15 Great Short Stories about Grief and Loss. Would you rather Read about Unbridled Joy? I don't think so.

While flying home after my father's funeral on September 8, 2001, I sat next to a grief counselor from Nova Scotia who told me that when we're in our teens and twenties we often have a brush with optimism and immortality, but beginning in our thirties and continuing when we're in our forties and thereafter, the predominant emotional tide inevitably shifts to grief and loss, increasingly so as we grow older.

On September 8, 2001, I let that grief counselor open my eyes to the truth. I have kept them open in order to appreciate the human condition that we are all subject to, beginning with the national tragedy that started just three days later, at 8:42 a.m. Central Time.

There can be no more fitting and significant theme a writer can choose to shoulder than grief and loss. That is the task that a great short story writer among us has set herself to. I do not take the word great lightly. And neither should you.

[This is my review of Amina Gautier's third book The Loss of All Lost Things, a collection of fifteen short stories published by Elixir Press, Denver, CO, 2016. Note: Her first book, At Risk, won the Flannery O'Connor Award, the First Horizon Award and the Eric Hoffer Legacy Fiction award; her second, Now We Will Be Happy was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction and the Florida Authors and Publishers Association President's Book Award. This current collection was awarded the Elixir Press Award in Fiction.]

The title of the collection, The Loss of All Lost Things, is apt because each story treats another kind of loss.

In "What's best for you," it's the loss of an attraction, the bare beginnings of one, think a flickering candle, between Bernice, a highly observant, sensitive and educated young woman working in a library who is attracted to an uneducated janitor, Harold, who sings "sweet" popular songs while he works. Today he sings "This Song's for You," while unbeknownst to him, she overhears him through the library stacks:

"As Harold sings about acting out his love in stages, his hands, gentle with the books, are telling Bernice, telling her, telling her just how it could be.

'Harold?'

'He turns, looking sheepish. 'Don't quit my day job, right?'

'She has not meant to say his name or speak at all. Now she feels she should say something, ask him questions, tell him there is a spill that needs attention. 'No, she says, 'It's lovely.'

He smiles revealing capped white teeth. 'Thanks.' Bernice doesn't notice the smile or the way it takes years off his face. Her eyes are riveted to his hand, which remains on the book, fingers idly caressing."

Notice: The poignancy that comes about as a result of what she does notice and what she does not.

He asks her for lunch but she turns him down, saying, she brings her lunch because she's on a diet. The rest of the story concerns her regret over that and her desire to invite him to lunch. In the end, though, he turns her down, saying, "You see, a woman like you and man like me, I knew there was nothing there. I mean it wouldn't be what's best for you. You didn't have to use the diet as an excuse. I understand, you know. You want to date somebody more your type. Somebody that's been to school.'

'That had nothing to do with it,' Bernice says. 'I'm not like that.' She doesn't know what she means by this, but it seems appropriately the thing to say.'"

The story ends with the janitor, replying, "'Everybody is like that,'"

There are many other wonderful stories in this collection:

"A cup of my time," where two twins inside their mother's womb fight "like Jacob and Esau inside Rebekah." One might ask, "Where's the loss and grief?" There isn't any until the mother learns from her doctor that if a procedure fails, "You'll have to choose which one you want to live."

"Resident Lover" where, after a graduate student loses his wife when she leaves him for another student after attending a two-month artist's residency, the wronged male fraudulently applies for an artist's residency of his own, and once there makes a perfect fool of himself—Gautier in that story showing us how pitifully emotionally dependent he is on judgments his ex-wife made about him years earlier. His major moral stance to life? His belief that he deserves a "do-over."

"Disturbance" is a fantasy story about how the town of Togetherness, where everybody is happy in their sameness the wife of a teacher, Everett, at the town school runs off with her child, disturbing the sameness. This story is very powerful and has the eerie horror reminiscent of Shirley Jackson's The Lottery as well as the conceptual fantasy sci-fi appeal that made so many of early Kurt Vonnegut stories great. Yet "Disturbance" stands on its own as a first-rate story with its own gentle sense of humor I happen to love.

