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Commentary on
“Slouching Towards SPOMA”

Richard Key

This story developed slowly over about five or six years. I have a love/hate relationship with acronyms. They’re fine if I know what they mean. Otherwise, they’re irritating, especially if I can’t remember what the letters stand for (the “easily forgotten” in SCADEFA). So I conceived of an epic battle between the pro-acronym crowd and the anti-acronym crowd.

The title is a tongue-in-cheek nod to Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming” and Joan Didion’s Slouching Towards Bethlehem, hinting at the collapse of language if the pro-acronym crowd prevails. Yes, the reader has to wait a page or two to figure out what is meant by SPOMA. That’s the way it goes with acronyms—there’s a “What the ??” moment. As I recall, though, I had to read Catcher in the Rye to the very end to find out what the title meant, and several chapters of To Kill A Mockingbird. So I don’t feel bad about the reader suffering through a page and a half before the light goes on.

Hiram Bletchley is my favorite character, a polymath perfectly suited for the role of what might be called in pigeon Latin acronymis dispersis unapologeticus. I pictured a character on the order of Rumpole (of the Bailey), the London barrister who often refers to his wife as “she who must be obeyed” or SWMBO, which in my story becomes “scoundrel who must be outed.”

I thought the story was complete a year ago, the first version, the shorter one. Then, after twenty or so rejections I paid for a critique in which the main suggestion was to identify and flesh out the narrator, who, in the shorter version, is an anonymous reporter. So I let that simmer through several more rejections and then sat down and wrote the second and final paragraphs, which add another dimension to the epic conflict and, I believe, brings the story to a more satisfying conclusion. And that conclusion is: the battle rages on.

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The author was born in Jacksonville, Florida, and currently resides in Alabama with his wife and their overindulged tuxedo cat named Velcro. He works part-time as a pathologist, but has been writing essays and short stories for about fifteen years. His author web page is richardkeyauthor.com.

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