Survival Rates - Hardcover

Mary Clyde (author)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0820320498 ISBN 13: 9780820320496

Publisher: University of Georgia Press, 1999

Synopsis

Clyde's collection of short stories explores not so much what has already happened but what happens next, showing how sometimes the most difficult part of life's misfortunes is trying to find a way to go on.

About this title

From the Author

Nothing Up My Sleeve
I think good writers--maybe even the best writers--write without too many answers up their sleeves. I realize that comment suggests either that I don't have any idea what I'm doing or (even worse) that I consider myself not just a good writer, but no, a great one. Really, really, what I'm trying to get at is that I think good fiction comes about similarily to the way life comes about: it's upon you--like a bug you've inhaled--before you understand it or whatever it is supposed to mean or do to or for you. Or even--especially--WHY? And so the writer hacks at the weeds and tries to make something out of it just like everyone in the real world. Tending. Pruning, if you will. Slug-B-Gone (No more slime)

What's engaged me as a writer isn't so much what's coming at us in a given day--it's the what comes after that counts, the "and then." The Pruitts in my story hope that if you can know about the possibility of a disaster happening, you can effectively innoculate yourself against it. I hope so. But in most situations we don't have much to say about what's coming. So I usually pick up my characters' stories after the butterflies have been set free at the butterfly farm, after the nose has been bitten off, after the mother has been killed by a household appliance (albeit a major one). Then I like to hack away at a story watching the characters' confusion or courage. Their doubt or resolve. Or better, some quirky combination of all of the above. I find so many surprises in the observation.

Which I suppose proves, after all, that I don't know what I'm doing.

About the Author

Mary Clyde spent her childhood in Utah, has lived in New York City, and now lives in Phoenix, Arizona.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0820320498
• ISBN 13: 9780820320496
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184