The title story, "The Loss of All Lost Things" has us following the tortured lives of a married couple that has just lost their child. From the opening words of the story, "The posters go up immediately," we embark along with these two people on their frantic, anguished nightmare. At first, we're certain this couple will never give up its quest to recover its lost child. Yet just eight pages later, we conclude that it's the parents themselves who have become lost: "Into the dark, against the curve of his neck, she whispers, 'Find me.' Urges him on, saying, 'I want you to lose me and then find me.' She is trying to say what she cannot say, but lost in the moment of rekindled pleasure, all he hears is what sounds like talking crazy. They have sad, sorrowful intercourse, making a love that leaves them feeling worse. When they are through, their thoughts remain as troubled as ever. They hate and they love. They do not know why, but they feel it and they are in agony. Immediately after, she peels him off her like a top sheet and slips from his embrace…"

In the end, only two pages later, they know that once their agony is over, they must lose themselves, move to somewhere new:

"Let them start anew.

"Poring over the planner, they consider the geometry of states, and wonder where they might go. They will pick a state—any state—and once they are together they will head out for it and hold it to its promise. There, in that new place, they will all be new people. Where shall it be? They close their eyes. He places his hand atop hers and they move their index fingers across the map. Blindly, they point. When they open their eyes, they sound out the name beneath their fingers, trying its newness on for size."

In "Cicero Waiting," a child's death is ever present. It's about a high school classics instructor who, while teaching his students about the "devastation of Pompeii" is in the midst of having his and his wife's life totally devastated after he loses his daughter while on a shopping trip.

"He packed their daughter into the car and went to Target to buy detergent. He would help out by doing the laundry. It would be a surprise for his wife.

"It pained him to think how easy it had been to lose his daughter. One minute she was near him, playing among a nearby rack of clothing, her head dwarfed by two-pieces on hangers, her feet visible. The next minute she wasn't there… Ten weeks later, the police found his daughter's body."

Meanwhile, his wife is patient; she appears like a saint: "She believed that they could heal."

In the end, she wants to make love.

"Are you coming to bed?"

"Not yet…"

"More work?"

"Cicero—a stack of papers—they're waiting for me."

"I'm waiting for you."

"I need to finish them."

She patted the empty side of the bed and held out her arms to him again…

"Honey, I can't," he said. "I don't know what to do."

"Come here," she said. "I'll show you."

That's poignant Amina Gautier in the process of ripping your heart out.

Now if you're also looking for a courageous Amina Gautier, she is very much in evidence. For example, her story, "As I Wander" starts out as one story, yet miraculously wanders into a totally different story by its end, a mere ten pages later.

       

Note: Most will agree that an important short story writing rule is what I call Conservation of Characters: Whatever characters you start out with at the beginning of a short story, you had better end up with at the end. That's the case, even if the characters are dead by the end of the story. They can be dead, but they have to be somehow present.

"As I Wander" starts out as a conventional short story: a widow, Judy, four hours after burying her husband, is beset by a group of his estranged relatives who she's never met before visiting her house. They go through her home, touching her things as though they intend to take them home just as soon as she feeds all of them dinner.

Next Judy awakes to the sound of garbage trucks; a month has passed. Judy sits on a bench in a nearby park all night until the sun comes up. She becomes interested in a neighbor, Sampson. When a young man with a "du-rag on his head" rings Sampson's doorbell, Judy strikes up a conversation, asking him '"You ever read any Baldwin?"' a wickedly funny line.

Judy and this young man have a reasonably coherent conversation. A half page later, they're in her bedroom and he's undressing, and we see this man, who is never named, naked: "After taking off his du-rag, he removed the rest of his clothing, revealing a lanky frame. His legs were long, his calves small hard knobs protruding from the backs of his bony legs. She pulled his face to her and kissed him hard and tasting. His lips were soft and fleshy, unlike the rest of him. He was surprisingly gentle and silent within her.

"

Making love to the unnamed man leads to thoughts of her deceased husband, Gene: "She loved all the lines on Gene's face.

In the next paragraph, Judy is in bed with the unnamed young man:

"The boy jerked under her hair, and Judy touched his hair lightly, smoothly, her fingers wandering over his intricately patterned corn-rows, following their winding paths along the contour of his head to the base of his skull where they curled under the ends. Once he quieted, Judy grasped the soft and tenuous braids undoing the plaited strands."

The story ends with those words. Like her fingers, the story wandered from where it started. Upon first reading it, I thought it was flawed because it didn't observe Conservation of Characters. Then I decided a great and courageous writer not only knows when to break the rules, but how to break them. And that is the case with "As I Wander."

The characters at the beginning of the story are not the same as at the end, but portraying a story with this shape where the only common character is the principal protagonist, Judy, enables Gautier to show Judy totally overwhelmed with grief. We get to see her losing herself in her grief when she makes love to the unnamed man. The brief affair she has with him is simply the "inciting incident," the event that releases or externalizes her grief, thereby helping us to understand who she is now that Gene is dead and buried, while she simultaneously is answering the same question.

