Fortunate Isles

By Jay T Wright

Jay Wright collected literary short stories of bebop, traffic jams and edible gene therapy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay T Wright
• Release date: Jan 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463525425

Jay T Wright

Jay Wright’s work has been published with more than a dozen literary presses including Windriver Press’s The Paumanok Review, Tachyon, Alternate Realities, Curve, Left Curve with readings at City Lights Bookstore, Cherry Bleeds and Duct Tape Press. He has also worked with Aardman and contributed to the Star Trek franchise, as well as several bestselling video games.His films and videos have appeared in the Biennial of Poetry and Video MUNAL. They are carried by Museo de Nacional in Mexico, the Vatican Contemporary, NMAC Montenmedio Arte Contemporaneo in Spain, MAMAC Nice, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, PS1 in New York and the Pompidou.His first novel King of Siam was published by Duct Tape Press. Invisible City, another novel which explores themes first presented in King of Siam was orphaned by Doubleday, but has found new life in the digital world. Exiles was attached to Bantam but was not published by them.He has been nominated for a Guggenheim and invited to Arsenal at the Berlin Film Festival and also to the Canary Islands and Florence Biennials, and won several best fest awards at film festivals. His films have also appeared at Cannes Short Film Corner and Clermont-Ferrand. His education includes UC Berkeley, and a BFA from San Francisco Art Institute where he worked with members of Cinema 16 and Warhol’s Factory.

Book preview

FORTUNATE ISLES

By

JAY WRIGHT

copyright 2020 Jay Wright

book design by Underground Assembled

cover art ‘Choicest’ by Jay Wright

published by Underground Assembled

Rejection originally published: The Paumanok Review

Sandalwood originally published: Cherry Bleeds

"Titan’s Junkies’ originally published: Alternate Realities

A Dictionary of Gods or a California Primer originally published: Curve Magazine

The Master excerpt from The Soul’s Tariff (novella)

Inheritance short story companion piece to History of the Unnameables (novel) and Invisible City (novel)

These Ugly Elysian Fields originally published: Cherry Bleeds

Sharkjumper originally published: The SN Review

Voyage In Blue originally published: Left Curve

Broken Fairings (new story)

Rejection

The Writing House

277 Hudson St.

New York, NY 10011

July 10, 2003

Dear M. Marcel Proust:

Thank you for your letter and manuscript, which we are not shipping back even though you included sufficient postage. It is too heavy and the insurance involved in convincing our intern to lift it makes it impossible for us to get it to a post office. We do not pay them and there is only so long you can beat a dead horse before it bites you.

We have reviewed the first five pages of your manuscript Rememberance of Things Past and although the writing is quite strong, it is not direct enough. We, the agents, find that it contains what we like to refer to as superfluous material. If one sentence is superfluous we are certain there will be many more, and because we do not read for entertainment, and do not find digressions have entertainment value, we do not want to help in seeing your novel published. We have years of experience and attended prestigious universities and know what good really consist of.

If we were interested in helping something long and unreasonably digressive get published we still would not choose your book Remembrance of Things Past because it is too thick to fit on a store shelf, and therefore is inconvenient to ship and product place. Also, the only way you could have a book as long as yours is if it had lots of bang for the buck. It should be more filmic, or more like a movie if you will, to keep people interested. We do not mean to insult you by relaying this but you seem to have entirely missed how a novel can function to make it buyable, which is to say, you won’t sell. Not even on the back list. Please take this into account if you decide to write something else. But I digress.

Also, we find that people are depressed by death, and books about death. They also do not want to feel their own mortality ticking down as you relate your superfluous experiences with cookies. There is only so long people can take an old man lying in bed.

Being French is usually a plus when dealing with upper middle class people, the people who buy the most books, but you have failed to make them feel like Francophiles. Think about a reader sitting in a Starbucks or Barnes and Noble bookstore surrounded by culture – Sex in the City DVD’s and Architectural Digest! You could be making them feel like they are in Paris because they are reading your book! That's what you should be trying to communicate. It's about their lifestyle, not your life. This isn't therapy. We want to make people feel smart for reading, as well as in the know and your book about mortality does not fit well with this. In fact it completely misses the point by making them feel their lives are a sham. Furthermore, most middle class people are fairly conservative, and your gay pianist would offend them - he is not one of those gay people like you see on television, and without the entertainment value of this kind of camp, we just do not see how it can work. You cannot threaten people into buying a book. All we can say is at least you have no interracial sex scenes. Even a gay publisher would balk at that! You don't even have any fashionable clothes or women with attitude. It's Paris, for Pete's sake! What do you think people pay money for? No one cares about your arty ramblings. In fact, as a writer, we feel you should avoid art all together. It just confuses people.

Also, if you must talk about dying and pain you should romanticize it so people do not become uncomfortable. Uncomfortable people do not buy books. You should try and make people comfortable. Think of them sitting in their homes in their beds with their designer comforter pulled up around their necks, just drifting off to sleep. Because of you! Just think of it!

We are not saying that everything must be like a greeting card, but certain sorts of themes, we do not mean to imply platitudes, help. Money doesn't grow on trees, you know! We have to support ourselves too!

In the future we suggest that if you want to talk about what food you ate one day or how sick you are, you take a job as a newspaper food reviewer or writing insurance instructions for an HMO. Furthermore, we do not think we can be of any help with any future projects and think your sick joke of dying as gambit to get our attention was uncalled for.

Sincerely,

The Staff

Sandalwood

His base smell of sandalwood. (Ticking frozen sunlight.)

The rest of it, breathing so fast now, scent of it in the freezing air. Oil of Bergamot. Coriander.

From where?

(The blossoms of the shop frozen in mid-sway and the blue Mediterranean light.)

What else? A bit of lemon. And something dusky, earthy, foresty. Molecules still contacting her receptors, body and brain working in concert despite the frozen time registering these simple scents while the other superfluous grindings have faded away.

Oh, yeah - the sunlight has a papery smell all it's own.

The street staccato and shrill now at rest. A parade rest,