Galley Beggar Singles Club 2

As I’ve said on here before, I’m not totally sold on the idea of e-readers, but one benefit has been the emergence of the ‘single’ – with low overheads, publishers can easily put out short stories at good prices, giving readers the chance to get a quick fix of an author’s work while they wait for the next novel, or discover a new writer without having to commit to buying a full-length book. Galley Beggar Press has been making the most of the opportunity with their singles club, releasing a new short story each week, priced at £1. Previous releases have included new work from the likes of Tony O’Neill, Nikesh Shukla and Gordon Burn Prize winner Benjamin Myers. Here’s a round-up of their latest singles. 

Vienna Famous: Plankton

Vienna Famous’s debut release is a deeply odd story, with a strain of lyrical surrealism, like Lear or Lewis Carroll transported into the modern urban world. The narrator is a meek man, confused by the world of aggressive alphas. Everyday items are thrown into odd juxtapositions by his jarred senses: 'A scrap starts in the high street outside Debenhams and I join the crowd, straining to see through the copse of raised camera-phones'. Two men are fighting, using an Argos catalogue as a weapon: 'At the crucial moment, a page of garden equipment covers the face of the man on the right and he is punched square on the lawnmower'. The narrator is caught up in the fevered atmosphere, but is put back into his place when he is confronted by a man whose ‘microwave stare parboils my statement’, and he is quickly sent on his journey down the rabbit-hole: 'As I attempt to parse this farce, he folds me up neatly, stamps my neck with his sovereign ring and inserts me into the nearest post box with an unsurpassable arabesque’.

From here, he winds up in a town called Plankton, in Nova Scotia. A parody of a politically correct nursery for sub-alpha males, Plankton’s routine includes therapeutic porpoise-bashing sessions (no euphemism, I think). Feeling increasingly assertive in these new surroundings, he eventually comes to learn about the consequences of aggression, after being swallowed by a cetacean, obviously. It would be interesting to see how this style would work over the course of a novel, but Plankton is both fresh and unusual, a good combination for this format. 

Tony O’Neill: Almost Blue

Tony O’Neill, on the other hand, deals in harsh realities. This is familiar territory for fans of O’Neill, another unflinching trip into the dark side of Hollywood, but his writing retains its customary bite. Almost Blue is the story of a non-fatal overdose, a moment of panic resolved by the narrator simply throwing a pitcher of cold water into his friend’s face. The incident serves to shed light on the addict’s warped sense of priorities; as William recovers from his near-death experience, the narrator wonders ‘if  it would be rude to sneak off and fix a shot so close to the incident. I absently ponder if there is an established protocol in these situations'. Their housemates, meanwhile stop off to buy takeaway on their way to the scene of the emergency, providing a moment of humour when they diffuse the situation by pointing out how prompt the service always is.

O’Neill’s imagery occasionally becomes gothic (the body of a starved pet is thrown into a ravine to be eaten by coyotes), and the whole story acts as a reality check for the cult of Doherty, Keef et al. The narrator is a failing musician, and rather than acting as his muse, heroin leaves him artistically constipated: ‘The band is stalling badly and I am blocked. The songs I have are pitiful, piss poor imitations of better songs by better bands'. Again, you get the sense that O’Neill is drawing on experience in his fiction, giving his stripped-down prose a visceral feel. The short story format is an excellent introduction to O’Neill's writing, which, like that of Hubert Selby Jnr, provides an extremely intense experience, and is not to be entered into lightly. His singles distil this energy, giving you plenty of punch without turning into a prolonged beating.

Jon Fortgang: The Last Eight Minutes of Light

The Last Eight Minutes of Light is a dark coming-of-age story focussing on Joe, a boy dragged on a camping holiday to Scotland with his mum and her new boyfriend Mark. They are there to watch an eclipse - Joe has very little interest in the proceedings, but 'Mark, who's a musician, is into all this kind of thing’, and now his mum is too. Joe is dealing with emotions and situations which he isn’t yet ready to process, and the idea of two separate adult males in his life is particularly unsettling. At the same time as Mark has arrived in his life, his father has also reappeared: 'two weeks ago your dad, who you've only met twice, sent you a 'friend' request on Facebook.' He is at once attracted and repelled by Mark, a disruptive new factor, finding ‘his body, his presence and power, compelling and hurtful in equal measure'. 

The Last Eight Minutes of Light is a clever psychological sketch, building up tension in its 18 pages, and Joe’s voice feels realistic. The story captures something of the pre-adolescent's power to disrupt, to cause damage without thinking, and also of the confused mix of influences which Joe isn't yet ready to deal with - relationships, status, adult issues which he has heard of but can't yet fully understand. In his confusion, he is ready to lash out, and Fortgang shows the danger of his ambivalent feelings towards Mark in particular. As with all good short stories, there is an element of ambiguity in the ending, allowing The Last Eight Minutes of Light to linger on in the reader's imagination.

The singles are available from the Galley Beggar store, at £1 each