These are just a few of Amina Gautier's creations. Read The Loss of All Lost Things and rescue some of the other Gautier stories from being mired down in grief and loss.

Why a "Do-Gooder" is a No-good Liberal and Never just Someone Who Does Good.

Most people know that when they hear someone called a do-gooder, it's not meant as a compliment; it's scathing criticism.

The term do-gooder describes someone who is well meaning but naïve about the implications of what he or she advocates. Do-gooders are typically well-educated, elite white people who want to reform society through misguided, philanthropic or equalitarian methods.

Call someone a do-gooder, and you might be accusing them of a wide range of sins. Your condemnation could include advocating one-size-fits-all remedies for social ills; everything from wealth redistribution, social justice, a welfare state, third-world immigration or the adoption of disadvantaged orphan children of color. (Heavens to Betsy!)

Do-gooders have been known to be members of the PC brigade, who are careful to avoid offending anyone. We've certainly seen "political correctness" denigrated by Trump and other candidates in the current presidential campaign. Never mind that sometimes people who attempt political correctness may be trying to show sensitivity for other people's preferences—people they care about.

I would like to claim that I don't care what conservatives say about do-gooders.I am a do-gooder in the purest sense of the term and proud of it. Do-gooders are simply people who do good. I am tempted to reject that negative connotation of the term. Although I might be tempted to make that argument, actually doing so makes no sense based on the history of the term and the way it has been used since the middle of the Seventeenth Century.

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary as of 1650, a "do-good" was thought to be someone who wants "to correct social ills in an idealistic, but unusually impractical or superficial way," exactly the modern-day meaning.

Strangely enough, according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the term "seems to have begun on the socialist left, used to mock those who were unwilling to take a hard line." The OED includes a citation from The Nation dating from 1923: "There is nothing the matter with the United States except the parlor socialists, up-lifters and do-goods."

In its current form, the term "do-gooder" began appearing in America in 1927, "presumably because do-good was no longer felt to be sufficiently noun-like."

So, the term do-gooder has carried a negative connotation for a long, long time. Why have people taken a perfectly positive behavior, "doing good," and given it a horribly negative caste.

 

I think the reason is that there was and still is a need for such a term. Too often the term "do-gooder" perfectly fits the personality of those involving themselves in high-minded social engineering experiments. How many times have we seen well-meaning leaders initiate change programs with horrible unintended consequences?

Two examples:

Public housing as a solution to inner-city urban poverty in the 1970s. Tearing down dilapidated tenements and replacing them with faceless concrete high-rise developments only served to concentrate crime and destroy the fabric of community that once existed.

Eliminating Sadam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Invading Iraq may have seemed to some a worthy idea in 2003 as a way of eliminating weapons of mass destruction, but it only left a power vacuum and ill-will toward America whose ramifications we're dealing with thirteen years later.

I've often wondered who wrote the rule that said a "do-gooder" can only be a liberal? I've often asked: Couldn't that term be used to describe a conservative who wishes to use "government overreach" to meddle in the affairs of another country or, equally, to meddle in the affairs of any subset or minority of our population? Perhaps it could fit; however standard usage requires a do-gooder to be leftleaning. But certainly there are enough pious, self-righteous individuals on both sides of the aisle.

I would only ask that whatever we call this meddling, we remember that arrogance is arrogance and that overreach is overreach whether it is on the right or the left.

Dani Shapiro's Wise, Healing, Inspiring and Brutally Honest Advice about Writing.

Still writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life, Dani Shapiro, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 2013.

Here's my review in one sentence: This is the best book about writing that I've ever read.

And here's my review in a few sentences: After more than thirty years of teaching writing workshops, Shapiro has distilled her hard won wisdom into a series of vignettes from her life, practical tips, suggestions, and observations about writing that I found delightful to read.

Dani is a superb writer. With her book organized into short, succinct, pithy chapters, I found myself enjoying it in quenching sips. I learned and was inspired each time I read it. And each time I returned, I was in a state of anticipatory pleasure. I was never disappointed. Even as I read Still Writing, I knew I was reading something very special; and I felt special and privileged to be reading it, too.

While other books about writing cover some of the same topics, reading Shapiro's words got me bubbling with excitement to write. No other writing book I've read did that to the degree and with the consistency that Still Writing did for me. I wanted to sit down and start writing the moment I started reading her. The wonder was that I was able to finish reading her book at all.

