A collection of short stories and such by Stephen Evans
“a lovely collection, imbued with warmth, wit, and wonder” -BlueInk Review
The Mind of a Writer and other Fables collects the often playful, charming, always quirky tales, short plays, verse, and other inhabitants of the imagination of playwright and author Stephen Evans.
From the Foreword:
When I moved to Minneapolis in 1992, I could not make the drive myself. So my father drove up with me. I spent three enthralled days on the road listening to him tell wonderful tales of growing up in Iowa: how he got his nickname (Trapper); every job he ever held; how he met my mother; his time in the Navy during WWII. And how he wanted to be a writer.
After the war, he enrolled at George Washington University to study journalism, though he soon had to drop out to support his young family. But he kept a few pages of a story he started.
For most of his life, he was a constant and intrepid reader of anything from English history to Louis L’Amour to Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children series (he would have been delighted to know that the last book in the series was coming out). We shared a special passion for adventure stories from the Forties by authors like Frank Yerby and Edison Marshall, Rafeal Sabatini and Harold Lamb. I would comb used bookstores and bring them to him like the lost treasures out of the tales themselves.
From time to time over his last few years, we talked about writing a book together, about his boyhood days in Iowa. He even started making notes. As I look at them now, the handwriting reflects the slow decline in his condition. I can’t make out the last few words. The letters are too shaky. I would have enjoyed writing that book. And I would have enjoyed reading it. He infused every tale with humor and joy in the telling. I imagine he could have been quite a writer. Instead he gave me the chance to be one. I guess that’s what being a father is all about.
He was in his eighties when he finally showed me a story he had started so many years before. I don’t know if there is a genetic component to writing, but his style reminds me a little of mine-quirky, fast, funny. But I could never match his storytelling bravado in person.
The last story in this book is his story (which I have completed and named The Gateway) is his story. The text in courier is his. The rest of the text is mine. I hope it will stand in for that book we wanted to write together.
I never discussed it with him, unfortunately, except to tell him I liked it. So I don’t know what he intended by it, or for it. That I think will be a mystery, at least until I pass through the gateway myself. So I have used that mystery as the heart of the story.
Dad, I hope you and Louis approve.
Stephen Evans
ISBN: 978-1953725783
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What the Critics Said:
“Stephen Evans’ short story collection, The Mind of a Writer and Other Fables, serves as a loving tribute to Evans’s late father, remembered here as an entrancing storyteller who once toyed with becoming a writer himself.
Evans and his father often talked about collaborating on a book, but the elder Evans passed away before they got around to it. Still, he left behind his own incomplete manuscript (a sort of hard-boiled detective story), which his son thoughtfully places at the heart of this collection.
The stories here are diverse, veering occasionally into magical realism, fantasy, and science fiction, but always literary and tightly written.
The shortest stories comprise single paragraphs. Anne Hathaway Remembers, for example, imagines the title character’s longing for her husband (Shakespeare), who was absent for many years. Mrs. Evans Remembers similarly conjures a recollection of the author’s own father through the eyes of his mother. Each manages a depth and intimacy belied by their brevity.
Other stories include fables, oddball premises, and stream-of-consciousness musings, often rather funny, and ranging from silly to profound: Henry David Thoreau tries in vain to sell a publisher on Walden; children erect an army of animate snowmen to repel a zombie apocalypse; a sensitive boy relates being bullied for abstaining from McDonalds, not because he’s a vegetarian, as it turns out, but because he’s a vampire.
There are serious stories too, rendered with sweet melancholy. In one, a young physician tries to help his hallucinating grandfather, who is haunted not by illusion but real memories, each pleasant but heartbreakingly past tense; as they form recollections together they find solace and connection with one another.
The Mind of a Writer is wide-ranging, and not all stories are equally engaging, but most are quite enjoyable and all are rendered with insight and precision. It’s a worthy memorial to Evans’ father, who supported his art, and a lovely collection, imbued with warmth, wit, and wonder.”— Blueink Review
Excerpt:
The Circus of the Animal Crackers
It bothers me that my animal crackers don’t all face the same direction.
Also I can’t tell the rhinos from the hippos.
Which is important because hippos are more dangerous in milk.
My mother says eating animal crackers involves a complicated Ethos.
She says Ethos is Greek for Because I Said So.
I think it may also be the name of one of the three musketeers.
I saw that movie with my father.
They had swords and mustaches.
I liked the swords.
I keep giving them names.
I’m almost ready to eat one and then I think Dave.
Or Ron.
Or Ethos.
Dave is my favorite.
I’m definitely eating him last.
Or George.
George has a broken head.
He may go first.
Or maybe I will free them all.
And we’ll start a circus.
The circus of the animal crackers.
I’ll be the ringmaster.
But I won’t have a mustache.
I’ll have a sword.
