. Spinning .

I’m in the middle of Cory Doctorow’s Anda’s Game (p. 223) and am a little conflicted in my reaction.  It is the story of a young girl (Anda) playing a computer video game online at some future time not far from our own, so there is the added element of story (game) within the girl’s story.  I’m not sure it’s losing me because of the toughness in getting into an adventure game that someone else is playing–remember, there aren’t even the visuals here to watch–or my own inexperience with games and roleplaying.

"Shit!" Lucy said in her headphones as her avatar began to keel over.  Anda yanked her sword free–finally–and charged at the guard, screaming a ululating war cry.  He managed to get his avatar swung around and his sword up before she reached him, but it didn’t matter: she got in a lucky swing that took off one leg, then danced back before he could counterstrike.  Now she closed carefully, nicking at his sword hand until he dropped his weapon, then moving in for a fast kill."  (p. 230)

There is the character revealed by the character the girl (Anda) chooses to portray, but there is little filling in of the character in her reality (so far) aside from her high interest in the game and her interaction with her online friends.  But there is a hint of conflict ahead; Anda is making real money by playing this game, something that was not part of her roleplaying previously, and something that appears to be rare among players but acceptable within this elite group she is trying to earn admittance to.

Her da could bluster all he liked about paying the bills, but she had pocket money for the first time in her life; not book tokens and fruit tokens and milk tokens that could be exchanged for "healthy" snacks and literature.  She had real money, cash money that she could spend outside of the 500-meter sugar-free zone that surrounded her school.  (p. 233)

It is intriguing in its concept, and I’m anxious to see how Doctorow leads us through the stories.

Death Defier by Tom Bissell (page 174) goes a bit further into layering stories and presenting the reader with some work to define the theme.  The main story in the past tense third person POV is of a journalist (Graves) and a photographer (Donk) who have hooked up in Afganistan and are attempting to travel through dangerous war zones along with a guide (Hassan) who they’re not sure they can fully trust.  Graves is ill with malaria, and this along with the danger of the journey provide both the points of stress and conflict as well as the underlayment of death that Donk carries with him as a mental burden since his father’s death.

While the premise may appear as man against society, and this is fully covered in Donk’s wonderings about the comparisons and contrasts in human nature on a global scale, it is also his private man against himself in his reflections of death as he’s experienced it, from the quiet death of his father to the tortured deaths of those he photographs in his travels.  Now facing the possible death of his friend, Graves, he does all he can whilst being frustrated by the conditions and lack of assistance.  The ending is a satisfying and surprising twist both for those who enjoy the head-scratching "I’ll have to think about this one " as well as those who demand a more traditional ending to an adventure story.

And I must exclaim about the writing:

Graves smiled.  "Old men have to die.  The world grows moldy, otherwise."  (p. 198)

The man’s face, Donk thought, was 70 percent nose.  (p. 199)

"Mister Donk," Hassan said, apprehensive to be violating Rule One, "you are well?"  "Fine," Donk said.  "Some dirt in my eye."  Hassan almost smiled.  "Both eyes?"  Hassan was smarter that Donk realized.  Everyone, Donk thought, was smarter than you realized.  "Yes, Hassan.  Both eyes."  (p. 203)

The Girls, by Joy Williams (p. 212) is a delightfully told story that is woven together by an underlying resentment of two sisters who are content to live in an world created to manipulate their parents and everyone else while keeping it safe from interference of boyfriends and houseguests.  They are cruel in the way of Dorothy Parker’s characters; self-centered and malicious in a place in time that is also very reminiscent of Parker’s 40s and 50s wealthy residents.  Nicely written, the story is well drawn out into the characters, and yet there is again here an ending that is both unexpected and leads one to wonder what major changes the girls will be undergoing from the climactic event, or, if indeed, it is something well planned for.  Good entertainment, good study in story elements.

First Four Measures by Nathaniel Bellows is a rather odd bit of story abut a fourteen year-old boy who tries hard to gain his piano teacher’s approval, and it seems, physical touch, though we aren’t quite sure if it actually is a sexual or intense creative overture by the instructor.  His parents go off and leave the boy in the care of a housesitter who also has what appears an attraction to the boy, and there is a jealousy of sorts that is evident after she tells the boy’s parents about seeing the piano teacher’s moves.  It is a true character revelation as even the boy himself obviously manipulates all the adults.  Sensitively presented, and while I felt rather wanting more clear information, it may be the skill of the author to leave us as uncertain as the boy himself is in his desire as well as his suspicions.

