. Spinning .

This time I’ve placed the author in the post title rather than the title of his story, and if I could festoon it with flowers and candles in a semblance of altar I would; I would indeed honor him.

Sometimes there’s a sentence, a phrase, a single story in an anthology that rings true and pure, and this story is it: Where Will You Go When Your Skin Cannot Contain You?  The title alone tells you that this is going to be different–and not scratch your head, what the hell was that? different.

By the first couple paragraphs I was hooked by the writing as much as the story; by mid-point I had to check if the author used a pseudonym, for it sounded more like Cormac McCarthy than McCarthy has in some of his books.  The writing is that beautiful:

He listened to the brook muttering to itself.  Night birds called from the bowered darkness of summer trees.  He drank again and past the gleaming ellipse of the upraised bottle the sky bloomed with blood-red fire and after a moment thunder rumbled like voices in a dream and a wind was at the trees. (p. 121)

Or this:

A woven-wire fence drowning in honeysuckle went tripping toward the horizon where it vanished in mist like the palest of smoke  (p. 119)

And I’ve read it first from McCarthy and admittedly likely used it myself, but the repetition for effect works for Gay as if he’d come up with it first:

"…until the little lights flickered dim and dimmer and died."

"The rutted road wound down and down."

The story is there, as we follow a well-developed protagonist called "The Jeepster" and see him as a hardass with a vulnerability  that evokes our sympathy in the loss of his first love.  The ending is as weird as any and yet beautifully poignant and tastefully handled to the point of gaining our understanding.

One thing that’s come of this is that I’ve discovered a storyteller who also writes lyrical sentences full of impact and imagery.  I’ve already checked Amazon and have added Gay’s first two novels to my "To Buy" list.

Surprised by the inclusion of this story by Joseph Epstein, surprised by its publication in The Hudson Review.  It’s too stable a story, too interesting, very much character-based and a reflection of life and family.  In other words, a good old fashioned story. Starting at the end, it does give enough information in the first paragraph to intrigue and pull the reader in to find out the background.  Here’s the opening:

Never let it be said that my kid brother Eli failed to give me anything: he gave me five ex-sisters-in-law and seven (I think I have the number right) nephews and nieces, three of whom I met for the first time at his funeral.

We’re given a lot of information here, most of it lying beneath the words.  By the tone, we sense resentment.  By the statement of wives, etcetera, we know this is not a close brotherly relationship.  What we see about Eli–and we must remember that this is the narrator’s (Lou’s) perception of his brother–does not immediately endear him to us.  Yet we’re willing to hold off judgment preceisely because we can see the bias in the narrator.

Epstein then gives us some background on Lou and his brother Eli and sister Arlene.  It is a typical story of hard working parents who have little time to show their love to each other or their children, instead doing the best they can to make do for them.  The narrator is successful in a used auto parts company, his sister does all right, an angel who refuses to believe anything bad about anyone, and Eli, the youngest, gains outstanding success as an author. 

Epstein follows the progress of Eli’s success, his many wives, his awards, etc., bringing him into the action and interaction with his brother usually only when Eli needs money or is receiving some literary prize.  Brotherly love is strained by Eli’s rudeness, his weird ways, bad luck with money (and women), and especially by his tendency to use family members and friends in unflattering characterizations in his novels.  This particularly irks his brother Lou obviously because he appears to hint that it wasn’t really creative work, just writing down history with a sarcastic and mean attitude.

As we read towards the end of Eli’s life and back to the beginning which opened at his funeral, we have the opportunity to see Eli, old and starting to go senile, and we wonder if Epstein’s narrator chose to degrade his brother by revealing this last stage of his life, just prior to his suicide. 

It is a well written story with many of the episodes that reveal character depth and intentions that is so unfortunately missing in so much of contemporary fiction.

By Joseph Epstein, a short story written in the traditional manner of laying out character by character. Even as the first person narrator of Lou tells the story of his brother Eli who is a writer, the telling is more telling of the narrator and his own resentments and desires.

