"The Freezer Chest" by Dorthe Nors

This story can be found in the May 25, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

First Line: "When I think about it, the freezer chest, it's with a sensation of the ferry rocking and the North Sea beneath us, black because it is January, and then the artificial lighting of the lounge where they were sitting, Mark and the others-Starling, Henrietta, Poul, and Susanna-and where I was also sitting with our English teacher, Bo, who found me interesting to talk to, because, as he said, 'One would never know you were so young.'"

Last Line: "'Shame on you,' she said, and I'd like to know if she ever did anything about it, the incest."

I am delayed in posting my review of this story as life made other demands, but I did comment on it on The Mookse and the Gripes.

Here's a sampling of my thoughts:

My initial impression was: too much. So much symbolism and theme and long sentences and rambling-esque thoughts. Because it is a translation, and coming from another cultural perspective, it took me a few paragraphs to realize where they were and what they were doing. There was also a numbness, a passivity to the narrator that held me from seeing things clearly.
All of the story set-up seems at first to be clutter, but I feel it’s there to make the simple point clear and obvious. But I still haven’t cleaned up the clutter with enough readings to find the nugget, the gem, the simple point.  It is the puzzle of this story that entertains me. I want to understand it. I just need a bit more time.

I reread and I even read another by Ms. Nors: https://www.guernicamag.com/fiction/mother-grandmother-and-aunt-ellen/ … and I was feeling the same thing – where’s the action. It reminded me of “My Life’s a Joke” in that it felt more vignette-like. But this tale was more “cluttered”. Either the tension and resolution, the emotional arc, was lost to me in all the action and sentences, or it was a “puzzle” (Nors) that just didn’t work.

Still not a favorite of mine. Wouldn’t even say I liked it. I can appreciate it more now – especially as I am beginning to understand the “why” behind some of the crafting…

With some time I may go back and give it another try, but I am willing to just let it go, unloved by me, for now.

 image source: https://i.vimeocdn.com/video/470901339_640.jpg

"Peacetime" by Luke Mogelson

This story can be found here in the April 27, 2015 issue of The New Yorker.

First Line: "I was living in the armory on Lexington Avenue."

Last Line: "Somewhere someone was calling my name."

Oh, I enjoyed this story!  From beginning to end, I was engaged.  I didn't look to check the clock or flip the pages ahead, wondering how many more were left.  With the first line, I just settled in for the ride.

The narrator tells us he was living in an armory.  Not staying overnight to get away from it all and clear his head.  Not a drill weekend for his unit.  Not stopping by to chat with the commanding officer.  He was living there.  He told the First Sergeant "two weeks, max" and ended up there for months after returning stateside.  He was avoiding going home to his wife.

Why?  We don't know yet.  But as we follow the episodes that occurred during this time, we find out more about the man we only know by last name, Papadopoulos.  

He works as an EMT.  There is a "regular" 911 caller - a lonely widow who calls in every Wednesday.  He and his partner, Karen, respond to a motorcycle accident, a rotting body, a gas explosion, a failed suicide attempt. Twice.  All of these incidents skillfully intertwine with Papadopoulos's off-hand attitude about his marriage, a war-induced pulmonary disease, a new hobby - kleptomania, drinking, drill weekends.  

Papadopoulos tells us everything that is going on with candid honesty.  There is an unburdening of self that shows he is conscious of the audience to his story, but also is not completely aware of himself just yet. Karen hits the nail on the head: "You think you're being a good person, but you're not.  What you're being is afraid."  

Every episode of this story is shared for a reason - to give us insight into this young veteran.  We learn about him best through his interactions with his commanders, partner, neighbor, fellow soldiers, patients. 

He is a good person.  He has loyalties and a sense of right and wrong.  And his profession is one of rescue and nurture - to come into a moment of crisis and create a sense of order and control, healing.  

But who can offer him the healing he is seeking?  War creates an altered definition of "peacetime" and here, now, looking back on the events shared, Papadopoulos recognizes he is broken and haunted.  "Someone somewhere is calling [his] name."

The writing voice of Luke Mogelson is conversational, like a casual interview. With increasing comfort, Papadopoulos spirals deeper and deeper into memories, creating a tight and honest tale.  The details are written with such conviction and accessibility it could be a nonfiction account.  And such a tone held my interest.  The realism of the story, the emotion, the humanness were welcoming.  Mogelson posed questions without dictating a solution. Heavy and important themes were approachable here.

I searched for more of this author's work after reading this piece. He is a journalist by trade and I was able to look at some of those writings.  I found them to be compelling as well.  I look forward to more by Luke Mogelson.

"Major Maybe" by Ann Beattie

The story can be found here in The New Yorker.

First Line: "The red-haired homeless lady was arrested after she fell in the street and a taxi almost ran over her."

Last Line: "Indelible, the yellow pollen on the floor."

"Major Maybe" is a story of a memory - nostalgia.  It is about an image that pops up and takes the narrator back to a time that is rich with thoughts, choices, feelings.  A time when she was free to not choose and a time when she was able to observe and live without judgment. 

