"The Ashtray"

I can say with a bare minimum of hemming and hawing that "The Ashtray" by Anton Chekhov is, for me, the most influential piece of short fiction that has never been written. That's right: as the story goes, one Vladimir Korolenko, a fellow Russian, fellow writer, and fellow for fun, once asked Chekhov how he wrote his stories. Whereupon the writer of slightly more stature picked up an ashtray that happened to be lying about and proclaimed he would write a story about it by the next morning. To the best of my knowledge he never did.

Much pleasure can be derived merely from speculation on what this story could have been like. Chekhov was a true master who was capable of writing just about anything, from the aptly-named "Misery", to numerous humorous short stories, to love stories like "The Lady and the Little Dog". In what direction would he have taken this tale of such humble beginnings? What part would that ashtray play? (Somehow I imagine it being smashed against a wall or against a head -- then I remember the 5-pound alabaster ashtray that used to sit on our old front porch...) Would an ashtray -- I dare to say -- make any appearance at all? (Yes, definitely. The progenitor of the literary technique today known as "Chekhov's gun" would never needlessly obscure such an object.)

But also "The Ashtray" story -- or, rather the story of the story -- can serve as inspiration. Chekhov throughout his life produced hundreds of these little nuggets of fiction, these compact yet remarkably complete short stories. And, he would have us to believe, he did so hurriedly, perhaps with as much effort as was required to pick up that ashtray. Surviving manuscripts do paint a different picture -- one of a cash-strapped young man who nevertheless put great care and spit and polish and elbow grease into his work -- but I suppose the author's mere perception will do...

I assure you: though I have posted nothing on this blog for weeks, I have been endeavoring to add my own cocktail of industrious fluids to a series of short stories:

"The Acrobat" -- You've met him before, but I assure you he has changed. He is out of infancy, of course, and long past toddlerhood. Indeed, now he is in his awkward and pimply years -- if I had my druthers such people would not be allowed into polite society until (hopefully) past their affliction.

"Step on a Crack..." -- In the fine tradition of creating stories based on small aspects of folk culture, I have endeavored here to create a story about the old phrase "Step on a crack, break your mother's back". I have created a kind of idyllic 1950s town, wherein a group of three siblings will accidentally discover that the old ditty has some weight to it. Expect a trip to the hospital in a visit to dear old mother; expect a line of groaning moms, all suffering from the same mysterious affliction; expect the formation of a kind of "mothers league" who plan to combat the new plague by filling in all the cracks in the pavement of their town. I imagine it in the gentle, playful style of Roald Dahl's children's fiction.

"Foundling Father" -- Another cute-ish story, this one about a wheelchair-bound old man who is abandoned in front of an orphanage during the night while he sleeps. The orphanage takes him in and he finds a new and better life. I am not one for inspirational, but this will certainly be lighthearted...

"The Death March of Middleburg Heights" -- A semi-autobiographical piece that will detail a bizarre and furious argument I had with my sister, which spanned hours and a large chunk of our suburban neighborhood. I added "Middleburg Heights" to the title with the idea of creating a series of stories detailing the odder sides of suburbia. The name is both an in-joke -- Middleburg Heights is an actual place, near where we live -- and an appropriate moniker for a typical "Every town" of the Midwestern United States.

"Henrietta" -- This is another in the bizarre suburbia vein... detailing the fixation of one odd, reclusive old man on a certain blond-haired young girl. This one stresses the semi in semi-autobiographical -- though the truth is bizarre enough as it is...

So there you have it...

On the reading front, I am currently working through The Best American Humorous Short Stories: 43 Stories by 31 Authors. I just finished "Pigs is Pigs" by Ellis Parker Butler, a silly story about just how much it should cost to ship a pair of guinea pigs by train. Flannery, the agent at the local station, wants to charge the fee for livestock -- "pigs is pigs" after all. The owner of said pigs is pissed; so ensues a torrent of letter-writing and a lot of bureaucratic nonsense. Meanwhile, the animals do what they do best, and soon Flannery has thousands of "pigs" on his hands. An amusing story, it has elements of the playful mayhem brought on by seemingly innocuous events, found in stories like If You Give a Mouse a Cookie and Too Many Mice. Disney even made a cartoon based on the story.

I hope to read a bunch of these short story collections, to expose myself to a variety of styles moods -- especially those that are not old and/or Russian...