"Musa" by Kamel Daoud

This story can be read here in The New Yorker.

First Line: "Musa was my older brother."

Last Line:  "It was the nineteen-fifties; the Frenchwomen wore short, flowered dresses, and the sun bit at their breasts."

Kamel Daoud wrote a novel, a "response" to Albert Camus's The Stranger, creating a brother for Camus's murdered Arab: Haroun.  This piece in The New Yorker is drawn from that novel.

The story is about the grief of a widow, a mother bereft of one of her sons.  It is also the story of the remaining son, Haroun.  He has lost a father and the brother he saw as a god.  He has also lost his mother. 

The title reflects the name of the brother, but he is dead.  He is a ghost with a decided influence.  This is the tale of the living. Haroun and his mother. Their relationship is complicated, saddening and unhealthy.  He says, "for us, a mother is half the world. But I’ve never forgiven her for the way she treated me." 

She punished him for resisting death and the grief she chose: martyrdom.

I found this story to be heavy and I was anxious to put it down.  It was not a load I wanted to carry or a path I wanted to share with Haroun for too long.  

It was beautifully written.  There was vivid imagery and poignant lyricism, but it was lengthy.  Even though the plot followed a linear path, it also rambled and seemed scattered - like trying to pin down memories to allow them to unfold. 

Taking place in Algiers during the 1930s to 1950s, the descriptions of the time and space were transportive.  I could smell the spices.  I could feel the heat.  I could taste the sea and the dirt in the air.  I was engulfed in a tight and festering relationship and could see how it represented their relationship to their country as well.  

I just didn't feel comfortable there.  I was glad when I was done reading, but I was grateful for the experiences that come to us only in reading. 

I'll leave you with a line that I enjoyed from the story:
"Books gradually enabled me to name things, to organize the world with my own words."

Stories tell truth, in our own words.

"I want a girl who reads" by Mark Grist

"I want a girl who reads" by Mark Grist:

This has been called a "feminist anthem".  


Okay.  YES.  And the power of a story - the benefits of fiction - are also clearly stated.


"I want a girl who reads/
Who needs the written word/
And uses the added vocabulary/
She gleans from novels and poetry/
To hold lively conversations/
In a range of social situations"


This piece certainly challenges objectifying women, but it also proclaims the capacity fiction has to encourage growth.  Stories challenge us to become empathic with another's reality and glean from it lessons we may not learn in our own lives.  


Sometimes, fiction just cements the truths we already know.


It is a fun poem - spunky, brave, and amusing.  


It is an important poem - reading adds "passion, wit and dreams".


"And I am not saying I don't like those bits/
But what's more important/
What supersedes/
Is a girl with passion, wit and dreams/
So I'd like a girl who reads."


Stories create beauty.
 

84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff

 

84, Charing Cross Road. Helene Hanff. New York: Avon Books, 1970. 97 pp.

From the very beginning of this amusing little book, the personalities and humors of Helene Hanff and Frank Doel burst off the page. Ms. Hanff is a playwright and screenwriter in New York City.  Her brisk and vivacious tone comes bumping and skidding into the quiet and proper life of Mr. Doel, manager of a bookshop in England.  She demands, scolds, and makes light.  He is ever polite, business-like, and sincere.

Their letters begin in October of 1949.  Through the correspondence that turns from business to familiar, we learn of life in post-War England. The lack of meat and eggs horrifies Helene.  She finds it an easy and charitable thing to send hard-to-get items as gifts.  And while Frank and his staff find rations hard to come by, they meet the needs of the American finding the rare and out-of-print books that will be cheaper than she can find in the States.

The twenty-year-long correspondence is not just between Frank and Helene.  Other members of the staff, neighbors, and Frank’s family all write letters to the American writer.  Helene’s influence is wide.

I enjoyed the relationship Helene had with her books and I was so glad she met her match in Frank.  He knew and understood books just as she.  He could converse with her about condition and content, and he could find the antique books that had become merely long-forgotten treasures.

This charming book was made into a movie in 1987 with Helene played by Anne Bancroft and Frank played by Anthony Hopkins. 

