Chump Change by David Eddie

muttered while the two Colossi — my hangover and the Protestant Work Ethic — battled it out over my prostrate form, hurling thunderbolts, tossing tridents at each other. Finally, in the end, it was a truce, a rare collaboration: it was agreed this would be a “working hangover,” I could stay in bed, but I had to read my book and make copious notes towards my review.
    After a while, Les poked her head in.
    “You’re an early riser.”
    I pointed out that I hadn’t actually arisen yet.
    “How are you feeling?”
    “I’m dead, Les. Just toss some dirt on me on your way out, I’ll be fine.”
    “Hungover?”
    “Carramba.”
    “You’re a pretty big drinker, aren’t you, Dave?”
    “I’m afraid so.”
    Her clean brown eyes stared into my bloodshot blues.
    “Why?”
    “My mother always said my father was a very ‘thirsty man.’ I think I inherited that, except with me it’s booze.”
    Les raised a sceptical eyebrow.
    “Well, I have to get ready for work. Can I get you anything?”
    “Would you? Something
fizzy?
And a couple of aspirins?”
    “Sure. Why don’t I mix you up a Bloody Mary, too?”
    “Thanks. Oh…you’re joking. Sorry, and thanks.”
    Les fetched the requested items, then hopped in the shower. I could hear her humming and splashing. I allowed myself to imagine the scene on the other side of the wall in rich, almost pointillistic detail. Then I got down to work.
    The Minimalist short stories were carefully crafted, subtle, poignant — and they bored the fucking shit out of me. For one thing, they were all about fishing, or Vietnam (’Nam, as he referred to it), two topics I don’t give a shit about. In their zeal to pare their stories down to the bone, the Minimalists cut out what makes literature important and useful, in my opinion: a description of a character’s thoughts, feelings, inner monologue or dialogue or whatever,
ideas
.
    But the Minimalists were tough guys, “men of few words” (the characters were almost all male). But why, I thought, would a “man of few words” want to be a writer?
    One thing was clear: these were Hemingway’s offspring. They all imitated Hemingway’s primerish prose: “I sat in the café. It was hot. A dog came up to my table. His name was Spot. I patted his head. Then he ran off. See Spot Run. Run, Spot, Run.” What they didn’t realize, though, was there was more to Hemingway’s prose than meets the eye. As he says somewhere
(Death in the Afternoon
, I think), “the stately motion of the iceberg comes from the fact nine-tenths of it is below the surface.” In other words, he wrote a lot, then cut a lot out. But it didn’t seem like these guys and gals put it in, then took it out. They just left it out in the first place, and as a result their stories were more like ice-cubes, bobbing on the surface, on “the spume of things.”
    To compensate, to make their stories “heavy,” they employed stylistic tricks: one-word sentences, the one-sentence paragraph. One of the Minimalists was a fish-obsessed writer named Rick Pike. One of his one-sentence paragraphs was: “He used crawdaddies for bait.” So his story would go:
    The old man squinted out over the lake. His features were craggy and leathery. He said nothing. He baited his hook.
    He used crawdaddies for bait.
    They fished for three hours. The craggy old man said nothing. He squinted over the lake. There was a tug on his line. He hauled it up.
    But it was only a boot.
    An old boot.
    Etc., etc. I’m making the rest of it up, but “He used crawdaddies for bait” was an actual line from Rick Pike’s story. I stared at this line a long time, wondering what possible heaviness it could have that it should deserve its own paragraph. Eventually, I decided: none, it was just a big con, like so much modern writing. Christ, it’s no wonder no one reads any more. People open a book these days and it’s either some sort of neo-Joycean crossword-puzzle bullshit, or this sort of stylistic