One more piece from Russell Edson

A second stunner from yesterday's author.  This was written last century, so "twittered" in the sixth paragraph has nothing to do with the microblogging service.  Oh and this is a Journalism class, so note that a title character was reading the newspaper (when the other title character splashed all over him) according to the eighth paragraph  :)
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Ape and Coffee

By Russell Edson

  Some coffee had gotten on a man's ape.  The man said, animal did you get on my coffee?

  No no, whistled the ape, the coffee got on me.

  You're sure you didn't spill on my coffee? said the man.

  Do I look like a liquid? peeped the ape.

  Well you sure don't look human, said the man.

  But that doesn't make me a fluid, twittered the ape.

  Well I don't know what the hell you are, so just stop it, cried the man.

  I was just sitting here reading the newspaper when you splashed coffee all over me, piped the ape.

  I don't care if you are a liquid, you just better stop splashing on things, cried the man.

  Do I look fluid to you?  Take a good look, hooted the ape.

  If you don't stop I'll put you in a cup, screamed the man.

  I'm not a fluid, screeched the ape.

  Stop it, stop it, screamed the man, you are frightening me.

Fall

I'm posting a classic piece by one of my favorite contemporary English-language writers today  :)

Because it's fall:
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The Fall

By Russell Edson

  There was a man who found two leaves and came indoors holding them out saying to his parents that he was a tree.

  To which they said then go into the yard and do not grow in the living-room as your roots may ruin the carpet.

  He said I was fooling I am not a tree and he dropped his leaves.

  But his parents said look it is fall.

The last of the storytellers

I don't mean writers, but rather people who orally told stories to audiences.  The stories themselves were often not original, but the storyteller's art/craft/trade/profession was the performance aspect of it, and telling the same story better than your professional rival(s) would actually be evidence of mastery.

"daastaan go'ii" ("daastaan" = "story", "go" = imperative of "guftan" = "to speak") used to be an actual profession in India, with master storytellers achieving fame and fortune, attaining celebrity status and/or receiving royal patronage.  But that was a long time ago:  The last storyteller, Mir Baqir 'Ali of Delhi, who hailed from a family that had been royal storytellers for generations, died in 1928 at an age of 75 or 80 (his exact year of birth is not known), and he died destitute, because storytelling had already ceased to be viable means of livelihood some time before.  I remember my friend talking about "brotlose Kuenste" the night the summer went out this year ...

So all that survives of the entire art of storytelling is two recordings of Mir Baqir 'Ali, both made on April 25, 1920, in Delhi, when the artist was about 70 years old.  The first recording is the story of the prodigal son, and is 3 minutes and 13 seconds long; the second recording is 3 minutes and 6 seconds long.

So there.  The complete surviving record of an art form, in all of 6 minutes and 19 seconds.

Have a great weekend!

Longer :(

Today, I learnt that writing bad grammar takes more words that writing good grammar.  To be specific, I needed 68 words today  :(
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Ring Again

The doorbell rings.

Inside, the silence sits up, the darkness holds its breath, and  the absence of all touch listens.  Only if it hears a second ring—for that was, like a dollar bill torn in half, the agreed-upon sign—if it hears one more ring, then lights will come on footsteps will rush to open the door with hands to hold open the door for your smell

Another piece from the Russian

Today's piece wasn't originally intended as flash fiction at all, in fact it is an excerpt from a book-length work, but I think it works as a self-contained piece as well.  Here's Mikhail Tal on this game:
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… I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship.  We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight.  The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it.  Ideas piled up one after another.  I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous "tree of variations", from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity.

And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky: 

Oh, what a difficult job it was

To drag out of the marsh the hippopotamus. 

I don't know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out:  just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh?  I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder.

After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself:  "Well, just let it drown!"  And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared.  Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord!  And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated.  Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive.  And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice.

            —Mikhail Tal in The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal

38 :)

My ultimate goal is to write fiction in a negative number of words (where the story will consist of me keeping my mouth shut and you, the reader, saying stuff to me) ...  but today, my shortest piece yet:  38 words  :)
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Matinée

On Tuesdays, she leaves the office early (the babysitter can’t work)—Stupid unprotected left turn at Douglas!—and the babysitter helps the twins with their homework after dinner (she has a late meeting at the office on Tuesdays).

Flash drama

When the original is a masterpiece in a language that I don't plan or hope to learn, such as Russian, I sometimes read translations, even if it's not homework.  Here's a supershort play by Anton Chekhov  :)  

Chekhov had started working on this play by 1886, and this version is from 1902.

