the fray

sorabji.com: Surfwatch: the fray
THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016).
By Jen on Thursday, February 26, 1998 - 11:55 am:
    i have been frequenting The Fray. it is a circle of writers and their stories. great tales and graphics. check it out and tell me what you think.
By Christopher on Thursday, February 26, 1998 - 02:34 pm:
    Kind of be helpful with a URL for us folks that aren't on the Psychic Friends Network.
By Jen on Friday, February 27, 1998 - 09:23 am:
    www.fray.com
By Dave on Friday, February 27, 1998 - 12:35 pm:
    I think the fray is a good looking site but the format makes it difficult to pay attention to what you're reading. It gives you maybe fifty words ant then the last word links you to the next fifty which will pop up on a different area of the screen. Reading stories on a computer monitor is hard enough. Nice design, though. I'm waiting for the Richard Brautigan Memorial Library do get off the ground. Right now, they're only taking submissions for poetry, and really, Brautigan is the only poet I've ever cared for. Poetry just doesn't do it for me. If interested, read The Abortion, by Brautigan and you'll know what the library is about. Or go here.
By Possum on Friday, February 27, 1998 - 09:14 pm:
    boy, do i hate .
    that site is so full of itself and as dave said impossible even to read let alone look at.
    nothing personal toward anyone with any thing to do with it.
    i can not even stand to see the thing some times.
    i guess it is canonically "cool," but who gives a shit?
    wordss are meant to be read, the fray smothers them.
    and the writing sucks raw eggs most all the time. i will admit, not always, but pretty often.
    all my opinion, take it for what it is.
    i will go back to lurking now.
By Possum on Friday, February 27, 1998 - 09:18 pm:
    i thought i'd screw that up.
    the link, that is.
By Nelly on Friday, February 27, 1998 - 11:21 pm:
    thing about fray, the format sets it up so the stories have a sameness about them. like any other magazine, i guess.

    i remember the stories in Ladies' Home Journal used to all be pretty much alike too. they had a certain kind they looked for and it had to be the right length. Domestic dramas, usually with a happy ending.

    and all those New Yorker stories about middle-aged academics whose marriages had come apart (the old New Yorker, ca. 1980's)

    but the New Yorker would occasionally have a real zinger. I remember particularly a one-page story about a party in a trailer, that ends with a wrong-number telephone conversation with a stranger who's alone with someone who just died...

    and another one, involving a naked woman in a glider being towed by a car...

    somewhere around here, amid scores of old New Yorkers, i've still got those stories. one day i'll go through and find them... (sure)

    (wistfully) wish they'd put all the old New Yorkers up on the 'net.
By Underwater on Saturday, February 28, 1998 - 12:12 am:
    i can make neither hide nore hair of the fray either. even on my friends netscape browse the thing makes me throw up my hands. with free lynx its hopeless. and yeah the writing blows chunks of bile but what "original writing site" doesn't? besides this one,, ahem..

    this site is great. i can read this site.
By Dave on Saturday, February 28, 1998 - 03:40 am:
    Amen, or rather the atheistic equivalent. This is eminently readable. I'll take functionality over style every time. Of course, a pleasant mix of both is optimal. Nelly, I've tried to read New Yorker, Harpers, Mother Jones, even Nat'l Geographic. I've subscribed to them for a couple of years now, and I don't think I've read more than ten articles out of the lot. It's mostly a matter of time, as I really like the idea of being a regular reader of mags like that. It's just that, between the sleeping and the working and the housecleaning and childraising, I'm at capacity. I can barely get in a good session of Carmageddon or Quake II before I have to deal with fixing supper or whatever. Where do you and other people find the time to read stuff like that? I know people who read the newspaper cover to cover everyday and I'm just amazed that they can do that and get other stuff done as well.
By R.C. on Saturday, February 28, 1998 - 12:04 pm:
    I'm glad someone besides me thinks fray sucks. I thought I was just being a web cretin. I've never brought into style over substance. I mean/isn't the web supposed to be about images AND words? So many sites are lauded for their great writing/but when you get there/the format makes the text practically unreadable (Colors is also guilty of this). And the writing is mediocre at best. I wish someone wd post a site that showcases straight fiction -- real short stories by folks who can't or won't get published via traditional print media. But everyone seems to be into these slice-of-life pieces/no matter how boring or banal their lives are. The only site I've found with consistently good writing is Glassdog. (Check out the archived stuff from last year.)

    As for finding time to read: All I can say to Dave is 1. become an insomniac like me or 2. hide in yr office & read during the day/instead of working. Or try having a Quiet Hour after dinner where you read to yr kids for a while/then everyone picks their favorite book & reads on their own. I don't know how old yr kids are/but every kid loves to be read to. (Heck, I'm grown & I STILL love being read to!) Over time/that usually instills a love of reading.


By Dave on Monday, March 2, 1998 - 11:06 pm:
    These guys, however, really know how to do up a nice website. What a crackup.
By Dave on Monday, March 2, 1998 - 11:37 pm:
    R.C., she's 4 so anything beyond say, Babar, is a little too much in the words-to-pictures ratio. I guess I'll just have to wait a few more years. Except the woman's mentioned wanting another. Ohmigod. . .
By R.C. on Tuesday, March 3, 1998 - 02:37 am:
    LOL! Dave -- is she wanting another Dad/or another book? Four-yr.-olds don't need books! Just tell her a story -- impromptu/off-the-cuff/ whatever- comes-to mind. Four-yr-olds are sooooo easy to please. All they want is the moment -- to feel that you are all abt them & that moment & making them happy. When my youngest god-daugther was 4/I came to her birthday party & made up a story for a bunch of 4-&-5 yr olds -- & they LOVED it. You haven't lived 'til you've had a roomful of kids clapping for you & calling out yr name -- truly! Just pick out one of her favorite things -- a doll/sunsets/her tricycle/snow -- whatever -- & build from that. And be expressive -- dance around/talk with yr hands/roll around on the floor. I had seen a crow outside in the yard earlier that day/ bothering the family dog for the food in his bowl. And I made up a story abt why the crow is black. Which was a story that was given to me in a dream when I was 10/by someone I now believe was an ancestor. Everyone has ancestors/& that's why they visit us -- to give us stories & guidance. But you don't have to wait for a story to come to you -- make one up! Creativity is everything you do -- so make something! Children always appreciate the fruits of the creative impulse.That's how Marshmallow Treats were invented. And godawful as they are/kids love 'em.


By Dave on Tuesday, March 3, 1998 - 12:30 pm:
    Pretty vague wording, huh? I was talking about MY woman, the momma part of the story. She wants to have another baby. She's nuts, I tell ya!
By Jeffrey Scott Holland on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 08:33 am:
    I can't read fiction on the web. It seems transcendentally pointless, for reasons even I cannot put my finger on. It needs to be in book form before I can even begin to take it seriously. Further evidence that I am an incurable Luddite.
By Nelly on Wednesday, March 4, 1998 - 09:52 pm:
    I have the opposite experience lately. I can read fiction only on the web. The other day I sat down to look for uses of the word "cheerful" and got up over an hour later, having read a dozen chapters of "Little Women".
    It just seems to flow on and on, on the web. I read a whole Henry James novel and bits of Moby Dick by accident that way too.

    If I had the book around here (which I might, you never know with my library) I probably wouldn't open it... It would seem such an undertaking.

    And having worn my eyes out staring at computers, I can't read the little type anymore for one thing.
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