Sonya - Story A (Story B) by Gideon Lewis-Kraus (a snail-mail special)

This article combines so many things I love - it's set in Japan, covers a bizarre event (a hole-digging competition between employees of different companies) and also finds space to explore the art of storytelling. I happened upon it at the back of a recent Harper's magazine, and it was very refreshing, having read through some heavy-going articles beforehand.

You can read the intro of 'Story A (Story B)' online, which is a bit of a tease - so if you like what you read, let me know and I'll photocopy and post you a copy. Here's a part that grabbed me up front:

'Many essays purport to be about one thing but reveal themselves to be about some other, profounder thing. Story A might be about the game of Monopoly but its real role is to give cover to Story B, which is about the decline of the American city. Generally speaking I am most interested in moments in which the gap between the two stories seem the widest, in which the manifest events are highly, perhaps irresponsibly, leveraged in the production of latent meaning. Competitive hole digging, as far as I could tell, promised both infinite frippery and infinite significance.'

The story goes on to detail a morning spent observing a series of male and female teams competing for 'The Golden Spade' in the annual hole digging competition. Many teams came in costume, dressed up as cows, milk cartons or in head-to-toe gold and strangely, the judging takes place in secret.  The largest hole doesn't necessarily mean a team will win, it's a mysterious combination of depth, width and the novelty of a hole's shape that make a winner.  And the competitors really get into it, travelling from across the country just to take part with their colleagues, even if the prize money is relatively small.

It's a really fun read but I also read it with particular interest because I am a sucker for quirky stories. Like the Wagga guy who tried to make the world's biggest pom pom. To me, his Story B was about finishing something, no matter what. But it was also achieving a goal, and realising that what you were striving for might not satisfy you or matter anymore. In a really tiny way, it was a story about growing up. Quite often I worry that other people might not see the Story B, and just think it's a really silly story.

And a side note - this story also features an unnamed Australian foreign correspondent from the ABC, in a not-so-flattering light. I suspected it was Mark Willacy (purely based on location, he's one of my favourite foreign correspondents*) and found proof here.

Let me know you fancy a copy of this story, I reckon it's a good 2000-3000 words long, and very enjoyable.

*The one time I completed some presenter training in Sydney, the editor working in the suite opposite the training space was busy editing a Mark Willacy story. It sounds silly but being across the hall, and learning how to best pronounce my name (I was getting the Gee bit wrong) while I could hear a Mark Willacy voiceover in the distance made me feel like I'd made it :)