Tag Archives: literature

Tenth of December

Posted on by Bill Chance

Almost a year ago, for the month of June, I read and wrote about a short story every day, for the entire month. I’m collecting online stories again this year (already close to the requisite thirty) – though I haven’t decided whether to do the same thing again.

Any suggestions or feedback would be greatly appreciated. Si o No.

On Day 7 of last year I read and wrote about the story Sea Oak, by George Saunders. It made me want to read more. I have just finished a long, interesting, but somewhat repetitive tome and wanted something shorter and lighter. So I picked up a book of George Saunders short stories in a digital loan from my library. It was the collection Tenth of December – and has been almost universally praised, often listed as one of the best books of last year.

And it did not disappoint.

First of all, though, the negative. George Saunders has a great skill – an innovative way – with words. Sometimes it feels as if he is showing off. Unusual forms, unexpected voices, mannered style – it’s all here and may be layered a little thick. I can see why the jaded literati have are so enamored – he can be challenging. In a few places I wanted to tell him to simply get on with it.

But, still, the stories had heart. The true judge of a work is whether or not you care about the characters and in these stories you do. They will break you in unexpected places and in an unanticipated fashion.

Back to the style. One technique that he uses to devastating effect is to tell a story from several points of view – from characters that are about to intersect in surprising ways. He uses this technique to illustrate how completely different the world is seen by different people. He exposes the little lies everyone tells themselves… simply to get through the day.

The first story in the collection uses this technique in triplicate. A popular girl, an unpopular boy, and a meter reader with bad intentions all tell their own stories in their own voices, observing each other under harrowing circumstances. A delicate structure, but one of great strength.

Another story – this one available online from the New Yorker, Puppy – uses the same technique for two women. They observe and are observed by each other and both found lacking – though they both are doing the best they can.

The title story – also available online, Tenth of December – has a young boy living in a fantasy world inside his head and an older man with a big problem intersecting on a freezing mountainside. Each has no idea of the others plight but are able to arrive at an understanding in the end.

Arguably the oddest, and possible the most powerful story, the The Semplica-Girl Diaries – Read it here, too, courtesy of the New Yorker – is written as a diary from a father to future generations. The jarring language and constant use of abbreviations makes it a hard read (I was halfway through before I figured out what “SG” meant) but by the end you realize it is worth the effort. A devastating comment on consumer culture, international capitalism, and exploitation of third world workers – all disguised as a diary of a father trying to have a nice birthday party for his little girl.

So, there are three stories you can read online. If you like them, get the book – it’s worth it.
And those are three more stories I can’t use for my month of short stories in June, if I decide to do that.

Don’t worry, there are more where those came from.

Short Story Day 6 – Gooseberries

Posted on by Bill Chance

6. – Gooseberries
Anton Chekhov
http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/gooseb.html

This is day six of my Month of Short Stories – a story a day for June.

After a string of modern and post-modern works, we swing back to a classic master – Anton Chekhov. He wrote a prodigious number of stories on a wide variety of subjects, but all of them were uniquely his own unmistakable style. Often known more as a playwright, his masterly short stories may be his greatest achievement.

I have always been a fan of his famous story, The Lady with the Dog -(audio version). A few days ago, I wrote about Joyce Carol Oates. She produced a story, The Lady with the Pet Dog, which was a modern adaptation of the same tale, told from the point of view of the woman (with the dog). Together, the Oates and Chekhov versions make for some good reading and an interesting comparison.

Today’s story, “Gooseberries” is one of Chekhov’s later works, and is full of his characteristic ambiguity, moral questioning, and general good cheer. It is very attentive to the minutiae of daily life and the author manipulates these details to define and enrich the message and morals that he wants to convey.

Three men spend the day talking, and one tells a long “story within a story” which, on closer inspection has a very close relationship to the outer, framing story. The inner tale fails to interest the listeners, which makes the outer story that much more subtle and effective.

In the end, nothing much happens and nothing is decided… the rain continues to fall and the odor of spent tobacco keeps a character awake late into the night. The moral ambiguities are not resolved – the brother, eating his gooseberries that he thinks are delicious while the narrator confides are bitter – acts like a pig, but is undeniably happy in the way that a person can when his dreams come true.

I think that Checkov is ultimately telling us that this in how life is – there are no guarantees and victory is simply a slight shade away from defeat – happiness is elusive, but so are good works. Selfishness is evil, but charity is an illusion. All you can hope for is to muddle through – but maybe this is a miracle in itself.