The most marvelous thing about the way Shapiro writes is her inclusive, personal style that invites readers into her book and into her life. Reading her, I felt she was writing to me alone.

She used so many details drawn from her real life that by the end of the book you know a lot about her. If you're like me, you develop a fondness for her. It's easy for me to imagine that if I were to meet Dani Shapiro at one of her readings, I might approach her like an old friend, when it fact we've never met.

Why does she call her book Still Writing? Because she thinks of writing as a practice, akin to a yoga practice, as something meant to be performed every day, or, at least, five days a week, which if practiced wisely and judiciously, will see one through one's entire lifetime.

She tells of writers who seemed to be on the verge of great fame and money who burned out and whose careers ended early.

Her wisdom on what it takes to maintain, to endure, a writing life over many decades is priceless: "The writing life requires courage, patience, persistence, empathy, openness, and the ability to deal with rejection. It requires the willingness to be alone with oneself. To be gentle with oneself. To look at the world without blinders on. To observe and withstand what one sees. To be disciplined, and, at the same time, to take risks. To be willing to fail, not just once, but again and again, over the course of a lifetime. 'Ever tried, ever failed,' Samuel Beckett once wrote. 'No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'

Continues Dani Shapiro: "[The writing life] requires what the great editor Ted Solotoroff once called endurability. It is this quality, most of all that I think of when I look around a classroom at a group of aspiring writers. Some of them will be driven, ambitious for success or fame, rather than by the determination to do their best possible work. But of the students I have taught, it is not necessarily the most gifted, or the ones most focused on imminent literary fame (I think of those as short sprinters), but the ones who are still writing decades later."

Dani Shapiro is the only one I've run across who splays open the fallacy of the adage, "Write what you know about." It's not that there's anything wrong with this piece of advice in and of itself. The fallacy is in the shortsighted way in which this adage is usually interpreted. Taking a more nuanced approach, Shapiro writes, "There is a tremendous difference between writing from a place that haunts you, from the locus of your obsession and fear and desire, and writing about what you yourself have been through. We know more than we think we do."

Here are just a few examples of the wisdom we come across in her compact chapters:

In "Scars": Of all the facts of my early life that made me a writer, at or near the top, these two: I was an only child with older parents.

In "Riding the Wave": When you sit down to write, just be. Sit and be still. Be present. She writes: "It's hard, I know. I know just how hard it is, and I hate to tell you this, but it doesn't get easier. Get used to the discomfort."

And that, after all, is Dani Shapiro's prescription: Turn writing into a practice. Begin your practice each day by sitting still, by being present in the now.

In "A Short Bad Book" Dani writes about a friend of hers who started out to write exactly that, a short bad book, and how it was that announcing that intention to the world actually gave her a tremendous advantage so she could tackle a big, important story and wind up writing a best seller that took her many years to write. She short-circuited the willies that would have appeared if she announced to the world she actually intended to write a Large, Important Book. So each time you sit down to write, think to yourself, "All I want to do is write a short, bad book."

And in "Inner Censor": When you've written something you're sure others will hate, and your censor wants to shut you up, and delete what you've just written, Dani suggests, "Don't fight it, just recognize her. Say to your inner censor, 'Oh, hello. It's you again.' Accept her coexistence."

By the time I finished reading Still Writing, I felt I had bonded with a new, best friend. I couldn't help myself: Writing saved Dani Shapiro's life, just as writing saved my life. We survivors have to stick together.

What's wrong with passive voice (for goodness sakes)?

Consider an eight-year-old girl who has just dropped a quart of milk on the floor. She will usually say, “The milk spilled.” Rarely will she say, “I spilled the milk.” She won’t take responsibility for her action. Passive-voice sentences work that way. They give you information, but you always get the impression you’re not getting the full story. Passive voice doesn’t build trust. Active voice does.

When is it okay to “go passive?”

1. Passive voice works, and, in fact, is necessary when you don’t know who performed the action:

“The car was stolen.”

“The finalists were announced first.”

Even if you don’t know who acted, you can always turn those sentences into active voice by using, “Someone…”

“Someone stole the car.” That sentence is in active voice, but it doesn’t reveal who stole it.

2. Passive voice is okay when the action itself is more important than who did the actionand you don’t want to get involved in who did it.

“Our country was founded on the principle that ‘all men are created equal.’”

I wrote that sentence in passive voice because I didn’t want to get involved in telling you who founded our country. I really didn’t want to write, “The Founding Fathers based our country on the principle that ‘all men are created equal.’” I wanted to focus only on our country “being founded.” Passive voice to the rescue.

