TMR Editors’ Prize
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Current Issue: 35.1 (Spring 2012)
Poem of the Week- David Kirby: “If Any Man Have an Ear, Let Him Listen”
- Larry Levis: “Labyrinth as the Erasure of Cries Heard Once Within It or: (Mr. Bones I Succeeded. . .’ Later)”
- Amy Newman: “The Day After The Dean of Michigan State College Admits Him To Lansing Sparrow Hospital For Rest, A Naked Theodore Roethke Barricades Himself Behind A Hospital Mattress”
Author Archives: Darren
A look at previous Editors' Prize winners, starting with "Nine Worthy and the Best That Ever Were"
The deadline for our 18th Annual Editors’ Prize is less than a month away, and as the submissions start to roll in, we’re finding ourselves a little misty-eyed nostalgic for past editors’ prize winners. Of course, I was not with the Missouri Review for the first 15 years of the contest (so I’m not really THAT misty-eyed), but still, as one of this year’s contest editors, I was curious to see what stories from the past merited the coveted Editors’ Prize. Over the next few weeks, leading up to the contest deadline, fellow contest editor Allyson Miller and I will be re-visiting previous prize winners in fiction, in no particular order, and will give you the opportunity to read them as well by providing a link to the stories on our website. The first story is the 2001 fiction winner, “Nine Worthy and the Best That Ever Were” by Austin Ratner. Ratner’s story uses Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur as an ironic template to reveal the story of a doctor—“Sir” Israel Schelde—his life, love and legacy. Each segment of the story has a heading inspired by the Malory’s epic, a brief title that summarizes what is to follow, for example “HOW ISRAEL SCHELDE WAS CHASTENED AND BADE ANON TO FORSWEAR HIS PENNE BY JAMES HELPERN, THE GHOST BOY.” It is interesting to compare the heroic imagery evoked by these headings to the realism of the passages that follow them. To get to the story, click or copy/paste to your browser:
http://missourireview.com/content/dynamic/view_text.php?text_id=1728
For more details on our Editors’ Prize contest, click the link on our homepage, or go to http://missourireview.com/contest
Editors' Prize Archives: "Coney Island in Winter" (1999)
The 2000 fiction winner of the Editors’ Prize was “Coney Island in Winter” by Dana Kinstler Standefer. It’s the story of a woman, who, concerned for her weight, drinks only iced coffee or Tab for lunch. She works for the androgynous Bob Scheinman, a designer of party dresses, and the story revolves around their relationship, and her own aspirations to become a designer. There’s an odd sexual tension to their relationship from the start that begins to escalate once she makes her designing aspirations apparent to him. He even suggests they make a baby together. However, Bob is dying-it’s never revealed what he is dying of, but it’s not hard to guess. The story has a theme which, interestingly, explores both weight-obsession and androgyny, observing how the fashion world appeals to a fantasy of what women want to become, making the “normal” woman more of an androgynous figure.
–Darren Pine
Editors' Prize Archives: "Tad Lincoln's Ladder of Dreams" (1998)
The story opens with the imagery of death–a small boy dying in bed, the sound of rain from an opened window. A mother and father experience a great loss, presented to us in effective detail. It is not until the second page that we discover the father is Abraham Lincoln. And it is not until this same page that we discover the narrator of the piece is someone who could not have witnessed the death presented so vividly in the first scene. The narrator is Thomas (Tad) Lincoln, the third son of Abraham Lincoln. The dying boy was the first son, who died before Tad was born, so this scene is his re-imagining of what happened, perhaps constructed from events he has been told, or perhaps simply what he feels must have happened. We soon learn that Tad, born with a cleft lip, is not only living in the shadow of the first son’s death, but also in the shadow of the second son, his older brother Willie, whose features-his eyes and lanky frame-are more like his father’s.
Tad’s imagination continues to be a dominant presence in the story, often exceeding what he would actually know, often revealing to us his father’s thoughts as if they were his own. He imagines what his father sees, what he fears. Lincoln is shown from the perspective of a son who is amazed that his father has attained a god-like stature to the people around him. The son imagines Lincoln’s fear of death, and his determination to do what is right in the face of this death, and his desire to go back to a normal life.
But death is never far away in the story. The numerous family tragedies that Thomas witnesses encompass a meditation on death which is both thoughtful and moving. There are many quietly powerful moments in the story. There is honesty in the prose. There is detail in the description which goes beyond the researched aspects of the story, making the reader accept the truth of the piece. There is verisimilitude, one of the more difficult tricks to pull off in a period piece.
– Darren Pine