Mark Trainer

Remember that person you knew in high school? The good-looking, smart and likable one? Years later you're amazed to find out he or she never partnered up with anyone.  The Facebook profile lists "relationships" as an interest among all the time-consuming hobbies and the endless lonely travel pictures and comments from married friends.  But that person seemed to have it all going for him?  What happened?

Now imagine that instead of a person, it's something you've written.  I have this short story that is the story (in my mind at least) all my other stories want to be.  I've sent it out for years, and each time it comes back: rejected to be sure, but always with a nicer note than the other rejected stories get.  My favorite was "Smart, warm, funny...not for us."

And as I dust this story off to send out yet again, I'm wondering if, as with some people, there's just something a little off-putting about it.  Maybe it's too eager to please, maybe it tries too hard.  Maybe its smile is a little forced.

"Thanks for a great read," went another rejection.  "Very funny piece."  This story is better than the ones that have found publication, in my mind.  What's the matter with you people?  They seem to wonder too.  The nice notes have a distinct whiff of the old "It's not you, it's me."  I'm starting to feel like one of those aging parents telling an adult child, "If they can't see what's beautiful about you, they don't deserve you!"

So soldier on, brave little story.  Someday love will find you!

So maybe the short story is dead, or maybe it's the hottest thing this season.  But here's a writer who gets the most out of the form and probably doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about the market and his platform.

Jones spent 10 years creating nearly all of his Pulitzer-winning, antebellum-era novel, "The Known World," in his head, until he finally set it all down on paper in a three-month rush in 2001 after being laid off from his job at a tax publication. "The Waiting Room" is still locked up tight in his mind, though he dictates the opening and closing three times in a row, down to the dashes and commas, without so much as blinking.

Here in Washington, dumping on the beleaguered Washington Post seems to be a favorite pastime.  But this profile of Edward Jones is a rare convergence of a subject worthy of profiling, a journalist up to the task of doing it right, and a paper willing to give a good story enough room.

Mark Athitakis' American Fiction Blog links to Donald Ray Pollock's recent interview with Southeast Review.  He's similarly mystified by the novel's prominence in these days of the limited attention span, but publishing in the tiny journals worked for him.  Good to hear.