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Unflinching, Uncomfortable, and Unsettling: The Easter Parade

January 25, 2009 in HMB, books, fiction, reviews by Sal

The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
(Delacorte Press, August 1976)
Sal Pane

When a novel begins with the opening line of “Neither of the Grimes sisters would have a happy life,” you know you’re in store for a bleak take on the world. But that’s to be expected from Richard Yates, the voice of the postwar age of anxiety made fashionable again thanks to the film adaptation of his first book, the heartbreaking Revolutionary Road. The Easter Parade is his fourth novel and the book that rescued his career for very good reason. Here, Yates shows a good deal of growth as he chronicles the lives of the Grimes sisters for forty desperate years in the intellectual wastelands of New York City.

Yates’ vision is unflinching, uncomfortable and unsettling. Emily, the younger sister, is the protagonist of the book who we follow through her humble beginnings and her quest to become a bohemian. Along the way she indulges in meaningless relationship after meaningless relationship, all the way while comprehending nothing about life. “She often said ‘I see’ about things she didn’t wholly understand,” Yates writes of her, and it’s a phrase Emily uses constantly throughout the entire novel. Emily ends up alone and miserable, and her sister doesn’t fare much better. Yates wisely juxtaposes “the original liberated woman” with her sister Sarah who marries a “limited man, and in many ways an ignorant man.” Her domesticated life falls apart in a crumbling countryside manor while her husband beats her and discourages her from partaking in any form of outside life, even one of the mind.

Although The Easter Parade is a breathtaking portrait of two women’s lives following World War II, it does feel dated in places thanks to Yates’ occasional cheap shots at feminism. When Emily is completely alone and at her wit’s end, she meets a woman who runs a “female masturbation clinic” and a scene ensues in which Yates brutally mocks the early stages of women’s lib. But despite the fact that a few scenes and themes have aged badly in the thirty years since The Easter Parade’s publication, what’s truly startling is how contemporary the majority of the book still feels. At its heart, Yates’ fourth novel deals with human beings searching for happiness when there are only limited options available to them. In this sleek volume he examines the pros and cons of not only married life but that of the intellectual as well, and what he discovers is alarming not only because of the pointlessness of it all, but also because of Yates’ deeply nihilist bent. The Yates mantra, as spoken through Emily Grimes, is as simple as it is chilling: “Yes, I’m tried. And do you know a funny thing? I’m almost fifty years old and I’ve never understood anything in my whole life.”

Submissions for Hot Metal Bridge #5 (Spring 2009) Now Open

January 16, 2009 in HMB, criticism, fiction, litmags, nonfiction, online, poetry by Sal

It’s that time of year again writers, readers and friends. We here at Hot Metal Bridge are ready and willing to pore over your finest literary submissions in preparations for the fifth iteration of Hot Metal Bridge, due to be released later this spring. Below you’ll find the updated call for submissions from the various genres. So whether it be fiction or criticism, nonfiction or poetry, send us your work by Monday, February 23rd. We look forward to it.

Submissions Guidelines:

Fiction:
Hot Metal Bridge is interested in your well-crafted literary fiction, whether short story, flash fiction, or novel excerpt. What counts as literary? Just don’t send us a story about spaceship-flying dinosaurs. That said, we like aesthetic diversity, from realism to surrealism, maximalism to minimalism. And if you simply write stories and don’t care about literary classifications, send us your work too. We accept submissions as Word attachments sent to fiction@hotmetalbridge.org. Please keep submissions under 7,000 words and make sure to include your name and contact information.

Poetry: 
We are many, and our tastes differ, but as this is an entirely online journal, there’s no reason not to read the past issue before submitting (it’s good, we promise). If you can smell what we’re stepping in, then send something our way. Down to business. We welcome poetry submissions of five (5) pages or five (5) poems, whichever comes first. Please attach your submission as one document (we prefer .doc, but .docx .rtf or .pdf will all work) with your name appearing at the top of the first page. E-mail subject heading should read “Spring Poetry Submission” and in the body, you may include a short bio or cover letter, if that strikes your fancy. Send your work our way:poetry@hotmetalbridge.org.

