Winter Gothic Tales and Tex-Ethiopian BBQ
George Saunders, Benjamin Appel, and a Dallas Restaurant where Injera meets Brisket
Hello!
Welcome back to the Writing Atlas newsletter, bringing you a new curation and discussion of short stories every week! We’re writing to you from yet another barbecue-induced food coma courtesy of Smoke’N Ash, a Tex-Ethiopian restaurant in Arlington, Texas where injera meets brisket and pulled pork. The casual establishment was one of The New York Times’ Top 20 Restaurants of 2022 and we highly recommend. It’s counter service, so you don’t need to make a reservation … which we did. Also worth checking out: their injera nachos!
Opposite from Texas are the short stories we have to share: cold, snowy, and gothic. (Or is it really opposite? Texas has had its difficult winters in recent years.) Our second curation below is from Cate Burtner, a junior at Stanford University studying English literature who loves anything to do with the written word. In her free time, she volunteers, writes for The Stanford Daily, and makes art. As spring nears and winter comes to a close, we hope that Cate’s stories can keep you company through the final stretch of cold! (That is, if you live in a place where winter means something. It’s just another day in California.)
The Winter Gothic by Cate Burtner
These stories have gothic vibes and are set in the winter—perfect for getting comfortable by the warm fireplace, while getting uncomfortably creeped out. They involve classic elements of gothicism including an emphasis on the past, ghosts, death, illness, curses, transformations, unstable states, and suffering. While gothic writing shares characteristics with horror, instead of being genre fiction, gothicism fits within literary fiction. Here are my recommendations for five winter gothic short stories for different types of readers.
For the literature lover: “Winter Meeting” by Benjamin Appel (full text here) is an interpersonally-driven story about a group of children and two men who suspect each other of murder. The story is complete with suspicion, explorations of family dynamics, and murderers on the loose. Using original, descriptive language, the short story plays with the ideas of the living and the dead, all against a chilling winter backdrop. In “Winter Meeting,” color also works together with the seasons to create an unmistakable natural aesthetic. Similarly, Appel uses readers’ sense of sound to cleverly weave free indirect discourse into the story, giving us multiple blended-together perspectives. Childlike innocence is juxtaposed with the violent premise involving murder in a story that is tonally eerie and totally winter.
An (extra) short story for those short on time this winter: read the quick “Frozen Stillness” by Alfred Morang (full text here). At three short pages long, this story revolves around a family, an illness, and a curse. The story is direct and moves at a fast pace—qualities that I at least found refreshing as a reader. Rather than languishing in world-building, Morang cuts straight to the chase. With seemingly wholesome characters and subtle but undeniably dark undertones, the story’s gothicism is laid out for us. While the tone is sharp, what I find most clever in this short story is the interaction between the story’s wintery backdrop and the story itself. First of all, the wind “dies” as one of the characters does. Similarly, the title “Frozen Stillness” evokes winter as well as death, winter and death being a significant literary trope. This story is a great way to get a ghostly undercurrent and an efficient plot.
For those who would be excited by a simultaneously gripping and meditative story, I recommend “Cold Wind” by Nicola Griffith (full text here). In readable prose, Griffith gives us a story that is initially tough to get down, but easy to digest once read. While in a Seattle bar, a woman lays eyes on another woman whom she finds fascinating, like this woman is the person she is waiting for. The two women seem to have a mystical connection and find themselves in the winter woods, where their true identities are revealed and transformations occur. While the story itself is absorbing, the descriptions of feelings have a meditative air to them. There is a moment in which “the world swam and lost focus,” a beautiful description that is open to interpretation and gives a reader room to ponder. Set in the winter in the Pacific Northwest (my home region!), “Cold Wind” is a gripping winter story involving intense attraction and a big reveal, plus it is available for free online!