But before I’ve even finished it I wanted to quote two passages that may have something to do with why I’m liking the story, in that I can relate to it.

“Jews went in for this left-wing stuff more in New York than in Chicago. Here we’re happy just to make a living and get some kind of fix on reality. Our hands are full trying to cope with the world as it is. We don’t waste a lot of time on the world as it ought to be.”

And this:

” ‘I see your brother’s got his ass in a sling,’ Al Hirsch said, smiling the kind of smile lawyers do when they discover fresh news of greed or other human depravity of the kind off which they make their living.”

This short story by Randy DeVita is very well put together.  Opening with a scenario of a father getting up in the night to check on his young son, it goes into recall of the man’s own relationship with his truckdriver
father and a particular incident when he rode along with him.

The trip was a usual one, but the conversation in the truck between father and son holds tension as the boy, realizing that his father is just a truckdriver as compared to his best friend’s father who goes to work in a suit and carries a briefcase, mentions this to his dad during the drive. 

There is a standing rule that the boy touch nothing in the truck while his father is not there, and at a truckstop, the boy breaks this rule and gets on the CB.  In the ensuing conversation with a mysterious trucker with the handle "Midnight," the boy comes to realize that he has put himself in danger and possibly his father as well by making this connection.

As the author returns us to the present, the man, as a father looking in on his son, we see the caring and understanding that comes from experience that provides a different perspective on events of the past.

Very nicely done.  This story succeeds in creating atmosphere, interest, and something to think about after the story is read.

The title of this story by T. C. Boyle refers to a dog of that name and the story of its adventure that Angelle’s father read to her when she was younger.  The story opens with Angelle being primed by her father’s lawyer, though the reader is not yet privy to the information surrounding the situation.  But there is groundwork laid.

Angelle lives with her father and younger sister, and there is a housekeeper and nanny.  Her mother is in France, and eventually we get the picture that she is not coming back.  Her father has a drinking problem and a girlfriend, and combined, these two elements result in a car accident which requires that Angelle lie to protect her father and her family.

The tension is created from the opening scene between the young girl and the lawyer, and continues through the play-out of the father’s afternoon spent with his lover.  We realize he’s drinking excessively and gets in his car to pick up his daughters from school.

There is manipulation of the lawyer and the father on Angelle, and there is an interesting twist as Angelle makes the final decision.

Very nicely done.

Ah, I don’t know.  I’m beginning to think that Stephen King made this issue an homage to a few well established, well published, well credentialed authors and while of course the stories are good, I’m not exactly jumping up and down with the creative end of it.

Solid Wood by Anne Beattie again begins in a setting that brings to mind the Great Gatsby and such in both character and environment.  A man and his sister, both evidently in their late fifties, early sixties, going away on a vacation.  No, I know people still do that, but the weave of widowhood and past relationships and names such as Maurice and Doris just placed it back a few generations.

That brings me to another little quirk, the opening:

The year Wright Kemzell published his book about my former colleague, friend, and mentor, Jacob Foxx Greer, I found myself with my sister in Key West.  At first we thought we’d take a cruise that boarded in Ft. Lauderdale and continued to St. John’s and Tortola.  But instead we decided to do something simpler and flew to Miami and rented a car and called the tourist information center, who put us in contact with the Key West Hilton, where two rooms were available. (p. 41)

To be honest, I’m not sure that the amount of detail we are given in the story concerning health issues and background really cover the the supposed importance of the opening line regarding the book about this man, and how the characters tie in with the history.  And I found this list of names and places distracting.

There is a meeting of the narrator with his friend’s daughter whom he has known since she was a child, and who obviously resents her father though she cares well enough about her aging, widowed mother.  There is a bit of mystery surrounding Doris, the narrator’s sister, but the secret is revealed early enough and the story appears to play more on the letting go of the influence of secrets than about anything else.

And the end?  Well, I must admit I scratched my head.  However, with the obvious validated talent of the writer, I must say that it is most likely that I just missed the whole point here.