Nonfiction:
We’re looking for nonfiction writing in all its disguises: memoir, travel writing, literary journalism, satire, etc. We want to hear about dirty kitchens, ill-mannered exchange students, and hydrogen bonding. We will read about decaying vineyards, heroic mall guards, disenchanted cartographers, and sweet potatoes. Look, just don’t James Frey us and everything will be fine. If it’s new and it’s true, send 500 to 5,000 words as a Word or RTF attachment to nonfiction@hotmetalbridge.org.

Criticism:
Hot Metal Bridge criticism is looking for innovative academic or non-academic work from professional, student, and other sources. As a forum for a variety of approaches to cultural criticism, we want your seminar and conference papers, your unpublished chapters, your articles and miscellany. Our aim is to create a space for previously unpublished pieces which may not find an easy home elsewhere. Because critical work is inherently creative, we encourage interdisciplinarity and hybridity in both form and content. Send us your poor, your tired, your huddled pages yearning to breathe free. We want to give voice to ideas that might otherwise be confined to obscurity. Submissions should be about 1 to 30 pages in MLA style. Send Word documents as attachments to criticism@hotmetalbridge.org.

And finally, good luck to all of you and we hope you’ll stay turned for upcoming book reviews, podcasts and our glorious fifth issue.

-Sal Pane and Geoff Peck
Editors

Silber’s ‘World’ is big. Almost as big as the next edition of Hot Metal Bridge.

January 16, 2009 in Contributors, HMB, books, fiction, online, reviews by Emily

The Size of the World by Joan Silber

(Norton, June 2008)

Emily Stone

 

Catapulted between New York State and Thailand, Florida and Chiapas, and even New Jersey and Bloomington, Indiana, the six interlinked monologues in Joan Silber’s The Size of the World explore the “elusive connection between place and happiness.” Silber, whose Ideas of Heaven was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Award, is a master of crafting overlaps in plot that imply larger meanings without compromising unity. Here, honest first-person accounts, equal parts confession and meditation, reveal a shared sense of freedom and displacement that marks American expatriates and, in one case, immigrants living as Americans. Recounting his life in Thailand, Toby describes himself as “a foreigner washed up here once by war.” Kit, a hippie single mother in Mexico, explains, “I was a traveler: I liked my comfort, I was not always brave, and I was only just starting to be curious.” In some cases, the relationship between parallel narrators is apparent within a speaker’s first paragraphs: Toby and Kit, for instance, were high school lovers. In others, the connections are more aloof, less linear–siblings’ stories are separated by decades, and a husband and mother-in-law paint a Rashomon-style portrait of the woman between them.

Of course, tales of international exploration are also tales of international conflict. Silber’s stories in The Size of the World are war stories, but, like the people who tell them, they are inherently off-kilter and framed by peculiar circumstances. Toby begins his story in Vietnam but as a civilian engineer rather than a draftee. Annunziata’s World War II story is of a contented life in rural Sicily under the Fascists until economics prompted her husband to emigrate. Owen alludes to the trenches in the First World War, yet his life in the book only begins (in a chapter spoken by his sister) during the following years when he is a soldier of fortune in Southeast Asia. Mike, a politics professor who raises a liberal voice against the American “War on Terror,” acts as much out of anxiety over losing a wife’s affection as he does out of conviction. In the final chapter, Owen returns as a pensioner and anti-war protester in California in the 1970s, a man whose small actions unintentionally attach him to the fates of the book’s other characters.

On occasion, Silber belabors the connections between her protagonists, assigning them awkward statements about a high-school science teacher or a first husband’s grandfather only in the service of connecting disparate narrative lines. Her writerly voice, too, can break through the scrim of the monologues, though her intellectual omniscience is less jarring than it is utterly captivating. She prompts Mike, the most contemporary and also the most sedentary of the narrators, to say that “if you longed for another place, you longed for another time,” signaling that the “elusive connection” between travel and emotion is the product of contradiction layered over romance.

Hot Metal Bridge This Way Please Coming Soon!