3. Passive voice works when tact is required. You may know very well who committed the action, but you may prefer not to say:

“The child was disciplined.”

“The laptop was taken from the office.”

If a program turned out to be a disaster, you may not want to bring up who started it. Thus, you might be advised to write, “The program was initiated”rather than writing, “Mayor Avery started the program.”

The worst abuse of passive voice

State-of-being verbs combined with past tense:

(is, was, were) + (past tense)

“…was produced by…”

“…were made to…”

“…is created for…”

“…is chased into…”

Don’t go there. Unless you really want to.

Tip:

You never have to write, “The program is comprised of four parts.” Write, “The program comprises four parts.”

Tip:

If you decide to use passive voice in one sentence, make certain the sentences before and after it are in active voice.

Summing up…

Active = Good

Passive = Bad

Except in certain cases where:

Active = Bad

Passive = Good

Could I be any clearer?

And if you really want some good advice:

Get a good night’s sleep.

Brush your teeth.

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals, Dinty W. Moore, 10 Speed Press, Berkeley, pps. 200.

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy,

I learned so much from reading your book.

For example, the inventor of the essay was frenchman Michael de Montagne. He did not write his first essay on a cocktail napkin because cocktail napkins did not exist in the 1500s when he lived. He would have had to write it on a cloth napkin ''and the ink would cause a terrible mess.''

Dear ExcitingWriting Advisory Reader,

I wanted to write a letter to Mister Essay Writer Guy, but got sidetracked wondering if that letter would help you, my E.W.A. readers, figure out whether you should pick up and actually, truly, really read Dinty W. Moore's book and thereby participate with me in the author's conspiracy.

''Conspiracy?'' you ask. Yes, I affirm, conspiracy! Vast conspiracy!

Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, J'accuse you of writing a non-fiction book of essays about the joy, wonder and commodious feelings that come from writing essays. Yes. Commodious feelings. I infer from what you imply: If everyone followed their essay bliss, they would go home right nowthis very momentand begin writing essayspersonal statements of longing, joy, love, separation, hate, brokenness, and cannibalism. Fact: One of Michael de Montagne's essays was on the subject of cannibalism.

I remain true to my thesis: Dinty Moore's book is a conspiracy, designed to cause everyone to become fabulously lost in the passionate act (in flagranti essai) of writing and reading essays. (No-surprise spoiler: Dinty W. Moore teaches non-fiction writing at Ohio State.)

Here's the setup of Dinty Moore's subterfuge: Imagine (''Why just imagine? Read!'') twenty famous writers of essays, that is ''essayists,'' who write sincerely curious, funny, gotta-know-now, and philosophically engaging letters that just happen to sum up in one form or another each essayist's writing style, area of concern, cultural angst, hangover, whatever.

Not only did each of the twenty authors write Dinty Moore the letter of inquiry (''with tongue firmly in cheek'') but then Dinty goes on to answer the question and write an essay-ette (A short essay. We owe so much to the French) which is more or less in the style of the essayist, sort of. Call it a parody. So by the time you get through reading all twenty of Mr. Moore's essays, if you are anything like me, you have learned of the existence of 18 essayists who you never heard of before even though some are pretty famous in their own right.

Dinty Moore possesses an infectious sense of humor. Yes, it's catching. My nose started to run. The enthusiasm; it overwhelms your defenses, moistens the tear ducts, keeps everything flowing. No, it never gets stuffy, stiff or self-conscious, which, I admit, it could, given the concept, but, Glorioski! Mr. Essay Writer Guy pulls it off with aplomb. He deserves congratulations for that alone if not a medal for public bravery; that is, bravely speaking openly of private things in public. What else is an essay for?

An example: Cheryl Strayed (Author of Wild) admits in a letter to Mister Essay Writer Guy that she has an obsession with em dashes: ''I have a hot dash on the em dash. What does my need to stuffwhile simultaneously fracturingmy sentenceswith the meandering, the explanatory, the discursive, the perhaps not-entirely necessarysay about me?''

Mr. Essay Guy writes back to Cheryl: ''You do realize that 99 percent of the civilized world has no idea what an em dash is, right?''

Another favorite of mine, his last essay in the book, Do not read this book where he laments everyone's attention deficit. Writing students are no longer requested to write. No one has time to read an essay, no less write one. He goes on to write one, anyway.

Other essayist queries request advice on selecting an essay topic, coming clean about how relatives traumatized one at an early age, and the importance of writing with clarity. Why be clear when one can be muddled and hint at so much while saying so little? Good question.

