Craft Notes
Lipsyte ate my brain and spit out a delicious chicken-fried steak
Sam Lipsyte has a really fantastic story in the new issue of The New Yorker called “The Dungeon Master.”
Next year, my collection of short stories, Happy Rock, will come out and it will include a story called “Rabbit Fur Coat.” It’s called “Rabbit Fur Coat” now. It was, in the first year and a half or two years of its existence, called “The Dungeon Master.”
Thematic similarities. Similarities in the characters ages. High school and role-playing games. Outsider freak and difficult friendships. Etc.
And so, the dilemma. Fellow writers (and people who like writing), what say you? Are you, in a similar situation, intimidated? Would you consider dropping the story from a collection? Or not sending said story out anymore, or for a while? Say, until the monster that is a badass story by a badass writer is no longer looming in your closet, making you feel inadequate to your writerly proclivities? Making you pull the sheets up over your head?
Say you’ve got some thunder you are are waiting to bring, and then a veritable god of thunder comes along and brings it first?
Should one cower? Or, hell, should one feel competitive? Should a writer buck up and maybe do a “Oh, yeah? That’s how you wanna play it, Lipsyte?” edit?
Tags: sam lips, the dungeon master
Good idea.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm
Thanks, Matthew…
This sort of thing always makes me feel badass. This cool dude you respect has written a sweet-ass story that reminds you of your story? Sounds like you and the cool dude have something sweet in common. That’s how I try to look at it.
Congrats on your collection, Matthew. This has happened to me a lot. Here’s a short essay I wrote about it, or, along those lines: http://bit.ly/cRNg1G
I say let the dice decide.
Good idea.
http://www.wizards.com/dnd/dice/dice.htm
Nice essay, Eric.
Thanks, Matthew…
You know, I really liked “The Dungeon Master”–of course I did, since it’s D&D and Sam Lipsyte–but I wondered if the particulars were too typical, too what anyone writing that kind of story would come up with. I think your post kind of highlights that. I mean, of course the dungeon master kills them all, ridiculously, every single session. Of course they’re weird guys, of course their parents don’t think they should be playing. What else could it be about?
I don’t know. I mean, I enjoyed the hell out of it, blogged a link to the story, clearly think people should read it. But I think the reason your high school D&D story feels like Lipsyte’s is because these are the elements that almost any story in a similar setting is going to contain, at least to some degree. It’s kind of like if you had both written football stories, and then you wondered whether yours having touchdowns in it made it too similar. I don’t see any reason you should pull your story, or change it to something it’s not in response to this one.
Lipsyte is prone to do that (the brain eating I mean)
Thanks for the link. This coincides with my insatiable desire to learn how to play dungeons and dragons, which began just two days ago. If anyone plays in south Jersey, I’m down to learn.
I definitely would not pull the story from your manuscript if you think it is strong. The questions about submissions is interesting. When Richard Yates came out and I scanned the first pages I had this $&#@$# thought as I’d just that moment been working on a story about hamsters eating their babies and wondered if I sent it out people would think i was ripping him off. After reading more I realized that particular piece really didn’t have anything in common with Richard Yates beyond that, so i wasn’t worried.
Still, it is something to think about. If someone is making a stir with a story or book with similar elements, does it hurt your chances of getting your piece published? This Lipsyte story is being passed all around the kinds of circles many people here run in (for good reasons, Lipsyte is fantastic) so it is quite likely if you sent your story to places they would be aware of his. How much would it affect their reading?
This also feels like an appropriate place to plug Ed Park’s fantastic “Personal Days,” a really funny novel about office work that had the misfortune of coming out right after Joshua Ferris’s “And Then We Came To The End” which had gotten a lot of buzz and was similarly a first person plural narration about office life.
Ah, the fickleness of the literary fates.
I wrote an entire novel about Richard Yates called “Haley Joel Osment Emotes Over Generational Malaise on the Internet” but now I’m sort of second-guessing the whole thing.
Pretty sure I’m not going to pull it, but I thought it might provoke some discussion here because it’s just damn well bound to happen to all of us from time to time. See Lincoln mentioning the Ed Park/Joshua Ferris synchronicity a few comments down.