November 7, 2008 in HMB, criticism, fiction, litmags, news, nonfiction, online, poetry, writers by Kelly

Dear Readers, writers, friends, curious ones, ex-lovers, those eating lunch:

Our fourth issue is nearly set to debut! Like an anxious dancer it waits in the wings, pulling down its too-short tutu.
Barrring any kind of editorial/personal meltdown, the finest fiction, art, criticism, nonfiction and poetry we could find should arrive on your proverbial doorstep this Monday.

So tighten your suspenders, friends. We can’t wait to hear what you think.

Yours,
The Editors

Hot Metal Bridge BOOK REVIEWS. Welcome The First.

October 3, 2008 in Blogroll, HMB, books, criticism, fiction, online, reviews by

Breaking Dawn Dominates (and I want to gush about it)

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
(Little, Brown and Company/August 2008)
Alexandra Rae Valint

Vampires are cool again. Of course, to we steadfast lovers of the bloodsucking mythical creatures, vampires have always been cool: stealthy, seductive, and inexhaustible metaphors for sex, empire, death, and desire. However, vampires have not always been as sexy as they are now, and as they undeniably are in Stephenie Meyer’s cultishly popular Twilight Saga, the finale of which came out on August 2.

Edward Cullen, our vampire hero and star-crossed love of our human heroine, Bella Swan, is perfection: a chiseled, cold, god-like body paired with an enviable IQ. He’s a guy’s guy who plays baseball and loves fast cars, but he’s also the type of guy you bring home to your parents, who opens doors for you and lovingly records you a CD of songs he’s composed for you on his piano (which, by the way, he’s kind of a prodigy at). Oh, and he’s totally okay with just kissing. He’s inspired a legion of loyal fans who endlessly extoll his flawlessness. He’s nothing like Bram Stoker’s Dracula, who for all his manipulative magnetism always aroused equal amounts desire and repulsion. Neither was Dracula quite the same brooding, tortured type that the vampire has become in today’s fang-friendly pop culture. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s resident vampire-with-a-soul, Angel, brooded with a stern, apprehensive face and morose eyes for three seasons before broodingly departing (at night, in shadow, without a word) to spin-off show Angel, where he brooded successfully for many more seasons. The recently aired (and cancelled) CBS series Moonlight starred another brooding vampire with a conscience who was, again, in love with a feisty blonde mortal. Such TV series have continued the trend towards the humanization and sexification of the vampire, along with the concomitant lessening of the danger and violence associated with the vampire’s demonic desires. Those sickly anemic looks, pointy fangs, and unwilling neck-scarred human victims have become stunning paleness, a set of perfect teeth, and a jug of extra blood from the hospital or leftover from the butcher’s shop. The vampire has increasingly become the repository for our hopes and anxieties about the human status as hero/victim: trapped within an everlasting yet bloodless and therefore blood-lusting body, the vampire struggles above his demon—his own self—to be “good,” “selfless,” and as “normal” as possible. The vampire has come to represent the human situation. Edward Cullen embodies this paradigm to the hilt, desperately trying to be good and moral in every way still open to him.

Clearly, there is nothing new about vampire lit. After Stoker and Polidori, Anne Rice, L.A. Banks, and Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries (the basis for HBO’s fall series True Blood) followed. But no other vampire lit, to my knowledge, has caused this kind of frenzied, impassioned ferment. Witness: bookstores sponsor nationwide midnight release parties a la Harry Potter; a high school girl band, The Bella Cullen Project, gets their Twilight-inspired compositions distributed on iTunes (I recommend “Switzerland”); I’m up reading wide-eyed until 4 a.m., only to finally go to sleep and dream about the characters, only to wake up and write an acoustic-folk song with my sister (also a fan), only to then brag about said song to all my friends, who one-by-one I have converted to the series (my book conversion rate has never been higher).

