"Bloodsport" & "Catch and Release"

After reading about Michigan author and funeral director Thomas Lynch’s current book “Apparition & Late Fictions” in last Sunday’s Detroit Free Press, I couldn’t help but recall the strong imagery from two stories in this collection. The first story “Bloodsport,” I had read in the 2002 Pushcart Prize (Best of the Small Presses). The premise was not lost on me: The main character, Martin, informed of the murder of a young woman at the hands of her husband, had to retrieve the body and start the embalming process just as he had done for her father five years earlier. Lynch writes:

Martin could not get his mind off how mannish the violence was, how hunter-gatherly, how very do-it-yourself, for the son-of-a-bitch to stand on the front deck of their double-wide out in the woods while she loaded the last of her belongings in the car—her boom box and a last armful of hanging things—how he must have carefully leveled the rifle, his eyes narrowing to sight her in. He put the first bullet through her thigh. An easy shot from fifteen yards.

The other story, “Catch and Release,” first appeared in Witness, a literary journal published by Oakland Community College and edited by Peter Stine. (In fact, both stories were first published there.) In this story, the main character, a fly-fishing guide, takes his father’s ashes down a familiar river in a symbolic gesture of “letting go.” Again, Lynch writes:

Danny remembered his father taking him fishing, that first time in the river, when he was a boy, how the water tightened around his body, the thick rubber of the Red Ball waders constricting in the current. It was late March. It was cold and clear and he wondered how his father ever found this place, hours from home, driving in the dark to get to the river at first light.

It’s easy visualizing Danny tossing his father’s ashes to the wind; it’s what he does afterward with the last bit of his father that may shock you. As much as I’d like to tell you the ending, I encourage you to discover that on your own. Whether poetry, essays, or short stories, Lynch’s writing is masterfully done. This latest collection consists of four short stories and a novella. For more information go to: http://www.thomaslynch.com/ .

--JR

Summer in the Winter City

Monthly Detroit has been gone for a while. How about Orbit? What are the best magazines and papers of today's Detroit? Or is everything online now?

Happy New Year, peeps, watch out for flying debris!

A Whole Lifetime of Living

"When I lived in the Detroit area . . . I taught at the University of Detroit and I had a whole lifetime of living in Michigan -- you can get a whole lifetime very quickly living in Detroit, just a few years there adds up to a long time." -- Joyce Carol Oates, 1996.

MAKING A STATEMENT

Photographer Gregory Holm, a native of Hamtramck, Michigan, and Architect Matthew Radune want to make a statement regarding Detroit’s high foreclosure rate with an art installation called The Ice House Detroit -- that is, if they can raise $11,000. It certainly isn’t going to have as lasting of an impression as Tyree Guyton’s Heidelberg Project. Perhaps sometime in the near future the economy will improve and people will find work. If not, we can always count on spring to melt away our hopes of a recovery. By then the Ice House will be a figment of our imagination as we enjoy a reprieve from the cold.

DRIFTWOOD

It's no longer called The Driftwood Review, however it has returned! Driftwood is accepting flash fiction stories of exactly 100 words from Michigan writers. Click here for more information.

THE MOTH COMES TO DETROIT

Prepare yourself! Mark your calendar! The Moth is coming to Cliff Bell’s, 2030 Park Avenue, Detroit, on October 1st. They will be hosting five-minute story slams, some of which will air on WDET 101.9 FM. Click HERE to learn how to participate.

Upcoming themes at Cliff Bell’s are:

October 1st: Firsts
November 5th: Blunders
December 3rd: Cars

There's a $5 cover charge. Story slams start at 7:30 p.m.

Watch the above YouTube video of Adam Wade, a previous Moth Grandslam Champion, to get an idea of what it’s all about.

BRACE YOURSELF FOR THE DETROIT LIONS!

With Fall fast approaching—the changing of the weather and color of leaves—comes the arrival of NFL football and, sadly enough, the Detroit Lions. After last season’s .000 winning percentage (excluding the preseason), I’m not sure Detroiters are willing to call the Lions’ mediocre play a form of entertainment and/or escapism, even with Michigan’s nation-leading unemployment rate.

At the beginning of last year’s professional football season, a neighbor proudly displayed the Detroit Lions’ NFL flag at the top of his flagpole. Around midseason it flew at half-mast. Then after a few more losses, it flew at half-mast and upside down - the emblem of a Lion waving in the wind, flat on its back, paws in the air.

I’m not sure what’s in store for this season. I don’t really care about the win-loss record. I’m more interested in what my neighbor will do with his flag. Will he proudly fly it like past opening football seasons, or will he start what may become a new tradition?

If you’re a Detroit Lions' football fan I recommend you read Todd Hasak-Lowy’s short story "Silver and Blue" from Five Chapters. Click HERE for the link. I first discovered his story in "Best of the Web 2009" published by Dzanc Books in Westland, Michigan. Hasak-Lowy knows all too well what it means to be a loyal fan of the Detroit Lions. Get ready for heartbreak; get ready to cancel your DirecTV.