Rest in Pieces

by Percy spurlak Parker

Working in the shadows of Woodrow Wellington Hanks, the famed literary critic for the New York Daily Tribune Times, I was in the prime position to observe the events surrounding the aftermath of his death.

To his throngs of readers his death was a particular horrid and grotesques occurrence, seeing as he'd been shot several times and then dismembered, his body parts scattered throughout the city. To the writers who suffered the public poisonous lashings of his Critic's Corner column, and oft times career ending prose, the same news was cause for joy and celebration.

His death mimicked one in a recent novel he'd blasted, Bloody Millions, by Barry Bestist. The novel chronicles the life of a Columbian underling, and what he does to climb to the top of the drug cartel, each time killing in exotic fashion the person one rank above him.

Hanks had berated the novel as outrageous lackluster dribble, without a modicum of believability. Naturally the police jumped at Bestist as their number one suspect, but Bestist was at a book signing at the time Hanks was murdered. I was elated when the police released him. Personally, I'd found his novel both entertaining and informative, especially the chapter on how the main character painstakingly dismembered the body.

Now that the Critic's Corner will be carrying my byline, I plan an extensive rebuttal of Hanks review of Bloody Millions. Barry Bestist has become my favorite author.

How to Kill a Critic

by Evie Christie

If this was set somewhere great like Sunset Boulevard, you’d find the critic dead in a pool, here, at the beginning. Anywhere will do though, I’m a poet. A hotel stairwell is sufficient. It’s clear that our critic struggles to become a known, if not renowned, author, that he’d eventually like to be remembered as someone who sold well. That he has been in the vicinity of prominence in writing classes with venerated professors who touched his papers and said kind little words about them, it’s possible. That he mastered the fine art of his own writing and was rewarded with lowly gigs like this one: poetry.

The book aside (it wasn’t great but whose is anymore?) there’s the boorishness, that’s the real issue. What if we were to show up at the same party? I couldn’t stand to see the oh, poor you glances of overworked publicists as they sweat it out in Smart Set ensembles, sneaking half sandwiches all night—not even once. I’m a good girl and as such don’t carry revolvers or pistols or anything helpful. I like blood and guts but I’m also a tidy person, this limits me. I’m also a very serious minded person and I need to get my work done in a timely manner, I have a schedule here above my monitor. Week 1 went like this: 1 line, writing, running, market, housekeeping. Week 2: 2 lines, writing, yoga and so on until I could do more blow than a businessman in a foreign layover suite (with an equally foreign stayover sweet). I cut it less and less into weeks 6-8, by week 14 my habit was forceful and pure. You can get a lot done this way.

I began our meeting with pleasantries, and was, thoughtfully asked back for a drink later. I wondered at how he afforded his hotel drinks and also at how remarkably lousy he would be at fucking. I wore stockings because I always do, they are effective, they set a heightened tone, don’t they? I had a drink and we settled against the coffee table for the evening. It wasn’t everyday ‘ham and cheese lunch’ the dealer had explained, no, it was the kind of blow your mom would pack for your birthday lunch (if mothers even pack their children’s lunches anymore, he scoffed). We did this for most of the night, it’s an aggressive and consuming way to go with an evening and most people end up talking too much and blowing the fine, progressive dread that’s actually become the best part of the experience for me. He was so attached to his childhood dog! You wouldn’t believe it. I suppose we’re all kind of pathetic and human about those things. I could see he would need mouth to mouth or an ambulance--not the dog (that was a straightforward hit and run followed by the kindest of shotgun surprise adieus), the dead guy.

Speak Softly

by August C. Bourre

The night I killed him wasn’t the first time we’d met. There’d been a reading, not one of mine, and the chubby milk-fed bastard took it upon himself to make introductions. He had wet hands. I don’t expect everyone to be a fan, but when the man who had just demolished my first novel in the Globe presented himself to me as though I ought to be grateful that he stooped to recognize the book at all, I was genuinely offended. He was the most arrogant man I’d ever met. He struck me, and I hope this doesn’t come off as hyperbole, as the sort of man who kicks puppies or lights cats on fire. The son of a bitch needed killing every day of his life. I excused myself as soon as it was polite, and hoped to never hear from him again.