To the still un-converted, the premise of the series is fairly simple: Bella Swan, our narrator, moves to Forks, a sleepy, rainy city in Washington State. Her first day at school, as she gazes across the abyss of the cafeteria, she locks eyes with a handsome pale boy sitting with other beautiful pale people (his adopted vampire family). Indescribable attraction and inevitable love ensue, even when she discovers he’s a vampire and even after he confesses that he must restrain himself from biting her because her blood is pretty much the best smelling liquid in the beverage store. Various threats to their love/life occur in the first three books, and through it all Bella desperately yearns to be turned into a vampire so she can live with Edward for ever and ever. The arrival of the fourth and final book in the series, Breaking Dawn, had the Twilight universe atwitter. Would Bella go through with the wedding? Would she become a vampire? Would Jacob (Bella’s best friend and a werewolf) imprint? Would Bella and Edward have sex? When August 2 arrived, and I cracked open the hefty hardback, I nearly read the 754 pages in one sitting.

Twists and surprises and answers to the aforementioned pressing questions make it almost impossible to talk about the book beyond page 25. However, from my investigation into the massive online response, Breaking Dawn has been met with more resistance and less unconditional glee than the previous three books received. Of course, a beloved series’ final book will never be met with hugs and kisses from everyone, and the book does take a distinct turn in subject matter, narrative structure, tone, and mood. The book feels more adult and less young adult, and perhaps that’s why some of the young fan base feels a bit alienated and betrayed. The book is no longer concerned with proving Edward and Bella’s love, but rather with handling the crises that come after love is assured. Such a maturation was to be expected; Bella leaves high school and parents behind, and she ventures into the unknown terrains of marriage and vampire existence (comically, the first causes her much more dread than the second). Even Meyer’s oftentimes inflated, indulgent prose feels more controlled, descriptively tighter here; she spends less time, though still a lot of time, expressing mushy love and describing steamy kisses and instead takes both the mushiness and steaminess of Edward and Bella’s relationship for granted (although the cold planes of Edward’s chest still receive an undue amount of attention).

Meyer is writing a different kind of book in Breaking Dawn: not girl gets boy, or girl gets boy back, or girl gets stuck in a classic love triangle. Breaking Dawn’s winding plot is harder to stereotype as frothy teen fantasy romance when it’s mostly preoccupied with the reasons we form the families we do and the ways we keep them from disintegrating. Thematically, the books have always emphasized choice and sacrifice (ironically within a framework of destiny), but yet again, such topics have matured and broadened in this final book. Breaking Dawn’s climactic showdown, a more psychological and nuanced battle than the one in Eclipse, features relevant questions about power, war, corruption, and the necessity of resisting the politics of fear.

I have spent a lot of time wondering why these books are so gosh-darn popular. Certainly, there is the refreshing, yet endearingly sexy, abstinence of Bella and Edward and the drug and alcohol free high school scene, both which makes the world of Gossip Girl a drunken and stoned red-light district by comparison. Of course, there is the grand, love-at-first-sight, fated passion between Bella and Edward, a soul mate scenario which invokes Juliet and Romeo and Cathy and Heathcliff (Bella and Edward actually quote from Wuthering Heights to express their mutual infatuation). But, I think, at the heart of readers’ intense investment in the series is that Bella, a seemingly ordinary girl who doesn’t fit in in “this world,” whose life in “this world” is defined by mind-numbing mediocrity, has another viable option; she has an escape.

And here is the core fantasy behind the series: not that an average looking girl instantaneously mesmerizes a beautiful and brilliant supernatural being (although that is another fantasy), but that she possesses something special and inherent that makes her belong more to that other world, the glamorous supernatural realm, than to this mundane world of cafeteria lunches and graduation thank you cards. Of course, when Bella bemoans her life of mediocrity she also reveals her own, distinctly not-average strengths: her incredible bravery, loyalty, and ability to notice that an important letter is written, crucially, on a page torn from her copy of The Merchant of Venice. Despite her clumsiness and her human need for food and sleep, she’s always possessed a “superpower.” Although Edward’s superpower is the ability to read everyone’s mind, Bella’s mind has consistently been a closed book to him (it aggravates him; delights her). Bella’s mind is a fortress of sorts, defended by steely resolve and a wry individualism. Breaking Dawn satisfyingly follows this potential in ways that, again, I can do no more than hint at. Bella’s mind becomes her ultimate strength and her ultimate gift—a capitulation proving that an intelligent girl is always already a superhero.

