About The Man, The Myth, The Legend

One of IndieRead­er’s Best Books of 2013.

The Man, The Myth, The Leg­end, Chris Orcut­t’s new short sto­ry col­lec­tion, show­cas­es his fer­tile imag­i­na­tion and writ­ing artistry as applied to the per­fect genre for busy readers—short fic­tion.

A col­lec­tion of enter­tain­ing and unique sto­ries about 10 men, The Man, The Myth, The Leg­end explores the idea that while men may come from very dif­fer­ent walks of life, at root they are more alike than they seem, grap­pling with the same issues and fac­ing the same dilem­mas: love, lust, adul­tery, greed, pride, ambi­tion, revenge, death, and a desire for their lives to mean some­thing.

From the emo­tion­al­ly poignant to the out­ra­geous­ly humor­ous, these sto­ries dra­ma­tize the lives of a wide range of fas­ci­nat­ing men:

•  African big-game hunter
•  Writer and bond sales­man
•  Homi­ci­dal vio­lin­ist
•  Road sign “engi­neer”
•  Boot­leg­ger
•  Glob­al grain explor­er
•  Cor­po­rate speech­writer
•  Pro­fes­sion­al dog­catch­er
•  Fine arts painter
•  Civ­il War gen­er­al

In the award-win­ning sto­ry “The Boot­leg­ger,” an ordi­nary man goes to extra­or­di­nary lengths to pro­vide for his fam­i­ly dur­ing the Great Depres­sion. In “The Blonde Imper­a­tive,” a mod­ern man con­tends with some­thing all men have since the begin­ning of time—gut-wrenching temp­ta­tion. And in “The Lost Dis­patch­es of Gen­er­al George B. McClel­lan,” an infa­mous Civ­il War gen­er­al reveals the piti­ful but hilar­i­ous depths of his own self-decep­tion.

How­ev­er, women read­ers will enjoy this col­lec­tion just as much as their male coun­ter­parts. Rela­tion­ships between men and women play an impor­tant role in sev­er­al of the sto­ries, and a few fea­ture a love sto­ry. Indeed, one of the themes of the col­lec­tion is that men only reach their fullest poten­tial when bask­ing in the love of a great woman.

Brim­ming with action-adven­ture, ample humor, and clean, pic­turesque writ­ing, The Man, The Myth, The Leg­end com­bines the com­pelling nar­ra­tive dri­ve of great movies (“What hap­pens next?”) with the gem­like beau­ty of the short sto­ry form.

Buy: Ama­zon

 

Exhttps://a.co/d/gHUQPSWcerpt from The Man, The Myth, The Legend

From “The Blonde Imper­a­tive”

He sprang up in his chaise, shield­ing his eyes, and scanned the pool­side. No sign of Alice. See­ing the cabana tent still emp­ty, Shel­by swam a quick back­stroke lap, tow­eled off and bought two giant frozen mar­gar­i­tas with salt. He put on his shirt and lay down in the shade of the cabana. He opened his lap­top and spread out a draft of the speech so it looked as if he’d been work­ing. He sipped the mar­gari­ta. What if she’d already been out here, got­ten bored and left? Between day­dream­ing, call­ing his wife and get­ting spooked by Scrip­ture, he’d tak­en longer than expect­ed to get out here. For all he knew, Alice was inside seething and would ignore him for the rest of the event.

He hap­pened to be gaz­ing at the water­fall when in his blurred periph­ery he saw her. At first all that reg­is­tered was a tall shape with a lot of bare skin. Then his eyes focused on her. She wore a Tiffany blue biki­ni with white trim. Chin up and shoul­ders back, her blonde hair made bouf­fant by a white plas­tic hair band, Alice looked like a Price Is Right mod­el show­cas­ing a grand prize trip to Bali. God, you shouldn’t have made this woman so beau­ti­ful. Why tempt me like this? Screw you, it’s not fair.

She smiled at him and scrunched her shoul­ders as she passed the life­guard stand. Step­ping under the cabana awning, she plopped a can­vas tote on the chaise oppo­site and reached for a mar­gari­ta. “Oh, I love you.” She took a sip, clos­ing her eyes and lick­ing her lips. “You have no idea how much I’ve want­ed one of these. You’ve been work­ing, I see. Get any sun?”

She sat down and stud­ied him. Her legs were crossed and a white Dr. Scholl’s san­dal dan­gled from her foot. Shel­by hadn’t noticed the pro­sa­ic footwear ear­li­er, for obvi­ous rea­sons.

“Oh, sure,” she said, the mar­gari­ta poised in front of her, “you got some col­or. I must look like snow, don’t I?”

He was about to take her ques­tion as an invi­ta­tion to ogle every last inch of her, but he locked eyes with her instead.

