“At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house and lick our leaking pipes.”

I have read this sentence twice now: the first time as the opening sentence of Mark Richard’s short story “Strays,” the opening story in The Ice at the Bottom of the World; the second time as Mark Richard describes a crucial writing moment in his new memoir House of Prayer No. 2 using the unconventional second person.

“The door to the house finally opens, and a rough-looking guy lets Melvin out, and Melvin shakes his hand and comes out to the jeep. You’ve got one of your little notepads on your lap and you need to borrow a pen, and as you drive off he asks you what you are writing, and you don’t answer but what you are writing is: At night, stray dogs come up underneath our house and lick our leaking pipes.”

“. . . you are on your mattress in the hot attic going over At night . . . because you’ve learned that everything you need is in that first line, all you have to do is unpack the story, its metronome is already ticking back and forth.”

Sometimes it’s best to know nothing of an author. Sometimes it’s best not to be anticipating but to simply be open and ready for anything. Reading House of Prayer No. 2 and the stories in The Ice at the Bottom of the World happened simultaneously just because of my innocent curiosity. I was rewarded with the stellar writing style of an author I had never read before and Mark Richard’s account of how The Ice at the Bottom of the World came to be published and then its termination followed with the Pen/Hemingway award in 1990–not to mention the reader reward of learning the story of a “special child” who grew up, realized his passion in life and found his faith.

Bynum writes in The New York Times Book Review that she now understands Richard’s unusual use of the second person in his memoir:

“. . . suddenly the memoir’s reticence, its desultory movement, its use of second person, revealed their purpose to me. To understand the mystery of faith, you cannot be told it; you must experience it yourself.” (Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum, The New York Times Book Review, February 11, 2011)

And I say, too, that you must experience House of Prayer No. 2 for yourself just as I did and let Mark Richard set the metronome with that first line– “say you are a special child . . .”

Join us Tuesday, February 22nd for a signing (5:00) and reading (5:30) with Mark Richard.

Mark Richard is the author of two award-winning short story collections, The Ice at the Bottom of the World and Charity, and the novel Fishboy. His short stories and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, Esquire, Vogue, and GQ. He is the recipient of the PEN/Hemingway Award, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and a Whiting Foundation Writer’s Award. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and their three sons.

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