{"id":31380,"date":"2016-01-17T08:14:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-17T14:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=31380"},"modified":"2018-09-06T02:24:12","modified_gmt":"2018-09-06T08:24:12","slug":"sunday-blog-read-kirstin-scott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/sunday-blog-read-kirstin-scott\/","title":{"rendered":"READ LOCAL First: Kirstin Scott"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"K_Scott\"<\/a>SUNDAY BLOG READ is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and \/ or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir.<\/p>\n

Today, 15 Bytes features Salt Lake City-based novelist Kirstin Scott who offers here a short excerpt from her novel manuscript\u00a0Ajax at the End of Time<\/em>, currently being “shopped” by her agent.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Says Kirstin,<\/p>\n

“In this little section, the so-far-unnamed and usually third-person narrator of the novel briefly steps into the frame to tell this personal story. <\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

“I expect a reader might wonder: Why the sudden intrusion of the ‘I’ voice, and what\u2019s the point of this anecdote? This section has no obvious connection to the story and characters the narrator has focused on thus far in the novel.<\/em><\/p>\n

“For me, narration is one of the central and most compelling mysteries of a novel. Who\u2019s talking? I want to know. Even with (especially with!) books that have omniscient and disembodied narrators\u2014books in which the telling is meant to be \u201ctransparent\u201d to the action, not at all foregrounded\u2014I tend to fixate on the implied speaker. Who\u2019s behind the curtain; who\u2019s moving the knobs and dials; what\u2019s the motivation? Why do they need to tell me this?<\/em><\/p>\n

“What I love about stories is that often we don\u2019t understand them or our reasons for having them. We\u2019ve all heard people interrupt themselves to say, ‘I don\u2019t really know why I\u2019m telling you all this\u2026.’ And isn\u2019t this often a signal that inside that story (or around it, or under it) is something rich, true, and important? <\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0“<\/em>I want this section of my novel to serve as that signal for readers.”<\/em><\/p>\n

*<\/strong><\/p>\n

from the novel manuscript\u00a0Ajax at the End of Time
\nby Kirstin Scott<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I once had a feeling\u2014it was a conviction; I thought it was a premonition\u2014that I was going to win something. An essay contest, A Hero in My Life, five hundred to one thousand words, that my fourth grade teacher obliged us all to enter.<\/p>\n

Writing had never been so easy. I had my story in the bag. My uncle, after all, is El Devorador. In my essay I described his mask: sharp white teeth stitched around the mouth hole, the smooth red face and head. I described his bulging arm muscles, the sheen of the skin across his huge round chest (I have a photo). I said how he was never unmasked, how he was undefeated for the whole of his career, how he was a t\u00e9cnico<\/em>, a good guy\u2014the way he threw opponents to the ground and then somersaulted lightly over them so as not to hurt them really. My hero.<\/p>\n

Of course, I left out some information. I didn\u2019t say how brief El Devorador\u2019s career had been, maybe only twenty matches or so, all in the small Chiapas city where he and my mother were born. I didn\u2019t say he\u2019d come to the U.S. and then disappeared and that I never knew him. Most of all I didn\u2019t tell the other story my mother used to tell about him, how as a kid my t\u00edo<\/em> once pretended to be blind. For half a week or so he\u2019d crashed around the house for just the simple reason\u2014after days of her prayers and tears\u2014that he could gift his mother with a miracle at Mass. And that\u2019s what he made happen. One hand gripping the back of the pew, he fluttered his eyes into focus; his gaze rose up to meet his mother\u2019s. With pleas to Santo Ni\u00f1o Jes\u00fas Doctor still pouring from her mouth, wrecked with sudden joy and gratitude, she fell into her son\u2019s arms. And if my mother ever disapproved of or resented her brother\u2019s deception in this instance, you wouldn\u2019t know it now.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt made our mother so happy!\u201d she\u2019d say, tearing up. \u201cHer prayers were heard. The best day in her life. A miracle.\u201d<\/p>\n

When as a nine-year-old I wrote down my uncle\u2019s abbreviated legend, I felt certain he was out there, El Devorador. When I would have won the essay contest and come into sudden fame, he\u2019d have read my essay and arrived to find us (so I thought). I\u2019d be a hero to my mother then, continuing the noble line and putting back a missing bit of family.<\/p>\n

I feel he\u2019s out there still. He\u2019s maybe even close to us, living here in Salt Lake City, pouring cement or something, lying on the couch. Of course now I know he\u2019s ordinary. He let himself be swallowed up; the silent months and years took him down without a fight. The good guys and the bad guys and the strutting in the ring: it\u2019s all staged, in case you didn\u2019t know, but in this case I doubt he even bothered to pretend.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll be back. I\u2019ll stay in touch. I\u2019ll send you money every month.<\/em><\/p>\n

He was El Devorador. I had a photo of him.<\/p>\n

#<\/p>\n

Copyright, Kirstin Scott, 2016<\/p>\n

Kirstin Scott<\/a> is the author of the novel Motherlunge\u00a0<\/b><\/i>which won the AWP Prize and the Utah Original Writing Competition.<\/p>\n

Her short stories have appeared in\u00a0Alaska Quarterly Review, Hayden\u2019s Ferry Review, Sonora Review, Western Humanities Review, PANK,\u00a0<\/i>\u00a0and elsewhere. You can read the 15 Bytes review of Motherlunge<\/em> here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Past featured writers in <\/em>15 Bytes\u2019 Sunday Blog Read:\u00a0Katharine Coles<\/a>, Michael McLane<\/a>, Darrell Spencer<\/a>, Larry Menlove<\/a>,Christopher Bigelow<\/a>, Shanan Ballam<\/a>, Steve Proskauer<\/a>, April Wilder<\/a>,Calvin Haul<\/a>, Lance Larsen<\/a>, Joel Long<\/a>,Lynn Kilpatrick<\/a>,Phyllis Barber<\/a>, David Hawkins<\/a>,Nancy Takacs<\/a>,Mike Dorrell<\/a>,Susan Elizabeth Howe<\/a>, Star Coulbrooke<\/a>, Brad Roghaar,<\/a>Jerry Vanleperen<\/a>,Maximilian Werner<\/a>, Markay Brown<\/a>, Natalie Young<\/a>, Michael Sowder<\/a>, andDanielle Beazer Dubrasky<\/a>,\u00a0Kevin Holdsworth<\/a>,\u00a0Jacqueline Osherow<\/a>, Stephen Carter<\/a>,\u00a0Alex Caldiero<\/a>,\u00a0Stephen Tuttle<\/a>, Raphael Dagold<\/a>, David Lee<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Lisa Bickmore<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

SUNDAY BLOG READ is your glimpse into the working minds and hearts of Utah\u2019s literary writers. Each month, 15 Bytes offers works-in-progress and \/ or recently published work by some of the state\u2019s most celebrated and promising writers of fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction and memoir. Today, 15 Bytes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1566,"featured_media":31415,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,2513],"tags":[26,1639,2712,1301],"class_list":["post-31380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-literary-arts","category-read-local-first","tag-15-bytes","tag-kirstin-scott","tag-motherlunge","tag-sunday-blog-read"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/K_Scott.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 06:42:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1566"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31380"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35438,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31380\/revisions\/35438"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31415"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}