Remembering the red-haired woman's "mad dash into traffic" brought up recollections of a neighbor's dog, accused by the woman to be a devil.  The narrator's memories are further pressed into the building she lived in, the neighbors, her roommate, their affection that had its brief moment.  We dance along with Beattie in and around these images.  Up one tangent, and down another.  We follow her from an abrupt passionate moment with her roommate to her current state: married and remembering those days gone by.  All of this brought about by a picture she sees in a magazine of her old apartment.  

With my first reading, I felt like I was the tail-end in a game of Crack-the-Whip.  Beattie took me one direction, and then yet another.  The tone was both conversational and poetic. I was excited to follow where it would go.

But then it ended.  Sharply.  Beattie took a turn that left me stunned, fallen on the grass, gasping for fresh air.

Even so, I love the last line.  It echoes.  It lingers.  It made me ponder and made me go back into the story to find it's importance - to find why it hovered in my mind.

But it also made me question what a story is.  

At first, it seemed a poetic vignette - a lyric.  A snapshot-memory and then, life goes on.  How is this a shorty story?  What is the purpose in sharing this bit of nostalgia?

The purpose of the short story is to elicit a response from the reader.  Someone has insisted that they entertain. And Chekhov has said that writers are to ask the readers questions, not to answer them.  But each story must have a beginning, middle, and end.  That's what separates it from vignettes. 

I read again "Major Maybe" looking for the plot, the questions, looking for my answer to them.  And it was the ending line that kept haunting me.  "Indelible, the yellow pollen on the floor."

In an interview with The Paris Review, Ann Beattie said:

Certain things that I like about endings—endings that hint at the whole story, that let you know there is an arc, but that offer some related image or emotion, instead of decoding the initial image, or pattern, or symbol, endings that alter the tone and the mood just a bit. I realize that some people criticize me for being arbitrary with my endings. I think my stories are very determined. I can tell you the reverberation I have in mind for each element in the story. I can’t make you read it that way, but it’s been contrived, and then revised. What is there is intentional.

I can see it. There is an "intentional" arc in this story.  Both the plot and the characters shift from where they were in the beginning.  There is a beginning, middle, and end.  The narrator shifts.  And her life has shifted with her.  

I can see it, but I had to look really hard, with eyes squinted, to see it.

The thing that remains?  Something "indelible".  Memories.


My "response" to this story?  "And?  So?"

Did I find questions here to examine?  Yep: "What is the author trying to do here?"

Was I entertained?  For a bit. 

Do I still think this is really more like a photograph despite the beginning, middle, and end and the narrator's shift?  Does this feel like a vignette forced to dress-up like a short story?

Yes.

 

"Apollo" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This story can be found here in The New Yorker.

First Line: "Twice a month, like a dutiful son, I visited my parents in Enugu, in their small overfurnished flat that grew dark in the afternoon."

Last Line: "I could have taken back my lie and left my parents merely to wonder."

"Apollo" is the story of a Okenwa, "a dutiful son", visiting his parents, now retired.  They have changed in his eyes and seem to move from their educated thoughts of his childhood years to accomodate the mythical beliefs, the stories they scorned just fifteen years earlier. 

Okenwa, now 27, is also changed.  He is prompted to return to a moment when he was twelve years old, by a conversation he has with his aged parents about increased crime in their area.  One of the ring leaders is purported to be a one-time houseboy of theirs, Raphael.  His mother shrugs it off, saying that her son would not remember this houseboy - there had been many and her own son had been so young, so unaware.

The narrator turns to the reader, "Of course I remembered Raphael."

The story takes us back to when Okenwa creates a friendship with Raphael. Together they watch Bruce Lee films, master nunchucks, and hide their socialibility from his harsh and unyielding parents.  "It was after school, with Raphael, that my real life began." 

And then this comraderie is taken to the next level when Raphael becomes ill with "Apollo", conjunctivitis.  (The landing of the Apollo 11 on the moon coincided with a pandemic of conjunctivitis that swept through many countries in Africa. The disease was subsequently nicknamed "Apollo".)

The parents banish the houseboy to his quarters, and while they provide him with the medicines he needs, Raphael is not learned in how to put in the eye drops.  Okenwa, with fondness, decides to assist without his parents' knowledge or permission.  Shortly thereafter, Okenwa is stricken with Apollo. The tale then comes to its precipice.

I found this story to be neat and tidy.  It was sparse, but with perfection, containing all the elements of a short story: character, plot, theme, conflict, and setting.  It was classic in its presentation and a great piece to read.

"I am drawn to brave endings that stun you and make you reconsider the beginning," says author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Did her story do that here?  Was Okenwa a dutiful son?

I found myself reconsidering the beginning.  The more I think about this story, the more I find to consider and ponder.

UPDATE - April 14, 2014 - please listen to Chimamanda's Ngozi Adichie's powerful TED talk - The Danger of a Single Story.