Gather pages, ye writers!

September 30, 2008 in HMB, criticism, fiction, litmags, nonfiction, online, poetry by Ashleigh

Hello, hello! Today is the final day to submit a piece of fiction, nonfiction, criticism, or poetry for consideration in our fourth issue. We accept submissions electronically (see the Call for Entries for further details), so all it takes is the magical click of a button. We look forward to seeing your lovely language, your tall tales, your astute cultural observations!

Many thanks, and happy submitting.

Yours,

The Editors

Submit! Submit!

September 13, 2008 in HMB, fiction, nonfiction, poetry by Kelly

Dear friends,

We are now accepting submissions for our fourth issue! Please send us your damned finest writing in nonfiction, poetry, criticism, or fiction. Submissions close on September 30, a date that hastens upon us like sleep, the desire for cheese, and the spectre of Ichabod Crane.

See our call for entries. Drink Ovaltine. Submit today!

Yours,
The Editors

PS: Hot Metal Bridge now has a Facebook group. That’s right. Join it.

“American Light” Coming Soon!

March 31, 2008 in HMB, fiction, litmags, nonfiction, online, poetry by Kelly | 4 comments

Hot Metal Bridge’s third issue, “American Light,” is set to debut at any moment. Please expect it by/on April 1.

We apologize for the slight delay and promise to repay you in gold coin — or rather, in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, criticism, and art, all of which we’d take over gold any day.

Yours, with anticipation,
The Editors

Metaphors and Milkshakes

February 24, 2008 in HMB, film, metaphor, writers by | 3 comments

Saturday Night Live returned to its live status this past Saturday night, hosted by 30-Rock writer/actress/producer extraordinaire Tina Fey. There was humor. There was glee. There was a deliciously self-mocking Huckabee (but, really, if it’s not mathematically possible for him to win…). But the most worthy skit riffed on Oscar-nominated films by way of commenting on the ridiculous yet innate power (and problems) of metaphor. The last 15 minutes of There Will Be Blood showcase the showdown between false prophet Eli and oilman Daniel Plainview—this bowling-alley set allegorical battle between religion and capitalism, between greed-motivated Eli and Daniel, relies linguistically on Daniel’s drunken “milkshake” metaphor. It’s both strange and strikingly perfect (as is Daniel’s weapon of choice). SNL’s skit imagines Daniel as hosting a show on the Food Network called “I Drink Your Milkshake” that features a milkshake-loving Daniel traversing the country in search of the holy grail of milkshakes along with his son and partner HW. Read the rest of this entry »

Submission deadline: onward, ho!

February 21, 2008 in HMB, fiction, litmags, nonfiction, poetry by Kelly | 3 comments

Our spring submission deadline is so soon, you can smell it: like that strange perfume your grandmother used to wear, like the shepherd’s pie you forgot you were reheating, like the rugby player who chose to sit next to you on the bus on the rainest day of the year.

Luckily for you, Hot Metal Bridge is both more fortunate and more attractive than a slack-jawed neanderthal. Also, as an online magazine, it has no odor to speak of.

Submit! Submit quickly! And make it good.

Yours,
Kelly and Ashleigh

Spring submission deadline fast approaches!

February 12, 2008 in HMB by Kelly | No comments

Like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, like Oprah’s inevitable weight gain, like warmer weather, eventually, in Pittsburgh, our spring submission deadline descends upon us! In less than two weeks, on February 25, 2008, we’ll lock ourselves in dark rooms and begin to make our publication decisions.

We’ve received some impressive submissions already, but we’re still waiting for you, o unheralded genius, to send us your work. Check out the call for entries and send your most brilliant words to the appropriate genre editor.

We can’t wait to read what you’ve written.

Best,
Kelly Ramsey and Ashleigh Pedersen
Co-Editors in Chief

headless has closed

October 3, 2007 in HMB by | No comments

Thanks to everyone who sent us work for the Headless issue. We are no longer accepting submissions.