So, yeah. How do you react when it happens? I imagine we all must have a quick moment of straight-up: “Damn it! What now?” before we begin to think our way to a more rational (or totally rationalized?) response.
I like Mike’s idea up top: it just proves that me and Lipsyte are just unbelievable, bad-ass former (ahem) geek fiction writers.
Ed’s book is really good. And, actually, I liked Joshua’s a lot, too. I even read them back to back. (Ed’s first.) Maybe that’s another good thing to keep in mind. Two books with thematic/setting/and formal similarities can appear at the very same moment, and they can both be good.
Once I read an awesome little book written in the second person that involved, among other awesome images, phantasmatic animals (If I’m remembering correctly, I believe these loomed outside motel room windows), and it reminded me a little bit of a short story I’d published that was also written in the second person and involved phantasmatic animals, and I remember thinking my short story could never be as good as this awesome little book. Especially when that awesome little book’s protagonist later encountered a room full of ringing telephones and I was like, Holy shit! A room full of ringing telephones, this is awesome.
I think it was last week I finished reading THE ASK. Definitely a novel with some warp and woof. Warranted I write a review about it:
http://theopenend.com/2010/09/20/sam-lipsyte-the-ask-book-review/
I wouldn’t worry about it. Anyone else noticed the preponderance of stories lately involving psychics and/or psychic hotlines? Yet, I’m not sure it matters–you could examine any period in literary history and find writers exploring similar aspects of the period’s particular cultural milieu. Why should only one writer have access to that material?
Of course you should publish the story. Nobody owns that world. We piece it together with our various approaches. Amped to read “Rabbit Fur Coat,” and your collection.
Of course, as Mr. Lipsyte says above, you have to put out your work, Matthew. If it’s good, and you like it, who cares? Hopefully we’re all tuned in to something larger than ourselves. Call it zeitgeist or collective unconscious or whatever.
Your post reminded me of a “badbadbad” rejection I received from a small publisher: “You’ve definitely got a strong piece of writing here. The questions it raises about sex and technology are interesting, I liked the dialogue (it’s so hard to get dialogue right, great job there), and most importantly, I appreciated that you were expanding the idea of the novel beyond just words on paper. However, we’re coming out with a book by Rikki Ducornet next spring that touches on many similar themes. Obviously your book and hers aren’t the same book (in fact, stylistically speaking, they couldn’t be more different), but they share enough themes in common that it wouldn’t make sense for us to take them both on. So, we’re unfortunately going to have to pass on badbadbad.”
Did that make me want to toss my manuscript or quit pitching other publishers? Um, nope. (And I did find another publisher.) Besides, maybe Ms. Ducornet will let me open for her at a reading or we could share a panel or something at some point. Everything is wide open. Plus, I think of books a lot like music. There are only so many chords and styles or genres. I’m just doing my thing and seeing where it goes. You’ve gotta do yours too, then think like Mike said above: you are badass.
Of course, as Mr. Lipsyte says above, you have to put out your work, Matthew. If it’s good, and you like it, who cares? Hopefully we’re all tuned in to something larger than ourselves. Call it zeitgeist or collective unconscious or whatever.
Your post reminded me of a “badbadbad” rejection I received from a small publisher: “You’ve definitely got a strong piece of writing here. The questions it raises about sex and technology are interesting, I liked the dialogue (it’s so hard to get dialogue right, great job there), and most importantly, I appreciated that you were expanding the idea of the novel beyond just words on paper. However, we’re coming out with a book by Rikki Ducornet next spring that touches on many similar themes. Obviously your book and hers aren’t the same book (in fact, stylistically speaking, they couldn’t be more different), but they share enough themes in common that it wouldn’t make sense for us to take them both on. So, we’re unfortunately going to have to pass on badbadbad.”
Did that make me want to toss my manuscript or quit pitching other publishers? Um, nope. (And I did find another publisher.) Besides, maybe Ms. Ducornet will let me open for her at a reading or we could share a panel or something at some point. Everything is wide open. Plus, I think of books a lot like music. There are only so many chords and styles or genres. I’m just doing my thing and seeing where it goes. You’ve gotta do yours too, then think like Mike said above: you are badass.
Most of my heroes don’t appear on no stamp.
There can never be too many stories about playing D&D. Just make sure you make your saving throw vs. plagiarism.