2012writers STILL ALIVE: Margaret C. Murray and Dreamers

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Margaret C. Murray and Dreamers

Margaret C. Murray is a writer and teacher. She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and attended Carnegie-Mellon University and Hunter College. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for the last 35 years and is the mother of three children. She attended the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and was the recipient of an American Federation of the Arts Scholarship and a National Endowment grant. She'll be talking about her recently released novel, Dreamers, a coming of age love story set in the 6o's. More at her website at http://www.margaretcmurray.com/writewords-press/dreamers/

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Collision Course With Collison

Friday Night Knife and Gun Club by Linda Collison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Okay. It's a short story. Make sure you read the book description before you cough up a few pennies (99 cents) and complain that it's too short or has no definitive ending. That kind of review tells me more about the reader than the writer.

Now listen.

I've known nurses that have worked trauma. Some of them in one of the most meanest cities on the planet in the worst possible location--downtown Detroit. That's, incidentally, where I grew up and used to live and work for awhile until I ran for my life when I was strong enough to. I grew up on gallows humor. There's no way you can cope under those circumstances if you don't. And I recognize it immediately. Most people who live happy, sheltered lives can't. And maybe that's a good thing. Maybe not everyone needs to know how staring at death everyday in the face affects your psyche. Maybe not everyone wants to know. No. It's a fact that most people don't want to know. Better to tune into Dancing With the Stars than thinking about the barbarism that has permeated almost every facet of American life. Discretion is the better part of Valium.

In the Friday Night Knife and Gun Club, Collison gives a smack down account of one night on the graveyard shift in a hospital Intensive Care Unit from a nurse's point of view. It's brutal. It's honest. It's concise and it's told with someone who's got a hangman's noose draped over their neck. A shooter comes into the hospital and goes on a killing spree. It's something that's in the news regularly so it's not so far fetched. In fact, it's so supra-real that it makes you either wonder is this writer out of her mind or is she trying to drive home a point that our society, which has become desensitized to violence, can only recognize if it hits them hard in the face at point blank range? I'm certain it's the latter.

Here's the ugly beauty about gallows humor: It covers truth with absurd comedy. People don't like truth but they can tolerate comedy, even if the humor is horrific. Dark comedy. Black comedy. Call it whatever you want. I know it when I see it and I use it often in my own writing and most people just don't get it because they choose not to. It's safer to turn on the TV, microwave a frozen pizza and watch The Big Bang Theory-a popular sitcom that appeals because it relives the same, stupid theme of a bunch of nerds trying to get laid on every episode. That's not newsworthy. In fact, it's more ridiculous than Friday Night Knife and Gun Club. Also, there's no definitive ending to people wanting to get laid just as there's no definitive ending to the seemingly out of control, senseless violence that our society has begun spiraling downwards into.

Collison is going to be a guest on my podcast blog at http://2012writersalive.blogspot.com on April 1st. Pity the fool.

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Thursday, April 26, 2012

Margaret C. Murray and Dreamers

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