“If I were young.”

He suddenly walked up to Aliokhin and shook him first by one hand and then by the other.

“Pavel Koustantinich,” he said in a voice of entreaty, “don’t be satisfied, don’t let yourself be lulled to sleep! While you are young, strong, wealthy, do not cease to do good! Happiness does not exist, nor should it, and if there is any meaning or purpose in life, they are not in our peddling little happiness, but in something reasonable and grand. Do good!”

Ivan Ivanich said this with a piteous supplicating smile, as though he were asking a personal favour.

Then they all three sat in different corners of the drawing-room and were silent. Ivan Ivanich’s story had satisfied neither Bourkin nor Aliokhin. With the generals and ladies looking down from their gilt frames, seeming alive in the firelight, it was tedious to hear the story of a miserable official who ate gooseberries. . . . Somehow they had a longing to hear and to speak of charming people, and of women. And the mere fact of sitting in the drawing-room where everything — the lamp with its coloured shade, the chairs, and the carpet under their feet — told how the very people who now looked down at them from their frames once walked, and sat and had tea there, and the fact that pretty Pelagueya was near — was much better than any story.

—-Gooseberries, by Anton Chekhov

Short Story Day 5 – Symbols and Signs

Posted on by Bill Chance

5. – Symbols and Signs, by Vladimir Nabokov
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1948/05/15/1948_05_15_031_TNY_CARDS_000214135

This is day five of my Month of Short Stories – a story a day for June.

Today we have another little jewel – this one published by the New Yorker in 1948, Signs and Symbols, by Vladimir Nabokov.

It reads so up-to-date, it’s hard to believe the story is sixty-five years old, published almost a decade before Lolita.

I don’t know if anyone else gives a damn, but I have been enjoying reading, researching, thinking about in depth, and writing a bit about each work… even if I am essentially doing a homework assignment each day for fun.

This story is an interesting one – much more complex and deep than it appears at first. It’s well known and a lot has been written about it:

It fascinates me how a great work of literature can spawn so many analytical studies – each one several times longer than the story itself.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a concept spelled out in the last article in the list – that of the difference between Story and Plot. The Story is what actually happens in the work of literature, in real time chronological and casual order. The Plot consists of these same events presented in the order and manner that they are in the narrative. The way the reader learns of these events is irrelevant to the Story – but the wide variety of Plots that can be applied is essential to the artistry and emotional impact of the work.

What Nabokov does with the plot – with the way he presents the story – is what makes Symbols and Signs resonate with a power and complexity hidden in its short length. He is telling multiple stories with the same plot – at least two and maybe three.

One trick he plays is to withhold from the reader certain key information that is needed to make the story complete. There are many questions:

  • Exactly how did the son attempt suicide?
  • Why is there a wagon wheel hanging in a tree in the painting he is afraid of?
  • There are subtle changes in the story (the title for example) between the New Yorker version and the subsequent versions – what is the meaning behind this?
  • What is the meaning of the specific cards mentioned in the deck that falls to the floor?
  • What are the rest of the ten flavors of jelly?

…. and so on. But the biggest mystery and the most perplexing for the reader is – Who makes the third phone call at the end of the story? Is the girl making another wrong number? Is it the hospital calling to report their son’s death? Has the son escaped and is begging to come home?

There are clues throughout the text to help answer these questions – though they are hidden and impossible to be sure about. Remember, that in addition to being a famous writer (and expert on butterflies) Nabokov took great joy and interest in the composition of Chess Problems. He says, “The strain on the mind is formidable; the element of time drops out of one’s consciousness”. Nabokov believed that the “originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity” of creating a chess problem was related to his writing. We should not be surprised to find riddles within riddles hidden in the story.

But even without the mysteries and puzzles and mental gymnastics the short story is a compelling one. It is so sad – you feel so much for the old couple – poor, waiting to die, buying a birthday present for their mentally disturbed son. There is an air of helplessness, leavened slightly by Nabokov’s keen sense of dark humor.

Here was Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, and cancerous growths until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.

I think about the boy’s rare and terrible mental problem. He is crippled by the thought that the entire natural world is a series of coded messages and communications about him. He must examine everything carefully and completely, all the time, under the horror that the whole world is purposed simply to defeat him.

But what of the opposite? The son is paralyzed with the belief that he is the center and purpose of the universe – but isn’t it more of a horror to believe that the universe is completely uncaring and even unaware of your existence?

That’s the terrible truth of the parent’s life. And there is nothing they can do about it.

