. Spinning .

I did read through all the poetry in this issue, and perhaps because of recent discussion with a friend, this one stands out:

Dichter by Peter Krok (p. 253)

You who have not a claim
Only the clamoring of a tongue
Who are you to say
You’re gnawed by questions
That like squirrels chew
At bags of yesterday’s refuse?

Like every vagrant,
You have a stake in this time.
You scrap together
What won’t be left behind
Hardly knowing why yet only
It stirs that hungry mind.

I like this.  There’s a combination of hopeless and hope, a brazen challenge to move on from the past and its mistakes to a starting point to make better what we can to leave a better world.

This winner of the 2004 Sarah Tucker Fiction Award is well-written by Nan Frydland as to storyline, structure, plot and voice.  Some of the imagery is exceptional:

Mornings I listen to the birds for a while from bed, listen to them call each other in the early silver light.  The air is so warm, and by noon it’ll be sweet and yellow as melted butter. (p. 173)

This is the first person narrator relating the summers of her youth, spent with her grandparents and her aunt somewhere down south (Alabama?) (she lives up north with her mother) and where her father, whom she describes as a flim-flam man attempts to be a father for a day during brief visits. 

There’s some great characterization here, of the narrator and particularly of her grandparents, and a special memory of the three of them going fishing.  Frydland then brings in a closer look at the father-daughter relationship, and it becomes obvious that he doesn’t really care about her as much as his wheelin-dealin’ when he sets her up with a boy who rapes her viciously on a first date, then demands that she keep silent.

In my copy of this book, though I suspect in all, there appears to be some missing pages though the numbering is correct as the closing of this story comes out of nowhere, following a page that ends "Seems that" with no further thought or punctuation.  Then it jumps to the fishing hole being poisoned, and the grandfather’s pronouncement that "that’s the way of the new world.  I’ve seen lots of unnatural things done by men–you get what I’m saying?"  This, I suppose, is indication that while the grandfather believes what has happened is wrong, we’re helpless to fight against change, even the bad.

The Getaway by Martha Whitmore Hickman has a wonderful storyline, that of a woman raising a family in a small town in New Hampshire in the early part of the 20th century.  Rachel is different from most folks of her time, interested in astronomy and science.  Through a well-written and descriptive narrative of Rachel’s life, Hickman guides us through the death of a daughter, the marriages of her sons, and the final blow of losing her beloved husband, Cyrus.  What I found lacking, however, was a reasoning or feeling of how hard the loss of her daughter hit her.  Since it highly impacts the absolutely glorious ending of the story, it would have done well to linger a bit on this portion of the story.  Perhaps it was the details in other areas that took the reader’s attention that somehow made one skip over the obvious, I don’t know. Even the incredible, wonderful ending where Rachel takes action using her knowledge of chemistry and love of astronomy to blast away in a church steeple is a bit deflated by not the gathering together of these elements (that was cleverly done) but by the overexplaining final sentences, "I’ve gone with your father and Miriam," the note said.  "See you later."  It was in his mother’s handwriting. (p. 163) Other than that, I enjoyed it.

John Martin’s The Acorn War is what I would guess to be called psychological realism.  We are hearing the thoughts of a young boy as he talks about squirrels and imaginary dangers and how life could be grand if only, etc.  What we’re hearing is the thread woven through of a dysfunctional family and a boy who is beaten by his drunken father, belittled by his grossly overweight mother, and the kid takes his escape into daydreams.  He imagines acorns as weapons, the loud sound of their falling almost an audible version of his world.  Good, no terrific stuff that had me spellbound by language use, nor a story so different than what is a sad fact of life for so many.

While completely understanding deadlines, typesetting, etc., all the pressures of running a magazine, I still find it hard to accept that in a journal of this caliber I’ve already found nine typos.

The worst part? Most of them appear to be words that would be accepted by Spellcheck in their erroneous form, i.e., "ever" instead of "every," or "than" instead of "that."

Byron Y. Adams has gotten us intimately into the head of his main character, William, partner in a law firm.  Opening the story in a men’s room where the elderly William notes that a young associate seems to always be in there at the same time, Adams exposes William’s prostrate problems that cause him many bathroom trips and the embarrassment of age.