This short story by Louis Auchincloss rather surprised me; I thought I was reading something from the era of Dorothy Parker. 

It is of that style, of that era, yet written I believe fairly recently.  The storyworld is one that most readers will not relate to well, yet may, as with much literature and narrative, provide insight into a world different enough to be enticing to the curious reader. After all, we are not familiar with and yet grow comfortable to the strange worlds of sci fi genre.

What Auchincloss investigates with this story is the depth of self-centeredness and resentment of a daughter towards her father in particular.  It is always intriguing to see how a writer handles a not particularly likeable first person narrator.  Not that she, Kate, is particularly dislikeable, it is merely that as she relates episodes in her own perspective, we suspect that her view is colored by her own flaws.  Even as she tells us her problems in her relationships, we are not completely sympathetic as we see her manipulations.  This did indeed remind me somewhat of certain of Dorothy Parker’s characters and is what makes them so appealing.

Not by any means a story of deep import, it still is an interesting read and a very skillfully drawn narrative.

A friend suggested I read this story by John Barth because she was really impressed by the turnaround in the ending.  Since I had just received the collection via UPS about fifteen minutes prior to her phone call, it took me until last night to pick up the book and start the story.  I’d read Barth in a collection of stories  (Literature and its Writers) for a CW class long ago, couldn’t remember which story but knew that I’d liked his writing.

Well, it’s definitely different.  There is an intimacy that Barth draws you into surrounding an older couple, Dick and Susan Felton as they consider their golden years, their home, family, friends, and wills. While they have made all arrangements and have come to accept their position in life, Susan appears to be more upbeat about things while Dick–older by several years–starts worrying about the little time they have left.

With these attitudes in mind, they accept a new neighbor’s invitation to a Toga Party, mostly out of curiosity to see the lavish home and lifestyle which, while their’s is certainly comfortable, would be quite a bit more upscale than their own.  They put together outfits complete with sandals, crowns and for Dick, a machete attached to a belt tied around his waist.  Determined to go and have a good time, they also, upon learning from a friend that the host and hostess are lawyers, plan on asking about a clause in their own will that states, "each presumed to have survived each other," which their own lawyer had insisted upon in lieu of their splitting their properties.

Barth takes us through their lives, their thoughts, up to the evening of this party very gently so that we are comfortable enough and feel as Dick and Sue must in meeting new people.  There are several neighbors there that they do know, and as they mingle, they keep an eye on one friend in particular, a widower whose wife had died exactly one year ago.  He’s not handling his loss as well as he’d like, and given the date, is taking advantage of the opportunity to get quite smashed.

Barth is clever at giving us a vivid image of his characters and their surroundings even as he invites us in to make us a part of it all.  Very nicely done; I found myself even reading apace with the goings on and thus was just as shocked as they when everything turned sour.

After reading Toga Party, I know I’m looking forward to Lost in the Funhouse, which has been sitting on my shelf for close to a year now.

This article makes me want to go out and buy this latest issue of the series after getting pretty down about the editors and their selections.

Stephen King’s description of his search for material to include in BASS 2007 is telling of the trend away from the short story form and why the stories found in the magazines and literary journals are often so, well, blah.

Instead, let us consider what the bottom shelf does to writers who still care, sometimes passionately, about the short story. What happens when he or she realizes that his or her audience is shrinking almost daily? Well, if the writer is worth his or her salt, he or she continues on nevertheless, because it’s what God or genetics (possibly they are the same) has decreed, or out of sheer stubbornness, or maybe because it’s such a kick to spin tales. Possibly a combination. And all that’s good.

What’s not so good is that writers write for whatever audience is left. In too many cases, that audience happens to consist of other writers and would-be writers who are reading the various literary magazines (and The New Yorker, of course, the holy grail of the young fiction writer) not to be entertained but to get an idea of what sells there. And this kind of reading isn’t real reading, the kind where you just can’t wait to find out what happens next (think “Youth,” by Joseph Conrad, or “Big Blonde,” by Dorothy Parker). It’s more like copping-a-feel reading. There’s something yucky about it.

