. Spinning .

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.