From Rick Moody

My only story about Max is one I've told many times. He was reading once at Bennington when I taught there in the low res MFA program. As usual, I was sitting in the back, next to Amy Hempel. (Too many readings! Can't bear to sit in the front and be on display all the time!) I knew some of Max's work, and I was eager to hear him, but, unfortunately, I was too far back, and anyway his accent was so beautiful that I was spending all my time listening to the melody and not to the words. Like he was an alto saxophone or something. About this time, there were a lot of discussions going on around Bennington on the subject of the "short short story" or the "flash fiction" or the "prose poem," and about the differences and/or points of conjunction between these various iterations of that modality. I had never really written in this form, but I decided I was going to try while I was there for the residency by just writing one sentence a day of some "short short." Problem was: I had no ideas. (I've always felt that content was overrated anyhow.) Somewhere in there, while muttering to Hempel and listening to the sax solo and thinking about short shorts, I heard Max read the sentence "Then the boys entered the house." In the years since I have often tried to imitate the contortions and extra syllables that he visited upon those words--with his beautiful accent. I thought it was a singular and limpid sentence and assuredly the most comely of those I actually heard that night, so I borrowed Hempel's pen, wrote it on my palm, and then changed it slightly for the beginning of my short, entitled "Boys," int he process making, I think, the best piece of short fiction I ever wrote. All because of Max.

Rick.