Still, the bottom line is that there’s a huge supply (although the first-time novel writers still outnumber the short story crowd I’d guess) and a small demand.  If that demand is then structuring the writing guidelines and forcing writers to write to form and trend, then it’s a sad state of affairs for the hopeful and truly gifted who have the artist’s soul instead of the marketing degree.

This may be either very, very good news for writers, or maybe not.

As I mentioned, in February I read the 2005 Best American Short Stories and did brief reviews on the twenty selected stories here on Spinning.  Last week I decided to read through the 2005 Best American Mystery Stories, something I was looking forward to since my roots are in the genre and I hadn’t read or written mystery in quite a while.  Kind of strange, but I realized that the fifth story in BAMS, Old Boys, Old Girls by Edward P. Jones, was one I had just read in BASS.  When I checked the index, I found Dennis Lehane’s Until Gwen.  This story was also in the BASS collection.

It seems to me that there are so many stories published that it struck me as kind of a really, really amazing coincidence that two different guest editors (BASS, Michael Chabon; BAMS, Joyce Carol Oates) would, out of all those stories, select the same two to include in their separate collections (both are published as part of a Houghton Mifflin series).   When I remembered that Joyce Carol Oates was one of Michael Chabon’s selections in BASS, I checked the BAMS for Chabon and confirmed he was not included.

That both stories qualified is without question; both were good and the mystery genre has been opened up to go beyond typical detective plots as Otto Penzler, series editor of BAMS has stated in his introduction.  But Mr. Penzler has also made this statement:

"It is the role of the series editor for all volumes in Houghton Mifflin’s prestigious Best American series to select the year’s fifty best stories, and then for the guest editor to select the top twenty from that group.

"No mention of the Best American Mystery Stories is complete without genuflecting to  Michele Slung, the fastest and smartest reader in the world, who combs every consumer magazine, every electronic zine, and as many literary journals as we can find.  She scans hundreds–no, let me correct that–thousands of stories to determine which are mysteries."

Mr. Penzler also assures us that there is a mix of both well known and unknown writers, and "it’s not about personal relationships.  And, although the criteria states that "Unpublished stories are not eligible," I was wondering about another statement he made that "Tom Franklin’s first appearance in book form was in the 1999 edition of Best American Mystery Stories."  Also, "Scott Wolven, too, who makes his fourth consecutive appearance in BAMS this year."

Katrina Kenison, series editor of BASS, in her foreword says, "I am a person who grew up, as they used to say, ‘with her nose in the book,’ and who now reads for a living, some three thousand short stories a year…"  Further, that "Michael Chabon cast a wide net as guest editor this year, reading even more stories than I sent him, even though I actually ended up sending him more than the usual 120."  And, "A list of magazines consulted for this volume appears at the back of the book" reveals a listing of in excess of 230 literary journals.  At a low estimate of semi-annual publication, and six stories per issue, this would seem to offer quite a selection from which to pull those twenty final entries in an annual issue.  Of course, many of the journals may not have offered entries, I suppose.

Again, I have no quarrel with the stories selected.  I am just very curious as to how, out of all that’s available, with a total of twenty stories for each, BASS and BAMS, two were duplicates.  I mean, what are the odds?

And of course, what does it mean for writers?  And, as far as that goes, for readers.

This particular issue of the Best American Short Stories collection has been an overall delight.  Which leads me more and more to the notion of seeking out one of the guest editor, Michael Chabon’s own novels if these stories appealed to him.  There were only one or two out of the twenty that I felt were not particularly likeable or had such terrific writing excellence that would justify their inclusion over the hundreds of stories available.  There is a listing in the back of the book of 100 Other Distinguished Stories of 2004 as selected by the series editor, Katrina Kenison, and a listing of literary journals as a helpful guide to the aspiring writer.  So, a quick review of the final three stories:

Hart and Boot (p.339) by Tim Pratt:  Probably my most favorite, or at the least, in top place with J. Robert Lennon’s Eight Pieces for the Left Hand and Rishi Reddi’s Justice Shiva Ram Murthy.  How’s this for an opener:

The man’s head and torso emerged from a hole in the ground, just a few feet from the rock where Pearl Hart sat smoking her last cigarette.  His appearance surprised her and she cussed him at some length.

