A Few Questions: Lewis Nordan’s “Sugar Among the Chickens”

May I present a few questions before asking you to read “Sugar Among the Chickens” by Lewis Nordan?

What if you, a lover of good fiction, read seven paragraphs in the middle of a short story that seem to have no strong reason to be there? What if those seven paragraphs are beautifully written and you’re drawn into them and love them? Now, if they don’t hurt the story, mightn’t they add to your enjoyment of the story? Does something strange and bad happen to the arc of the story if those seven paragraphs stay in? Does the arc of the story, then, become a flat-top hill? Would you then give a rat’s ass about the flat-top or would you suggest that the seven paragraphs come out of the story, so that a verified arc could be visualized by you and, say, another reader, or an editor, or student, or professor? Does a flat-top, arc-like line reduce the power of the epiphany? Isn’t epiphany a funny word? Kind of like elephant in a mirror? And how can you have an effective climax if the arc is flat-topped and thus not an arc? Am I making fun of something? Or light of something? If either, how would my intentions affect our holding back chaos with art?

Did you ever fall in love with a story? Have you … now think about this—have you ever fallen out of love with a person? You certainly have, haven’t you? Have you ever been able to explain how falling in love works? You haven’t, have you? Falling in love is not the opposite of falling out of love, is it? Do most falling-out-of-love experiences resemble yours? In how many ways can a story bring us the ache of love? Isn’t that one thing we want—even if the story is not “about” romantic love?

Does the difficulty of stating a story’s theme mean an editor shouldn’t ask a writer that valuable question: “What’s your story about?” Do you remember the theme of your first love affair? Does the word theme seem to take some of the muscle out of the memory of your first love? Does affair?

Is remembering more precious than the act of describing, of attempting to describe? They go together, don’t they? The word love is so much more deeply situated in your heart than the term love affair, isn’t it? And word is more solid here than term, isn’t it? Placed warmer than situated? Does all love ache because death stands in the distance, watching?

Would you now read this Reclamation story, written by a friend not long ago carried away by death, Lewis “Buddy” Nordan—a story that gives us permission to ask literary terms to fall away and make room for hope, fear, and fun? Who among us thinks of psychology during acts of love?