My boss provided the introduction. He asked me whether I'd read any of Saki's short stories after he’d read a very short story of mine about a talking ostrich called Belinda who lays garlic dips. It was one of those crazy little dream-stories I've always really liked writing. I wrote it with craziness and surrealism in mind. I wanted to be a bit weird for weird’s sake. Weird doesn’t take itself too seriously and this leads to a sense of freedom. This gives them a bit more snap, crackle and pop than if I was writing something a bit more serious.
What I’ve learnt over the course of this year is that people like weird. Or at least the sort of people I like like weird. When I'd showed my boss that story, I was worried that he’d be a little bamboozled by it. But regular readers don’t get bamboozled easily and my boss is a regular reader. What actually happened was that he found it quite normal – normal within the construction of this dream-story. And everyone dreams. Everyone has an imagination. And it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine an ostrich - who has the real-world capabilities of laying something as weird as an egg – laying garlic dips. Surrealism, absurdism – call it what you will. These things flourish with the suspension of disbelief. And as long as there's the essence of reality weaved into the story, I've found you can go pretty damn crazy and people will still like it.
A few weeks later, after a long search for the book, a 1976 paperback edition of The Best of Saki appeared on the workshop table. I still didn’t know anything about him. I was pleased to see how brief his stories were. I had much more patience for big novels in my teens and twenties but I can’t stomach them now. As my love of poetry has increased, I can't seem to sustain the concentration needed to get through something big. I like a novella. Steinbeck’s Travel with Charley was wonderful, but East of Eden will remain unread on my bookshelf for the foreseeable.
I like really short stories, or flash fiction, or whatever you’d like to call them. Writing a good poem is hard and writing a good novel is even harder. But I like a short story. It’s seemingly the most straightforward and doesn’t take too much commitment from the reader. It’s not as subjective or potentially opaque as a poem or as vast as a novel. I’m not a prolific short story reader and I’m an even less prolific a writer of them, but having read a good deal of poetry, I certainly know what I like.
There was this short story I read last Christmas that really excited me. I can’t think of any other way of putting it. It just gave me energy. It’s called Take a Magpie Up to Heaven and it’s by Grace Carman. There were things I like about Murakami’s short stories and things I like about Italo Calvino’s segments in Invisible Cities, but I’d never been able to find anything that hit the nail on the head for me style-wise. I’d never had that holy-shit-Batman!-that’s-frickin’-it moment. The moment you get to the end and you’re shaking your head because you’ve just read something great and all you want to do is read it again. Then comes a burning jealousy that you didn’t write it. I wish I had written it. I wanted to get in touch with Grace but I wasn't on social media so I thanked her using my mum’s Instagram account. This is the point I should say LOL. I won't...LOL.
The very first thing I posted on this blog was a short story called Out on the Tiles that I wrote back in 2011. The thing that struck me while reading it was how much I was trying to copy someone else’s style. I can’t say for sure whose style it was, but it certainly wasn’t mine. It may have been an impersonation of a style that I thought readers might like. I’ve never been on a creative writing course but I’d imagine one of the first lessons is to write something you yourself would want to read. Clearly it’s taken me a good few years to fully understand that.
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Saki’s short stories have been a revelation. Had it not been for Grace’s short story, these would be the first short stories that have really resonated with me. Some are better than others, but the quality is always there. My poetry proves that I like putting my characters in odd little pickles. They are often confusing and almost entirely silent situations in which one person knows dramatically more about what’s happening than the other person. It seems niche, and it probably is niche, but readers like niche. Niche and weird. And it’s the kind of thing that Saki does. He has a love for this rock-and-a-hard-place scenario and this provides the fuel for all of his stories. I could imagine him sitting at breakfast and thinking ‘I wonder what it would be like for a man to be caught between two old witches at odds with each other', as is the case in one of my favourites of his, The Peace of Mowsle Barton. And he builds the story from there.
Last Wednesday morning I was running a bit late for work, but I had just enough time to read one Saki story. As I heated my porridge up, I wondered how many short film adaptations of his stories were on YouTube. Quite a few as it turns out. I singled one out that featured a young Michael Sheen as one to watch after work. I wondered if it featured in the book I was reading because I didn’t want to watch it before I read the story. Lo and behold, it was the story I had my bookmark poised to read next! Half an hour later, having eaten my porridge, I’d read the story and was able to squeeze in its onscreen adaptation as well! I cycled to work at breakneck speed.
I feel as if this is the beginning of a journey. I’ve already written the first draft of a short story in the style of Saki and there’s certainly more to come. We’re approaching the 150th anniversary of his birth and he deserves to be celebrated. So this is to Saki, also known as H. H. Munro: we bow to your greatness!
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