A blog I love...

 It's been awhile, huh? 

But sometimes you run across something that just fits so well - you gotta tell folks about it.


This time it isn't a book or a short story, but a blog: Just Another Damn Thing to be Strong About.

She writes about a son with a mental illness, surviving cancer, losing her parents, being an art teacher, adoption, Colorado, a teenage daughter, and everything else that just comes with life.  She tells her story.  And her story is enough. 


Check it out.  It's good stuff. 

"The Story of a Painter" by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya

This story can be found in the January 18, 2016 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "There once lived a painter so destitute that he couldn’t afford a single crayon, let alone brushes and paints."

Last Line: "'It’s because you’re a silly one,' Vera told him. 'Always were and always will be.'"

How wonderful to read a story that is merely a fairy tale - a story intended to amuse, to entertain, to hold the recepient's interest from beginning to end!  And though this piece is elementary, it is fun, and also current, touching universal and timeless themes and characterizations.  Fairy tales remind us that some things- some thoughts and emotions - some of life's circumstances - never seem to change.

No Big Bad Wolf, no little gnome of a man, and no princess to be found here.  But amid echoes of Dickens and Tolstoy we find a poor, abused painter; a young woman with a withered leg; a melodramatic swindler; and magic - paints, brushes, canvases...  There are "strangers in a strange land" and there is "no room in the inn" for a woman giving birth.  And guilt!  Oh, the guilt that runs throughout this piece - a thread weaving together the fuzzy differences between wants and needs!

As in any fairy tale, there are positive events that suddenly lead to negative turns and a moment when all seems lost.  Despair looms and threatens the thinnest fabric of humanity and hope.  But then there is a moment when what is real overcomes what is magic, in the end, and the hero comes through triumphant, and legally and lawfully wed.

Mormon Moment: "For behold, are we not all beggars?"  Mosiah 4:19
 
Photo Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/Ludmilla_Petrushevskaya_seven_2009_Shankbone_NYC.jpg/200px-Ludmilla_Petrushevskaya_seven_2009_Shankbone_NYC.jpg

"1=1" by Anne Carson

This story can be found in the January 11, 2016 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "She visits others."

Last Line: "The fox does not fail."

I do not understand everything about this story, but I know there is so much in there. I wish I had more learning, more background, more intellect to make and see the connections that are here in this piece.  So I'd like to encourage discussion about this story.  I am ready to learn. 

What did you notice?  What struck you about the beginning and its connection to the ending?  Is there a symbolism that ran through here that was heavy for you?  Did this prose piece feel poetic in tone and theme?  What is this tale really about?  

Water predominates this piece - the lake, the sea.  It held and cradled characters - the main character, the dog, refugees... 

The first line is haunting: "She visits others."  Yet, then the protagonist calls herself selfish.  How?  Why?  She notices people, situations, individuals...  But she says there's "no momentum in sharing"...?

"There is pressure to use this water correctly... Every water has its own rules and offering... Perhaps involved is that commonplace struggle to know beauty... Every water has a right place to be, but that place is motion.  You have to keep finding it, keep having it find you.  Your movement sinks into and out of it with each stroke.  You can fail it with each stroke.  What does that mean, fail it."  What does "fail it" mean?

And how does this connect to the end?  "The fox does not fail."  And Comrade Chandler's connection to the fox?

So much to talk about here.  Let's see what we discover from each other.

Photo Credit: http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1380283628p5/34336.jpg

Mormon Moment: "And he said unto me: What desirest thou?  And I said unto him: To know the interpretation thereof... [for] I do not know the meaning of all things."  1 Nephi 11:10,11,17

"The Beach Boy" by Ottessa Moshfegh

This story can be found in the January 4, 2016 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read on The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line:  "The friends met for dinner, as they did the second Sunday of every month, at a small Italian restaurant on the Upper East Side."

Last Line: "It was clear to him and to the other beach boys watching from their perch in the dunes that the old man wasn’t carrying any money."

A couple, steeped in privilege and an elite lifestyle, meet with an untimely death and grief upon returning home from a vacation on an island.  The story is meant to explore a man's experience with a controlling marriage, too-tightly fit career, and the lack of choice and freedom he feels inside his life of privilege and ease.

