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Imaginary Dinner Party, Part Seventeen

By Lynn Crawford
“The cap wasn’t lost, it got stuck up his sleeve”
–Raymond Queneau, Elementary Morality

In fifth grade, our teacher, Mrs. Beckwith, began mornings with freeform, timed, writing exercises. For example:

“When I say start, write something, anything, as quickly as you can. Do not pick up your pen from the paper until I say, stop.”

I never discussed this with Mrs. Beckwith or my classmates, but her lessons distracted me from what I yearned to get out of my system to see, visit, and revisit on paper, but because of my struggle to maintain focus, could not. As Karl, Rose, and the trees in and around my home—possibly even my books themselves—could verify, I have long-standing difficulty with attention. I love the idea of prompts, which spur me to new ways of thinking and writing, yet honestly cannot attempt it until properly attending to what is lingering, like the multiple sentence fragments, nipping at me for development. Yes, Mrs. Beckworth’s assignments might have taken me to places I would not have visited before and of course I believe expansion and experimentation is important, but “there is a time for everything” and each fiber of and in me senses that, for now, broadening my horizon is not a wise personal challenge. I’d rather give a go at being here now.

The best comparison I can come up with is food sensitivity. No one wants to get sick from gluten or shellfish or dairy or duck fat, and, if you do, it is not your fault. Some do outgrow food allergies and I hope to outgrow my dis-ease with experimentation(s). I hope to someday occupy that new comfort zone but understand that overcoming a challenge does not on its own regularly lead to greatness. As Thomas Bernhard reminds us in his novel Yes, “After all there is nothing but failure.”1


Frankenstein [The Modern Prometheus]
By Mary Shelley
Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, 1818
Fiction
Wuthering Heights
By Emily Brontë
[Ellis Bell]
Thomas Cautley Newby, 1847
Fiction

Endnotes

1. Bernhard, Thomas, Yes, originally published in German in 1978 and translated into English by Ewald Osers, 1992.


Imaginary Dinner Party is a literary series by Lynn Crawford that explores “what happens when books join forces.” Read the archive:

Part One, Under Stories (spring 2021)
Part Two, Heal the People (summer 2021)
Part Three, Think Like a Detective (fall 2021)
Part Four, Possession (winter 2022)
Part Five, Forms of Engagement (spring 2022)
Part Six, Conversations (summer 2022)
Part Seven (fall 2022)
Part Eight (winter 2023)
Part Nine (spring 2023)
Part Ten (summer 2023)
Part Eleven (fall 2023)
Part Twelve (winter 2024)
Part Thirteen (spring 2024)
Part Fourteen (summer 2024)
Part Fifteen (fall 2024)
Part Sixteen (winter 2025)
Lynn Crawford’s books include Simply Separate People (2002), Fortification Resort (2005), Shankus & Kitto: A Saga (2016), and Paula Regossy (2020). She is currently working on her next novel, Closely Touched Things. An excerpt from that book, Take Away From the Total, was published in issue no. one of Three Fold.


Read next: Issue no. eighteen poetry section



Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market district in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.