Showing posts with label
Reader's Digest Condensed Books.
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Showing posts with label
Reader's Digest Condensed Books.
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This review can also be read at The Mookse and the Gripes.
First Line: "In the damp late spring of 1985, Jelly picked up the handset of her pink plastic Trimline phone and the dial tone hummed in her ear."
Last Line: "But she cried as she sealed the envelope, because for a moment she thought she might have gone a different way."
When I was a little girl, my parents had Reader's Digest Condensed books on a cheap metal shelf, that bowed in the middle under the weight of partial stories. I am always reticent about pieces pulled from a larger work - they usually feel flat and leave me disappointed.
This time, however, not only did I enjoy this piece on its own, I am looking forward to reading the whole when it comes out next year. I want more, but not because something was lacking here. Rather, this tale was so complete that there must be more to discover about Jelly. There must be a further ending that answers the ending we find here.
"Jelly" is how the narrator addresses the protagonist, a woman named Nicole. And as the story begins, I am brought into a Doris Day-like film but with real true, non-comedic seduction. Jelly lures and controls men through a "pink plastic Trimline phone". She knows what she is doing - how long a conversation should last, how to listen to what the man is saying on the other end of the line, how to hear what he truly wants her to hear yet isn't saying. She is in control. That is, until she dials Jack's number.
For the first time, Jelly finds the intimate distance of the phone to be too much. The phone is, indeed, "a weapon of intimacy". The con artist finds herself conned by love itself. But this isn't THE TWIST. There's more. And when Dana Spiotta dropped it down in front me, I was truly surprised. For it wasn't unbelievable, but I was unprepared. I was lured in by the seduction of minute and gorgeous details, unabashed storytelling - lulled by the process of the con and the process of fiction. I was caught unawares.
I cannot stop thinking about this piece and I cannot soften the affect it had on my heart. This is not a condensed book, I assure you. Like Jack, I fell for Jelly's enticements, and am anxious to see more of her.
Photo credit:https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Dana_Spiotta_2011_NBCC_Awards_2012_Shankbone.JPG/170px-Dana_Spiotta_2011_NBCC_Awards_2012_Shankbone.JPG
First Line: "The church on Siegfeldstrasse was open to anyone who embarrassed by the Republic, and Andreas Wolf was so much of an embarrassment that he actually resided there, in the basement of the rectory, but unlike the others - the true Christian believers, the friends of the Earth, the misfits who defended human rights or didn't want to fight in World War III - he was no less an embarrassment to himself."
Last Line: "The she ran to her friend, and the two of them walked away briskly, without looking back."
On The Mookse and the Gripes we have been discussing the quality of fiction in The New Yorker. This is what I had to say about that as well as my thoughts on "The Republic of Bad Taste" from the June 7, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.
"This thread has been fun to read. I am a neophyte to contemporary fiction... I fell in love with 19th century literature and found that it affected my writing negatively (or so my writing group said - hmmmm....) So I am new to Franzen and Froer and Rushdie and Munro and Smith and even Carver- just read my first Carver this year.
This has certainly made me rethink all I was taught about the short story (the rules a la Vonnegut and Poe).
If I like it - I like it. I try to find the reasons why when I share whether or not I liked it. Maybe there is a mathematical formula for the perfect story, like there is supposed to be in music... maybe there is a "right" way or an expectation. Maybe there isn't.
Art changes with time. Chekhov? Would The New Yorker publish him today? Or Dickens? Would they publish an excerpt from Virginia Woolf? Who knows... Do they have a "mission statement" for their fiction somewhere? Are we privy to it?
The New Yorker has afforded me a place to begin to explore contemporary shorter fiction. So, for now, I am not disenchanted. I am going along for the ride. Give me time to become disgruntled. I am sure it will happen...? But do I HAVE to like art? Or do I have to be affected by it? Don't know yet. Some things I like. Some things expand me but anger me. Some things I turn from never to return. I like the opportunity to TALK about the stories - decide how I feel about them. And I love to hear/read what others have to say...
As for Franzen's story: ick. That's the first impression. I put it down three different times before forcing myself to finish it. It was gritty, explicit, sad, disturbing. But folks were right - there was something compelling about it. A story of redemption - of a nation, of a man, of a girl... Redemption does not always mean bread or shorter lines or true felicity in freedom. Or love. It just means a release and a change of heart regardless of the externals.
Did I like it? No. I didn't like his writing voice. It seemed stuttered, choppy, robotic. I didn't like the depth with which we inhabited Andreas' head. It bothered me on a personal level even though it offered the strong contrast needed for the redemption to be believable. It was indeed too long for my tastes, though came within the two hours or lest required by Poe's rules. And I had a hard time following some of the identifying pronouns - like I lost a character for a second.
Would I read it again. Nope. Did it make me think? Yes.
Do I feel it belongs in this magazine? I have no context yet only having been reading it for a few months.
I do feel it is a cop-out to publish excerpts. This is not a Reader's Digest Condensed Book...
I am almost afraid to be disappointed now with Russell's story from reading the above, but we'll see. I like to find the good where I can."
The story is enough.
photo from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e6/Jonathan_Franzen_2011_Shankbone_2.JPG/220px-Jonathan_Franzen_2011_Shankbone_2.JPG
This story can be found in the December 14, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.
