Short Story Month 2011: Wrap-up (#ssm2011)

Unless I get around to reading the latest New Yorker story today, this will be final post for Short Story Month 2011. I started out strong, but there was that Blogger outage mid-month, and then I went to a conference, and . . . So I didn’t manage to post every day as I’d originally planned. I didn’t get through all the literary magazines I’d hoped to. And, I didn’t dip into the many short story collections I’ve picked up recently that I’m looking forward to reading.

So, in this final post, let me at least mention some of those.

Burning Man by Ed Falco. I heard Falco read from this collection at the Virginia Festival of the Book this year and I have no doubt the rest of the book is as good as the piece he read. I’ll get to it soon, and I’ll report back.

Right of Way by Andrew Wingfield. Wingfield was sitting next to Falco at that Festival of the Book reading and I’m also really looking forward to digging into this one.

Greetings From Below by David Philip Mullins. David and I were on a panel together at AWP this year, and this collection has been sitting on my credenza since then.

I started Richard Bausch’s new collection—not new anymore—last year after Sewanee. Something is Out There is terrific. I need to finish that one.

The Prospect of Magic by M.O. Walsh. We were fellows together at Sewanee last summer and I’m embarrassed that I haven’t read this yet. He read from it and it was terrific. Must get to it soon!

I recently picked up a collection by a friend, Rarely Well-Behaved by Phyllis Anne Duncan. I’ve heard her read a few pieces from that and I’d really like to read the rest of it.

Then there's The Universe in Miniature in Miniature by Patrick Somerville. Must read that.

And let us not forget A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan, which may or may not be stories.

And How to Predict the Weather by Aaron Burch. And The Weather Stations by Ryan Call.

I’ve also recently acquired story collections by T.C. Boyle, Yiyun Li, Aryn Kyle (also a fellow with us at Sewanee last summer), Ann Packer, Steve Yarbrough, Pinckney Benedict, Rick Bass, Justin Cronin . . .

You see the problem. I’ll read them all eventually, I swear. And then I’ll report back.

Short Story Month 2011: Boomtown -- Fred Leebron (#ssm2011)

I've been browsing through Boomtown: Explosive Writing From Ten Years of the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program. I've got a story in the anthology ("Justice, Inc.," which first appeared in the Los Angeles Review) and I picked up a copy during the 10th Anniversary Celebration at Queens last weekend.

Because Fred Leebron is such a great teacher and writer, one of the first stories in the anthology I read was his.

"Two Germanys" is a flash piece that first appeared in Digital Americana, a magazine--actually, it's an iPad App--that I hadn't heard of before. (You can read the story and an interview with Leebron here.)

The point of view character is 46 and "his liver hurt." He thinks it's because of the drinking--he's been drinking since the summer after 8th grade, and now his liver throbs. He's looking for something to hold onto--if he could just clutch his baby, everything would be okay. Or he'll be thirteen again--the summer he began drinking--and he'll make a different decision. That was in Germany. But he then thinks of his sister, "carried off in a liver coma," and that, too, was in Germany.

Short Story Month 2011: The New Yorker -- Kate Walbert (#ssm2011)

May, 30, 2011: “M&M World” by Kate Walbert

The good news is that this story is available for free. No pay wall. The bad news is that you might not like it much. I can’t say that I did. It’s pretty typical for Kate Walbert, in that the one man in the story, who isn’t even in the story except in flashback, is a cliché (which is the character Ginny’s word for him, not mine: he left the marriage because he fell in love with an intern at the hospital where he works). But, frankly, I don’t blame the guy. This Ginny isn’t exactly blameless.

Before their daughters were born, they went on a trip to Patagonia and went whale watching. Because she was trying to stay out of the sun, she stayed on the shady side of the boat, while everyone else was on the sunny side, where the crew expected the whales to be. So she got some time alone with a whale—a female, naturally—and they exchanged meaningful glances. Why are we here?

But in the present time of the story, the man (whom Ginny thinks of as “the girls’ father” and not her husband or ex-husband) is gone, and Ginny is dealing with the girls. She’s overly protective of them, which predates the split with her husband, and so the meltdown that occurs when they visit the Times Square M&M World is no surprise. The smaller of the girls disappears in the store and Ginny panics. When she is finally found, she says she was afraid Ginny had left, “too,” which Ginny puzzles over, but surely that refers to the fact that the father left.

