FROM TALK AT 1989 CANADIAN AUTHORS ASSOCIATION CONFERENCE

Last winter, Eleanor McEachern, president of the North York branch of the Canadian Author's Association asked me to be on this short story panel for the 1989 National Conference. My role was to discuss the future of the short-story.

After saying "yes", I wondered how I would go about "crystal-balling" the next half-century of short-story writing. You see, my "crystal-ball" has been out of commission for quite some time. In fact, my "crystal-ball" is presently in at the local garage getting a tune-up. So, with my "crystal-ball-forecaster" out of whack and now only capable of predicting a couple of days into the future, I was really stymied. Not to let this get me down, I sent out an "all-call bulletin" to my favourite psychics. Within minutes the phone was ringing with messages forecasting the future of short-story writing. Madame Louisa in her cackling, aged voice shouted into her California-based phone, "Frank, guess what? Shirley MacLaine's coming down off her limb and taking up ghost writing."

"What!" I said.

"Yeah," Madame Louisa went on, "she's doing a short-story collection about Mackenzie King."

"Okay, Louisa," I said. "Talk to you later."

I barely got off the phone when Candy Berling called from Saskatoon.

"Got your message, Frank. Here's one for you." I visualized her gazing into her modernized, beach-ball sized, computerized, over-sized "crystal-ball" gleaming with incandescent colours beneath her palms.

"What you got, Candy?" I asked hopefully.

"Well," she said,"you're not going to believe this, but Pierre Berton is going to take up short-story writing."

"Nah...," I said. "That's crazy."

"Well, you better believe it. He's working on a fishing story right now called "The Last Pike."

"Oh great," I thought. This isn't working at all. I thanked Candy and waited for the next call.

"Hello Frank, this is Shirley. I'm in my tree house. What do you need to know?"

Full of hope I said, "I need to know about the future of short-story writing, Shirley."

"Nothing to that," Shirley said, " I just tapped into John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway."

"Wow! What did they say?"

"Listen for yourself. Here's Steinbeck. Shirley's voice changed to a low, guttural masculine tone. "If there is magic in story writing, and I am convinced that there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another. The formula seems to lie solely in the aching urge of the writer to convey something he feels important to the reader. If the writer has that urge, he may sometimes but by no means always find the way to do it. Over the years I have written a great many stories and still don't know how to go about it except to write it and take my chances." 1

After a short pause Shirley's voice returned to normal. "How do you like that?" she said.

"Good Shirley. You mean he's still writing?"

"Sure, what do you think he's doing up there, cloud hopping with Charley?"

"Okay... what about Hemingway?"

"Hang on. Here he is. He's haunting Paris right now. Shirley's voice changed again.

"Nobody knows what's in him until he tries to pull it out. If there's nothing or very little, the shock can kill a man. Those first years here when I made my run,...to put myself on the line, I suffered a lot...But everyday the rejected manuscripts would come back through the slot onto the wooden floor, and clipped to them was the most savage of all reprimands, the printed rejection slip. The rejection slip is hard to take on an empty stomach and there were times when I'd sit at that old wooden table and read what had been attached to a story I had loved and worked on very hard and believed in, and I couldn't help crying." 2

"Ah...that's the past Shirley." I said. "I need to know about the future."

"Oh!" Shirley gasped, her voice rising three octaves. "Ah.. I'll see what I can do. Back to you later."

Just then there was a knock on the door. I went to the front of the house and peered through the kitchen window. A man wearing a black gangster's fedora, a black wool suit, a black shirt, a wide white tie, and black and white spats stood impatiently in the doorway.

"Great!" I thought. "Interruptions, just when I'm putting this thing together." Somewhat intimidated in light of the character's appearance, I opened the door and meekly uttered,, "Can I help you sir?"

The man stared at me, shifted what looked like a gun hidden in his black jacket, and then in abrupt, choppy sentences said, "No, but I can help you. I am the grand-master of the literary future-world. You must say what YOU think. That is why your crystal-ball is broken. That is why your psychic attempts are not fruitful. Go back and write."

I gulped twice. "Thank you, sir. I'll do that."

Back at my desk I sat in front of my word-processor and stared at the blank screen. Nothing would come. I was about to give up when I heard some heavy breathing going on behind me and felt something cold, hard, and round press between my shoulder blades. I looked over my shoulder. There, standing behind me was the literary mobster dressed in his black fedora, black wool suit, black shirt, white tie, and black and white spats. His small, black hand-gun pushed violently into my back. "Write this chump: over the next fifty years the short story will go through a resurgence surpassing all other literary forms in popularity; short story collections will be sold in super-markets like soap; there will be unheard-of interest in the science of the future; the biggest and the best short stories will come from writers who go into, not the world as we know it, but the world that is to come; people will clamor for short story collections that entertain; subway riders, air travelers, and Macdonald's Hamburger patrons want quick reads; that's all they have time for; the old Love American Style television format is going to be the model for action-packed, fast-paced television based on the multitude of short-stories that will flood the market over the next fifty years; and finally, Conrad Black will start a large circulation literary magazine which will publish seven short-stories each week. The magazine will be called Sunday-to-Saturday Night. Got that, chump?"

"Got it." I said.

The cold steel left my back, the heavy breathing stopped, and the man left taking his small black hand-gun, gangster's fedora, wool suit, shirt, tie, and spats with him.

I sank into my writing chair and tried to breath slowly. Just when my heart-rate was approaching normal the phone rang. I hesitated wondering whether or not to answer. Curiosity got the better of me and I picked up the receiver. It was Canada's master gatherer, John Colombo. "Hey, Frank, I've got a few for you...Frank...Frank...you okay?"

"Ah...yeah John...I think I've just seen a ghost."

John paused, then said, "Is Shirley up there?"

1. John Steinbeck. Paris Review. George Plimpton (editor). (interview 19__)

2. Ernest Hemingway. Papa Hemingway. A.E. Hotchner. Toronto: Bantam, 1967.

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