But the time of Headless approaches: it will launch, right here, October 29.

Extended! Submission deadline now Oct 1!

September 24, 2007 in HMB by Pinky | No comments

We want your Headless stories, nonfiction and fiction. We want your Headless poetry. We want you to have fun with the theme Headless and make it your own. That’s why we’ve extended our submissions deadline to October 1.

That theme, once again: HEADLESS. Horsemen, flat beer, chocolate bunnies, the guy who never gets a blowjob, zombies, animal crackers, classical statues, John Wayne Bobbitt, groups without leaders, blondes, Marie Antoinette and other unfortunate royalty, Medusa post-Perseus, the philosophy of D.E. Harding — any and all of these could fall under the heading of headless. Whatever your interpretation, be sure to stun us. We’ll know it’s good when we feel, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, as if the tops of our heads were taken off.

Full submission details here.

Just saying

July 23, 2007 in Contributors, HMB, fiction, online, writers by Adam | No comments

Issue #1 of Hot Metal Bridge launched over two months ago, but it continues to impress me. The astonishment comes in waves: first the insider’s swell of pride at the quality of (fiction) submissions; next the excitement of venturing into the other genres, seeing the excellent poetry and non-fiction my colleagues have collected. Now that the issue has faded from memory a little, the next stage is rediscovering stuff that, by the time the issue launched, I was honestly a little burned out on.

The best example? Johnathan Wilber’s “(de)jamais vu,” which gave me fits as I proofed it for the site–it’s a textual minefield full of particular accents, footnotes, punctuational flourishes, and selections from esoteric vocabularies. (My annoyance was nothing, however, as compared to that of Carolyn, who had to format the story for publication.) It was kind of a tough sell at HMB’s editorial meeting, and it’s not surprising: it’s a weird story, and with its fragmentation and the aforementioned excess of style, it can be tough to dive into.

But it remains one of my favorite things in the issue, largely because the weirdness and style feel necessary and embedded in the world of the story, and the fragmentation pays off in the end. But, looking through the site again, I came upon almost a distillation of all the things I like in the story: the separate page that contains “(de)jamais vu”’s footnotes. I could type a while longer trying to recommend the story, but I couldn’t make it seem as interesting as do these twelve short footnotes.

-Adam

Dirty Money Part II: The Good, the Bad, and the Dirty

June 15, 2007 in HMB, nonfiction, online, writers by Paul | 33 comments

At a recent University of Pittsburgh panel on how to make money as a nonfiction writer, a successful freelancer advised us on how to get started. “Take anything!” he shouted, pounding his fist on the table. “ANYTHING!” A freelance photographer in the audience snarled, “Don’t use Craigslist. Jobs on there are piss.”

This summer I needed work, and having paid my dues in food service and public education, it was time for a summer gig that would beef up my writing resume. My requirements were few: work from home (to accommodate two vacations and my internship schedule) and that my work be compensated with money (to accommodate the rest of life). I didn’t want to pay $30 to Writer’s Market, and Media Bistro had mostly full-time gigs in New York and L.A. To Craigslist!

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll Give You Something to Cry About!

May 18, 2007 in HMB, Uncategorized, books, fiction, online, reviews, writers by Adam | 6 comments

On a day to day basis, I am a very laugh-y person. I giggle at incredibly innappropriate times, like when my large, short-tempered 3rd grade science teacher used to scream at our class to be quiet. While my fellow eight-year-olds cowered, my reaction was to muffle my laughter–surely bred out of fear–in the sleeve of my shirt. Sometimes I laugh so hard that my eyes get puffy and red, and the muscles of my face feel frozen in a perpetual, doughy smile. It’s actually a little painful.

But all that said, I also cry. A lot. Not because a road rager flipped me off or because I realize my bank account is devastatingly sparse or because I just ate about two week’s worth of calories in one sitting, and can already see it accruing on my thighs. I cry when something moves me, and I find it fulfilling to realize that I am moved by a quite a lot. Two of my favorite ways to get my cartharsis-on are by listening to heartbreakingly beautiful songs, and by reading a good novel. The list below details the who and what of both songs and books that have seriously moved me. I hope they’ll do the same for you.

