Robert Day

The stories in this collection represent about six decades of writing. Over time some of them have grown the "claws and wings" of novels as Vladimir Nabokov put it. But they were stories first. At the University of Kansas I took a course titled "Narration and Description." Not that I knew what those terms meant but I was curious to find out. It was taught by "Staff."What I found out was that I could not contain myself with those two categories and in an early submission I branched out into scenes. My teacher (a Miss Staff) did not reprimand me for this, but pointed that "scenes" typically had two "unities": one of time and one of place. I had no idea what she meant. But since I had not been scolded, in my next submission, I not only had a scene but I introduced two characters who talked. Meanwhile the other students were dutifully writing narration and description: We walked from our dorm to Strong Hall where our class met and along the way we saw the cars on Jayhawk boulevard.