It was two years before I had another book out. My mother had been sick, and I was afraid she wouldn’t live to see a third. Naturally it was dedicated to her. My first novel had sold well, bad review from the Globe aside, so it was only natural those few outlets that still cover books would review my second one. Guess whom the Globe assigned to review it. He found my characters flat, my plot hackneyed, my prose stiff. Every writer will hear these or similar criticisms at one point or another in their career; those I could have lived with. What was unforgivable was his writing that it was good that I dedicated the novel to my mother, as it was the sort of book “only a mother could love.” As though I was unworthy of my mother’s love, had no legitimate claim to her pride in me. As though my gift to her in her final years was a joke.

The second time we met was outside his home near High Park. It was after midnight, and he didn’t see me. I had a silver Smith & Wesson revolver, a little snub-nosed twenty-two. I put the barrel behind his left ear, and let it give a whisper. The bullet rattled around in his skull until his brains were mush. I used a revolver so I wouldn’t have to hunt for shell casings in the dark. The cylinder on the revolver was too large for a Toronto storm drain, so it’s now sitting somewhere at the bottom of Lake Ontario, wrapped in a towel sealed with black hockey tape. I have no doubt it looks like any other rock down there in muck. I didn’t stay to watch him twitch, but I didn’t run either. I got on the first streetcar headed to the lake, and then went straight home. It’s been six months and no policeman has ever knocked on my door. I regret nothing.

Open or Closed

by Brian Palmu

MARLOWE:
The unkindest cut (and I’m not talking about the foreskin), he’ll soon be
thrown into a hole in the ground where waning moons press wan light on rabid
curs doing their St. Vitus dance on an unmarked slab. He’s done.

DONNE:
That’s me, Detective.

MARLOWE:
I hope it shall never be so, Constable. Pray, what, again, were his last
words?

DONNE:
This footnote to a particularly vituperative report on the love poems of a
serial bomb builder: “After finishing Mr X’s sixteenth redundant
monstrosity, my spleen may soon explode. Speaking of explosives, in my
garden there’s a strange black bag with a red wire affixed, and snaking
athwart the rustling rhododendron. Think I’ll go investigate ….”

MARLOWE:
As for the murderer, we didn’t need the fingerprinters. Remaindered one week
after the launch, and now the grey pinstripes. Poor shit.

DONNE:
Note the knife’s angle of entry into the critic’s blood-congealed melon. He
was a southpaw, I reckon. Perhaps a Faulkner/O’Connor acolyte? Was the
victim, in sympathy, a federalist, or worse, a formalist?

MARLOWE:
The internecine poetic thrusts and sallies aren't for the faint or feint of
heart, I’m afraid.

DONNE:
What did the wretched scribbler leave behind?

MARLOWE:
No family or friends to speak of. A dented cocker spaniel. A fierce bust of
William Logan. A month’s supply of industrial-strength soap.

DONNE:
Aye. If there were at least one supporter to etch on his cold granite:
“Ultimately, his hands were clean.”

How To

by Fred Fawnicoly

So, when kill a book reviewer? Not “critic”, since this north-side-of-the-border hasn’t had a resident critic since Frye died. Reviewers have to have social agendas, since preening’s important to them. Ask around. This is Canada, after all. Everybody knows everybody. Go to a place your hate-object will be, preening. Aim, shoot, and leave.

Who? Book reviewer? Yep, the one getting exposure in the journals, mags and papers that pass your obviously superior work up. ’Nuff said.