Adams brilliantly uses William’s condition as the impetus for the conflicts (and understandably, tension) as he both faces and tries to hold off retirement and decisions regarding his relationship with his life partner, Tom.  There is a poignancy to this story that brings us along with William on something that we all must grapple with some day, and brought to us in an unusually mundane–base if not for the exquisite handling by Adams–and universally human need.

Written by Jane Bradley, this story is a second person pov, about a woman whose husband has just told her "we have no future, Alice" and covers a very brief period of time as she sits at an airport bar waiting for a connecting flight to go home alone. 

God knows why, but this woman responds to a stranger sitting next to her at the bar and he takes her off to an area hidden from view and things go downhill quickly.

The character didn’t get my sympathy because while it’s obvious she’s hurting and the immediate need for validation is natural, to go wandering off between flights with some sleazebag at a bar?  And he is a sleazebag:

You glance at the doorway.  "Are you sure no one’s there?"  "I’m always certain before I make a move," he says. (p. 135)

Note the "always"?  Besides, even if he was Mr. Wonderful, there’s this:

"That’s it," he whispers.  He grins and kisses, saliva slipping at the corner of your mouth.  As he feeds on you, you swallow the wetness that seeps up from his mouth like a spring.  (p. 134)

Yuck.  ‘Nuff said. (Aside from the sappy sex, the ending was rather tritely tied in to that "no future" statement so it’s really not worth any more words on this one.)

This story stands out from the rest as daring in content: the first person narrator, a Thalidomide baby now grown, who has his first sexual experience with an overpainted, boozing, drug-loving, epileptic midget (little person), with a twist of humor and sad loneliness that’s presented in a fine voice and style by Alicia Gifford.

Oh, and did I mention a bitten-off penis?

It takes a good writer to throw all this together and pull it off, and Gifford, I believe, has done it.  I remember in one of my CW classes that one of the first student stories offered for workshopping was of the accident occuring just as the driver’s getting a blow job and the expected result.  But it was the usual amateur mistake of making that moment the climax (no pun intended) of the story, when it was so obviously built up to that particular focus as a shocker.  In Gorgeous World, the scenario is but a moment on the way down the arc, a confirmation of a decision already made, so well used by the author.

There’s also a nice contrast in what the narrator is saying to what we think he feels, and not in the usual sarcastically flippant manner.  In the opening line, "I’ve forgiven my mother, she didn’t know what she was doing," we are pulled in and interested as he relates the circumstances of his birth.  There is delicate subject matter here, in describing what surely is the heartbreaking reality caused by the drug, as well as the fact of his girlfriend, and Gifford handles it in a very down-to-earth, politically incorrect, and yet open and honest manner.  Humor is a healer, and the narrator’s nickname of Penguin is just the beginning of acceptance and a road to normalcy.  Open honesty may hurt, but it is better than proper words that offend even more by their attempted masquerade.

Entertaining, provocative, and one story that’ll stick with you.

Normally I dislike first person revelatory introspection stories, but this by Katherin Nolte is smooth and quick enough to overcome the typical flippant and sassy attitude of a life gone wrong and the paths it might have taken instead.

Roseanne begins by telling us, "My breasts were important to me, but I wished I’d been born a genius." (p. 104) Right there, with the opening line, I felt this story would be different from all the rest because it was stylistically well done.  It opened up the story with all kinds of quesitons while giving valuable insight into the mind of the narrator.

The story becomes one of extreme lack of self-confidence and family dysfuntion without being painfully corny or trite, and Nolte seems well familiar with the subtleties simile in getting a point across:

"Well, not stupid really, but I figured since I wasn’t a genius, why even try to be smart.  It’s like those musicians who devote their lives to studying an instrument, only to attend a concert and hear another musician blow them away." (p. 104)

And a nice homage to Margaret Atwood’s short story, Endings, in closing with a "what if" frame of mind of the narrator as she offers the reader the same possibilites of her dreams as that of her reality. 

Nolte’s writing style and use of different techniques certainly raised This is the Part to Wonder above the usual run of the mill stories in this vein. 

I did enjoy this short story by Paul Crenshaw, both for its story and for the writing style. 

