Kris Bertin, "The Game"

It’s December 15. Kris Bertin, author of Use Your Imagination!, would like to buy a vowel.

How would you describe your story?

KRIS BERTIN: “The Game” is a story about aimlessness, about the ways in which young people, especially young guys who only have each other, create meaning for themselves out of absolutely nothing. With a gigantic collection of Boggle dice, two friends who have made a pact to stay together (a pact that they are more or less unable to keep) find ways to act out strange and sometimes dangerous commandments they receive as messages in the random assortment of letters. It's also about being in-between things, and finding ways to cope with the pressure of being stuck. What was interesting to me is the ways in which imagining meaning in things allows us to actually understand and confront what we actually want out of life. In this way, this story is about writing itself, which (for me) is a kind of psychotic fact-finding mission where you dig into your brain's muck and dredge up what it is that you want and what you're most afraid of, which are often the same thing.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

KB: I wrote this story when I was younger and still had a roommate, and it's very much a snapshot of that part of my life, where my love for my friend and my efforts to make him happy were the most important thing in my life. I also wrote this story before I was married and before I was a father, and now that I am, the actions taken by Brad, a married father of a small child, seem almost horrific to me. The process of writing the story itself was quite different from a lot of other work because the narrative device of random words and sentences really did drive the story rather than the usual plot and framework. I'd get to the point where the guys would roll the dice and I'd just type in anything that came to mind, which led to some very strange places, especially towards the end when things are spiraling out of control. It was liberating and totally exhilarating to create the flourish with the dice, because I never knew what I was going to put there until I hit the little bold 'B' and started typing. It was like I was playing the Game myself.

What kind of research went into this story?

KB: A lot of my peers have degrees that I don't and—probably because I don't have those degrees—I always found their little academic world totally fascinating. I did attend university but left without graduating, so I had only a limited understanding of collective bargaining, job availability, or anything else that goes into becoming a professor. This meant the only research that was required was the real-deal details of how and why one of these two could have gotten their job while the other didn't. I relied on (O. Henry Award winner!) Alexander MacLeod, who helped me with this story (and plenty of others) by giving me a few options that might best explain their predicament. It's a small thing, but once I had it, the crazier parts of this story felt properly situated in an otherwise-real world.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

KB: Despite the publishers that act like short stories are the novel's ugly cousin, I think the short story is the real thing, the main thing. In my mind, it's not just an ideal form, it's pretty much the original one. When someone tells you a really good story, it's usually about as long as a magazine-length piece, and usually has those same compelling, challenging elements that you find in a good short story: striking images, unique characters, and some central thematic question that's being tackled. We've been telling stories this way since we had words, and the literary short story form (while still considered new) is really a very close continuation of the oral tradition. I feel like what it does best is give you everything you want from a story, and it does it fast. There's no meandering, no waiting around to get to the point. Reading a great short story is like mainlining straight narrative: it's the good shit.

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

KB: You can find me at krisbertin.com, where you can get in touch with me and find my other books. I have two collections of short stories, and if you liked “The Game,” one of those books, Bad Things Happen, contains a sister-story to it, about a very, very troubled janitor working at that same university. If you want to read longer stories, Use Your Imagination! is a collection with pieces that fall in between short story and novellas (what are sometimes called long stories). I also write a totally weird comic series with my best pal Alexander Forbes, called Hobtown Mystery Stories, which is a surrealist maritime-gothic Nancy Drew horror story. That's available from Conundrum Press.

What's the best gift you've ever been given?

KB: I think the gifts that become part of my person, like the watch my wife bought me because she loathed how loud the old one ticked, or the pocket knife that resides in every pair of pants I wear (I'm half-hick) are among the best. Recently, I'd have to say that my other best pal, writer Naben Ruthnum, bought me the first book in Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson and I was absolutely hooked. For anyone who doesn't know them, they're gigantic 1,000+ page books that look like they'd only be interesting as a weapon to kill houseflies, but are actually meticulously researched historical tomes about a man who changed the world, and did it by launching an endless campaign of lying, bullying, and cheating to get what he wants. Caro's prose is beautiful, and he understands that telling a compelling story is as important as being accurate. His central question is a simple one, about whether the ends ever justify the means, but I'm three volumes in and I'm amazed by the fact that I still cannot decide.

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