This Bengali adaptation of the play, which runs under fifteen minutes, is famous in India.
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On the Harmful Effects of Tobacco

A monologue for the stage in one act

Delivered by Ivan Ivanovich Nyukhin, husband of a wife who keeps a music school and a boarding school for girls.

By Anton Chekhov, as translated by Dr. Avrahm Yarmolinsky in “The Unknown Chekhov”

The stage represents a rostrum in a provincial club.

Nyukhin (sporting Dundreary whiskers, his upper lip shaven, and wearing an old, threadbare frock coat; enters majestically, bows, and pulls down his waistcoat).  Ladies and, as it were, gentlemen (Combs his whiskers).  It was suggested to my wife that I deliver a popular lecture here in the interests of charity.  Well, so let us have a lecture—it is all one to me.  Of course, I am not a professor and learned degrees are not in my line, nevertheless for the past thirty years I have been working untiringly and, I might even say, at the sacrifice of my health and so forth, on problems of a strictly scientific nature.  I engage in meditation and sometimes, think of it, I even write learned papers, that is not exactly learned, but, pardon the expression, very nearly learned.  Among other things I recently composed an enormous article entitled:  “On the harmfulness of certain insects.”  My daughters liked it very much, particularly the section on bedbugs, but I read it over and tore it up.  For, write what you may, you cannot dispense with Persian powder.  We have bugs even in the piano.  …  As the subject of my lecture today I have chosen, so to speak, the injury that tobacco inflicts on mankind.  I myself smoke, but my wife has ordered me to lecture today on the harmful effects of tobacco, and therefore there is no help for it.  If it must be tobacco, it must—it’s all one to me.  As for you, gentlemen, I suggest that you treat my present lecture with due seriousness, or something untoward may occur.  But anyone who shrinks from a dry scientific lecture, who doesn’t care for it, need not listen—he may leave (pulls down his waistcoat).  I particularly crave the attention of Messrs. the physicians here present, who may obtain much useful information from my lecture, since tobacco, aside from its injurious effects, is also employed in medicine.  Thus, for instance, if you place a fly in a snuffbox, it will expire, probably from nervous prostration.  In the main, tobacco is a plant.  …  When I deliver a lecture, I usually wink my right eye, but pay no attention to it:  it is due to agitation.  Generally speaking, I am a very nervous man, and I started to wink my eye on September 13, 1889, on the very day my wife gave birth, as it were, to her fourth daughter, Varvara.  All my daughters were born on the thirteenth.  However (glances at his watch), as the time at our disposal is short, don’t let us stray from the subject of the lecture.  …  I must tell you that my wife keeps a music school and a private boarding school, that is: not exactly a boarding school but something of that description.  Between ourselves, my wife likes to complain of straitened circumstances, yet she has something salted away, about forty or fifty thousand, while I haven’t a kopeck to bless myself with, not a groat—but what’s the use of talking about it!  At the boarding school I am in charge of the housekeeping.  I buy the provisions, look after the servants, keep the accounts, stitch the exercise books together, exterminate bedbugs, walk my wife’s lapdog, catch mice.  …  Last night it was my duty to issue butter and eggs to the cook, because we were going to have pancakes.  Well, in a word, today when the pancakes had already been fried, my wife came into the kitchen to say that three pupils would not be able to eat their pancakes because they had swollen glands.  Thus it turned out that we had fried several pancakes too many.  What would you have us do with them?  At first my wife ordered them taken to the cellar, but then she thought and thought, and said:  “You eat these pancakes yourself, you dummy.”  When she is in a bad humor she addresses me thus: “dummy,” “viper,” or “Satan.”  Now, what kind of Satan am I?  She is always in a bad humor.  And you couldn’t say that I ate the pancakes—I swallowed them without chewing them, because I’m always hungry.  Yesterday, for example, she gave me no dinner.  “No use feeding you, dummy that you are,” she said.  However (looks at his watch), we have been carried away and have strayed somewhat from our theme.  Let us proceed.  Though, of course, you would rather listen to a love song, now, or some symphony or other, or an aria.  (Breaks into song):  ‘In the heat of battle we shall not blink an eye …’ I don’t recall where that comes from.  …  Incidentally, I forgot to tell you that at my wife’s music school, in addition to being in charge of the housekeeping, I teach mathematics, physics, chemistry, geography, history, solfeggio, literature, and so forth.  