It’s tough being a single mom in the city, and men suck. That’s what it seems to be saying. That and the fact that Ginny needs therapy . . .

I suppose I should mention what I DID like about the story. Ginny is interested in animals, a trait that has been passed on to Maggie (who carries her pre-historic stuffed critter around with her). It isn't exactly clear to me WHY she has this connection, though, and if anyone has comments on that I'd be happy to hear them.

Short Story Month 2011: The New Yorker -- Ron Rash (#ssm2011)

May 23, 2011: “The Trusty” by Ron Rash

On the downside, you can’t read this new story by Ron Rash online unless you have a subscription. The upside is that there is a mini-interview with him in which he talks a little about the story and his method.

As Deborah Treisman mentions in the interview, the story has a nice twist at the end, reminiscent of O. Henry. It’s about a convict named Sinkler who is working on a chain gang near Ashville, NC. It’s the Depression, apparently, and times are hard—although that’s not why Sinkler’s in jail. He’s a grafter and stole money from the bank where he worked—a job he took for the sole purpose of stealing. But by talking up the guards and bribing them with cigarettes, he’s managed to become a trusty, which means he has a little more freedom than some. He still has to work, though, and his job at the moment is fetching water from a nearby farmhouse.

He carries his two buckets to get water from a well and he meets young Lucy Sorrels, married to farmer Chet, whom Sinkler can see out in the fields. She’s pretty, Sinkler wants her, and he also hatches a plot to escape, taking Lucy along with him, at least for a while.

Trust is an important theme here. Sinkler’s a trusty, but he’s untrustworthy. He “trusts” to luck, but luck is also untrustworthy. And can he trust this Lucy not to turn him in.

It’s an enjoyable story, largely because of the ending. Along the way, the dialogue is great—wonderful unknown words that Rash has uncovered in his research on the period. It’s worth reading just for that.

Short Story Month 2011: AGNI -- Sigrid Nunez (#ssm2011)

AGNI 73 arrived in my mailbox yesterday, so last night I read "It's All Good" by Sigrid Nunez, whose work I've read and enjoyed before. Although in the end I liked this story very much, I confess that I was initially disappointed when it appeared that the story was "about" Alzheimer's. Fortunately, it was much more than just another Alzheimer's story.

The narrator, a single woman in Brooklyn, speaks to her brother on the phone about their mother who is living in a nursing home, and then they jointly pay a visit on the mother's birthday. There are lots of interesting details at work here: the mother's dementia came on very quickly (and so Alzheimer's, a word Nunez doesn't use, might not be the problem); the narrator and her brother have different fathers--hers died suddenly and his walked out; the narrator and her brother, reasoning that they weren't full siblings, were in love as children and thought they could marry until the adults set them straight; the brother, Beany, clings to his childhood nickname even now when he's in his forties; the mother reacts to very little but she does react to the image of Brad Pitt in a movie, and so Beany gets the idea of bringing a Brad Pitt look-alike to her birthday. And eventually we come to an understanding of why she reacts to Pitt the way she does.

It's a very good story.

Whenever I read a story in AGNI I concentrate on the opening line (because of Sven Birkerts's essay in AGNI 63: Finding Traction). Here we have: "My brother calls like he always does after visiting our mother at Villa New Beginnings." I don't know how Birkerts would analyze this, but here's what I get: voice ("like he always does" isn't grammatically correct, but it is how many people speak, and so it gives some sense of this narrator, and we already have a point of view established by "my brother"); the name of the nursing home, Villa New Beginnings--and the visit to the mother makes it clear what kind of place it is--is brilliant. So, for me, it's an effective opening.

Short Story Month 2011: Tin House -- Katie Arnold-Ratliff (#ssm2011)

Does anyone else think it a little unusual for Tin House the magazine to be publishing an excerpt from a book that Tin House Books is publishing this month? That is the case with "Bright Before Us" by Katie Arnold-Ratliff. Not her fault, of course. Does Tin House often do this?

In any event, I didn't notice the disclaimer on the first page that this was an excerpt, so I found the piece disappointing as a story. As a taste of a novel, though, it's fine.