Even though December is long past, I recommend “Tenth of December” by George Saunders (full text here) for the curious and avid reader. Walking alone in the ten-degree snowy weather one day, a boy named Robin catches up with a man who is intent on freezing to death. When cutting across the frozen lake doesn’t go as planned, the tables turn and the man comes to realize the value of a life. Despite plotlines of death, near death, and illness, “Tenth of December” is an uplifting Gothic short story that focuses on sacrifice and shows us that sometimes saving someone else means saving yourself. The story is full of short, choppy sentences but manages not to be overly simplistic. Interestingly, the story also blends perspective shifts, different characters’ thoughts, and dialogue together without punctuation. This stylistic choice forces readers to read actively—a challenge that is worthwhile and should be taken advantage of. For a short story, “Tenth of December” had impressively extensive character development. With detailed backstories, offhand glimpses into thoughts, and actions that speak volumes, our characters are complete to us, and so fun to read about. The final ‘point’ that this story gets from me is the way that it throws us into the scene and setting—the story shows us and doesn’t merely tell us. This is a very good thing that is often hard to do right, especially within the short story form.
Finally, for the winter sportsperson, I strongly recommend “The Ledge” by Lawrence Sargent Hall (full text here). The story follows a father, son, and nephew who leave for a fishing trip on Christmas day. After they shoot and kill nearly one hundred ducks, they anchor themselves in the middle of the lake to eat lunch. The group becomes stranded, with water slowly rising. Death, suffering, and uncertainty loom large in this Gothic tale. The ducks’ deaths and the fate of the fishermen are connected in an interesting way. Man and nature are also connected through the physical discomfort and eventually suffering that is undeniably linked to the winter weather conditions. Additionally, there is an interesting contrast in the story’s setting. Even though it takes place on Christmas day, a wholesome time of family and rejoicing, the story borders on horror, and a family is separated. The tone and content is militant throughout, while the ending is purely terrifying. While I do recommend this spooky story to a winter sportsperson, I would not recommend it to anyone who is about to go ice fishing!
Whether you’re having a peaceful, busy, or unpleasant winter season, there is a Gothic story for you to read in Writing Atlas’s extensive catalog. Even though the holiday season is over, winter is still around for a few months, and you have reading to do!
Cate’s Wikipedia Page to Note: Prophetic Perfect Tense
Instagram led me to the page for prophetic perfect tense, which is writing tense that is most commonly used in religious texts. The tense describes future events that are so certain to happen that they are referred to in the past tense as if they had already happened. Here is a diagram of how it works:
I’m looking forward to the next time I see this tense used—I’ll know what to call it!
Cate’s Favorite Gothic Emoji: 👻🌬️🌕💀⌛❄️🧤
We often associate “spookiness” with Halloween, but I want to use these Gothic stories to bring spookiness to the wintertime! 👻, 💀, 🌕, and the ⌛ (a focus on the past) represent the Gothic while the ❄️🧤🌬️ represent winter.
I appreciate you taking the time to read this newsletter update, and I hope that the story recommendations bring you some joy.
Thank you, and enjoy!
Cate Burtner, writer and curator
Other Items That Brought Us Joy This Week
While we are the topic of Texas versions of cuisine, we were amused to discover Texas Eggs Benedict (made with beef brisket!) on the menu of Perle on Maple in Dallas. Other versions of this dish are made with black beans and Texas toast.
And during Valentine’s Day, we were entertained to find heart-shaped pizzas heart ❤️ 🍕 in the refrigerated section at Target 🎯 …
… As well as a heart-shaped boba bottles ❤️🧋 at Gong Cha. (We debated, but passed because it cost $2 more for less beverage). Fun fact, one of us Writing Atlas community members played a role in the creation of the🧋 emoji, which was designed by Yiying Lu. (One observation: it’s not insignificant there are Asian American women in senior roles in tech these days!)
If you’ve made it this far, thank you once again for joining us on our weekly newsletter/barbecue odyssey. We hope to keep sharing these curations of short stories and providing you with new discoveries of all kinds.
If you would like to curate stories, or share quirky photos and foods with the community, please let us know by responding to this email. As always, keep visiting our Writing Atlas homepage as we work to update it! And for our new subscribers (hello!) you can check out our first installment here.
Sincerely,
Your Writing Atlas team
Please share and spread word of our support of writers.