Mixing Tracks

by Jan Steckel

Winner of the 2008 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award.

A darkly comic and oddly touching story of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a plane crash that crushes human bodies while leaving the mandolins unharmed. In “Mixing Tracks,” Jan Steckel strikes an unsettling balance between the consolations of memory, the thrilling ephemerality of youthful ambition, and our shared need for connection, even (or especially) when our world seems to have to come to its end.

22 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Jan Steckel is an Oakland, California writer, a Harvard- and Yale-trained former pediatrician (now retired due to an acquired physical disability), and an activist for bisexual and disability rights. Her debut fiction collection, Ghosts and Oceans, came out from Zeitgeist Press in 2023. Her book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) was a finalist for poetry in the Bi Book Awards. Her first full-length poetry book, The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011), won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) won the Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. Her poetry books are available on Amazon and through the publisher at www.zeitgeist-press.com. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) won the 2008 Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award. Her fiction, poetry and nonfiction have appeared in Yale Medicine, Scholastic Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Red Rock Review and elsewhere. She has won numerous awards, and her work has been nominated three times for a Pushcart Prize. You can find out more about her at www.jansteckel.com.

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm totally biased. I wrote this 5,000-word story for an undergraduate fiction writing class taught by Jonathan Strong. While Jonathan seemed to like it, my colleagues told me that the story was "bizarre" or "over the top," and that I had no business writing a first-person story from a male point of view that was really pretty gay. I think what actually made everyone uncomfortable, though, was the shadow of ephebephilia.

A quarter of a century later, guest editor Peggy Munson chose "Mixing Tracks" for publication in the online journal Suspect Thoughts. The following year it won the Gertrude Press Fiction Chapbook Award for LGBT writers. I think it was just written 25 years too early. Here's Gertrude Press's take on it:

A darkly comic and oddly touching story of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a plane crash that crushes human bodies while leaving the mandolins unharmed. In “Mixing Tracks,” Jan Steckel strikes an unsettling balance between the consolations of memory, the thrilling ephemerality of youthful ambition, and our shared need for connection, even (or especially) when our world seems to have to come to its end.

[Phillip · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is what I was hoping for when I gathered the work of Jan Steckel. I am a Thomas Pynchon fan and some of Steckel's poetry that I read on line caused me to think maybe she would be like Pynchon. By that I refer to story with his irreverent and outrageous songs. Steckel's poetry that I read is outrageous and counterculture.

This book is a very nice taste of narrative. I hope she keeps writing and that the reading public will be able to see a collection of short stories or a novel at some point. My hope is that the poetry will work its way into the story telling. That is my personal taste.

The poetry can be grim. I am pretty much a Mayberry, USA kind of guy. So, there are some poems that I don't have the worldliness to appreciate. Yet, there are some of the poems that I flat enjoyed.

[Julene · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Gertrude Press 2009 Fiction Award winner is a small chapbook, 22 pages, first published in 2007 in another journal. It opens with the main character, "Cam" for Cameron Gray, remembering his band buddies after a plane crash. Turns out there is one other survivor, Michael. It is the story of their meeting.

The author layers music into the story, which acts as metaphor; one paragraph both symbolizes their relationship and foreshadows the ending, " Michael lifted the harmonica to his mouth again. He started playing the same tune as I at exactly a quarter of the tempo, and damn it worked. Steady by with quavers, he played like a tightrope artist walking slowly over the net of my finger-picking. Suddenly the sound tumbled off the rope and down the scale, only to be caught and borne skyward again as if by some wide-winged bird. It hung for a moment on the edge of air. Then he let himself go, and that bird was flying circles around my four feeble lines of earthbound harmony."

At the end I am left wondering about their continuance, I don't want to give away the ending, but it leans toward the makings of a gay fairy tale.

[Matt Jasper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A dreamy post-plane-wreck tale of perfect pitch and forbidden love that ends with one of the more interesting renunciations of society that I've read. The seamless stitching that links present with past reminds me a bit of Murakami. The story moves like an Edgar Rice Burroughs joint--a desperate wilderness situation requiring practical steps, odd flashes of the past lighting up the present. The music is mostly in the past yet is made quite present in the flashbacks where the intimacy of the band members is poignantly drawn. There's a good understanding of the way memories and associations flood in after trauma to sustain a survivor and help them adjust to loss. I also love Michael's painfully honest observations in which he weeds out superfluities in an odd, improvised quest toward perfect music and a bold version of the perfect life.

[Debby · Rating 5 out of 5]

What Jan Steckel does with her writing is genius. In Mixing Tracks, the reader instantly can see why Jan's work is so celebrated. She expertly creates complex characters, and weaves them into a layered plot that's a quick read, and impossible to put down.
Not only is Jan a masterful writer, and adept at creating characters with subtlety and passion, but she also demonstrates a wide knowledge of music in this well researched story.
Mixing tracks may be a story about people who are gay, but because the theme is something that speaks to everyone-- vulnerability and loss, it is, in my opinion, quite mainstream.
I look forward to future works from this exceptional writer.