The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2018, part 15: Karen Heuler

Annual Pleasures 2018 
by Karen Heuler 


A lot of my real and virtual friends have come out with amazing books this year, books that grab the imagination and charm or alarm the senses. I’ve fallen in love with what they’ve created. But, unfortunately, the world of imagination has spread into the political world, and most particularly, the world of headlines and tweets and memes.

 I check a number of sites throughout the day, to see what’s happening, and I lose far too much time plunging after misleading headlines. It’s not merely the current political system that disturbs me, it’s that the distinction between fact and fiction is ending. You’d think, as someone who sees the weird in the everyday, that this would amuse me, but it doesn’t.

The rabbit hole I drop down most often is anything that smacks of new scientific discoveries, but in fact there are many kinds of headlines that take me on a time-sucking romp through the fantastic and the false. Of course headlines are intended to tell you just enough to entice you to read the story, but the end result is that facts are no longer as pleasurable as lies.

We’re addicted to the small bits and pieces now. It’s a hypnotic lure, this “Incredible Frozen Find” and that “They Never Would Have Guessed” and “Scientists Baffled By,” to say nothing of what “Voter Fraud” and “Trade War Threatens” and “Caravan of Criminals” does to us. I suspect that every time we click, we get us a pleasant little shot of adrenaline, so it’s no surprise that the headlines leer and we know it’s nonsense, but still we click. Adrenaline is addictive. Politically speaking, we hear shouts around the corner and have to see what’s happening.

These headlines suggest to me that a new kind of prurience is becoming our national characteristic, and that these bits and pieces of titillation are changing our opinion of the truth.

 I can see it; I am caught up by it. And the thing I’ve noticed is how reading the bits is different from reading a book or a story. Reading the bits constantly gives you little charges, little bursts of (small) excitement. Reading something longer requires us not only to stay focused but to imagine the story by putting us there, by being part of it. Bits assures us that we are the normal and everyone else is either wrong or bizarre. The books I like are more often the books that allow us to see the strange or alien as relating to us, or revealing the distinctions not as threatening, but as informative.

 I am trying to train myself not to go down the clickbait trail. I know that the astonishing things will not be astonishing, I know that the political things will be biased and incomplete, and I know long-term weather predictions almost always fail.

I will try to wean myself off the adrenaline kick and instead, appeal to the endorphins I get from the books my friends wrote—whether I’ve met them in real life or not. I love my nearby friends, but the friends I can only imagine are also writing fantastic books.

But wait! “Scientists find that imagining friends is a sign of genius.”

 Click!

 Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in over 100 literary and speculative journals and anthologies, from Alaska Quarterly Review to Weird Tales. She’s won an O. Henry award, is frequently nominated for Pushcart and Best American Short Story awards, and has been a finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction award, the Bellwether Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Aqueduct Press has published her novella, In Search of Lost Time, and her collection, Other Places.

The Pleasures of Reading, Viewing, and Listening in 2017, pt. 18: Karen Heuler

The Year 2017, and the Madness of Men
by Karen Heuler



It’s a strange coincidence that this was the year I watched Mad Men. I didn’t see the show when it first aired, and to be honest, I watched the first couple of episodes a few years ago and decided I didn’t want to live through that crap again. That hungry, leering, supercilious, offensive era.

But I went back and tried again, and I’m glad I did. I started every day by reading about what rights had been removed/were about to be removed by the current administration and what fights were going on over things that were—flip side—starting to be covered in the background in Mad Men. Most of my watching coincided with the #MeToo movement, which also prompted mixed reactions in me. Was there a danger that the accounts of (relatively) minor infractions would dilute the awful experiences so many of us dealt with –mostly silently, mostly with an eye to survival? I finally gave in and did my own #MeToo, and while I don’t regret it, I’m not sure it will matter long-term. I’m not great at reading social media or movements, but almost everything I’ve lived through has its own backlash waiting to be born. And I think it may be starting off by creating the wrong casualties. Roy Moore almost got elected because it doesn’t matter to that kind of men what other men do. I think offending women did matter to Al Franken, and I regret his loss.

So Mad Men and #MeToo had my attention together. Don Draper is a horn dog, but the men around him, especially in the beginning, are caricatures of men, the ogling, tongue-hanging-out, despicable men. These are the ones I recognize, the ones I’ve worked with in various guises. I love, with all my heart, Joan and Peggy for fighting through these men and past these men and creating their own lives, their own integrity, because in fact the integrity of women has largely been the province of men.

In watching Mad Men, it’s obvious that men have only ever had their eyes on other men. All that office camaraderie, the drinking, boasting, evaluating, choosing, picking up “dates”—all of that was measured in the eyes of the other men. Of course we know that value has nothing to do with women, but what seemed obvious to me (and is reflected in today's vile things) is how the men determine value by anticipating what the other men will see as value.

But Don Draper has an appeal—not necessarily the bad boy aura, but the wounded hero aura. He’s searching for something, and he’s recovering from something. He can’t be satisfied even as he tries to be satisfied. He has a completely selfish quest to find the woman he needs, who will fulfill him, and it’s all wrapped up in a story. He’s good at stories. In fact, all of Mad Men is about story—about finding the story that sells, about finding a woman whose story supports you, about always searching for the story that absolves you of all the misery you’ve inflicted on just about every woman who’s comes your way.

I like that this is all about story; I don’t like that the stories exist to excuse men and their actions. The male world is cars and tobacco and whiskey and whores—sensation without depth or meaning. The female world—bras, hosiery, feminine cigarettes—is laughable, dismissable, and not worthy of having a place on a man’s resume.