I laughed out loud.  I moaned in grief.  I cheered and I sighed.  I heard their unique voices through their letters.  I read this slim volume – only 97 pages – in one sitting.  The epistles were sparse, but seamlessly woven together, moving us forward with the characters over the years.  In no time at all, I grew to love Frank and Helene.

Even the deepest of friendships can begin over a simple query.

"This Is An Alert" by Thomas Pierce

You can find the story here  in The New Yorker magazine.

First line: "We-my family, I mean-were in bumper-to-bumper traffic on our way to my mother-in-law's house for Sunday lunch when our phones flashed red and the Alert sounded overhead for the second time that day.

Last Line: "Unless the poor thing had only fallen asleep, chased forever through a dog dream."

I had not read anything by Thomas Pierce before reading "This Is an Alert", but I am looking forward to finding more of his work.

This is the story of a woman having Sunday dinner with her husband, her daughter, her mother-n-law, her husband's twin brother, and her niece.  It is a routine event, punctuated by irritating Alerts - it is time for people to put on their gas masks and seek shelter.  

There is a war being fought in the skies above them, one they cannot see.  They must trust the Alerts to warn them - to keep them from harm.  But at the same time, there are the similar "wars", undercurrents within the family that cannot be seen.  Their feelings "alert" them to the drones that fly through their own inner airspace.

I was drawn in and led through, an observer, completely accepting of the normal and everyday details of their lives.  This story could take place tomorrow or maybe it even happened yesterday. 

Chekhov would be pleased.  This story merely "records" the problems of the characters yet poses no solution.  

There are unanswered questions when the story ends, but I was wholly satisfied with this well-told tale.

Brian Dettmer's art...

Stories tell yet another story.

Reading Stories

What do we learn about life - our life - by reading stories?  

EVERYTHING!

How to fight dragons.  How to survive in the wilderness.  How to be still.  How to wait.  How to love.  How to be sad.  How to dance.  How to kiss.  How to cheer.  How to "boo" and "hiss".  How to cry.  How to give.  How to take.  How to create.  How to apologize.  How to hide.  How to destroy.  How to ride a horse.  How to destroy a species.  How to classify and subjugate.  How to lie.  How to steal.  How to tune a piano.  How to feed a cat.  How to feel.  How to see.  How to hear.  How to know.


How to honor ourselves.

How to  honor another.

How to be a hero or heroine.

How to allow someone else their turn.

How to tell and be the truth.

The story?  It is enough.

"Sleep" by Colm Toibin

This story can be found here in The New Yorker.

First line: “I know what you will do when morning comes.”

Last line: “I like to think that I am silent, but how can I tell?”

This story seems quite straightforward.  Man meets and falls in love with younger man he meets on the Internet.  They are close enough, affectionate enough, that they spend nights together.  One keeps his things at the other's place.  Intimate enough for the younger man to hear the narrator’s vicious nightmares.  Close enough for the younger to insist that the man with a ghost seek help before the relationship goes further in time and commitment.  And then leaves to wait. 

The narrator visits with a therapist across the ocean and, through hypnosis, experiences the heart attack of the brother that haunts him.

What begins to twist and turn in my mind then is the ending.  The narrator returns to New York, and with less and less frequency, responds to the texts and calls from his lover.  Then those become even less and less. 

There is foreshadowing of this throughout the story – the reality that without this ghost the narrator cannot be with the young man.  Yet the longing compels him to write this story in first person to the lover.  It seems a eulogy rather than a hope for reconciliation. 

This story was frustrating for me.  The narrator loved his relationship so much that he met the demands of his lover, but then didn’t tell him what he had done.  He just writes this story.  I wanted it to be clear to me why he didn’t go back to the young man.  Or at the least, for the emotional hole left by the death to be filled.  But instead, we have this story – a letter, of sorts.

It is not a straightforward tale.  And it left me with questions.  It starts with "knowing" and ends with "thinking".  

The younger lover is told: "You have learned something that I don't want to know."  

That is a game-changer.