“Sorry, But I Can’t Take You With Me” by Lisa K. Buchanan appeared in Issue 39 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
Like many of my stories, this one has a long (twenty years!) history of impassioned progress and protracted respite. The oscillations have kept me thinking about the tension between what today’s readers must know and yesterday’s characters could not. What was it about the early events that made the distant outcome inevitable? How do both eras in the story converse with our present day?
What was the most difficult part in writing this story?
I’m often struck by the extent to which my perceptions change when I learn something about a person’s past. Similarly, I tend to understand myself best (perhaps, only) in retrospect. I knew almost immediately where this story’s characters were headed; the difficulty was learning where they had come from.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
While Bambi: The Story of a Life in the Forest by Felix Salten was first published in 1922, I recently read the 2022 edition, translated with an introduction by one of my favorite fairy-tale scholars, Jack Zipes. The author was a Jew in Vienna and knew the dynamic between hunter and hunted. More Animal Farm than Disney, the original story is not only fascinating for its subsequent metamorphoses, but also powerful and poetic. My favorite scene is a conversation between two leaves, destined to fall from their tree.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I’ve attended many craft webinars using breakout rooms in which three to six people share insights and experiences. Sometimes, they’re hilarious. Sometimes they diverge from the main topic. Almost always, they’re congenial and deepen the discussion at hand. I often wish this intimate group of writers and readers were meeting for a longer discussion in a café or someone’s living room.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I am always working on several pieces at once in varying degrees of completion. I visit them often, staying for minutes or months, depending on the kind of attention warranted. My system is largely intuitive and it has worked for many years.
Our thanks to Lisa for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “Sorry, But I Can’t Take You With Me” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-sorry-but-i-cant-take-you.
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Lisa K. Buchanan lives in San Francisco. Notable, Best American Essays 2023; First Place, Short Fiction Prize, CRAFT, 2022; Finalist, Lascaux Review Prize in Flash Fiction, 2021. Here’s what she has been reading lately: The Nightstandwww.lisakbuchanan.com X: @lisakbuchanan