Kritika Narula, reviewing the book on GoodReads wrote: ''How can you read non-fiction like this and not fall in love with the genre? The whole genre owes you, Sir. Or your humor. I am not sure if we can separate the two. You know you will fall into this book as soon as it opens because of this [dedication page]: ''To the polar bears. Be gentle with me.''

I agree with Ms. Narula.

Mr. Moore's oeuvre is not a ''how-to-write-an-essay book'' so much as it is a ''why-should-I-bother-writing-essays?'' book, or a book that demonstrates some of the marvelous effects that can be accomplished by writing essays.

True, non-fiction story: I got the idea of writing an essay while reading Mr. Moore's book.

So gin-on-up to Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy, Dinty W. Moore's crazy, funny, hilarious, LOL romp through ''essaylandia,'' a collection of twenty parodies of well known essayists (not well known to me, but well known to those who have long loved this literary form), writers like Philip Lopate, Cheryl Strayed, Patrick Madden, Steve Almond and Judith Kitchen (who sadly recently passed away.) I had never heard of most of the names but, thank God, many better read than me have.

And therein lies the conspiracy. After reading Dinty Moore's twenty smart, funny essay parodies, you will be cajoled into Google-ing at least some of the essayists' names. You will read and gain a new appreciation of the essay you never had before.

Full disclosure: This author made me laugh out loud when he was an instructor and I, a participant, at the Kenyon College Writer's Conference some years ago. Dinty W. Moore is a fun guy who is fun to read.

Not-so-witty Tales of Punctuation and Grammar Reviewed by the Little Ol' Curmudgeon, Me.

Between You & Me, Confessions of a Comma Queen, Mary Norris, W.W. Norton & Co., New York, 2015, 228 pps.

Mary Norris has been a proofreader and copy editor at The New Yorker for more than 30 years, certainly time enough to qualify her to remark, wax elegantly, and, at times, pontificate about the finer points of punctuation and grammar. Ms. Norris does all three in her book entitled Between You & Me.

Wisely, the book covers more than writing issues; rather, it combines those discussions with mini-memoirs of her experiences editing some of The New Yorker's most famous writers along with descriptions of moments from her life, for example, her first job in high school as a ''foot checker.'' One summer she checked swimmers' feet at a local pool in her hometown in Cleveland, Ohio. (If you must know, she was checking for athlete's foot.)

I was fully expecting Norris to draw an admittedly tasteless parallel between checking feet and checking page proofs, you know, it's a stinky job but somebody's got to do it? But, no, her book never approaches that low point. Amazing, huh? Would that my suggestion be more aromatic than Mary Norris' approach. Alas, poor Yorick, while one might argue that her level of taste is higher; neither is she of infinite jest or most excellent fancy, I can assure you.

No, Ms. Norris often stays on the straight and narrow, and when you consider how few risks she takes, her writing certainly has paid off handsomely because her book has been praised by the likes of The New York Times,, National Public Radio, and The Guardian, among others who all seemed to agree that Norris' book is ''witty,'' and generally a rollicking good read.

I'm certain Ms. Norris will be crushed to learn that my review of her just-out book is not nearly as positive. I found the proof-reader's quibbles over grammar and punctuation at times tedious; her humor sometimes forced and some of her mini-memoir episodes irrelevant.

Between You & Me is not without its high points, however. Overall, I found it to be uneven. Reading it was like riding the E train back to Queens after work when I lived in NYC. Sweaty riders on all sides of you pushing in close. The train coming to a screeching halt and the lights going off every ten minutes. Then suddenly speeding along at sixty miles an hour until another crisis of confidence brings your reading to a screeching halt and leaves you in the dark. That is to say, Norris's book gets you home safe and sound.

Some of the high points that contribute to the book's overall worth:

Her admission of the futility of trying to edit the ''incomparable'' George Sanders admitting that ''the fix does violence to the writer's voice.'' (Pg. 54) As a fiction writer, I gloated at her admission. Of course, some might take the opposite view, i.e., that we writers are beyond both fix and salvation.

In her discussion of the awkward use of ''he'' and ''she'' caused by the lack of a gender-neutral pronoun in English, she let on that personal pronouns have such deeply imbedded identities that on one occasion a single pronoun slip-up (forgetting that ''he'' was now a ''she'') threatened to scuttle her loving relationship with her transgender sister. Very moving. (Pg. 72)

Of course, the title Between You & Me, pays homage to a common blunder, i.e., people saying, ''Between You & I,'' which simply isn't correct. (Pg. 77)

I loved this quote: ''I am not trying to fit anyone for a linguistic straight jacket.'' (Pg. 86).

