"Leaves drifted,
Huge poplar leaves veined with amber so golden
they might have been coin of the realm for a finer world than this one."
Extract from The Paperhanger by William Gay.
I'm reading The Best American Noir of the Century Edited by James Ellroy and Otto Penzler.
William Gay's short story The Paperhanger features in this book. It's another one of his beautifully crafted southern gothic tales. Again, no speech parenthesis anywhere in sight, and this omission of those little pecks scattered throughout the text like chicken feed intensifies the austere and brutal quality of the writing and its overall theme of death and despair.
I haven't written in the short story genre for a few years now so it would be a good exercise to draw on the Frank Erceg research and maybe fire away at some creative writing in the southern gothic style; which fits perfectly into the theme of backcountry Southern Alps of New Zealand, and the lone deer culler hunting in the wilderness.
I took the photo above this morning, gathering the leaves on my walk, looking for William's lost coin of another realm.