All this, and much more, she had accepted, for, after all, living does mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case, mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches.
—-Signs and Symbols, Vladimir Nabokov

Short Story Day 4 – The School

Posted on by Bill Chance

4. – The School
Donald Barthelme
http://www.npr.org/programs/death/readings/stories/bart.html

I came upon the writings of Donald Barthelme in an odd, backward way. I stumbled across an article in the New Yorker (Good Losers, March 8, 1999) written by two of his brothers, Stephen and Frederick. It was an eloquent piece about an extremely successful family, the father a famous and influential architect and three sons that were noteworthy writers. The article was about two of them, Frederick and Stephen, who had become terribly addicted to gambling. It was fascinating and horrifying to read how these enormously talented and intelligent men were destroying their lives by driving down to the cheap casinos along the Mississippi coast and blowing all their livelihood on blackjack binges.

During the course of the article the brothers wrote about their older brother, Donald, and his revolutionary genius as an author. That interested me enough to do some research and to start to read his stuff.

Most of what Donald Barthelme writes are very short stories, flash fiction. They are unique and unusual bits of text – not what you are expecting or used to reading. They give up on a regular plot arc and make the reader figure out the meaning from a series of seemingly unrelated, often ridiculous statements, occurrences, or facts.

It’s a bit of an acquired taste. At first it was attractive to me because of its short nature – I figured I could read these little morsels of tales in some spare seconds here or there. But their simplicity turned out to be an illusion. The stories were more complex and deeper than they appeared on the surface. It took longer than I expected and were more work than I was prepared for – the tiny things had to be re-read and thought about.

Eventually, I came around. I haven’t read everything Donald Barthelme (or his brothers) have written – but it’s in the repertoire. I’ll get to it eventually.

Today’s selection, The School, is a good representative. We all have had the experience of being in a class of children keeping animals or plants in the classroom for educational purposes. Most have had the experience of having something die under these conditions – the shared sadness, responsibility, and disappointment. This very short work takes that experience and amplifies it to the point of ridiculous terror and then takes a very unexpected turn.

Read it, see if you like it.

At any rate, it’s the rare piece of serious fiction that reminds me of a Monty Python sketch (a reminder only – the tone and theme are very different) in the way this one does.

Of course we expected the tropical fish to die, that was no surprise. Those numbers, you look at them crooked and they’re belly-up on the surface. But the lesson plan called for a tropical fish input at that point, there was nothing we could do, it happens every year, you just have to hurry past it.
—-The School, from Sixty Stories, by Donald Barthelme

June Short Story Month – A Story a Day

Posted on by Bill Chance

I read, more or less, a short story every day. Not every day, but most. Somedays, if I’m not working hard on a novel or other book, and the selections are shortish, I’ll read two or three. I have been doing that all my life. Let’s see… maybe three hundred short stories a year for maybe forty years – that’s in the neighborhood of twelve thousand short stories.

Seems like a lot.

So, it looks like May has been declared short story month. I’m not sure where I read that – or what person or organization actually declared the month. Probably some random blogger. I don’t think the Official International Board for Naming Months Shit had anything to do with it.

Anyway. I missed it. But it did get me thinking. After the gears stopped creaking and the smoke cleared I decided to make June my non-official short story month. I will read a story a day, take notes, and eventually write a blog entry on it.

I will definitely stick to my schedule on reading them – though I might wait before putting it online if there is something else I want to write about that day, so be patient.

The next step is to make a list. I went out to look for:

  1. Thirty One stories by different authors. Yes, I know that June only has thirty days… but thirty one seems like a better number. So it will drag over into July. So sue me.
  2. Stories that I don’t remember reading. This isn’t a firm rule, there are a couple that I read a while back that I want to revisit… but generally new stuff. This wipes out a long list of some of my favorite authors – Ballard, Poe, Denis Johnson, Flannery O’Connor, Lovecraft, Pynchon, Russell Banks… that would otherwise have featured positions because I have read, as far as I can tell, everything they wrote. Or at least all the short stories. On the other hand, there are a few authors on here that I have never read. I’m a bit ashamed of that and see this as a good opportunity for an introduction. Which ones? I’m not telling.
  3. I’m going for breadth, not quality. This is not a list of the best short stories, but an attempt at a wide sampling, hopefully to find something unknown, a new rabbit hole to fall down. I tried to select shorter works whenever possible – time is in great demand.
  4. Finally, I wanted them all to be available free, online, in some sort of readable format. So that all of you can read along if you wish. This was the most difficult and restrictive of the requirements. I’ll include a link with each entry.

