[Music fades in]
Female Narrator:
This is Behind the Cut with Christopher Gronlund. The companion show to Not About Lumberjacks.
Christopher Gronlund:
Taller than the Moon is the first real short story I ever wrote. I started taking writing seriously when I was 19 or 20. Most of what I wrote at the time were odd little slice-of-life vignettes—and then there was a rivalry story about people eating bugs that swelled to 25 pages like that and became even too ridiculous for me.
Then came Taller than the Moon…
Taller than the Moon is one of the only stories that came to me in a dream. Thinking about it, it might be the only one. All I remember from that dream is that I won some award for writing a story called Taller than the Moon. It was about a small-town hero whose life took a rough turn after a couple tours in Vietnam.
I woke up, turned on my old IBM Selectric II typewriter, and wrote the story pretty much as recorded for the episode. (Thinking back, that means the story is 30 years old.)
Taller than the Moon is an important story to me because, at the time I wrote it, I was a bit of a conflicted writer. I wanted to write the kind of serious fiction I grew up reading, but I didn’t think I’d ever be a good enough writer to pull it off. That explains the weird slice-of-life vignettes and horror stories I was writing at the time. That’s not to say what I was writing was somehow sub-par, because there are some Clive Barker and Richard Christian Matheson stories that hit me as much as any literary fiction ever did. But I generally avoided writing serious fiction out of respect and fear.
Let me be clear: I think any writing can be serious…elevated…whatever we want to call it. I don’t believe literary fiction holds the title as the only serious writing out there. The opening of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven is as beautiful as anything ever written. When Stephen King flexes his literary muscles, we’re reminded why he’s buddies with writers like John Irving and Amy Tan. And there are comic books out there I’ll put up against the deemed-best fiction ever written.
But there was always something about the kinds of books I saw on the shelves in the houses I grew up in. I’ll never say a great work of literary fiction inherently means more than a fast-paced thing written to entertain people, but I do think one can argue that the craft Alice Munro puts into a short story is greater than something written to a formula, mired in clichés, and lacking any attention to prose or emotion.
Still, if you listen to enough episodes of Not About Lumberjacks, it should be clear I don’t believe all stories must be serious things. I mean, hell…I wrote a Christmas story that made several people feel guilty for laughing at child torture! And next month I’m finally releasing the post-apocalyptic office story I’ve talked about for over a year!
The stories I just mentioned are fun, and they might even mean something to readers or listeners. But the stories I’m most proud of that I’ve written for the show are those leaning a bit more literary: “Purvis,” “The Art of the Lumberjack,” “Standstill,” “The Other Side,” and “Horus.”
Some of those stories contain fantastic elements, but I never believed literary fiction inherently equaled stale stories about pathetic middle-aged white men and their messed up sexual habits. (In fact, I’d rather read some escapist work than be subjected to more of that kind of thing!)
To me at least, literary fiction is simply something written for more than just entertainment, with a certain attention to craft. In the end, those are the kinds of stories we carry with us (sometimes for years) rather than those we finish and say, “Next!” – as though books were potato chips meant to be consumed rather than savored.
And so, Taller than the Moon will always mean something to me because it was my first attempt at a literary story, written during a time I was all about humor and horror. I like writing literary fiction because I’m no longer afraid of it. I enjoy the challenge and the time it takes to finish them. Some of the funnier stories here are things I knocked out in an hour or two. And while they’re fun, I wouldn’t include them among the best things I’ve ever written. Some of those stories might even be like a well-timed fart, meant to make only the most baseless among us laugh. And I include myself in that list, just to be clear. I wrote the stories, after all.
But it’s the stories that took a greater effort…those I had to find my way through over days or months—even years—that I’m most proud of.
It’s not lost on me that all those stories can be traced back to a morning I woke up in Grapevine, Texas and wrote Taller than the Moon before I did anything else that day…
[Outro music fades in…]
Christopher Gronlund:
Thank you for listening to Not About Lumberjacks and Behind the Cut. Theme music for Behind the Cut is a tune called Reaper by Razen. Visit nolumberjacks.com for information about the music, episodes, and voice talent.
Next time—and I’m totally serious–it’s finally the post-apocalyptic corporate office story I’ve talked about for over a year…
Probably…
Okay, okay…I’m just kidding! It’s written and it’s ready to record, so it’s really happening.
Maybe…
Until next time: be mighty, and keep your axes sharp!