The narrator, Mr. Mason, has been on a field trip with his very young students, and apparently the class came across a body on the beach. So now that they're all back in school, the principal and parents are rightly concerned--especially because Mason was seen sobbing. So many of the parents are attending class this first day back. Meanwhile, at home, Mason's wife is getting a sonogram, which is a big deal because she has a history of miscarriages. Back at school, the police call Mason with some questions about the "timeline" of the incident at the beach, and two juicy tidbits are revealed: Mason saw the woman jump off the bridge and the woman was his ex-wife. Needless to say the police have some more questions for Mason . . .

So. Not a short story, in my opinion (and it's not claiming to be one, either, I hasten to add). An intriguing sample of a novel, though.

Short Story Month 2011: Gettysburg Review -- Geoffrey Lee (#ssm2011)

"Niramiai" by Geoffrey Lee is the first story in the current issue of The Gettysburg Review.

I like this story a lot because it's fresh and different. It's not about the same old world we read about all the time. It's set in a working-class Buffalo bar that is the scene of a sumo wrestling tournament, of all things. A construction worker who saw a documentary about sumo encouraged his drinking buddies to participate, and now we're down to the championship match: the narrator (who is short and so has an advantageously low center of gravity) vs. John, a cocky personal trainer.

The narrator arrives with his Polish girlfriend, Nadia, and John is with his girlfriend, Andrea, whom he doesn't treat very well. They drink--quite a lot--and then it's time for the match, in a ring that is marked by blue painter's tape on the floor of the bar's back room.

Meanwhile, the narrator has reviewed some of the features of sumo, the training of the wrestlers, the dimensions and composition of the ring, and some of the rules. And he knows this because Andrea--John's girlfriend--has given him a book about it that John wasn't interested in, because he wasn't taking the tournament seriously.

It's the combination of circumstances that give the story its texture: there's no construction work around, so the narrator has nothing to do; Nadia is newly arrived and, although her accented English is good, she doesn't quite fit in; the men--not unlike real sumo wrestlers--have guts, even the personal trainer, and seem to be sensitive about them, hiding them under baggy t-shirts or sweat shirts (the narrator won't let Nadia touch his); only the narrator really knows the rules; they drink a lot of beer and collect the bottle caps that are marked like a deck of cards, but the narrator isn't sure what he'll do if he ever collects the whole deck.

While they seem to think things will get better--they have to, sooner or later--for now their world is pretty bleak. But this one competition, this one bit of dignity, is all the narrator has to hold onto.

Nice.

Short Story Month 2011: The New Yorker -- Michael Ondaatje (#ssm2011)

May 16, 2011: “The Cat’s Table” by Michael Ondaatje

I liked this fiction a lot—Ondaatje is a great writer—but it’s not a short story. (Then why is this post labeled as being part of Short Story Month? Because it’s what I read yesterday hoping it was a story; a novel excerpt will have to do.) Ondaatje’s novel of the same name will be coming out later this year and it seems like it’s going to be a good one.

What I really liked about the piece, especially at the beginning, was the point of view, although in this excerpt it isn’t taken advantage of fully. I imagine the book might do a better job of it. We begin in third person, a description of a boy on his way to a ship, riding through the streets of Colombo. (“He was eleven years old that night, green as he could be about the world, when he climbed aboard the first and only ship of his life.”) But then a shift to first person: “I do not know, even now, why he chose this solitude. . . I try to imagine who the boy in the narrow bunk was. Perhaps there was no sense of self in his nervous stillness, as if he were being smuggled away accidentally, with no knowledge of the act, into the future.” Then there is a jump and the “I” becomes the boy, suggesting that this is retrospection at its best—where the present and past characters are distinct. The opening of the story highlights the distinction, although of course we don’t know how this is really handled in the novel because the story abandons it here and becomes a straightforward narrative about the boy’s journey on the ship. (There is another brief glimpse of the retrospection midway: “What was I in those days? I recall no outside imprint, and therefore no perception of myself.”)

And that journey is interesting enough. The boy is seated at a table with 2 other boys and some interesting adults, each providing the opportunity for some shipboard excitement. One such adventure involves going ashore in Aden and returning with a smuggled dog who plays a role in the death of one of the other passengers. Then there is the boy’s cousin, who is also on board—an older girl who is attracting attention from some of the male passengers. And of course the boy himself has issues—his parent are divorced and he’s been living with relatives, but is now on his way to London to be with his mother.

It’s a very readable piece and suggests some of the themes of the novel. But it’s not a short story.

Short Story Month 2011: Ploughshares -- Lynne Tillman (#ssm2011)

The story today is "Tiny Struggles" by Lynne Tillman, from the current issue of Ploughshares (Guest Editor Colm Tóibín).