This list may change – especially if a link goes dead. Any suggestions will be gladly accepted – if this works, I may do it again.

I thought it would be difficult to fill out the list, but it was very easy. I had to trim it down. I could have gone to a hundred without much trouble.

When I write a review I am careful to only give a tiny hint of a plot – I detest spoilers. Hopefully, I can come up with something interesting to say about each story. Again, I hope that this may look interesting enough that somebody else will read at least a few of these and throw their opinions up.
I’ll start tomorrow… and here’s the current list so far:

1. – The Fall of Edward Barnard
W. Somerset Maugham
http://www.online-literature.com/maugham/the-trembling/3/

2. – Heat
Joyce Carol Oates
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/heat.html

3. – A Study in Emerald
Neil Gaiman

Click to access emerald.pdf

4. – The School
Donald Barthelme
http://www.npr.org/programs/death/readings/stories/bart.html

5. – Symbols and Signs
Vladimir Nabokov
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1948/05/15/1948_05_15_031_TNY_CARDS_000214135

6. – Gooseberries
Anton Chekhov
http://www.eldritchpress.org/ac/gooseb.html

7. – Sea Oak
George Saunders
http://www.barcelonareview.com/20/e_gs.htm

8. Thirteen Wives
Steve Millhauser
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/05/27/130527fi_fiction_millhauser

9. – “A 32-Year Old Day Tripper”
Haruki Murakami
http://wednesdayafternoonpicnic.blogspot.com/2010/05/32-year-old-day-tripper_01.html

10 – The Crawling Sky
Joe R Lansdale
http://subterraneanpress.com/magazine/spring_2011/fiction_the_crawling_sky_by_joe_r._lansdale/

Other works
(new story changes each week)
http://www.joerlansdale.com/stories.shtml

11. The Piece of String
Guy de Maupassant
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/string.html

12. Paladin of the Lost Hour
Harlan Ellison
http://harlanellison.com/iwrite/paladin.htm

13. A Father’s Story
Andre Dubus

Click to access FathersStory.pdf

14. Beyond the Door
Philip K Dick
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/28644

15. Wiggle Room
David Foster Wallace
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2009/03/09/090309fi_fiction_wallace

16. – The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
Ursula K LeGuin
http://harelbarzilai.org/words/omelas.txt

Click to access rprnts.omelas.pdf

17. The Dark Arts
Ben Marcus
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/05/20/130520fi_fiction_marcus

18. The Landlady
Roald Dahl
http://www.nexuslearning.net/books/holt-eol2/collection%203/landlady.htm
Man From the South
http://www.americanliterature.com/author/roald-dahl/short-story/man-from-the-south

19. Eyes of a Blue Dog
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/bluedog.html

20. A Telephone Call
Dorothy Parker
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/teleycal.html

21. Mexican Manifesto
Roberto Bolaño
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2013/04/22/130422fi_fiction_bolano

22. The Sandman
E.T.A. Hoffmann
http://www.fln.vcu.edu/hoffmann/sand_e.html

23. Hunters in the Snow
Tobias Wolff
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/huntsnow.html

24 Red Nails (Conan the Barbarian)
Robert E Howard
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32759

25. The Use of Force
William Carlos Williams
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/force.html

26. The Secret Room
Alain Robbe-Grillet
http://www.101bananas.com/library2/secretroom.html

27. From Hell’s Heart I Stab at Thee
Armando Vitalis
http://ubuntuone.com/6iBiMK1EvBCzdb8qqCgLdE

28. Pretty Boy
Richard Ford
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2005/jun/25/originalwriting.fiction5

29. The Garden Party
Katherine Mansfield
http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/TheGardenParty.html

30. Passion
Alice Munro
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/03/22/040322fi_fiction

31. Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose
Kelly Link
http://www.fenceportal.org/?page_id=2327

Lucky Dogs

Posted on by Bill Chance

From the wonderful book, A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole. In the story, Ignatius J. Reilly discovers and ends up working for a famous New Orleans Hot Dog Vendor. In the book, it’s Seven Paradise Vendors… in real life, Lucky Dogs.