“No, you look per­fect­ly healthy,” he said.

“Oh? Is that your con­sid­ered pro­fes­sion­al opin­ion?”

“As a mat­ter of fact, yes.”

 

For an addi­tion­al excerpt, check out this full-length read­ing of anoth­er sto­ry in the col­lec­tion, “The Mag­nif­i­cent Mur­phy.”

 

What are the contents of The Man, The Myth, The Legend?

The col­lec­tion con­tains the fol­low­ing sto­ries (in quotes) and addi­tion­al con­tent:

•  “The Last Great White Hunter”
•  “The Mag­nif­i­cent Mur­phy”
•  “Sonata for Knife & Vio­lin in D Major; Op. 1 ‘Revenge’”
•  “The Man Behind the Signs”
•  “The Boot­leg­ger”
•  “Sev­en Whole Grains on a Mis­sion™”
•  “The Blonde Imper­a­tive”
•  “The Dog­catch­er”
•  “The Charmed Life and Sin­gu­lar Death of Jacob Homer Stan­ley”
•  Bonus Sto­ry (down­load­able PDF): “The Lost Dis­patch­es of Gen­er­al George B. McClel­lan”
•  A Note from the Author
•  About the Author
•  Excerpt from A Real Piece of Work

 

Where did you come up with the title The Man, The Myth, The Legend?

It was on a cof­fee mug that my moth­er had giv­en my father sev­er­al years ago. I cov­et­ed that mug for a long time, until my moth­er gave me one of my own. Then, in the ear­ly spring of 2013 when I was try­ing to come up with a title for the col­lec­tion, I real­ized that all of the sto­ries were about men. I want­ed a title that was amus­ing­ly grandiose and would con­vey a sense of “leg­ends in their own minds,” and I remem­bered that mug.

 

Are any of the stories in The Man, The Myth, The Legend taken from real life?

Not exact­ly. With a cou­ple of them, some­thing from real life might have pro­vid­ed the ini­tial ker­nel of the story—that is, the thing that got me won­der­ing, “What if…?”—but on the whole, the sto­ries are 100% fic­tion.

 

Can you tell us where you got the ideas for some of the stories?

Sure, take “Sev­en Whole Grains on a Mis­sion™” for exam­ple. My wife and Muse, Alexas, and I were in a gro­cery store cere­al aisle, frus­trat­ed at the most­ly emp­ty sec­tion of Kashi® cere­als, when I said, “They must be out on one of their grain-find­ing mis­sions,” and Alexas retort­ed, “Yeah, to find that elu­sive eighth grain.” In a rare and won­der­ful moment of Gestalt, the entire vision of “Sev­en Whole Grains” came to me: a James Bond-esque Glob­al Grain Explor­er who goes all around the world seek­ing out new grains for Kashi®.

“The Boot­leg­ger” came from tales I had heard about my pater­nal grandfather—a smart, mul­ti­tal­ent­ed, col­or­ful man whom I nev­er knew (he died before I was born). Besides work­ing as a car­pen­ter and as a stone­cut­ter in a quar­ry, and besides hav­ing adven­tures as a hunter in the Maine woods and clean­ing house in bar fights in Port­land and Boston, he left behind evi­dence that he had been a boot­leg­ger dur­ing Pro­hi­bi­tion. So, the sto­ry uses those ideas as a start­ing point and expands on them in fic­tion.

Final­ly, “The Dog­catch­er” came from my see­ing des­per­ate signs for lost pets (par­tic­u­lar­ly dogs) all over the place, and those signs offer­ing, in some cas­es, “SUBSTANTIAL” rewards. I got think­ing that some­body must be out there find­ing these lost pooches, so I imag­ined this guy who makes a liv­ing as a pro­fes­sion­al dog­catch­er, and I imag­ined his voice as being like that of a detec­tive in a 50s noir movie.

 

The Man, The Myth, The Legend—a collection of short stories—seems a radical departure from your Dakota Stevens Mystery Series. Why not simply continue your detective series instead of coming out with such a different brand of fiction?

Actu­al­ly, I’ve been writ­ing short sto­ries far longer than I have the Dako­ta nov­els. Dako­ta Stevens and Svet­lana Krüsh only go back as far as 2003-04, but I’ve been writ­ing short sto­ries since I was 12, when I would read them to my friends on the school bus. I’ve had about two dozen sto­ries pub­lished in lit­er­ary jour­nals, and it’s a form of sto­ry­telling that I’ve been hon­ing for over 30 years. Many of my favorite writ­ers were pri­mar­i­ly short sto­ry writ­ers, and I’ve assid­u­ous­ly stud­ied their work: Anton Chekhov, John Cheev­er, Ray­mond Carv­er, Ernest Hem­ing­way, Guy de Mau­pas­sant, and F. Scott Fitzger­ald.