Chapter 5 entitled, ''Comma Comma Comma Comma Chameleon!'' was great fun. (Pg. 93)

Chapter 6 entitled ''Who Put the Hyphen in Moby-Dick?'' I found sort of fascinating. (Yes and no.) She's right of course, although I had never noticed it before: In the title of the famous novel, Moby-Dick is hyphenated; however throughout the text it is not. Why? After descriptions of exhaustive research described in exhaustive detail (she certainly exhausted me), we learn that a copy editor inserted the hyphen on the title page because it was customary to do so in mid-1800s America: ''The hyphenated form refers to the book; the unhyphenated, to the whale.'' (Pg. 111)

I loved Chapter 9 in which she makes a convincing case for the use of profanity, saying it's fun and lively. (Pg. 157) The chapter opens with these words: ''Has the casual use of profanity in English reached a high tide? Fxxk yeah.'' (Well, sort of. Full disclosure: She put an entire irrelevant sentence between her ''high tide'' question and her witty answer, totally gutting its power.) It's sad for me to write, but it's true: Mary Norris needed an editor. For her next book, let's hope she gets one. The New York Times review let on that the reviewer found a typo in her book. That is not what an author wants to read in a review of her book.

More full disclosure: I wanted to adore this book once I learned that Mary Norris graduated from Douglas College, which in primordial times when I attended Rutgers University was my alma mater's woman's college just across town from Rutgers.

I used to hang out at the Douglas library because I liked brainy women who were literate. Still do. Married one. I might have met Mary there and asked her for a date except she graduated about a decade after me. (Or,is that ''after I?'')

How to Fail Your Way to Success.

This month I describe the method I'm following to become a best selling novelist:

For the last year and a half I've been working with writing coach and novelist Bridget Boland who most recently suggested this method. In fact, though, I've been using it for decades; first, to learn to play baseball when I was ten years old; then, to graduate from college; then, to improve my performance as a Peace Corps Volunteer; then, to become proficient as an advertising copywriter; and now to become a successful novelist.

The only success method that is steeped in failure.

With anything you want to accomplish, you're either a natural, or you're not. Here's my method for becoming successful at anything when you're not proclaimed a child genius; I call it ''Failing Your Way to Success.'' Follow these four steps:

Step #1: Try to accomplish something you really want to accomplish. Fail at it. (If you succeed, you can't use this method!)

Step #2: Find out why you failed. Ask others. Analyze it for yourself. Get to the root cause of your failure.

Step #3: The next time you try at this task, keep that root cause in mind. See if you can improve next time.

Step #4: Each time you fail or don't measure up to your expectations, fall forward until you do succeed to your satisfaction.

Imagine you're sculpting a standing figure out of a block of marble. Would you say it's advisable to finish sculpting the nose before beginning on other features of the statue's face? And would you say it's smart to finish the face before sculpting other parts of the statue?

I'm sure you agree that the smartest approach, and the one likely to lead to success, is to start with the end in mind. Rough out the entire standing figure, allotting space for the head, neck, torso, middle and legs. Then develop each major area of the sculpture.

It's the same when writing a novel. Working quickly, a novelist roughs out major portions of the story before finishing out each part.

As you go back over each part, you can assess how well your first attempt worked. If you decide it could work better, you try a different approach in hopes of getting a better result. This is called the experimental, or trial-and-error approach to writing.

I'm a trial-and-error writer.

I first realized that I'm a trial-and-error writer when I read an article by Malcolm Gladwell (author of Tipping Point and other groundbreaking works) entitled Late Bloomers: Why do we equate genius with precocity? published in the October 20, 2008 issue of The New Yorker.

Gladwell calls Ben Fountain a late-bloomer because he was nearly 50 when he published his first book, a collection of short stories entitled, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.

I first dreamed of becoming a novelist when I was at The University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in my 20s. Soon after graduating with an MFA, feeling frustrated and depressed, I gave up writing novels and short stories to work as an advertising copywriter, first in New York City and then in Dallas. I did not begin writing fiction for a second time until 2002, a few years shy of my sixtieth birthday.