Charles D’Ambrosio’s The Scheme of Things is based more on action to produce the conflict, while gradually revealing the main characters in their reactions.  Kirsten and Lance are ex-cons, down on their luck, traveling the countryside in a beat-up car and trying to sucker folks into donating to a legitimate foundation for aid to drug-damaged newborns even as they decide to keep what little they manage to solicit for themselves. Kirsten is psychic, and acts as the front man, and at one point they stay a couple days with an older couple who readily share what little they have.  When they leave, Kirsten is amused and a little upset to find that the jewelry Lance has stolen from their hosts is paste, and the corn he’s filled the back seat with is all cow corn.  Interesting delving into the side of people who even in desperation may be affected by the plight of others, yet still take advantage of them.

I love Alice Munro’s work; it always is so simple and straightforward about a common situation, and yet it’s the underlying story that the reader slowly becomes aware of being the main focus.  What’s happening is the impetus, the action; in this story, The Silence, a mother goes to pick up her daughter from a commune that she suspects is a cult, the daughter is gone, and the mother’s life changes and goes on in waiting for the girl who never does return but leads her own separate life.  Munro has an excellent way of moving time both backward and forward from her immediate action starting point that provides insight into the characters even as it reveals their growth and changes.

I want to get one or two more stories read before I do another review of Best American Short Stories – 2005, but this is one of the reasons I read, to catch the writing style, and too often my immediate delight is forgotten when the story’s done.  So…

Hassan looked at Donk and shrug-smiled, his eyes rimmed with such a fine black line they looked as if they had been Maybellined.  (BASS 2005, p. 175)

The sentence is from Death Defier by Tom Bisell.  The stop-me-dead words are "shrug-smiled" and "Maybellined." 

I love when nouns are turned into verbs, verbs into adjectives , etc.  I love nothing better in my own writing when I check out those squiggley green lines from Windows spell-check and click "ignore." 

It’s man over machine.  Creativity over proper form.  It’s a love of language and the ways it can be twisted to say exactly what you see and feel when the language as it stands cannot fulfill the need.

There was a recent question raised at the MetaxuCafe forum about story length, and the usual answer would be "when the story has been told and finished."  Or, if must be done, according to the publisher’s specs.  Of course, I (as all of us, I’m sure) feel insulted by the word limit placed on creativity.  It’s like telling a painter that his skies must be bluer, or the canvases limited to 24" x 36" because that’s what sells. 

However, looking at the next story in Best American Short Stories 2005, there was one that ran forty pages long called Stone Animals written by Kelly Link. While it was good, it just seemed that an excess of dialogue and slow buildup of changes within a family who buys a house that seems haunted (unfortunatelly, I immediately pictured Jack Nicholson in Stephen King’s The Shining) did indeed need a bit of tightening up to pick up the pace.  As a matter of fact, the main plot is outlined right within the text.  The wife is pregnant and obsessed with painting the rooms while her husband spends more time away at his job than they’d planned:

He helped Catherine down from the ladder.  "I wish you would stop painting."

"I can’t," she said.  "It has to be perfect.  If I can just get it right then everything will go back to normal and stop being haunted and the rabbits won’t tunnel under the house and make it fall down, and you’ll come home and stay home, and our neighbors will finally get to meet you and they’ll like you and you’ll like them and Carleton will stop being afraid of everything, and Tilly will fall asleep in her own bed, and stay there, and–" 

"Hey," Henry said.  "It’s all going to work out.  It’s all good.  I really like this color."  (p. 96)

There are a few subplots; the wife lies to her husband about an affair, and the children get a little dippy along with their mother as their possessions "feel" haunted, and there are a bunch of rabbits that run around outside this country home, so it is interesting.  But naming off the paint sample colors and much of Henry’s work back in the City just seem to build to nowhere.  There is an odd twist to the end, but I think the impact of the story might have either been built to novel form, or shortened considerably to short story format.