In the setting of an insane asylum (sorry, mental institution) it opens with the first person narrator retelling a story a fellow employee has told him about a girl who blew her mind on an acid trip and is silent and uncommunicative on the twelfth floor of one of the buildings.  Through the interaction of the narrator and the other employee, Burke, as well as the conflict brought into the story by one of the inmates, an ex-fighter named Ray who’s suffered one too many blows to the brain, we get an idea of the narrator’s sense of caring.  We become curious about his backstory, of which Crenshaw gives us only subtle hints that lead us to believe he’s been hurt emotionally in some way.

The twist at the end is a surprise that answers many questions without being an Ahah! type of arrangement that usually leaves the reader feeling tricked and foolish.  This was very well done, from beginning to end in a graceful arc, minor conflicts both between characters and the element of nature–snow storms, electricity, and a gradual building up of tension that we feel more as the characters develop because they are real and worthy of empathy.  Nice work here.

Written by a highly credentialed (published novelist, short stories in lit journals, winner of grants and awards, creative writing teacher at NY University) Nahid Rachlin, Hotel Hafez tells of Mustafa, a young man who’s lost his family and becomes prime fodder for an organization of terrorists that now has landed him in a hotel room with a bomb that is meant to kill at least one specific target while Mustafa escapes to a promise of paid living and studies. 

It doesn’t quite work out that way, and the twist that throws off the great plan is not Mustafa’s own strong doubts about the organization and his reluctance to carry out the deed, but rather a simple small act of spite of employee against employer.  This is likely the whole thrust of the story: that misunderstandings and discontent on a small scale enlarge in the mirror of the world.

The writing is fine, though it was very telling rather than including any drama via show:

It all sounded harmless to Mustafa–no mention of anything destructive.  He liked being with the other members, all young men.  They had been, like himself, bereft of what they once had valued and been attached to.  (p. 83)

Maybe there’s a purpose to keeping the reader at arm’s length, never quite allowing him to understand enough about Mustafa aside from the facts that even as his feelings change, we don’t care enough (at least I didn’t) about him to worry that he’ll oversleep and blow himself up.  What he gains in character by questioning the purpose and motive of his task, he loses in his wimpy manner of making it right:  he’ll go to the authorities after the bomb’s done its damage.

The twist ending is a little too pat, giving full explanation which frankly, we don’t need; the plan didn’t work and it changed the outcome dramatically, but it doesn’t really matter why.  Except of course, to enhance Rachlin’s premise.  There is also a confusing switch from third person to a brief sentence in first and back to third again that must be over my head in meaning and purpose.  I just didn’t care enough to go back and reread it.  The idea could have been more powerful, though maybe what I’m missing is its subtlety.

A simple story by Stephen Tuttle of rivalry, self-esteem, wishes and aging, I would think, but presented in an unusual style that I’ve seen before but am still not quite taken with it.  Grunwald’s a juggler, Semple, a contortionist.  As they perform for audiences you can see how much time and effort they’ve put into their careers, and though friends, seem to pooh-pooh each other’s  work. 

A linear narrative, third person pov, with near alternating paragraphs focusing on the individuals, but with headers such as: This is How You Juggle, What You Wear Makes All the Difference, Gravity, etc.  Despite these signposts there is a flow to the story, as one paragraph often raises a question or leads into another quite naturally.  I’m just not sure the experimental style adds to the story at all.  Visually, it’s naturally interruptive. 

While there are tit-for-tat-sized conflicts between the two characters, the arc of the story starts somewhere in the middle and goes down from there as the two become less nimble, less accurate, playing to ever shrinking audiences.  They notice a poster of a nearly naked woman and while they appear interested in the marketing aspects, we find them one night each separately waiting in the rain outside the theater where she’s playing.  So there is this hint of what they’ve lost out on in life, perhaps by their dedication to their talents. 

The last paragraph does something nice with foreshadowing and the repetition of a cycle, as the paragraph is titled This is How You Hypnotize a Man, and I took it also as the blindness to time as life passes by.  Interesting.

By Irvin Faust, this story relates from first person pov a young soldier’s time spent in Japan  right after the War and tells of his relationship with a young Japanese woman.  He takes her into the destroyed city of Hiroshima to meet her cousin who plays baseball and the two men throw the ball back and forth between them, the cousin wearing the glove the soldier’s brought him, and the soldier catching barehanded.  They begin throwing the ball harder and harder to each other until the soldier’s mittless hand is stinging and he returns a ball that knocks the cousin down by the force.

