Bewildering Stories discusses...
The Bottom of the Pile
with Cleveland W. Gibson
A veteran contributor and friend of long standing of Bewildering Stories sends a message of a kind we see fairly frequently.
The process normally begins with our review procedure, which assures contributors that real people have read their submissions and given them serious thought. After a work appears in a regular issue, other readers — be they Review Editors, Associate Editors or people we don’t know — may send messages of appreciation or thoughtful critiques to the Managing Editor.
Now, the Managing Editor is Bewildering Stories’ Bob Cratchit; we have no Ebenezer Scrooge. Don — the Managing Editor — forwards the messages in a postmasterly fashion and encourages further correpondence. It’s a function we’re proud to fulfill; it is what Bewildering Stories has been designed to do since its inception, 20 years ago.
As a classic example, we include Cleveland Gibson’s message to Gary Clifton on Gary’s story The Bottom of the Pile.
Hi, Gary,
You picked a difficult subject to write about. But you came over well. You gave us a slice of life, but what a slice of life! The kind of fiction you wrote was hard-hitting with McCoy going up in my estimation. A visit to an old folks’ home or loony bin is an eye-opener with out a doubt. But what a subject to write about! Nothing nice, neat and tidy. It was certainly the opposite.
Can a person survive on such a diet? I guess they can, but the effect will always show in how they are treated and how people bother with them. At the end of the day we all know who had a tough day that day, tougher than me, for sure.
A cheer to you for this flash fiction and three cheers all those who engaged with the action and dialogue. Interesting to learn how people speak with a rural/ranchy twang. But with a heart in the right place who can complain?! Well done,
Keep on writing.
[Don Webb] Gary Clifton says that the story is based on a real-life event. The character McCoy represents a real city policeman. Gary himself was a federal agent who managed to intervene on behalf of the lady who had escaped from the mental institution.
Does the story end with “McCoy’s” intervention? Hardly. Other readers will want to know how the original stakeout assignment played out. And they’ll want to know how “McCoy” got evidence sufficient to indict the guards who were harassing poor Shonda. And what happened to Shonda?
The mid-20th century French author Vercors has a character say, in a short story, that you know a story is true when it has no ending, McCoy’s expression of statisfaction tells us all we need to know.
New writers often think, mistakenly, that short means “easy.” On the contrary, the shorter the genre, the more difficult is is, and flash fiction is exceptionally difficult. Over the years, Charles C. Cole has been a regular and important voice in the art of flash fiction. In recent years, we’ve been happy to see Gary Clifton join him in bringing life to the art.
