world that he had settled down with some high school sweetheart, worked at the factory, or even gone to trade school.       ...

Sometimes when you work too much, you achieve a level of clarity that allows you to step back and take stock of your life and the choices you have made. Other times you just feel exhausted and want to take naps and sleep in every day. Of course, you force yourself to get out of bed and go to work because that is the adult thing to do and you have responsibilities. If you are anything like me, your sense of self-worth that is intricately connected to conscientiousness bordering on insanity. Your Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) leads to the strangest behaviors like getting to work early and taking on extra work to maintain a sensible sense of identity.  During these odd days of COVID, I find myself doing less work than usual or struggling to maintain my usual level of obsessive-compulsive writing and grading. I have new habits of grading a few papers a day instead of my standard marathon sessions; however, if I do decide to embark on a marathon grading regimen, I have graded for ...

I used to see myself as an all-too-serious writer when it came to writing fiction. I always tried to write what in the past would have been considered the Great American Novel or those very serious stories that people would read in The New Yorker or The American Mercury . Apparently, I thought of myself as a modernist 1920s-1950s writer telling stories about characters in the vein of Gertrude Stein or J.D. Salinger, exploring the foibles of normal people. I slowly realized that my writing style is close to this vision but not in the way I thought. I am improving my process by writing earthy stories full of humor and straightforward storylines, covering the daily adventures of normal people. I really have no ambitions to write the Great American Novel anymore because I would rather write for myself and the average fiction reader. I am becoming more comfortable in my skin as a writer.  The narrative structures I was creating in more fiction were far different; in fact, I was dabbling...

As someone who writes both fiction and nonfiction every day, I often discover snippets of writing in notebooks or in long-forgotten files on my hard drive. Generally, I know what they are. At least, I have some idea of why I wrote them. If they are nonfiction, I sometimes revise them for blog posts. The fiction snippets are more difficult to use. I always tell myself that I will finish the story or find a place to use it in the ever-expanding novel that I secretly contend is narratively daring. This snippet is amusing, if nothing else, so I am sharing it. Perhaps, I want to remind myself at some future date that I will eventually finish each of these brief pieces. Another thing, why did I think I could use goosebump as a verb? For this story, I wonder what was coming next: a scary ghost story, a humorous tale, a novel about Bill and his madcap crew of camp rangers, or the secret life of William Jefferson Clinton. One thing I do know is that I am now hungry for s'mores. Take it ...

I often feel the pull of the written word, encouraging me to read and write fiction far more than I have time for. Yet I have so many stressors in my life, pulling me in all directions, halting my efforts and sapping my strength. It is all I can do to put a few words down on paper for a book chapter I am working on or scribble a few notes for my movie list. I write this from the standpoint of finishing my doctoral dissertation in the spring, teaching the equivalent of six courses, and trying my best to seek tenure. During these rough spells, I have been trying to read fiction and slowly writing a little. Someday I hope to get back to my manuscript and at least finish one novel or a few short stories or pull a few more of my grey hairs out. I take comfort in the fact that many are late bloomers to this fiction game. However, I have been writing fiction for more than two decades and have never taken it all that seriously. It is a given, but there is something to be said for sitting dow...

“ Seventh Son” A hazy mist covered the ground in the cemetery. Green saplings bent to the ground. I walked solemnly, looking behind me every couple of minutes. My chest beat and my legs felt tense. I had been meeting my brother in Shadows Grove Cemetery for several years. Well, I guess I couldn’t really call it meeting him. He’s dead. I just walked to the cemetery to talk to him. He was the only person whom I could really trust when he was alive. You see, my dad died before I was born and my mom -- well, she’s crazy. She tells me that I’m crazy for talking to Randall. She says, “He’s dead. When are you gonna realize that? I raised a dip shit kid who talks to fucking angels.” She isn’t all that bad, though. At least, she doesn’t hit me anymore. As I approached his plot, I saw a big and nasty crow. It cawed at me and flew into the grey sky, then alighted near Randall’s gravestone and dashed back into the sky. The sun was beginning to make me tired. I felt it on my skin and s...

Right after school Cecil grabbed his shotgun from his father's rifle cabinet and headed out the door. He took his old BMX out of the garage and slung the gun over his back. He pedaled the bike as fast as he could. Small for his class, he was still waiting for a growth spurt. His grandmother had told him that sometimes it happens later in life. But he wasn't waiting until eighteen or twenty-one. He had outgrown his shit hole town already. He spent most of his time out on state land shooting squirrels or just walking. There was nothing at home that equaled the thrill of just being out in the woods, nothing that equaled the thrill of being among the pines and oaks. He was master of all he surveyed out here. No one came to bother him.             He pedaled his bike down Wilson Road past house after house all of them empty because no one was home from work or school yet. Out here the paint was chipped and the yards were filled wi...

He finally found a place downtown near the club he was playing. A underused city parking lot that required no fee. He parked the beast and made note of where. He needed to make his getaway as effectively as possible. He was sick of playing these gigs. He usually opened for some upcoming metal band, whose fans hated his music. They tacked him on the bill because they loved it. He dealt with hours of inane hipster talk with little recourse – he played the blues, at least an archaic crossroads form of it. They loved it, but there crowd always wanted Metallica. He had no problem with the music. He just wanted to some day open for musicians more his stripe. Hell, he figured he deserved it. He had done penance long enough. He pulled his short, but solid frame from the car. His weather worn skin and brutalized stetson spoke of his days as an old dog. Long in tooth, but still strong in talent. His bones ached a little more each day, but he had his pride. He played blues originals and nothi...

I'm listening to Chris Bell and feeling really underwhelmed by graduate school today. So I figured now was as good of a time as any to flex my fiction writing muscles and post another installment of my sojourn into fiction writing -- " "The Jukebox Played An Old Sad Song." I feel that some of this story might seem a tad cliched, or intentionally pulpy, but I am going with it. Writing is an unrewarding task sometimes, but most of the time I can't imagine doing anything else.  One of these times I will put up revisions. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- He grabbed a pool cue from a corner rack. The bar was somewhat of a dive with dirty concrete floors and cracked brown wall panels covered by decades old beer signs. The only new embellishments included new lights over the pool tables and large screen led televisions with 24 hour sports blaring. The pool cue he grabbed was one of the old ones; it had so...

I'm throwing a fiction snippet up just for fun. I probably won't do many more, but if anyone likes this, I might post again. I enjoy being thrown into the middle of the action, and I want to see what others think. We often live vicariously through the work of others -- nightly television programs, crime novels, postmodern literature, neighborhood gossip, whatever our vice of the moment is. How often though do we really imagine what it would be like to truly participate in these other stories? Instead of relying on the distance that the fictional barrier creates, can we truly confront these other worlds? Or must we be content to live vicariously through stories told by others? Creating or narrating our own stories or adding to the overall discussion is always a possibility. I would like to continue that discussion, whether it be blurring the lines in writing, by putting ourselves in the place of others. Or, perhaps, just keeping an open mind to the other lives and possibilities...