There were great images in this piece - they juxtaposed each other in a subtle, and quietly jarring way.  Yet they felt forced.  This piece could have been an organic exploration of relationships, emotions, desires.  Instead of allowing the reader to watch the story unfold in a natural and life-like flow, Ms. Moshfegh tells us what to see and think, and when, in an overt manner.  The characters are well-developed, but they are pushed from scene to scene, moment to moment, by the author.  I wonder what John would have thought about the last picture on the roll if particular thoughts were not insisted upon him...

I tried to find the criteria used to select fiction for the magazine.  I found this response from Deborah Treisman at The New Yorker: "We have no concept of 'trademark' New Yorker fiction. It is next to impossible to define one limited category that would contain work by Haruki Murakami and Alice Munro, Edwidge Danticat and Jonathan Franzen, Jhumpa Lahiri and David Foster Wallace, William Trevor and Aleksandar Hemon, John Updike and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Gabriel García Marquez and Antonya Nelson, to name just a few of the very different writers we’ve published in recent years. What is important for us is that a story succeed on its own terms. If the writer’s goal is to be linguistically inventive, he or she needs to pull that off and do something fresh; if his or her goal is to have an emotional impact, that must come through in some powerful way. The styles and approaches can be as different as is humanly possible, as long as they’re effective."

"The Beach Boy" feels like it is on its way to "suceed[ing] on its own terms", but is not quite there yet.  Such dramatic and sudden shifts in personality do take place in times of grief, in times of great upheaval, and sudden freedom.  This transformation is covered in a brief paragraph, but it reads like it's trying to create effect - make readers see the change - rather than allowing them to discover it on their own, notice it by connecting to their own life experiences while reading.  The narrator feels as controlling as Marcia, without being as light-handed and airy.

Photo credit:  https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/85/Ottessa_Moshfegh_2015.jpg/220px-Ottessa_Moshfegh_2015.jpg
  

"Bedtimes" by Tim Parks

This story can be read in the December 21, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be found at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "Monday evening, 10:30.  Thomas is sitting on the sofa with his laptop, reading for work.  Mary has been talking to a friend on Skype."

Last Line: "In the playroom, the two children are wondering whether there's anything they can do about their parents."

Tim Parks again?  Really?  Was there nothing else?  Did the editors of The New Yorker find this to be such an amazing piece?  Are they pushing Tim Parks' new novel (it includes this story as well as "The Vespa", the fiction published in the magazine just a couple of months ago)?

I did not like "The Vespa", and the feeling remains the same with "Bedtimes".  The writing is simple, and as Mr. Parks declares himself, "mechanical" with "monosyllabic repetition".  This was his artistic choice!  He says he hopes readers find this story "funny"...

Sorry, Mr. Parks.  I found no humor - no ascerbic sarcasm, no raw irony, nothing laugh-out-loud, and certainly no wry internal grimace.

"Bedtimes" has potential to be expanded, and there's a lot of "showing", but this story feels like a catalog of stage directions.  It is dry and unoriginal.  I cannot connect with such two dimensional characters - I feel nothing for them.  

I am glad this tale was so short...

Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Cocker_spaniel_angielski_zloty_photoshop.jpg

"Jelly and Jack" by Dana Spiotta

This story can be found in the December 14, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

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

"Oktober" by Martin Amis

This story can be found in the December 7, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "I sat drinking black tea in the foyer of the hotel."

Last Line: "'Dark Continent' is not a book about Africa; the rest of Mazower's title is 'Europe's Twentieth Century.'"
 
"Novelists should never deal in duties or obligations. But if they feel a literary impulse to take on political realities—then by all means."

This doesn't feel like fiction at all to me.  In fact, it reminds me of a creative writing assignment from college - write something true that happened to you and write something made-up. The class then votes which is the fiction. I vote that this is not very "fictional", based on the voice, the pacing of the story and the seemingly didactic purpose.

What ideas and thoughts readers will find addressed in this story:
politics
festivals
war
refugees
women
religion
geriatrics
inclusion
bigotry
a literary narrator
family
business
alcohol
ID theft
vignettes of Thomas Wolfe and Nabokov
borders
immigration
history
repetition of history

"The repetitions.  You go through the same things again and again.  And it just doesn't sink in."

Readers are intelligent.  And here they find an event in an author's life melded together with his way of approaching (forcing connections between) ideologies rather than a tale exploring universal truths from a side angle.  Readers are not encouraged to form their own opinions by watching a story in action.  Here, instead, they are overtly lead to situations and instructed what to make of them... like fifth graders. Almost like an "obligation"...