The rea­son why I didn’t sim­ply con­tin­ue the Dako­ta series is that, like some oth­er writ­ers, I believe that we don’t choose what we’re going to write about, as much as what we’re sup­posed to write about choos­es us. Nine of the 10 sto­ries in the col­lec­tion were writ­ten over a three-year peri­od, from the sum­mer of 2010 to the sum­mer of 2013, and it so hap­pens that dur­ing this peri­od a bunch of char­ac­ters oth­er than Dako­ta and Svet­lana grabbed my atten­tion and insist­ed I write about them. The sto­ries in The Man, The Myth, The Leg­end (MML) rep­re­sent only about a third of my short sto­ry out­put dur­ing this peri­od, so there might be anoth­er col­lec­tion on the hori­zon.

 

Why is one of the stories only available as a downloadable PDF? Why didn’t you include it in the ebook?

First, the sto­ry in ques­tion, “The Lost Dis­patch­es of Gen­er­al George B. McClel­lan,” is includ­ed in the print ver­sion of The Man, The Myth, The Leg­end. The rea­son I couldn’t include it in the ebook is that it con­tains lots of his­tor­i­cal foot­notes, and cur­rent ebook for­mat­ting stan­dards don’t han­dle foot­notes well—if at all.

To rem­e­dy this, I con­sid­ered putting the sto­ry in the ebook with­out the foot­notes, but since so much of the humor and dri­ve of the sto­ry comes from the con­flict between what’s going on in McClellan’s mind (ram­pant fan­ta­sy and para­noia) and what actu­al­ly hap­pened (his­tor­i­cal real­i­ty), when I took out the foot­notes, the sto­ry lay there like a wet dog.

Because the theme of “The Lost Dis­patch­es” dove­tailed so nice­ly into the over­all theme of MML—men as leg­ends in their own minds—I didn’t want to release the col­lec­tion with­out it, so I cre­at­ed a PDF of the sto­ry, which can be read on a reader’s Kin­dle, iPad, etc., and I put the sto­ry on the Orcutt.net Bonus Sto­ries page. The sto­ry is includ­ed in full in the print edi­tion of the col­lec­tion.

Inci­den­tal­ly, McClel­lan’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy—McClel­lan’s Own Sto­ry—is fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing, and I wrote the fic­tion­al entries in “The Lost Dis­patch­es” to mim­ic the con­tent, tone and dic­tion of the auto­bi­og­ra­phy.

 

Have any of the stories in The Man, The Myth, The Legend been published elsewhere?

Yes. “The Boot­leg­ger” appeared in the 2003 MOTA: Courage anthol­o­gy and received an Emerg­ing Writ­ers award. The oth­er nine sto­ries in the col­lec­tion are brand new and have not appeared any­where else.

 

Besides the fact that the central characters are all men, what else do the stories have in common?

I’d say that the worlds in all of the sto­ries are a lit­tle bit larg­er than life, slight­ly hyper­bol­ic in some cas­es. In MML, what­ev­er world my char­ac­ters find them­selves in—whether the world of cor­po­rate speech­writ­ing or fine arts painting—everything is height­ened. Some­thing else that most of the sto­ries have in com­mon is that they’re part­ly about men’s rela­tion­ships with women, and how we, as men, usu­al­ly only reach our fullest poten­tial when we’re bask­ing in the love and ado­ra­tion of a great woman.

 

What is your favorite story in the collection?

We writ­ers love our sto­ries like par­ents do their children—equally, but for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

I love “The Last Great White Hunter” because with it I cre­at­ed a kind­heart­ed par­o­dy of an obscure genre: African safari big game hunt­ing books. I love “The Mag­nif­i­cent Mur­phy” because in it I lov­ing­ly spoof one of my favorite nov­els, The Great Gats­by, telling the sto­ry in the pitch-per­fect voice of Nick Car­raway. I love “The Man Behind the Signs” because it tells the behind-the-scenes sto­ry of some­thing we encounter every day but take for granted—road signs. And final­ly I love “The Lost Dis­patch­es of Gen­er­al George B. McClel­lan” because of how much the fic­tion­al let­ters and telegrams sound like those in McClellan’s real auto­bi­og­ra­phy (an auto­bi­og­ra­phy that I checked out of West Point, his alma mater, and noticed had nev­er been opened before).

I love all of the sto­ries, but I don’t want to give away too much about the col­lec­tion, so I’ll stop gush­ing now.

 

* Foot­note: The bril­liant MML book cov­er design is by Elis­a­beth Pinio. The stu­pen­dous pho­to­graph on the cov­er, “315/365 — The 365 Toy Project,” is by David D. (a.k.a. puuik­ibeach) on Flickr. My heart­felt thanks go out to both of them.