Tiny, a former Soaps actor, has moved to a smaller town--he thinks of it as the country--three hours from the city. The town, either on its way up or down, is a mix of old-timers and city refugees like Tiny, and Tiny can't be sure if he's welcome in the shops. With the neighbors on either side he is on a nodding acquaintance. And he finds that what people do in the "country" is spy on their neighbors. He notices that a young woman from one house seems to be conducting an affair with a young man from another house.

Meanwhile, Summer becomes Fall--Tiny observes that change is constant--and he realizes he might need to find work soon. Or not: he might fall in love, he might win the lottery.

When the weather turns cold, the girl next door is kicked out of the house by her family, and she and the boy hint that maybe Tiny could take her in. But he can't. Or won't. And then the girl goes away.

This is what passes for struggle away from the city, apparently. But that's all there is to it.

If I had to guess what Guest Editor Tóibín found of interest in the story it would have to be the bar where Tiny goes: "Tiny usually needed an incentive and took a seat at the long, white marble-topped bar. The only person he'd ever met, down one end, was a solitary, bookish man who dressed up as James Joyce, so Tiny forgot his name because he unfailingly thought, James Joyce." Otherwise, I'm not sure . . .

Short Story Month 2011: The Kenyon Review -- Theodore Wheeler (#ssm2011)

Here's yet another 10-year-old protagonist--even though I don't love the kid's perspective, maybe I ought to give it a try myself. It seems popular with other editors.

Actually, in Theodore Wheeler's "How to Die Young in a Nebraska Winter" (in the current issue of The Kenyon Review), there's a hint of retrospection. So we don't really see the narrator--he's simply looking back on something that happened when he was a kid, which allows Wheeler to jump forward in time a little to resolve his story.

Mikey and Todd wake up early in the room they share. Their father, Charlie, is getting ready for work, but instead of leaving he comes into their room to tell them that Brandon has died. Brandon, it turns out, is Charlie's first born, a child he fathered when he was in law school with a woman he had no intentions of marrying. He's been good to Brandon all this time--the boy was fifteen--and Brandon has spent a lot of time with Mikey and Todd on family vacations, summer and weekend visits. And there is a suggestion that Charlie has a different relationship with Brandon than he does with Todd and Mikey--closer.

The boys go with their father to the funeral, where Brandon's mother becomes hysterical, attacking Charlie. Later, Mikey's mother explains to him the special bond between a mother and child, and that she needed drugs to calm down. Mikey asks "Is it a cheat?" And then: "Just a little cheat, right? Because no one wants to see a kid die. It's too sad to see it through the mom's eyes." But his mother elaborates: "It's not that we don't want to see it. More like, we don't want it to exist."

And then the ending, perhaps the most interesting part of the story, shows Charlie's reaction to Brandon's death. Because if there's a special bond between a mother and her child, there's also a special bond between the father and his son, especially his first born.

Short Story Month 2011: There is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out by Madeline McDonnell (#ssm2011)

Until now, my Short Story Month 2011 contributions have been from literary magazines, and I've got plenty more of those to talk about for the rest of the month. But today I'll do something different by presenting a press new to me and an author new to me, because I suspect we'll be hearing more about both.

Madeline McDonnell's There is Something Inside, It Wants to Get Out, published by Rescue Press, is a slim collection of just 3 stories. But they're all good ones, and I enjoyed this book very much.

The first story--my favorite, I think--is "Wife," about a woman named Wednesday--which is her first problem--who is dominated by her mother--that's her second problem. She is engaged to Ben, although he has a hard time telling her mother, who doesn't like Ben much and also doesn't think much of the institution of marriage ("Marriage is legalized rape, nothing more."). But Wednesday doesn't seem terribly interested in her own career in academia. So what's left for her?

The second story is "Physical Education" about a teen cancer patient who is returning to school and her gym classes, but whose father also shoes up to keep an eye on her. Because the pipe-smoking gym teacher seems uninterested, the father basically takes over--becoming both coach and participant in the games of volleyball and basketball.

The final story, "Trouble," profiles a young woman who finds herself pregnant for the second time. The first time, when she was a teenager, ended in an abortion. This time, she's married, but it doesn't seem that she's any better equipped to handle than she was when she was a child. Among other things, she has this fondness for running her car into other cars . . .