Seven Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, was housed in what had formerly been an automobile repair shop, the dark ground floor of an otherwise unoccupied commercial building on Poydras Street. The garage doors were usually open, giving the passerby an acrid nos-trilful of boiling hot dogs and mustard and also of cement soaked over many years by automobile lubricants and motor oils that had dripped and drained from Harmons and Hupmobiles. The powerful stench of Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, sometimes led the overwhelmed and perplexed stroller to glance through the open door into the darkness of the garage. There his eye fell upon a fleet of large tin hot dogs mounted on bicycle tires. It was hardly an imposing vehicular collection. Several of the mobile hot dogs were badly dented. One crumpled frankfurter lay on its side, its one wheel horizontally above it, a traffic fatality. Among the afternoon pedestrians who hurried past Paradise Vendors, Incorporated, one formidable figure waddled slowly along. It was Ignatius. Stopping before the narrow garage, he sniffed the fumes from Paradise with great sensory pleasure, the protruding hairs in his nostrils analyzing, cataloging, categorizing, and classifying the distinct odors of hot dog, mustard, and lubricant. Breathing deeply, he wondered whether he also detected the more delicate odor, the fragile scent of hot dog buns. He looked at the white-gloved hands of his Mickey Mouse wristwatch and noticed that he had eaten lunch only an hour before. Still the intriguing aromas were making him salivate actively. He stepped into the garage and looked around. In a corner an old man was boiling hot dogs in a large institutional pot whose size dwarfed the gas range upon which it rested. “Pardon me, sir,” Ignatius called. “Do you retail here?” The man’s watering eyes turned toward the large visitor. “What do you want?”

“I would like to buy one of your hot dogs. They smell rather tasty. I was wondering if I could buy just one.”

Lucky Dogs cart - Bourbon Street, French Quarter, New Orleans

Lucky Dogs cart – Bourbon Street, French Quarter, New Orleans

“May I select my own?” Ignatius asked, peering down over the top of the pot. In the boiling water the frankfurters swished and lashed like artificially colored and magnified paramecia. Ignatius filled his lungs with the pungent, sour aroma. “I shall pretend that I am in a smart restaurant and that this is the lobster pond.”

“Here, take this fork,” the man said, handing Ignatius a bent and corroded semblance of a spear. “Try to keep your hands out of the water. It’s like acid. Look what it’s done to the fork.”

“My,” Ignatius said to the old man after having taken his first bite. “These are rather strong. What are the ingredients in these.”

“Rubber, cereal, tripe. Who knows? I wouldn’t touch one of them myself.”

“They’re curiously appealing,” Ignatius said, clearing his throat. “I thought that the vibrissae about my nostrils detected something unique while I was outside.”

Ignatius J. Reilly

Ignatius J. Reilly, sculpture on Canal Street.

Ignatius is such a fan of the Paradise Hot Dog, he is able to get a job as a vendor, setting out on the streets of his beloved New Orleans, pushing a heavy cart.

This does not turn out well.

George, who was wandering up Carondelet with an armload of packages wrapped in plain brown paper, heard.the cry and went up to the gargantuan vendor. “Hey, stop. Gimme one of these.”

Ignatius looked sternly at the young boy who had placed himself in the wagon’s path. His valve protested against the pimples, the surly face that seemed to hang from the long well-lubricated hair, the cigarette behind the ear, the aquamarine jacket, the delicate boots, the tight trousers that bulged offensively in the crotch in violation of all rules of theology and geometry.

“I am sorry,” Ignatius snorted. “I have only a few frankfurters left, and I must save them. Please get out of my way.”

“Save them? Who for?”

“That is none of your business, you waif. Why aren’t you in school? Kindly stop molesting me. Anyway, I have no change.”

“I got a quarter,” the thin white lips sneered. “I cannot sell you a frank, sir. Is that clear?” “Whatsa matter with you, friend?”

“What’s the matter with me? What’s the matter with you? Are you unnatural enough to want a hot dog this early in the afternoon? My conscience will not let me sell you one. Just look at your loathsome complexion. You are a growing boy whose system needs to be surfeited with vegetables and orange juice and whole wheat bread and spinach and such. I, for one, will not contribute to the debauchery of a minor.”

“Whadda you talking about? Sell me one of them hot dogs. I’m hungry. I ain’t had no lunch.”

“No!” Ignatius screamed so furiously that the pas-sersby stared. “Now get away from me before I run over you with this cart.”

George pulled open the lid of the bun compartment and said, “Hey, you got plenty stuff in here. Fix me a weenie.”

“Help!” Ignatius screamed, suddenly remembering the old man’s warnings about robberies. “Someone is stealing my buns! Police!”

My son, Lee in front of a cart.

My son, Lee in front of a cart.