Aaron Burch

RIP Mitch Hedburg

MOUNTAIN R by Jacques Jouet, translated by Brian Evenson

photo of first page of Mountain R: SPEAKER OF THe HOUsE - The floor belongs to the president of the Republican Council. THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLICAN COUNCIL - We must do something. We must. Something must be done, something must be accomplished. It must not be said that we have not done anything. We must do more, and do it better than anyone has ever done. And moreover, this extraordinary something, we will do it. We have already conceived it, and are here to make it official. This something even has a name, and its name is The Mountain.. Republic Mountain ... it is Mountain R! Now there's a name that says it all. Mountain with a capital R. We shall call it henceforth Mountain R. The Republic is magnificent-long live the Republic! — but it looks like a flat-chested girl. Too bad! But we are going to alter her, the Republic... we are here to act... to give her what we can: a womanly figure. The most beautiful girl in the world can afford to give all she has and more, if that beautiful girl is the Republic... the Republic of exceptional self-improvement! Is there anything more beautiful than a mountain? Anything health-ier? We shall build a mountain. Among us let it be said, we…

I read this in grad school, in 2009/10, and loved it, and just picked it up again, and only two pages in and holy shit it is already the funniest, most contemporary seeming, best book I’ve read this year.

photo of printed out paper in a 3-ring binder sitting on folded out place seat table. paper reads: TACOMA (title of my novella, forthcoming from Autofocus Books in February)

plane reading

“It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” a super fun song… but maybe not what you most wanna hear at the airport.

man, I fell asleep watching it on my phone in my hand, in inning 13, I think it was

when you open the email and it's an acceptance

I can be a real sucker for a great haunted house story! See: Jim Ruland’s “The House on Dead Confederate Street,” published a couple years ago here on SSL; see, too: one of my favorite novels of the last few years, The Grip of It, by SSL contributor Jac Jemc. As soon as I read “The Writing on the Walls” as a submission, it felt a part of that lineage. While doing something both familiar and a little unlike anything I’d read before. I don’t even want to say too much more. I’m so excited to get to share this one today! In general, but maybe especially here in October. I hope it crawls inside you and lingers like it has with me. —Aaron Burch

I normally write SSL story introductions the morning of, then hit publish, but going to be out of town on Tuesday so I scheduled the post, and thinking about what I love about the story, I remembered Jac Jemc's amazing The Grip of It & Jim Ruland's great story “The House on Dead Confederate Street”

How about: Thanks, boss!

when you open the email and it's an acceptance

(I've spent the last 25 years devoting my time and energy to getting really good at something that like 130 people care about 🙃)

I guess I did actually used to be married to something of a benefactor...

someone should pay me a living wage + benefits to edit literary journals & read for pleasure

go M's! ;)

that background painting is amazing

there were a series of animated shorts on the tracey ullman show about a crudely drawn, yellow family of five. no one ever seems to remember the tracey ullman show, but I dug those shorts. seemed like there was something there!

idk, man, I still say, "I'm the baby, gotta love me!" probably at least once a week

"who did all this sort of crazy evil science" is a pretty amazing phrase

I've worn my house slippers the last three mornings, and it is such a delight

Something about a Short Story, Long story Short Story, Long has been my favorite new Substack discovery of 2025! All my Substack subscriptions go to my yahoo email account so I end up being behind on them, but this one is a real treasure, and I look forward to digging through the archives. Short fiction might be (IMO) the most perfect and beautiful form, so I love what you do to shine a light on it and show case stories. One of my recent favorites was Amy Stuber's story (loved her debut collection), and of course I love to read anything Lindsay Hunter writes, so that was a favorite, too...but slowly, surely, I look forward to making some new discoveries!

Agreed!

(re short fiction maybe being the most perfect and beautiful form, but re loving everything from Stuber & Hunter, too!)

What's So Funny? Not Roseanne, not anymore, anyway.

this older @biblioracle.bsky.social post about using ROAS (react, observe, analyze, synthesize) to think about comedy and what's funny, specifically/especially in response to Roseanne Barr and Marc Maron, has become one of my best teaching tools

biblioracle.substack.com/p/whats-so-f...

Quickly mapping out Matt Mitchell’s essay on Freaks and Geeks in preparation for my “art of the essay” class…

This quote pops up a few times a year, and usually that "I'd rather put a gun in my mouth" is what especially sticks with me, but man believing that artists think, "boy, I wish I had AI to solve the thorny problems of making art" feels so bonkers but also illuminating.

Haha. Yes! And I guess I maybe regretted some at the time, when $10-$15 was all my money in the world. But I've grown pretty zen with old age and one of my core beliefs has become supporting art with money.

I've never regretted buying an album.

George Saunders: It’s changed a little. In some cases now I have a sort of pre-sense of what I need to make a story – usually just these broad action/escalation markers. If I can figure those out in advance, I can engage that improvisatory energy in figuring out how I get from one marker to the next. In Tenth of December, ‘Victory Lap’ and the title story were written like that – the rest were pretty much improvisations. I love that Gerald Stern quote: ‘If you start out to write a poem about two dogs fucking, and you write a poem about two dogs fucking – then you wrote a poem about two dogs fucking.’ Or, as Einstein said it, in his slightly more snooty manner: ‘No worthy problem is ever solved in the plane of its original conception.’ So the trick is to keep the conscious, conceptual mind at bay and thus stay open to mystery, revelation etc.

Sinners score and soundtrack on vinyl

Photo of Sinners soundtrack on two discs, one red, one blue

photo of Sinners soundtrack vinyl insert showing table of contents for accompanying essays by Hanif Abdurraqib, Jake Blount, Ludwig Goranson, and Ryan Coogler

Hell yeah. Preordered these months ago, as soon as I got home from seeing the movie. Excited they’re here!

“Returns” “She was breathless, as though she had no idea where to start among all the things we had to talk about.”

I keep meaning to read more Ernaux! This was one of my fave stories I've read in the last few years

www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

JUST taught this in my "art of the essay" class earlier this week!

magazine.catapult.co/people/stori...

I went long enough without looking at gmail (my work email) that my phone... muted/uninstalled/silenced (?) the app and I just haven't redownloaded it and it's easily one of the best work/life balance things I've ever done.

have been slacking on my "short story a day" habit that I've been doing the last couple years, but have read and accepted three stories for Short Story, Long the last couple mornings, and what a treat & gift to read and fall in love with a story... and then accept it, getting to publish & share it!