I just wanted to announce that I’ve published three short stories in Great Jones Street. Two are brand new, and one is a reprint of my “classic” story “Solitude City,” originally published in Kenyon Review.
A preview of the brand-new piece “Preludes” (you can read the rest in the app if you’re an iOS user…GJS is like the Netflix of short fiction):
Her father had purchased bottles of champagne raised from the Titanic. Her boyfriend didn’t believe it either, so she spread the newspaper across the table and read him the article. The prices were unprintable, apparently, with the auction house receiving a record commission. “Could you still drink it?” her boyfriend asked. His name was Kyle. For breakfast, he was eating dried cranberries and almonds from a Ziploc bag. This would be his lunch as well. He was a jazz trumpeter, had a gig that evening, and the mix was supposed to help him store energy.
“I’m not sure why the headline says he’s a ‘Korean-born electronics tycoon.’ He’s lived in America most of his life,” she said. “Apparently, they built champagne fingers for the diving robot and it slowly carried the ‘bubbling liquid gold’—their words—to the surface. James Cameron has one bottle and the rest are up for sale. Were.”
“James Cameron probably drank it from a funnel. And filmed it,” he said.
She’d met James Cameron and he would do no such thing. But really, who knew? Her father was older than ever now and had an impatience for indulgence, as if building a global electronics empire were merely a prelude to something greater, some impossible new task he had less and less time to complete. Salvaged champagne? He didn’t like the ocean because he couldn’t control it, and he hated France. Even during his pre-spartan phase, he rarely drank. She wondered aloud: was this purchase a publicity stunt? An investment? A cryptic message to his newly estranged daughter?
Robert Yune 