It's an excellent little collection, beautifully written, that explores dark emotions and personal trauma.

Short Story Month 2011: Mid-American Review -- Kevin Wilson (#ssm2011)

I'm a big fan of Kevin Wilson and his work, so I was thrilled when I picked up the latest Mid-American Review and saw that it included one of his stories. (We were delighted to publish Kevin's "Another Little Piece" in Prime Number Magazine last year.)

"Intergenerating" is classic Kevin Wilson. The story features Boyd, an unemployed (directionless, clueless) man who lives with his mother and seems to spend his days sleeping. His mother, on the other hand, is wealthy, having inherited everything from her late, philandering husband, including a sizable settlement from the airline responsible for the crash that killed him. One day Boyd is awoken by a call, and all of his neuroses are revealed: "He had to sound like a man caught at his home by chance at eleven o'clock a.m., perhaps rushing home from his fairly lucrative job to eat lunch with the wife, who no longer had to work because of his aforementioned, though still detail-lacking, lucrative job."

But there is no wife and no job. The call is an invitation to join something called Older/Wiser Bother and Sister Foundation and become a mentor to a disadvantaged youth. Despite his mother's objection--she's certain OWBSF is a fraud--Boyd joins. He goes through a brief training program, learns the ten commandments of being a mentor, and makes arrangements for his first outing with Raul, his mentee. Needless to say, it doesn't go well, but the story gets funnier and crazier as it goes on.

I highly recommend this one if you can get your hands on the current MAR issue.

Short Story Month 2011: One Story -- Ethan Rutherford (#ssm2011)

I'm not sure why it is, but I don't love stories about kids. I just don't. So I probably didn't come to "Summer, Boys" by Ethan Rutherford, in Issue Number 145 of One Story, with the right frame of mind.

Which is not to say I didn't like it. I think the writing is great. I love the sentences, some of which are these great sprawling things of the sort that I like to write. And I also love the point of view, which is unique in my reading experience. (It's basically simultaneously from the point of two boys, best friends, who have just finished fifth grade.) The issues the two main characters face, while important to 10 year olds, don't greatly interest me.

In any case, these two boys--we don't get their names because they're basically interchangeable--spend all their time together at one boy's house. They live Seattle and are big football fans generally and Brian Bosworth fans in particular. But in this transitional summer, something happens. They spend a little time with an older boy, a cousin, who is a skateboarder, and so they abandon their bikes in favor of skateboards. The older boy also doesn't care about Bosworth, or football, and while he enjoys a cartoon the boys like (Godzilla stomps on Bambi), he says he's got a movie to show them and will return with it the next day. When the older boy doesn't show up, the younger boys don't know what to do with themselves. Eventually, one of the boys goes home and they are separated for a few days--their first time apart. The separation is painful, but finally it ends and they watch the older boy's movie--which appears to be porn. ("Both of them know what they are watching, neither of them knows whether they should be watching it.") But the boys don't even hear the movie, or the approach of the father coming down the stairs. They hear only each other: "One friend is clumsily showing the other--the other, who knows nothing of himself, except that he wants to be included. There is milky, hairless skin. . . There is a flaccid taste, the bending of limbs, and a strange, tongue-less kiss."

Okay, then. A couple of kids discovering their bodies and cementing their friendship. I wish there were more to it.

Short Story Month 2011: New Letters -- Abby Frucht (#ssm2011)

"Tamarinds" by Abby Frucht is in the current issue of New Letters (Volume 77, No. 1).

The Help it isn't, but the story is about the relationship between a young girl and her black housekeeper, in this case a woman named Cynthia, who comes from the islands. The housekeeper is from another planet, according to the girl's younger brother, and, furthermore, her children when they reach the age of ten were changed into tamarinds by witches. And, he tells her, tamarinds on Cynthia's island aren't fruits, they're animals about the size of koala bears. Unfortunately, the girl doesn't seem to be bright enough, or confident enough, to argue with her brother.

In the background of the story, Robert Kennedy has been killed. But in the girl's terminology, he was running for "Emperor of the Second Cycle of our planet"--which sounds like something she's picked up from her little brother. Only the brother is smart enough to solve Cynthia's riddles, such as "how many coconuts put in an empty sack."

The family treats Cynthia reasonably well, although the mother doesn't seem to be willing to allow her to go to mass on Sunday--she's too helpful with brunch--but other than that what bothers Cynthia is being separated from her family, especially her daughter Wanda.

