chuq@sun.uucp (Chuq Von Rospach) (01/09/86)
I thought you all might like to see this. It's from Writers Digest, February
1986, copied without permission (obligatory plug: if you want to learn how to
be a writer, WD is a great magazine. It won't teach you how to write, though
...)
---
Hemingway in parody lives on almost as well as the real work of Hemingway.
Harry's Bar and American Grill is again sponsoring the International Imitation
Hemingway Competition, seeking one page of bad, but funny, prose written in
Papa's style.
Deadline is Feb. 15, 1986, for complete rules and an entry blank, write to
Harry's at 2020 Avenue of the Stars, Los Angelese 90067.
The prize? A visit for two to Harry's Bar and American Grill. The branch in
Florence, Italy.
To best explain what the judges want, here's the winning entry, by Peter
Applebome, in the 1985 competition:
In the late summer of that year we lived in a condo in North Dallas that
looked across the tollway to the discos and honky-tonks of the Rue St.
Bubba. We were young and our happiness dazzled us with its strength. But
there was also a terrible betrayal that lay within me like a Merle Haggard
song at a French restaurant.
"The Great Landry said the Cowboys will be back," said the girl.
"Then it must be so," I said though I knew it was lie.
"When football season comes, then it will be cold. Like Switzerland. But
not now. The cold will be later."
"Pass the Doritos," I said and her eyes shone like the staors over
amarillo.
I could not tell the girl about the woman of the tollway, of her
milk-white BMW and her Jordache smile. There had been a fight. I had
punched her boyfriend, who fought the mechanical bulls. Everyone told him,
"You ride the bull, senor. You do not fight it." But he was lean and tough
like a bad rib-eye and he fought the bull. And then he fought me. And when
we were finished there were no winners, just men doing what men must do.
And the pain was washed away like a blessing and like a curse.
We went that summer to many clubs. We went to the Longhorn Ballroom and to
the Palm and to a honky-tonk in Ft. Worth that was what Harry's Bar would
have been like if it had 85-cent Pearl Beer and a barmaid whose peroxide
hair could damage your eyes as if you had watched an eclipse. That night
we visted them all, but as we drove home I did not think of the Pearl Beer
and I did not think of the peroxide. I did not think of the girl who sat
beside me. I thought of the woman of the tollway, and I could feel my
heart pounding in the heat of the summer night.
"Stop the car," the girl said.
"There was a look of great and terrible sadness in her eyes. She knew
about the woman of the tollway. I knew not how. I started to speak, but
she raised an arm and spoke with a quiet and piece I will never forget.
"I do not ask for whom's the tollway bell," she said. "The tollway belle's
for thee."
The next morning our youth was a memory, and our happiness was a lie. Life
is like a bad margarita with good tequila, I thought as I poured some
whiskey onto my granola and faced a new day.
--
:From catacombs of Castle Tarot: Chuq Von Rospach
sun!chuq@decwrl.DEC.COM {hplabs,ihnp4,nsc,pyramid}!sun!chuq
It's not looking, it's heat seeking.