The tone of the writing was easy and flowing - conversational and intimate.  I am sure Martin Amis is a wonderful writer, for he executed great skill in the act of writing.  The content, however, left me frustrated and unimpressed.

Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1f/Martin_amis_2014.jpg/220px-Martin_amis_2014.jpg

 

"Save a Horse Ride a Cowgirl" by Ann Beattie

This story can be found in the November 23, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be read on The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "Heidi and Bree were rear-ended on Route 1 by Sterne Clough, driving his brother's Ford pickup."

Last Line: "She had no doubt nodded in agreement."

Bradley Clough is coming to terms with what his life has become after the death of his wife, Donna.

That's it.

Well, also his time in Vietnam...

Yet Ann Beattie takes us on a rambling, fabricated journey of "telling" (not "showing"), marking the path with senseless brand name-dropping - Puma, Newman's Own, Coke.  It seems as if she is cataloging evidences of the characters' lives to convince us of their reality.  Instead, this story feels like a meandering gossip reel.  Characters and their connections to each other are dropped in so quick and hard in the beginning that I thought: who cares?  Who was there to connect to and follow?  

About a third of the way in, Beattie focuses solely on her main guy.  And it makes sense that she is taking an artistic route, and fleshing out his existence for us...  I can almost see what she is intending to do for us as readers.  There is a lot of potential here, but...  Is she trying to sound like the younger writers of the day?  I don't even like when they do this kicking realities around and making them squeal for the reader.

The dialogue is heavy and unnatural.  Beattie's "telling" flows better than what we overhear the characters say.  There are attempts at wry humor, but it feels forced - for show.  Not only am I lacking any concern for Bradley (I cared more about his brother Sterne!), but the participants of this tale seem made up - static, except for well-placed details in order to create spontaneous life on the page.  A lot of attributes or quirks, or even life events, seem random.  Sudden.  Oh!  I need to tell them this part, too!

Readers are pretty brilliant.  "He finished his seltzer, peed, and undressed, draping his clothes on the bedpost.  The next day was Saturday, so he'd wear them a second day."  One, readers understand that the clothes on the bedpost assumes a second wear, otherwise they would have gone to the laundry basket or even the floor.  And two, how many times can one use the word "day" in a sentence?

The concept of starting with one character and bumping around until we get to the protagonist and how they connect to the first is fascinating.  There were just too many loose ends here.  This story felt like the kitchen "junk drawer" - many great pieces taken out on their own, but put together, they create a mess not to be dealt with.

Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Ann_Beattie_headshot.jpg

"The Weir" by Mark Haddon

This story can be found in the November 16, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.  

This review can also be seen at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "He pops the catch and lifts the rusty boot."

Last Line: "And the last few minutes may be horrible, but that's O.K., it really is, because nothing is lost and the river will keep on flowing and there will be dandelions in sporing and the buzzard will circle above the wasteland."

I love The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time.  I found it to be powerful and moving and thought-provoking.  The exploration into human emotion and the sensation of such was touching and well-portrayed.

I am not as impressed with "The Weir".  It is another story with great potential to be tender and compassionate, honest and vulnerable.  A man whose wife has left him (he gets the car with the rust...) and his son has abandoned them both, takes his dogs for their daily romp in the fields on the banks of the Thames.  Battered tennis balls and racket show us that he is not faring as well he thinks he is.

Then Ian spots a woman, on the weir, behaving strangely in a spot that can only mean thing - she plans to jump.  After this extended scene, the emotive drive behind the story seems to loss a little "umph". 

The tale moves into a direction of life's complexities, yet trying to show continuities of life bring hope...  I was waiting for something, but I am not sure what that something was.  The ending was wrapped up, but rather messy and poignant, as in life.  But I did not walked away moved, or pondering.  There is no residue left in this piece for me.

There were lines of feeling and imagery to love: "Enough blue to male a pair of sailor's trousers."
"The sour self-pity in her voice, daring him to reach out and have his hand slapped away."
"...as if she were a superhero and this was her power."
"...he's like a lobster in a warming pot, claws scrabbling at the metal rim."
"She listens better than anyone he knows.  Or maybe it's just that she doesn't interrupt.  And maybe that's enough."