For dancing, singing, and drawing my wife charges extra, though I am also the one who teaches dancing and singing.  Our music school is located at Five Dog Lane, No. 13.  Probably my life is a failure because the number of the house that we live in is 13.  Besides, my daughters were born on the thirteenth, and our house has thirteen windows.  …  But what’s the use of talking?  My wife can be seen at home at any time for an interview, and the prospectus of the school may be had from the porter at 30 kopecks a copy.  (Produces several copies from his pocket).  I can let you have some, if you like.  Thirty kopecks a copy!  Anyone wants a copy?  (Pause).  No one?  Well, I’ll make it 20 kopecks!  (Pause).  How annoying!  Yes, house no. 13!  Nothing suceeds with me, I’ve grown old, stupid.  …  Here I am delivering a lecture, outwardly I am cheerful, but privately I long to cry out at the top of my voice or fly to the ends of the earth.  And there’s no one to complain to, I could burst into tears.  You will say: daughters …  But what are daughters?  I talk to them, but all they do is laugh …  My wife has seven daughters …  No, I am sorry, six, I believe.  (Quickly) Seven!  The eldest, Anna, is twenty-seven, the youngest, seventeen.  Gentlemen!  (Looks round).  I am wretched, I have turned into a fool, a nonentity, but actually you see before you the happiest of fathers.  Actually, that’s how it ought to be, and I daren’t say it is not.  If you only knew!  I have lived with my wife for thirty-three years, and I can say that those were the best years of my life, that is, not the best, but just generally speaking.  They have swept by, in a word, as one happy moment; strictly speaking, a curse on them.  (Looks round).  I believe she hasn’t come yet, she isn’t here, and I may say what I please.  I am in terror of her … in terror when she looks at me.  Well, as I was saying:  my daughters are so slow about getting married, probably because they are bashful and also because men never see them.  My wife doesn’t want to give evening parties, she never invites anyone to dinner, she is a very stingy, ill-tempered, quarrelsome lady, and that is why no one ever comes to the house, but …  I can tell you confidentially (comes close to the footlights).  My wife’s daughters may be seen on high holidays in the home of their aunt, Natalya Semyonovna, the same that suffers from rheumatism and wears a yellow dress with black dots as if cockroaches were crawling all over her.  Refreshments are served there, too.  And when my wife isn’t on the scene, one can … (raises his fist to his lips).  I must tell you that I get drunk on one glass, and then I have such a wonderful feeling, and at the same time I am so sad, I can’t tell you how awfully sad; for some reason I recall my youth, and for some reason I am seized with a desire to run away, oh, if you knew how I long to do it!  (Enthusiastically).  To run away, to throw everything over and run away without looking back …  Where to?  No matter where … only to run from this cheap, trashy, vulgar life that has turned me into a pitiful old fool, a pitiful old idiot, to run away from that stupid, petty, mean, mean, mean skinflint, my wife, who has tormented me for thirty-three years, to run away from the music, the kitchen, my wife’s money, from all this pettiness, all these vulgarities … and to come to a halt somewhere far, far away, in the fields, and to stand there like a tree, a post, a scarecrow in a kitchen garden, under the wide sky, and all night long watch the bright, still moon hanging overhead, and forget, forget …  Oh, how I long not to remember anything!  How I long to tear off this vile old frock coat that I wore at my wedding thirty years ago … (tears off his frock coat) in which I constantly give lectures in the interests of charity …  Take that!  (Tramples on the frock coat).  Take that!  I am old, poor, pitiful, like this waistcoat with its shabby, threadbare back … (Turns round to show its back).  I want nothing!  I’m better than this, superior to this, I was once young, intelligent, I was a university student, I dreamed, I considered myself a human being …  Now I want nothing.  Nothing but rest … rest!  (Glancing aside, quickly dons the frock coat).  My wife is standing in the wings.  She has come and she’s waiting for me there.  (Looks at his watch).  Time is up …  If she asks you, please, I beg you, tell her that the lecture was … that the booby, that is me, behaved with dignity.  (Glances aside, clears his throat).  She is looking in my direction.  (Raising his voice).  Starting from the premise that tobacco contains a terrible poison, of which I have just spoken, one should on no account indulge in smoking, and I allow myself to hope, as it were, that my lecture on the harmful effects of tobacco will be of help.  That is all I had to say.  Dixi et animam levavi!  (Bows, and stalks out majestically).