Nicely written, no deep mystery, but the obvious mimicking of war via the game, and the pride that sustains the vanquished is shown by the cousin’s refusal to keep the glove, and the young woman’s laughing assurance that her cousin is "Funny guy.  Ruv faw down."  Though gracious but quiet upon their return home, she never sees him again, ending the relationship without notice.

As the soldier much later ships for home, he finds some postcards and photos–one of the girl–rips them up slowly and tosses them into the sea.  Symbolism?  Likely of a difference in cultural traditions, or the difference between the victorious and the beaten.

This story by Katherine Vaz took me longer to read since I found myself putting it down every few pages.  The reason is likely the feeling I got that it was disjointed and while as afterthought it was understandable, the multiple ways that Vaz used to do so was at first, annoying. 

The basic story is about a mother who is a ballerina and has a lover as well as a husband who is a good man but rather too nice; the daughter who gets shot in the kneecap at the schoolyard and who draws pictures of people with animal heads; the father who is a teacher, loves his wife and daughter, knows about his wife’s affair, and is simply trying to cope while sacrificing his own wants to theirs; the lover who sees the cycle of relationships from sensual to domestic happening again; his wife who he’s married because the great love of her life got her pregnant and then left and who is still adjusting to her own feelings about the man she lost and the man she married.

Point of view is always switching, with an asterisk that’s meant to help delineate the changes but in fact makes things more complicated since there is a lot of italicized text that is mainly used for place, a language change, thought, and conversation.  It doesn’t take long to get used to is, but just flipping through the pages makes it even appear as a non-linear, non-flowing narrative structure.  Time too is played with to a reasonable point, future–past–backstory–back to future which becomes past and onward from there.  And this is done several times because of the changing pov’s.

What bothered me a little is the use of the italics–which I believe also changed in its purpose–in such a juxtaposition with the characters and time.  I remember Cormac McCarthy in an interview answering the question of why he didn’t use quotation marks for dialogue and he said something to the effect that it was unnecessarily intruding upon the story. 

As far as the story itself, there was enough conflict within the characters themselves, along with the revealing of their innermost desires and their relationships with each other that both stifled and enhanced those desires to make it interesting.  Totally character-driven, though  we do wonder about if they have the insight of each other that the reader gains.

This story by James Lee Burke flows back to an earlier time of a patriotic America, the recollection by the narrator of when he and his best friend were twelve and came up against the neighborhood bully.  This fight mirrors on a small scale the battles of WW II requiring by ratio the same amount of courage and self-knowledge.  Burke also gives us a glimpse through Charlie’s eyes of problems between his parents that his mother dismisses with, "You mustn’t talk like that.  We were just having a discussion."  But this is just an idealistic hope on her part. 

Burke reinforces this background of man’s tendencies toward war in various ways.  The obvious ongoing WW II serves as an underlying thread on a huge scale, but does not personally affect this family or the neighborhood except for "member in the forces" stickers in the house windows.  The aggressiveness instead is seen in the struggles between Charlie and his friend Nick against the bully, Vernon. Charlie’s father has marital fights, a different but very real daily war, but he as well avoids facing the realistic nature of man, evident in this comment to Charlie as the boy tells him of his own problems:

"There’s a new kid on the next street from Chicago.  He thinks he’s better than everybody else.  Why doesn’t he go back where he came from?"  I said.

"Hey, hey," my father said, patting me on the back.  "Don’t talk about a chum like that.  He can’t help where he’s from.  No more of that now, okay?"  (p. 15)

The writing is skillful and the story presented in fine form, reminding me of my friend Jim’s style, and that is one that is smooth and capable of involving the reader in the storyworld completely.

In view of Augustine, Alice, and the coupla-two-tree books sitting on the table for many moons…oh, and the story-games (dubbed that for research purposes) such as Still Life, Scratches, Watchmaker and Silent Hill, I think that I need to move into a short-story format reading style rather than a novel that may be so good it grabs all my limited attention.  For those reasons, and the fact that I’m starting to be too embarrassed to include the dates of these literary journals I’m catching up on little by little. 

There appear to be more stories than usual in this issue–actually thirteen!–and maybe that alone dates it; when a lit journal wasn’t 20 pages of story and 200 of poems, essays, reviews, and interviews–so it’s not your quick read, but the story breaks do tend to give a nice stopping point to wander onto other things.