I have been really into Gretchen Peters lately. You might not know the name but you probably know her work, because she wrote “Independence Day.” “Nashville” (the song) is by David Mead (not Gretchen Peters), but I like her version better.1
July in posts
I did so few standalone posts this month that I can’t even thread them into a cute narrative. Writing a book is ruining my blogging!!!!!
July in writing abroad
July in Japanimation
July in perfume
August in research
You probably know that Playboy once had a blockbuster short fiction section, was a very prestigious place to publish, and so on. Oddly enough, Playgirl seems to have tried to do the same thing. But Playgirl was (I think it’s fair to say) never really able to get Playboy’s own kind of louche prestige, and thus its own attempts at developing a fiction section are not as well documented. A while ago, I ran into this problem after reading a letter recommending a story in Playgirl called “Only Occasionally and Very Small Dragons.” No author given. The title returns… nothing. But I found it very charming (the title, I mean), and I was feeling challenged. So.…
The letter is from the spring 1974. So we can guess it’s from sometime in early 1974 or late 1973. It’s certainly not older because Playgirl itself began in 1973. To eBay!
It may not surprise you to learn that (1) people who wrote not very famous short stories are not on the cover of Playgirl and (2) people who buy vintage Playgirl don’t really care about the fiction. However, eventually, I found a listing for a March 1974 that had a picture of the table of contents. Computer, enhance.…
Thar she blows.
Now that I am furnished with the relevant copy of Playgirl, which is somewhere in Michigan shoved under things so that I don’t have to look at the cover, I find there’s no author info about Sharon Pickens in the magazine. It doesn’t look like this person published that many other stories—if any.2 It’s an okay story; it’s definitely not a lost treasure but it’s not awful either. It’s basically about a woman who can make dragons, and her son can see them, but if he ever mentions the dragons her husband, who cannot see them, beats him. The title is the best part.
Anyway, what I have also discovered is that there’s a Ursula K. Le Guin story that was published in Playgirl and hasn’t (as far as I can tell) been anthologized. It is called “Cake and Ice Cream.” If this somewhat sketchy website’s listing can be trusted, what you want to find is the February 1973 issue, the one with the Hager twins. Or you can go to the University of Oregon and read it in the archive, which is what I did.
What kind of story is it…? “Cake and Ice Cream” is a story about turning thirty and hating your life. Its never being anthologized ever is probably a good stand-in for whether or not it’s worth reading beyond curiousity and completionism, and I would not say it’s worth paying $90 for (the going price on said sketchy website, into which I also would not personally want to enter any credit card information). It’s a little like Joanna Russ’s early realist stories which are fine but lacking an essential Russness.
But it does make me curious about who else might have written for Playgirl once and then never again. Not curious enough to buy a bunch of vintage Playgirl, however. I have to save that money for fanzines and trips to Oregon.
Sometimes I go on these journeys and then discover at the end that somebody already did all of that. (For instance, figuring out the identity of C.L. Moore’s mysterious and doomed fiance was a pleasant use of a few hours, but it had not only already been done, it turned out to be… in her Wikipedia page.) This time, however, I feel like… sixty percent confident that I am the only person to have done this particular journey for the Sharon Pickens story. (I have found one allusion to the existence of “Cake and Ice Cream” on JSTOR.)
Next month: 🎶 Salt air… and the rust on your door… 🎶
Some August preorders.
Queen Mab (Emily McBride)
Three Tenses (Ed Park)
The Life of M. (Rachel Cusk)
Thirty Cabins (Zine)
N.B. I really like Queen Mab. I read an ARC and pitched a couple places on a review without any luck. There will something about it on here in August or September.
August in Japanimation
Princess Mononoke (Hayao Miyazaki), August 15
My Neighbors the Yamadas (Isao Takahata), August 29
August in perfume
In theory, Providence Perfume, round two. However, because of traveling, that might get bumped back to September. We’ll see.
Incidentally, Taylor also did a very good cover of “Nashville” during the Speak Now tour. I’m not going to link to it, because those links have a knack for getting copyright struck, but if you look for it you’ll find it. Or you can get the Speak Now tour DVD, I guess, since it’s apparently on there. (I actually do own this DVD but have never watched it.)
Also, one thing about Gretchen Peters is you can seen the line from her kind of storytelling songwriting to Taylor’s very clearly, i.e., take these two lines from Peters’s “Jezebel”:
Wear them like a crown
Your scarlet hand-me-downs
Or “On a Bus to St. Cloud” (best known for Trisha Yearwood’s version):
And you chase me like a shadow
And you haunt me like a ghost
And I hate you some, and I love you some
But I miss you most
But, as going from listening to Peters to trying out the new Gracie Abrams reminded me, this kind of storytelling through detail is the basic thing many Taylor 2.0s don’t… seem able… to do…? (Though I don’t know why people are so het up trying to figure out who “Death Wish” is about when it’s clearly about J. Robert Oppenheimer.)
Trawling through newspaper archives, I can find Sharon Pickenses getting married. I also found a news article from The Marion Star about a Sharon Pickens Teague who played music under the stage name “Tangee.” An obituary (not for Sharon, but I’m not going to link to it here) points me in the direction of an act called Tangee and Tommie. And sometimes… friends?
So: maybe this is the writer of our story. But maybe not. It could be a pen name, or it could be that somebody who otherwise did not pursue a career in the arts placed a story in Playgirl and maybe a couple of other similarly un-digitized places and then called it quits.
B.D., ghost story please. It's the first of the month, well almost. I like ghosts who wear big glasses.