Eight Pieces for the Left Hand by J. Robert Lennon is a series of eight vignettes, each telling a short short story (flash fiction) of an episode in the narrator’s home town (only tip-off to first person POV is usually "our") that are otherwise unrelated.  Each is a complete story within itself, with all the necessary elements of arc and conflict and resolution, and each is a very well organized look into human nature that is self-referential and often disturbing.

This is my favorite story so far, and I’m intrigued by the concept.  I have myself written a series that was posted on Spinning a while ago that was tied into the Seven Deadly Sins (I actually composed eight–one for food gluttony since it’s such a personally precious part of my life), and have just recently been thinking of putting some effort into rewriting them as some are more fairy-tale oriented while some are more contemporary and wanted closer relevance. 

Each of the numbered segments in this work builds up to the final story, and each displays a part of humanity that leaves one wondering.  In the first episode, two rival high schools are defined by their football teams and more clearly by their social and economic status.  Pranks between the two build up each year until due to a lowered population, the two are melded into a single new school.  The question then becomes who to go to war with and a neighboring town is selected and the cycle begins again.

Story #2 is about a poet’s unpublished manuscript that becomes police property and the legal battle over rights turns a policeman into a poet and a fraud.  Story #3 is your mailbox bashing and lawsuits that it entails.  Story #4 is a mis-identity of a pet cat and the misinformation given to its rightful owner.  Story #5 is superstition over a road sign.  Story #6 is a wonderful four paragraphs of story that starts with a group of children in a school play and ends in their traumatic futures based on that play (this was just wonderful!).  Story #7 is of a professor speaking to a group and making fools of them, with the twist of joke coming back to haunt him.  Story #8 is of a local novelist writing a 1000-page story that after required cuts, came down to a single haiku.

Lennon is brilliant.  I’ve got to look him up and locate more of his work if possible.

I’m five stories into this, and the main reason I broke my rule about catching up from the past to the present is because another MetaxuCafe member, gzreads, is also reading this now.  It’ll be interesting to compare notes.

The Smile on Happy Chang’s Face, by Tom Perrotta, may be the same old dad’s side of the divorce story, but there is some deeper insight here into the feelings of fatherhood itself as well as human nature.  The narrator is trying to impress his ex-wife and son and win them back, while a father who is watching his talented daughter play Little League baseball shows no reaction to her amazing skill or the game in general until she is beaned by a ball and he races to her side, getting himself arrested for going after the coach who instructed his player to take her out.  The interesting part is that the narrator lost his family because he couldn’t accept his son’s gay leanings.  The father of the girl playing on a boys’ team showed respect for her decision to play by showing up at each game, was not overly surprised at her ability, and thus more accepting of who she was.  Good action (even though I dislike baseball) that built up on the game.  This was a true example of Aristotle’s belief that character will be displayed in its reaction to events or action (Poetics).

Dennis LeHane’s Until Gwen is another well written action story, although the action is based upon plenty of flashback as a man coming out of prison is picked up by his father and driven around in the hope that he’ll remember where he hid a large diamond that he and his lady, Gwen, had stolen just before he was caught and imprisoned.  The ending is bizarre but well done.

I don’t have any idea why A Taste of Dust by Lynne Sharon Schwartz was first published in Ninth Letter never mind being chosen by Michael Chabon as one of twenty stories to include in this BASS issue.  The writing is mediocre, the story is old–bitter divorced woman who doesn’t get over it, and the ending is tell all, just in case the reader didn’t get it.  Quick briefing:  A woman is invited to dinner with her ex-husband’s and his new wife and family to celebrate the birth of a new grandchild, that of her and her ex’s own son.  The conflicts build up only via little faux pas on the part of the husband, and the ex-wife’s aren’t-you-sorry looks of empathy, and the climax is the new baby throwing up on him. Honest.  And here’s the moral, as promised, in the closing:

He owned all the misery his risks had earned; he was in the thicket of his mistakes, impaled, fending off an excess of feeling, even if it was remorse.  He life was dense and palpitating.   She was clean and dry as old bones.  (Bass, p. 42)

Old Friends by Thomas McGuane is okay.  Well written, interesting, and enough action in a linear narrative with enough backstory to develop the plot.  Nothing I was particularly moved or unsettled by but it was enjoyable enough.

The next story deserves a post of its own.