Yes, it’s true; a man pops out of a hole in the ground with no further explanation than that.  He’s also naked except for cowboy boots–hence, his name that Pearl bestows upon him:  John Boot.  Then the two pair up for some stagecoach robberies, end up in prison, and he, having the capabilities of smoke naturally becomes a terrific escape artist.  The two cook up schemes and the final method in which Pearl is set free is one that still has me smiling in its imaginative and practical thinking–once you’ve come to accept the magical realism in which the story is written.  This was just awesome in voice, style, narrative structure, story conflict, action and resolution.  Just about perfect.  I most definitely will be looking up Tim Pratt’s short story collection and novel on Amazon.

Justice Shiva Ram Murthy (p. 356) by Rishi Reddi is a brilliant story of an elderly judge from India who has arrived to live in Boston with his daughter and her family after his wife’s death.  The story covers a brief episode of Justice Murthy’s adventure with an old friend (who has been in America for a longer period of time) on a routine Thursday lunch meeting.  The resulting conflict served up by a fast food restaurant where he ends up eating beef (against his convictions) and his adamant insistence on the rude and insulting behavior of Americans hides within it the underlying pride, fear, and lost feelings of all those who face living within a different culture–especially the elderly.  The story is paced through dialogue between the two old friends, and it is touchingly poignant yet humorously well written.  Loved the story that stood well enough on its own, and yet allowed the deeper meanings come through.

The final story in the collection, The Bohemians by George Saunders (p. 374) is another great character changed by revelation of truth.  Written in the first person of a young boy, it tells of the cruelty of youth, the lies of adults, and the discovery of seeing people from different viewpoints to expose truth.  And, once that truth is exposed, the protagonist has changed, has learned something, and yet as children do, in the end goes on with life and the important things of childhood a bit wiser but without the heavy guilt and obsessive questioning as adults often tend to do.  A nice little story, but powerful in its presentation and meaning.

For now, for me, on to Faulkner.

David Means’ The Secret Goldfish (p. 288) is a tricky little story that can be read as a view into a family relationship, but with the metaphorical story within it of the resistance of the family goldfish to its environment and its struggle to survive.  As the family unit breaks down, it is coincidental that the family pet is neglected to the point of being miraculously able to overcome the  murky water caused by overfeeding and abandonment.  The wife remembers her own goldfish as a child, which was released into a stream and freedom.  Very interesting use of a simple, common neglected pet motif to illustrate human relationships. 

The Cousins by Joyce Carol Oates (p. 298) is a linear narrative told in letters between a lonely elderly woman (Rebecca) in a retirement home in Florida and her reaching out to a cousin she has found to be an author of a controversial book on her Jewish roots (Freyda) who is resistive to the communication.  Freyda slowly warms to Rebecca, as each woman seeks something within the other to better understand their own lives.  Not awe-inspiring, but well done in its showing of the secrets we bear, the secrets we share, and our views of ourselves.

I totally enjoyed David Bezmozgis’s Natasha (p. 318).  Written in first person pov, it is the story of a horny teenage boy whose uncle marries a Russian woman with a sexually active, street-smart fourteen year-old daughter, Natasha.  The typical scenario with the two forming a friendship and sexual relationship is unrolled, but the conflicts that arise in the marriage and the subsequent boy-girl relationship being discovered and Natasha’s running away ties in wonderfully well with the boy’s secret life of buying drugs from a friend and a betrayal.  It’s a well written unraveling of action and character, and the understanding of a boy’s glimpse into life.

