A story
of lost childhood
I never doubted my mother’s love. I was her favorite. In fact, I was born to be her redemption. She sealed my destiny with a name: John (gift of God) and Alexander (leader of men). She groomed me for the ministry, had me reading the Bible when my first-grade peers were reading Dick and Jane, paid me a quarter for every Psalm I memorized. I was her answer to those who’d vilified her as a child, deemed her unworthy — the unwanted daughter of an unknown father. It was my duty as her firstborn to put things right. To serve as proof that her life had counted for something after all.
”
[From “The Story of My Life”]
At Home in 1946 (Mills Home Baptist Orphanage, Thomasville, N.C.)
Plott Revisions is a reimagining of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale as a series of extra-marital adventures that lead divorced empty-nesters Henry and Martha Plott back to each other as revisions (for better or worse) of their former selves. By turns serious and comedic, the style will appeal to fans of Andrew Sean Greer's Less, Julia May Jonas's Vladimir, and Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Good Squad.
On Boxing Day, gifts were as good as money. The stores were less fussy about receipts. Martha had tossed into her car, along with yesterday’s booty, a couple of sweaters she’d bought last year on impulse but never worn. She wished that store policies were even more liberal. If only she could exchange Henry for a decent pair of shoes!
[From “Plott Revisions”]
John's Word Factory in the Blue Ridge Mountains
This Kafkaesque tale challenges the reader to judge from five pieces of evidence whether Allen Creech is guilty or not guilty of the crimes he imagines. [Published in Confrontation 117 (2015): 41-45.]
Carla’s vow to stick by her man, recently admitted to a nursing home, is tested by a handsome young worker at the facility. [Published in The Louisville Review, 71 (2012): 76-85.]
While visiting his adult son in a mental institution, a father considers what he might have done differently to have saved the boy. [Published in The Missouri Review, 31 (2008): 66-75.
A parody of Edgar Allen Poe’s tale of revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado,” set in New York City, 1974. [Published in The Little Patuxent Review, 14 (2013): 83-91.]
A young instructor at St. Benedict’s School for Boys forms a friendship with an elderly lay brother, who helps him come to terms with an unspeakable sin he committed. [Published in Zone 3, 26 (2011): 12-28.]
A wronged husband takes his guilt-ridden wife shopping to help her feel good about herself again.
Jozef Praski, a world-famous pianist, has defected to the U.S. at the height of the Cold War. However, he cannot escape his memory of the horrors of the Warsaw ghetto and, worse, the guilty knowledge of what his survival cost.
J. Randal Webster and his wife Charlotte have opted for an open marriage, unprepared for what happens when Randal falls for a girl only a few years older than their teenage daughter.
A young man is beset by “white guilt” after being excused from military service. The setting is the South. The
time is the mid-60s, when two great issues converged to test the national conscience: Civil Rights and the
Vietnam War.
An aging husband quizzes his wife about an old affair––an elegy for the slipping away of time, memory, desire.
After Dr. Harry Hillman's wife, Mitzi, dies, the widows and divorcees of Temple Beth El line up to take her place, and the good doctor is pulled in every direction by his devotion to his beloved Mitzi, by his Orthodox faith, and by his troubling sexual urges.
John Alford is Professor of English (Emeritus) at Michigan State University; he has also taught at the University of California-Irvine, the University of Virginia-Charlottesville, the University of Leeds (UK), and elsewhere. He is a Guggenheim Fellow as well as the recipient of two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Humanities.
John likes bluegrass and opera and, above all, a good sentence. He is currently finishing his second novel, Prurience, and gathering materials for a memoir. He lives in Asheville, North Carolina.
John is currently open to offers of representation. He can be reached by email at jalford1@colourfield.com.