Tunes:

“One More Dollar” by Gillian Welch.

Oh, Gillian. How I love you. You and your cowboy hat!!

I loved the lyrics to this song so much I wrote a story based on them. And while I wrote, I listened to this song on repeat. For literally days on end. If this particular tune doesn’t suit your fancy, try “Orphan Girl” or “No One Knows My Name.” If she doesn’t have you crying, she’ll have you tapping your bare toes and pensively sipping some moonshine.

“This is the Dream of Win and Regine” by Final Fantasy.

If you are already an Arcade Fire fan, this song may be that much lovelier (Win and Regine are married and play in their band, The Arcade Fire, as one gloriously artistic and adorable pair of musical lovebirds), but it stands its ground entirely on its own. Perhaps I am shamelessly sentimental, but this song embodies the kind of love and loneliness and sweetness and angst that I wish I could pour into my own writing.

Life of Pi by Yann Martel.

Say what you will about best sellers, but this book is a damn good one. Beautiful. I laughed, I cried so hard I had to put the book down until I got a grip, I laughed some more, I cried a lot more.

“Remember the Mountain Bed” by Billy Bragg and Wilco, lyrics by Woody Guthrie.

Um…I can’t talk about this one right now. I’m about to start crying.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte.

I’ve read this book several times and can’t decide if it’s a really twisted love story, or a story about a couple of miserable existentialists gone a little cuckoo from all those windy moors. What I do know is it is delightfully grim, and I can’t help but be moved when, psychotic or not, a guy loves his lady so much he’d dig up her dead body just to see her again.

(*giggle*/*sniff*)

Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling (all six of them).

I have cried at the end of every single one of these babies. I don’t know if it has something to do with Harry’s whole Burdened Hero persona, his poor murdered parents, or the fact that by the end of each book I’ve spent a straight forty-eight hours prying my eyes open with toothpicks and abstaining from food and drink in favor of finding out what’s going down at Hogwarts. These books are well-written, funny, smart, sweet, and sad. Everything a good book should be, in my opinion.

I’m a sweet-and-salty kind of person, and I like my reading and listening materials to hold that same dual quality. It’s like Joni Mitchell (whose music often makes me cry) said: Laughing and crying, you know it’s the same release.

–Ashleigh

Call for entries: the best theme ever

May 10, 2007 in HMB by | 1 comment

We are now accepting submissions for our second issue, which will go live in October 2007. The issue will be themed, because we’re cool like that. You may be asking, with the anticipation of a 13-year-old going to his first dance in wrinkled khakis and a boutonnière, what theme? What theme?

Headless.

Please send us your poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, and cultural criticism on the theme of headless. Horsemen, flat beer, chocolate bunnies, the guy who never gets a blowjob, zombies, animal crackers, classical statues, John Wayne Bobbitt, groups without leaders, blondes, Marie Antoinette and other unfortunate royalty, Medusa post-Perseus, the philosophy of D.E. Harding — any and all of these could fall under the heading of headless. Whatever your interpretation, be sure to stun us. We’ll know it’s good when we feel, to paraphrase Emily Dickinson, as if the tops of our heads were taken off.

Super-secret Michael Chabon & Ayelet Waldman visit

February 5, 2007 in HMB, fiction, writers by | 17 comments

This morning, in town for a speaking engagement at the Carnegie Library, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman sat down with Pitt’s fiction students. As all Pitt writing students know, Chabon did his undergrad at the University of Pittsburgh. Chuck Kinder, the author who runs the Pitt creative writing program, said of Chabon, “I gave him special permission to sit in on graduate classes because he was clearly one of the most brilliant young writers I’ve ever been around.” That’s Michael Chabon on the left, Chuck Kinder on the right.

Sadly, I didn’t get a photo of Ayelet Waldman, who shared the stage — er, table — with her husband as they answered questions and shared stories about writing. Some of what they told us, hastily transcribed:

Chabon: What a good writing program does is give you time to do your writing. A writing program ought to be a way to change your life so you have more time for writing.