Most of the stories in this collection are strongly geared toward the development of character, the protagonist facing conflict that does drive them to face decisions that are moral crossroads that may take them in a different direction than they had previously been heading into.

Simple Exercises For the Beginning Student by Alix Ohlin (p. 251) is similar in story to Nathaniel Bellows’ First Four Measures (p. 109):  A piano student’s relationship to his instructor brings out his deeper relationship to his family in creating a situation that determines decision and action. In this story, the eight-year old son of a pregnant mom and runaway dad takes lessons with a female teacher who has a seemingly disturbed fifteen-year old son who plays beautifully.  Kevin, the eight year-old is upset by the older boy’s playing.  With the loss of his father, the financial problems of his mother, and without a real piano at home to practice upon, Kevin compares his relationship with his mother to that of his teacher and her son, finally allowing some feeling to overcome him

Old Boys, Old Girls by Edward P. Jones (p. 265) opens with a protagonist in prison for murder.  Caesar’s relationships with his cellmates are dictated by a need to establish strength and superiority.  Once Caesar is released, he runs into an old girlfriend whom he had once loved and who has grown hard and slovenly, a far cry from the soft, loving and meticulous person she had been in their youth.  He is also tracked down by his brother and sister who insist on his coming over for dinner, despite his inclination to remain distant from them and their middle class lifestyles.  He does visit them, is warmly welcomed, and starts to accept an inclination to reunite with his family until he teases his young niece by touching her foot and notices his sister’s look of fear and mistrust.  This reveals to him their true feelings, and he leaves, knowing he will never be truly accepted for what he is, but rather for what they want him to be.  Back at his apartment building, he finds his old girlfriend has died in her bed and he carefully cleans the room, washes the body, dresses her in her best clothes, and leaves the apartment building.  Caesar has seen the changes in people as they mature, the differences in what they become and how they are seen by others.  It is a well-written story, an exposition of humanity at its most needy levels of desire.

I have just about finished the stories–only the last two to read–but have been absolutely uplifted by one in particular:  Tim Pratt’s Hart and Boot.  Totally caught up in it, I loved the characters, totally fell into the state of suspended belief, thrilled to the action, admired the planning, and when I got to the end, actually felt my mouth curve into a smile at the brilliance of the ending. 

Will dissect this and the others soon.  Overall, I’ve been immensely pleased with this collection and surprised that almost all of them are very good, and a few, such as Hart and Boot are just outstanding.  Very interesting as well to note that Hart and Boot is a fictional account of a couple of real-life characters around which legends swirled enough to fire Pratt’s imagination to bring the pair to life in a magical way.

I believe that’s what it’s called–braiding–and it is applied in Cory Doctorow’s Anda’s Game, by the reality of Anda and the online game she plays which is your pretty typical slash ‘em and fight your way to points and status video.  The writing of the gameplay is excellent–although here I do have the advantage of having been killed myself by some pretty ugly thingies out there in Silent Hill 2.  And, while I questioned how the excitement of playing (and this takes place in the future, where voice communication adds to the camaraderie of team playing) could possibly be presented by text, Doctorow does it well. 

There is then, the story of the game:  Anda partners with Lucy to overcome their foes, but then a player who breaks rules by telling them about the game being a manipulation of big business at the cost to little girls being exploited in third world countries, playing and losing their livelihood if they lose, there is a conflict of morality involved that Anda and Lucy must face up to.

In the real world, Anda and many like her are becoming fat and indolent from lack of exercise because of the time spent at the computer, and while the reality pushes sports and sugar-free zones, once Anda makes real money on her victories, she naturally heads for the sweets. 

It is a look at the present expanded just a bit further into the possibilities of the future.  It is the worry of all parents, and the answer to the misfit child’s dream of acknowledgement.  But the theme comes down to moral decisions.  It faces the question of online friends and avatar presences replacing in-the-flesh connections, as well as the pain of reality in cruelty to others versus the non-harmful killing of game personas. 

Very interesting to think about, while keeping the arc and tension of the story at a high.  Nicely done.