Where? In front of as many book maggots as possible. Preferably at a prize-awarding ceremony. Outside on the street, obviously, because only the clique particular to the award will be invited inside. They’re Torontonians. No one will grab you after. Wear a George Bowering mask. Everyone who doesn’t live there hates the West Coast.

How? Well, in a coffee shop near Jane and Finch, I met a guy who knew a guy who’d sell me a 9 millimeter. Met another guy on another day who’d do the job himself, guaranteed, for the same price as the handgun. So your part’s easy enough. Wear a George Bowering mask. Pay the guy who’ll do the job. He won’t give a shit what coast you’re from. He’ll think it’s a Nixon mask.

And what? Yes, a reviewer is a what.
Why kill a reviewer? Well, why kill a cock roach? Why kill a Norwegian rat? Rhetorical questions are sooooo annoying!

by Penn Kemp

Cutting Re: Marks, or The last SOB, or “Only a Play but My Play”, or The Hedge Hog, or The Cock's Comb, or The Head Cheese, or Critical Mass/Mess/Age, or Enough!

“Lame!” So the Critic panned my latest play, dismissing months of labour in one derisively decisive cliché. I limp from the computer, crestfallen. Cock o’ the walk, this Reviewer never hedged bets nor minced words so his blog goes viral fast. My thesaurus suggests apt synonyms for Critic: enemy, opponent, detractor, censor, columnist. Calumnist! Drama­- he wants drama? He’ll soon be dead-panning, minced-meat: mark my words. This Detractor will be tracked down. His next review will be his life's, before the screen goes blank.

Revenge is sweet, they say, so I bake a cake when I know he’s coming over. A death-day cheesecake, with tinfoil-wrapped coins for Cerberus inside. Slicing his piece, my knife slips... How clumsy of me, raspberry-icing cake in his face like that. (Beware Playwrights scorned...)

Now I literalize the metaphor, scalping that wigged-out crest right off his head. Underneath is a mass of worms squirming like grey cells: a paper wasp’s nest, a mess of sodden bills in low denominations of payola. A head in hedge funds: that’s how his mind roils. Cutting this long story short, I leave the knife wiggling in his wooden blockhead.

The crummy Critic on my floor looks up beseechingly, mouth rasping scarlet. I lean low under the hedge of wig to catch his last sob: “How could you? It was just a play…” His eyes glaze cherry-red. I’d better be quick before he’s dust. “Eat chalk,” I snarl, stalking off to key in my forthcoming title, Justice: a Play.

The Masticating Critic

The critic couldn’t read if he wasn’t also eating. This was problematic because he had to read a lot. He was on deadline for a review of The Collected Letters of Blake Brinings, Vol II, which collected Briner’s correspondence from age 12 to age 16, about 1,196 pages, not including endnotes and several appendices. It was the largest book he’d seen in some time. He was literally, physically incapable of reading more than a stop-sign if he wasn’t masticating. Beholding the colossal Brinings galley, which felt as heavy as if he was holding his own massive gut in his hands, he’d driven straightaway to the city’s food-supply center, where farmers drove their trucks into an automitive bazaar that the city’s restaurants came to in order to buy their vegetables. The critic had purchased a huge flat of celery from a mute Latino dude in a 49ers cap—about 40 bunches worth. He then drove home, sat down at his kitchen table, and started ploughing through the celery. He’d began dipping it into a low-calorie vinagrette, the recipe for which he’d poached from his stepmother, but he'd eaten so much celery by early afternoon that he was now morosely crunching stalk after stalk, turning the pages in a steady rhythm, occasionally making notes in the margins—little celery and radish-shaped tics of disapproval. The review would be easy to write, because the book was awful. Brinings was a brilliant novelist, but his brilliant novels were published when he was in his 70s, in the early 1980s – an old Australian man inexplicably situated at the white-hot center of London’s New Wave punk-rock scene. A 76-year-old Australian who wrote novel after novel that defined (and redefined) what it meant to be young and New Wave in London in 1981. This is was all well and good, but the letters, this hugely voluminous correspondence from his adolescence in the 1920s, was excruciating stuff. “Mummy loves me, I know it, but she loves me only from a biological imperative. If I met mummy on the street, or in a cocktail bar, mummy wouldn’t give me the time of day. This makes me loathe mummy. I loathe mummy.” This is largely what filled the book’s pages. Um, then suddenly the critic died, because the mute Latino, who was actually a guy who had some fancy literary reason for hating him (wearing a fake mustache, and a fake cap), had poisoned some of the celery. In 'revenge.' Sorry. The end.