"The Weir" doesn't feel real to me, but it seems it should.  Instead, it seems like I am being told a made-up story...  and while I have something akin to pity for Ian, I do not empathy for him.  I see him too far ahead in the distance to even try to connect with him.

Photo credit: https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/436449989946908673/9_ZPDodB_400x400.jpeg

"Honey Bunny" by Julianne Pachico

This story can be found in the November 9, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be found at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "He comes up to her on the dance floor. 'Nice purse,' he says almost immediately."

Last Line: "It's not the world's most comfortable nest.  But it's a start."

I went through several  sensations as I read this story.  First: another twenty-something year old's drug story??  Then: a lot of fragments that I have to seam together, and I don't feel like doing the work on another twenty-something year old's drug story.  To: there seems to be something familiar here in this heroine's journey.  And finally: I liked it.  A lot.

I was unsure for most of the story.  The nameless protagonist and her cocaine struggles were well-described, I just felt like it is a very common story line these days.  Girl meets a boy in a club.  They do drugs together.  Her odd, drug-induced behaviors...

But then the story follows on the wings of insects found in the coke - leaves, flowers, crackers, dirt... and a nostalgia - clearly evoked memories of her very young years - comes wafting in smelling like chicken broth and sounding like her grandmother.

I have recently finished reading How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and so I felt comfortable in this young woman's reminisces of her privileged background and current stylish existence. 

There were hints to history and politics, but the reader is allowed to come to their own conclusions about them.  The implications of adult politics on children who then grow up is evident but not decided for us.  And for this reason, I was able to connect with this twenty-something year old in another drug story as an individual still dealing with sadness and loss in her little girl heart.

Photo Credit: http://www.newyorker.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/151109_r27259-884.jpg

"The Gospel According to Garcia" by Ariel Dorfman

This story can be found in the November 2, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be found at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "We watched him come in, how his steps faltered at the threshold of the classroom, how he just stood there, his first mistake, giving us enough time to size him up, not enough time for him to figure out who we were, what strategy might win us over."

Last Line: "We remain absolutely still and wait."

I do not like stories that have a moral as their purpose - that have a message as their medium - that have a point that may be categorized as political.  I like stories that let me find my own joy or sorrow in the plot and characters.

Ariel Dorfman has written a piece that feels like I am to read it for homework and come into class prepared to discuss the themes and how they apply to our lives - here and now.  I felt 16 again, anxious to get it "right", get my A, and feel a bit intellectual in the process.

Which is to say "kudos!" to Mr. Dorfman.  The first person narrator is plural.  We are supposed to feel part of a nameless, faceless group of students, feeling intellectual and wise, and unsure when a new teacher takes the place of  the beloved.  We feel their uneasiness - we feel our own mind dart in and out of old thought patterns and new ideas.  They do not know what has happened to the man that could lead them, nor do we.  We just sit and watch and wait, as they do, to see what the new teacher can pull from the group.

There is great symbolism (the title, for instance) and deep philosophical questions ("Why is indifference worse than murder?").  There are fantastic images ("...with a bird in a nearby tree watching the snow cover his body...") and the length is perfect for its politics (5 pages when I printed it up).  

But I love the connection with one or two characters - I don't care about how the group feels.  A group is made of individuals, but even here that is cleaned and refined by Garcia.  He claims to have taught them to rebel, but here they sit, unsure of what that rebellion should look like to their former instructor, not to themselves.  

I like the examination of the individual and the only place I found it here was: "...he was not disappointed when somebody asked, this time I am sure it was not me, 'Does that mean we should never love intensely, give ourselves entirely to another human being?'"  This was in response to Garcia's comment: "Remember that he who loves more in a relationship always ends up screwed."  We see the one narrator speaking for all. And we see that Garcia is not just the "resistance leader of the week" - we see that somehow, his heart was broken.  And that is not politics.

It is well-written and conveyed with great skill.  It just isn't my cup of tea.  The brush strokes paint a beautiful nose, but I prefer teeth.

Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/DorfmanA1.jpg/250px-DorfmanA1.jpg

"Who Will Greet You at Home" - Lesley Nneka Arimah

This story can be read in the October 26, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be found at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "The yarn baby lasted a good month, emitting fry, cotton-soft gurgles and pooping little balls of lint, before Ogechi snagged its thigh on a nail and it unravelled as she continued walking, mistaking it little huffs for the beginning of hunger, not the cries of an infant being undone."

Last Line: "In the morning, she would fetch leaves to protect it from the rain."

