It's been a summer of Scotch and Sodas, sometimes too many, enough to make me the kind of clear, businessman drunk that only fictional ad executives and movie accountants (who have just discovered something terrible about their own futures, that will allow them to finally live life to the fullest) get. The kind of drunk that makes a visit to a children's museum difficult the next day.
I've been reading John O'Hara's very short stories. They put contemporary flash fiction* so much to shame that I shouldn't even talk about it. John O'Hara is an important lesson about being nice, because his reviews were based more upon how unlikable he was than how good he was at writing. He was also notable for his drinking, like Faulkner was, except that Pottsville boy lacked a certain Mississippi charm.
What I mean to say is, I'm going on vacation. My first as an adult. One that will allow me to drink cheap Scotch on Faulkner's grave, visit my childhood ghosts, and see the world's smallest city block. I'm headed South. After Second Stories, that is.
*It's fair to say that I'm wary of flash fiction. Almost as much as I am prose poetry, which I feel is the lowest form of either genre.