So much of what I read this year was all about politics, about the politics of men like Trump and Moore and Weinstein. That’s one story line. There’s another about #MeToo, about accountability, and I have no faith that this story line will prevail. Mad Men covered the 1960s to the 70s. There isn’t that much difference between that era and our era, not deep down. All final decisions are still male decisions, as far as I can see. The distance we’ve come since then is significant, but it’s still revocable. I fear for Roe v. Wade.

Karen Heuler’s stories have appeared in over 100 literary and speculative journals and anthologies, from Alaska Quarterly Review to Weird Tales. She’s won an O. Henry award, is frequently nominated for Pushcart and Best American Short Story awards, and has been a finalist for the Iowa Short Fiction award, the Bellwether Award, and the Shirley Jackson Award. Aqueduct Press has published her novella, In Search of Lost Time, and her collection, Other Places.

Karen Heuler's In Search of Lost Time

I'm pleased to announce the release of In Search of Lost Time, a novella by Karen Heuler published as a volume in Aqueduct's Conversation Pieces series in both small trade paperback and e-book editions. (You may recall that Karen's story "The Apartments," published in an earlier volume of the Conversation Pieces series, Other Places, is a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Awards.) You can purchase both of these volumes from Aqueduct Press now.

After beginning chemo for a rare cancer, Hildy discovers an extraordinary talent—the ability to see and take other people’s time. She also discovers there’s an underground market for quality time. After all, who has enough time? The dying, especially, want to get more of it, but giving it to them means taking it from someone else. How moral is she? How will she juggle the black marketers’ strong-arm tactics and her own quandaries about stealing something so precious and vital that it can never be replaced?

Nisi Shawl writes, in her review for The Seattle Review of Books, "Author Karen Heuler's heroine Hildy discovers that chemo infusions targeting malignant lesions on her "tempora"— an imaginary area of the brain — allow her to see, manipulate, and ultimately steal other people's time. Her superpowers neither free nor cure Hildy, though. Instead, she struggles to integrate them into a humane and principled philosophy while fending off the self-interested alliances of warring would-be time-mongers. She girds herself for battle in red-heeled boots, silk head scarves, and penciled-on eyebrows, but kindness and self-reflection prove to be her most kickass weapons."   (Read the whole review)

In Rich Horton's review for Locus, he writes: "It's a curious story, leaving the reader with more questions than answers about what’s really going on, to say nothing of the morality of the process (not that it isn’t questioned). Hildy herself is an interesting character, recovering not just from cancer but from the death of her married lover, and the people she encounters are likewise a bit off-center. I was intrigued throughout..."

 A Conversation with Karen Heuler about In Search of Lost Time

Q: Why is there never enough time?

It’s a little bit like riding a good car on bad tires. You think everything’s fine until you start skidding out of control going down an icy hill. Time, in this case, is the tires. There’s nothing to grip, so there’s no way of negotiating how fast it goes. When I think about time at this point in life, I can only think in small leguments. When I was young, the road was longer. And I’m spending all my time steering. This is called an extended metaphor, and the problem with extended metaphors is that I never know when to stop. Or how. Like that car.

 

Q. What would life be like if we could sample other people’s memories?

I’d love to do that. There are a lot of people in the world that I find unfathomable. If I could see the bits and pieces that formed them, I could see what makes them tick. That might explain why they chose to do evil while I chose to do good.

 

Q. Really? How good are you?

 I give to many charities. Small amounts, yes, but I’m not rich. I live-trap mice and release them. I used to release them too close to home, and they’d actually beat me back to the kitchen. There was one night when I caught the same mouse four times. Then I was told that it was best to take them at least two miles away. I do that now. And I give them a little packed lunch to take with them.

 

Q. Is this book a comedy or a tragedy?

That really depends on the reviews. I will cheerfully acknowledge whatever they want me to acknowledge.

Q. Will this be made into an action-adventure movie?

There are a lot of women in it. There are no explosions. There would be limited opportunity for CGI. So, no.

Karen Heuler's Other Places

I'm pleased to announce the release of Other Places by Karen Heuler, a collection of short fiction, as the fifty-first volume in Aqueduct Press's Conversation Pieces series. In Other Places' tales, life unfolds in strange ways. You may encounter people from your past living in your former apartments, or realize you have a penis as you engage in war-dreams, or find a planet filled with ghosts that look exactly like the ghosts back home. Is it possible they are the same as the ghosts back home? Wherever you travel, you'll have to make tough decisions about the aliens you may have harmed and the aliens who may harm you. Other Places, Karen Heuler's latest story collection, follows travelers as the familiar becomes strange, and the strange becomes life.

Publishers Weekly has reviewed Other Places: "Prolific fantasy and horror writer Heuler continues defying convention and categorization in her latest collection of stories. The first tale, “The Rising Up,” wherein a young woman unexpectedly realizes she has a penis while engaging in dream combat, sets the stage for the weirdness to come. There is fairy tale opulence in “Twelve Sisters, Twelve Sisters, Ten,” in which a dozen sisters spend their evenings dancing in an underwater house. “The Apartments,” in which a woman visits her old haunts and discovers some unsettling personal information, is as much a stroll down memory lane as it is a meditation on narrative. Each story is as inventive as the last. Heuler’s prose illuminates the strangeness of both her characters and her settings. Establishing elaborate themes and morals is no easy feat in such short narrative arcs, but Heuler does it admirably, quickly laying the groundwork for her myriad of worlds, cultures, and travelers. There is no doubt as to Heuler’s creativity, but some of the stories have less pull than others, though the collection as a whole does not feel unbalanced. Exploring difficult questions with imaginative prose, Heuler leaves readers with much food for thought."

 Other Places is available in both print and e-boook editions. You can purchase it now through Aqueduct's website.