While the language of this story is lyrical - the opening paragraph is quite beautiful - this genre is not something I enjoy.  I love the traditional Grimm's fairy tales, but I do not enjoy newly created parables or fables (think Dan Miller or Paul Coehlo). They feel forced and what I enjoy about fiction is the ease with which reality is addressed- even if in a hyperbolic way.

Maybe I am still reeling from the wonders of last week's story (Ben Marcus's "Cold Little Bird"), and the intriguing examination of fatherhood.  Maybe.  But this mythological invention of motherhood has less for me to link with, less to embrace.  And because it is not a "common" folk tale, it did not take root in prior memories or schemas.

This story is vaguely reminiscent of "The Snow Child" - but less beautiful, more harsh and unyielding.  Universal themes and ideas are addressed.

Even still, the writing is delightful.  It is animated and I can see the story unfolding in my mind's eye. The sensations for the reader of scene and character were well done.

Photo credit: http://i.ytimg.com/vi/GFUv9CHibZ0/maxresdefault.jpg

"Cold Little Bird" by Ben Marcus

This story can be found in the October 19, 2015 issue of The New Yorker magazine. 


First Line: "It started with bedtime.  A coldness.  A formality."

Last Line: "On the cover a boy, arms outspread, was gripping wires in each hand, and his whole body was glowing."

I have not been so stunned and haunted by a short story since I read Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery" in high school. 

And I mean that in a good way - in a "falling over and dripping with inexpressible words of praise" kind of way.

Wow.

Read it AND listen to it on SoundCloud.

Wow.

A story with no real resolution at the end (amazing Chekhovian style!), and a possibility of hope, but that even that possibility isn't solid. The only solid thing here is hurt.  It is the only thing that is tangible and seemingly immovable.

This story is not "inventive" - who said that fiction is more honest than truth?  "Cold Little Bird" is realistic with spot-on dialogue, eerie insight into the mind of the male protagonist, and a truthful examination of the affects a child's troubles can have on a marriage, a family.

A husband and wife and their two sons.  One very normal.  One very not - or is he just "sarcastic" or "acting out" because of his parents' tensions?  

Martin and Rachel respond to Jonah differently - and that is to be expected.  One parent is a man and the other is a woman.  And their reactions to each other's response is completely understandable.  The influence we have on those we love is fantastically deeper than we can imagine.

"Grow-Light Blues" is the only other Ben Marcus story I have read... but I am convinced of his power as a story-teller.  His tales are timely and well-crafted, touching uncomfortable topics in a unique way...

Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/38/Ben_marcus_3041200.JPG/220px-Ben_marcus_3041200.JPG
 

"Usl at the Stadium" by Rivka Galchen

This story can be found in the October 12, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be seen at The Mookse and The Gripes.

First Line: "The game on Sunday had a 2 P.M. start, and Usl was featured on the Jumbotron intermittently from 4:02 to 4:09."

Last Line: "He must have been waiting."

Usl works the buyback end of a storefront gold and gem outfit.  He receives few texts, and mostly from his mom and a site called GemFacts.  His life is not what he had pictured or hoped.  He has dreams and he dreams them.

Usl is featured on the Jumbotron at a Yankees game - sleeping.  The footage is loaded onto YouTube and cruel comments are made.  His mother seeks to soothe him.  A friend helps him create a lawsuit and his employer, like a father, offers sage advice.

This is a story about shame, degradation, and infamy.  And this is nothing new in our "look at all the skeletons I have in MY closet" world we live in.  Even without asking to be seen, many of us are.  And there's always a response we cannot control. 

While the writing was decent and the plot was developed, hints and details well-placed and less speculative than truthful, I did not like this story.  This type of situation happens all the time, but I avoid the drama that attends these scenes.  I did not want to go into this scenario willingly, in life or in fiction.  I also did not have a lot of empathy for Usl.  I do not know why his name is so different (I kept looking for meaning behind that) and he remains boring throughout the whole piece.  On an artistic level, this may have been the point - the drama, the name, his dullness - but I wasn't looking for a masterpiece. 

I want to read a well-written story that I can connect with, offering me insights into a truth I already know.

This one didn't strike me as that type of story.

Photo credit: http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT1emLa-DMfnshdswzxYH8BKgnVvugvR0fGOHws-5DHADOvYSnh

"Vespa" by Tim Parks

This story can be found in the October 5, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be found at The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "Mark parked his Vespa beside three others outside Yasmin's school, in Manchester, where it would be safe."

