Ken FosterI Should Have Known
When I was asked to come up with a theme for this issue of
the Blip Magazine Archive, location was the first thing that came
to mind. I thought of my favorite stories, the ones that haunt
me long after I’m done, and the one thing they share is
location. (And, in addition to the sense of place in those
stories, I always remember where I was as I read them, the two
realms, reality and fiction, infinitely bound.) Read William
Maxwell’s novel They Came Like Swallows, for example, and
you know—through the characters’ eyes—the Morrisons’ house
inside and out—every carpet, every wall paper pattern, and with
it, every change that takes place. Every dislocation.
It seems to me that that sense of place is fading from much
of what gets published today. We can travel to the places we
used to only be able to read about, so maybe people have
forgotten how place—exotic or plain, familiar or foreign—shapes
our experience.
Yet I was completely unprepared for the
enormous—ENORMOUS—number of submissions that followed—and the
narrative questions they raised. For some people location seems
based entirely in language. For others it is the mystery of
fate, of loss, of nature and the elements. Of war.
The truth is, I’m still reading and finding amazing gems to
share. So there will be some more stories coming up, but for now
here is what I’ve found. Here is your summer reading. And thanks
to the internet, you can read these stories from around the
world, from wherever in the world you are today. |