Now, in August 2015, I have stretched this late bloomer thing as far as it will go. Even compared to other late bloomers, I am incorrigibly late. What I am certain will be my first published novel, a trilogy entitled Charging the Jaguar, a story about a Peace Corps Volunteer in the late Sixties who goes on the dark side when he falls in love with a FARC revolutionary in the jungles of Colombia, remains unfinished. I promise you and myself that I will finish it and publish each of the three parts as they are complete. (You notice I did not promise when, only that I would.)

Gladwell's article was a revelation to me for three reasons:

Some artists encounter greatness later in life.

1) I learned that I made the same mistake as so many others, i.e., confusing genius with precocity, the word that has always been applied to Mozart and others who achieve astounding creative feats at a young age. Gladwell mentions, ''Orson Wells [who] made his masterpiece, Citizen Kane, at twenty-five. [And] Herman Melville [who] wrote a book a year through his late twenties, culminating at age thirty-two, with Moby-Dick.

Gladwell debunks the prevailing myth that ''doing something truly creative requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth.'' He gives many examples that prove artists often come upon greatness later in life, two of the more interesting being the painter Cézanne and the novelist Ben Fountain.

Have you heard of Ben Fountain? His novel, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk,published in 2012 was a finalist for the National Book Award. When I read Gladwell's article in 2008, I had never heard of Ben although by then he had published an acclaimed book of short stories entitled, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara.

I love Ben Fountain's Writing.

2. That was the second revelation I took away from Gladwell's article: After a bit of reading I discovered that Ben Fountain was a short story writer and novelist whose method, style of writing and subject matter I love; also the fact that he lives and works right here in Dallas makes things cozy. And here's the truly amazing thing: I actually met him years ago when he was a real estate attorney, and we both attended a dinner at the home of mutual friend in North Dallas. The reason he remembered me so many years after having only met me only once? I would like to think it was my brilliant personality; but, that was not the case at all. After meeting him I sent him an early version of this newsletter. He remembered my writing.

As I alluded just now, once I read Fountain's Brief Encounters, I learned that I loved the robustness of Ben's storytelling; its action and excitement which I found believable and engrossing. I don't respond that way to most writers. Overnight, Ben Fountain became my favorite contemporary fiction writer.

One other thing I learned that was nothing less than thrilling to me: The story in that collection I loved the most (and which Gladwell called ''one of the best'') is about an ornithologist taken hostage by the FARC guerrillas of Colombia.

Confronting the FARC.

In my novel my American hero, Jake Lancer, is never taken prisoner by the FARC, but, instead, he develops a relationship with a FARC soldier and begins to see the world through that soldier's eyes. He is then taken prisoner and interrogated by a CIA agent and a Colombian Army Intelligence officer because they believe he's sympathetic to the FARC.

This idea of a relatively innocent American having an up-close and personal encounter with the FARC: I didn't get it from Ben. I had been working on it before I read Brief Encounters in 2008. However, I did find myself tremendously encouraged by reading Ben's work. Obviously it depends on how well I write my novel, but I felt that if Ben could be successful with his story, perhaps I could be successful with mine.

3. Another revelation I got from Gladwell's article: I am an experimental or trial-and-error writer.

Gladwell's thesis is that precocious geniuses use the conceptual method of writing, where their works come out fully formed and finished. They have no use for experimentation. On the other hand, late bloomers like Ben Fountain use the experimental method of writing. They make a series of trial-and-error rewrites. As they do this, the work gets better and better over time until it springs to life fully formed with sufficient power and presence to turn readers into fans.

I also slowly honed my writing skills.

Another observation Gladwell made in his article about experimental writers: ''Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goal.''

I've certainly experienced frustration while writing fiction. When I stopped writing fiction and turned to advertising copywriting I did so specifically so that I would not turn into a chronically depressed crank. .

And as though to prove his point about we late bloomers (Ben and me, ;-))) being perfectionists, he quotes Ben, saying (about the same story I loved so much in his Brief Encounters collection), ''I struggled with that story. I always try to do too much. I mean, I probably wrote five hundred pages of it in various incarnations.''.

One thing that should be said here: Behind my trial-and-error process is my determination to never fall in love with any of my failures. To see them for what they are and jettison them as rapidly as possible and to continually find better solutions. To continually move forward through the entire work that way until I'm satisfied.

Does that make me a perfectionist? I don't think so. With me, making it better isn't a disease that feeds on itself and never ends. I know when my writing is at a sufficiently professional level that it is ready to be sent out into the world to seek its fortune.

I'm gratified that this far into the process of writing Charging the Jaguar, I feel part of a movement of late bloomers who I would wager, in our own estimations, are never late. We perform on our own schedules; and, as far as we're concerned, we're right on time.