. Spinning .

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.