Last Line: "He braked to let it go by, then changed his mind, accelerated, and drove straight on past their house, up the slope beyond the village, then on toward the wooded hills and the horizon."


Really!?

Now, everyone knows I am annoyingly cheerful and supportive of authors’ stories, but this one drove me nuts!  But as I am not a lamabaster by nature, I will limit myself to five points.

1.            The title is just two words about an object in the story, albeit a central object, but without creativity and excitement for the tale at hand.

2.            The writing feels like a well-proofread first or second draft.  I had to check to see who the author was and if he had anything else to his credit warranting a New Yorker placement.  The story does not unfold.  It tumbles and jerks.

3.            The characters are clichés – well-drawn clichés, but still…  Exotic adolescent lover, privileged young man, distant parents in the midst of divorce, something with an engine that gives a young man his freedom (usually a car, but…) the bullheaded police officer… Even down to the female nude model in Mark’s art class.  And why is she even there?  She doesn’t need to be.  Sure, there are connections made to her feelings and Mark’s later, but other methods could have been used.  Or at the very least, this choice could have been more skillful.

4.            The themes are universal.  But here they are forced and tried into a very predictable and clumsy story.  Details abound, but they seem out of sync, heavy, trite.   Even reading the interview with Parks was like listening to a high school English class – adolescence feeling quite brilliant.

5.            I didn’t care about Vespas before reading this story and I care even less now.

 Photo credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b8/PerthVespa.jpg/220px-PerthVespa.jpg

"The Driver" by Thomas McGuane

This story can be found in the September 28, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

This review can also be seen on The Mookse and the Gripes.

First Line: "Mrs. Quantrill lived in a beautiful old Prairie-style house built in the twenties, which she had restored to its original elegance with Mr. Quantrill, a patent attorney attached to Montana's burgeoning natural-gas industry."

Last Line: "A widow up at Ten Mile went on TV with a hailstone the size of a grapefruit, but subsequent investigation revealed it to be something from her freezer."

I live in a rural town out West and today was “ditch-day”.  I could not curl up with this story, hold it in my hand, and let the print dazzle me.  I had to listen to it on SoundCloud as I traipsed through short, slicing yellow grasses, willing the irrigation water to move further across the orchard.

This rather uninspiring activity allowed me to be more than “wowed” by McGuane’s obvious mastery and skill.  I became consumed.  I found metaphors, themes, connections, imagery, and methodology galore!

Now I know I am an optimist and I like to cheer for almost any story, but there was so much going on in this short piece that I listened twice, and even ignored the ditch for twenty minutes to read it through one time.

Spencer’s silence in school elicits a meeting between his mother, the “tallest person in the room and very thin, with unblinking blue eyes”, the principal, and the struggling boy, himself.  Special ed is the proposed to solution and Mrs. Quantrill responds by insisting that some time in Bavaria will “cure” her son.  

The narrator takes us to their car for the mother’s hen-pecking and elitist soliloquy.  Only when we reach the end of the paragraph do we realize that she has forgotten her son!  She was so wrapped up in her own judgments and thoughts, her own superiority, that she has not even seen her child!  It is here, also, that we discover our narrator is third person omniscient – not limited, as we might have supposed.

In this story, we are introduced to the concept of things not always being what we think they are based on our limited perspectives.  “Subsequent investigation” is often necessary. 

Spencer starts walking, now that he’s alone.  Home?  We don’t now know.  Just that he has decided to walk.  And here we meet “the driver” – at this point, I had forgotten the title and was so wrapped up in the neat little “tricks” McGuane had already employed.  

The interchanges between the driver and the boy further show that things are not always as they appear.  The driver has a schema that is challenged.  He tries to do the right thing.  And there are evidences of “too quick to judge” in the resulting events.

The ending of the story isn’t in the last sentences of the last paragraph.  It is in the last sentences of the first paragraph.  Spencer inherits the house, has it “demolished” and turned into a storage unit facility.  Are things what they appear, even here?  Is the demolition due to an “acting out” of an older, neglected Spencer – or is it an acceptable, adult decision by a man who wants to move on?

Again, I am just enthralled with the craft of this story.  There is so much more here to talk about!  If only there wasn’t a ditch to watch!

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