Q: Some undergrads are worried that if they’re not published by 23, they won’t really be writers…
Waldman: I think Michael’s one of the only people in the world who isn’t embarrassed by the book he published at 23.
Chabon: Oh, I’m embarrassed.

Chabon: If you write every day, you’re a writer.
Waldman: Michael’s model has been sufficient guilt to keep me at my desk.

Q: What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever gotten?
Chabon: Dennis Bartel, a teacher I had here: If you want to write a novel, you have to sit on your ass. At the time, I was like, Yeah, whatever, dude.
Waldman: story about the Golem as novel, a creature that you create but that you can’t necessarily control, ending with: It’s not anything good unless there’s a certain element of danger to it.

Q: What’s it like working in film, like Spiderman 2?
Chabon: It’s a totally different thing. so much goes unmade; he’s written 2 original screenplays, 2 pilots, years, 15 drafts of Kavalier and Clay. It’s not very fulfilling…. Usually the first draft is fun … but you don’t become a writer because you like sharing.

Q: What kind of research/prep did you do for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay?
Chabon: Part of the reason I wanted to do that book was because of the research; I knew there was a lot I didn’t know (so he read a lot of old comic books, 50-year-old copies of Life magazine and interviewed Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Gil Kane.) My dad grew up in Brooklyn in the ’40s and ’50s and infected me with the sense of wonder of the time.

Q: How do you create the internal logic of Kavalier & Clay, in which superhuman feats appear naturalistic?
Chabon: Try to find books that give you permission to do the kind of work you want to do: E.L. Doctorow’s Ragtime, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera.

Q: Literary fiction vs. genre fiction?
Waldman: I started with murder mysteries. Who did I think I was? I was just a lawyer on maternity leave. My goal was to write something no worse than anything I’d ever read. I didn’t call myself a writer until I had 4 or 5 books published.
Chabon: When I was here, writing, the work that I did, the stories I wrote and the stuff that I wanted to do when I grew up was strongly influenced by what I read — science fiction, hardboiled detective novels. There had to be a way to write within genre and transcend genre — to write literary fiction true to its genre roots. The Mysteries of Pittsburgh was an anomole, naturalistic. All of my primordial great reading experiences were genre, in one way or another, starting with Arthur Conan Doyle when I was 10.

Michael Chabon’s upcoming novel, The Yiddish Policeman’s Union, is due out May 1. Ayelet Waldman’s latest, Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, is now out in paperback. Big thanks to them for spending time with us Pittsburgh fictioneers!

Would you like a rejection notice with that?

January 24, 2007 in HMB, litmags, online by | 3 comments

How long should it take a journal get back to people who’ve sent in submissions? Bookfox looks at his experiences and find Zoetrope — with a response time of 369 days — wanting. Here’s his tally:

I’ll have a tiny journal like Apple Valley Review reject my short shorts in less than a week, while a heavy hitter like Columbia Journal still hasn’t responded to a story I mailed out in January 2006 (and neither have they responded to email queries, and my last short story I sent them took a year and a half to receive a reply). On the other hand, Glimmer Train is practically a model for speed. Zyzzyva is another one that has been prompt, and as a plus, Howard Junker’s rejection slip is the nicest I’ve ever read. Kenyon Review and One-Story have both been pretty quick. I’ve had multiple relative die while waiting to hear back from The Chattahoochee Review (and still have an outstanding story. . .) and Notre Dame Review clocked in at a snail pace of 8 months and 9 months for two separate submissions.

So what’s the problem? Is it the volume of entries? The fact that once an issue’s stories are selected, editorial staff just want to move on?

Rest assured, you can submit to Hot Metal Bridge and you’ll hear back before any of your relatives die.

We are Hot Metal Bridge

November 11, 2006 in HMB by | 1 comment

We believe the most fun you can have by yourself is reading. That’s why Hot Metal Bridge is dedicated to writing that makes you go yowsa! or eek! or oof! We, the University of Pittsburgh MFA students behind Hot Metal Bridge, settle for nothing less than being a regular source of uncommonly good writing. It’s good for us — and it’s good for you.