Blind Judge

By Nathaniel Moore

God was doing sit-ups when the golden phone began to ring. It was 11:45am EST. Silver pools of sweat all over the master bedroom floor. The golden phone was loud. God was crunching; when this particular line rang, it ruffled several of God's closest clouds, including Tyranny, Tyra, and Taylor. The vibration tore small holes in the lining. God did tens of thousands each month, these strenuous God sit-ups, and the accompanying strained vocals familiar on earth during exercising.

Another loud ring. God sweated lions. A third ring. Huffing majestic. On the fifth, someone answered. One of God's handlers. A pause; a moment. God noticed the golden receiver glistening in the heavens, tin the hands of a friend. God exhaled and grabbed a towel; beads of God's sweat were sopped up in the gentle thread count.

“God, it's for you. Are you in?” Someone said, hand over the mouth piece. “You available?”

And then God spoke, gentle but firm. "Yes...yes, that's good, I see. Right. Really? Well that's great for a six week window. Especially in the summer! Congratulations. Sure go ahead. [PAUSE] I like that one! Very tetrastichous! I mean Tetrastichus. It's a lot of work yes. Well, I want to retire in 400 years but that's not going to happen either!" God laughed. God listened. God listened to the voice on the other end. Something about a poetry contest.

“Which one now? Oh I see. Well that is popular these days. Did they include a S.A.S.E.? Okay. Shortlist their poem, plus three others, lose fourteen in the mail, and outright disqualify the rest. Anything else?” God asked.

“No, that was last night. Squats. Six thousand. Everyday? Are you kidding. No, twice a week tops. Yes, yes, right, sure I'd love a contributor's copy when it's ready. No, thank you.”

God put the phone down. A cloud rolled on its side and began to laugh. A ray of sunlight giggled. God sneezed, catching the nostrils before too much wind expelled.

“That could have been messy.”

“No kidding.” One of God's creatures said.

Writing Lesson

by Lydia Ondrusek

Ivor Miskelson was a hated child.

Like a weed that sucks up repeated attacks of pesticide to become, finally, poisonous itself, he dealt with the rejection of his relatives and peers, raised himself from the garden plot, and became the grotesque focus of all eyes, unplanned impediment to the growth of everything around him.

Ivor Miskelson became a literary critic.

Read To Me, Miskelson’s television show, was a trainwreck. Millions tuned in every week to see if its host could, by a series of increasingly ugly jabs, again reduce a bestselling author to tears. He did not disappoint. Until Jonquil Esterhaus.

He questioned her lifestyle, laughed at her hat. She admitted her changing from writing children’s books to cozy mysteries could cripple the educational life of a generation. Her demeanor remained serene. After reading the teaparty scene from “I’m Afraid The Vicar Is Out,” she even kissed Miskelson during the closing music. Credits rolled with them deep in conversation, holding hands.

Police responded to a call from Esterhaus the next morning to find her in her bedroom, marking galleys. The late Mr. Miskelson sprawled fully dressed across her calico bedspread, dried spittle on his chin and an empty cup that looked like it had held cocoa clutched in stiff fingers.

“He said I was fascinating, that he wanted to see what I was working on next,” Esterhaus said to the detectives as people dealt with the body. She patted the galley of “The Coroner’s Cocoa.”

“So I showed him.”