The climax of the story arrives with a knock on the door that turns to banging and kicking. The narrator sees that the glass of the door has shattered and that her younger brother's "Vintage Monogram Big Deuce Ford Roadster"--a model, but the boy's most impressive--is in pieces on the lawn. The police arrive (to solve the mystery of a murdered hobby-model?) and ask questions. Why would someone do this? The mother seems to be thinking that the problem is owing to her having a black maid, but she doesn't actually say that.

The story leaves more unanswered than I'm comfortable with. Did the narrator have something to do with the destruction of the model? Did the boy himself do it? And who kicked in the door? The ending itself, though, is great. The narrator reflects on the "spell-like tissue paper" on which she'd written a birthday greeting to her brother, and this recalls the witches who turned Cynthia's children into tamarinds, as if our narrator expects this to happen to her brother.

It's an odd story, but well done. I'm just not sure what to make of it.

Short Story Month 2011: Interview with Christine Schutt (#ssm2011)

I love Christine Schutt's short stories. So, in honor of Short Story Month 2011, and the fact that today is Christine's birthday, I thought I'd share a link to an "interview" I conducted with Christine for Prime Number Magazine last year, in which she talks about creativity.

Enjoy!

Interview with Christine Schutt

Short Story Month: Book Giveaway! #ssm2011

Today is 5/3, which means that it's National Press 53 Day. And to celebrate, Press 53 is giving away free books, including one copy of my linked short story collection, In an Uncharted Country.

All you have to do is go to Press 53's Facebook Page and leave a comment in the appropriate post. The publisher will select the winners from among the comments. So, go forth and comment!

Short Story Month 2011: The New Yorker -- Donald Antrim (#ssm2011)

May 9, 2011: “He Knew” by Donald Antrim

Whatta ya know? A story about New York in The New Yorker! 

This one involves a washed up comedic actor and his second, younger, wife. He’s, apparently, bi-polar, and she’s, apparently, neurotic. He’s taking anti-depressants, among other things, and she’s taking valium. Lots of valium. On the day in question—which happens to be Halloween—Alice and Stephen (for some reason we don’t get their names for the first couple of pages) are feeling good and they’re out walking and shopping. It’s what they like to go when Stephen is feeling up to leaving the house (or getting dressed, for that matter). He likes to buy things for her, but he also likes to buy things for her. (What they buy are unnecessary clothes, so they can dress their parts, not unlike the Halloween costumes they encounter on the street.)

As the day goes on, Stephen’s mind washes over his ex-wife, a prostitute, a woman he had an affair with, a woman he didn’t have an affair with, and his declining resources, as well as generally contemplating his problems: “The problem—the problem—was that he was no longer getting cast in the comic roles that had become, over years of acting in plays and, for a brief spell, on television, his strong suit.” But then he realizes that isn’t the root problem, or yes, in a way it was.

He and Alice have an argument over nothing. They both have something of a meltdown and drop into a coffee shop for a bite to eat and their meds, although while Stephen is in the restroom Alice takes a few more for good measure, which makes her a little wobbly when they head out to the street for more shopping. Then, in the middle of the story, came a nice surprise for me. Stephen is reflecting on the fact that they’re both from North Carolina, although they met in New York, and they had considered a return visit: 

“For the first year or two of their relationship, they’d discussed plans to rent a convertible and drive south together through New Jeresey and Delaware and Maryland, continuing around Washington and on through the Shenandoah Valley, in Virginia—there was a nineteenth-century inn near Staunton that he’d read about in a food magazine and wanted to spend a night or two at—and then from there into the southerly regions of the Blue Ridge . . .” 

Staunton! (There are some cool old inns around here, and practically everything is nineteenth century.)

But the meltdown continues—it slows briefly while Stephen interacts with a young couple and their costumed child, and the wife recognizes Stephen from television—until Alice finally renews her accusation that Stephen had an affair while Alice was in the hospital (after her suicide attempt) and then runs off. Now HE takes a couple of valium and then finds their favorite bar, where everyone else is in costume. But she joins him, they go home and he puts her to bed, where he fantasizes that he’ll get his career back on track, they’ll have a child together.

So what’s it all about? Clearly, Stephen and Alice are costuming themselves, or at least Stephen is doing it for the both of them. He reflects on his costume experiences as a young actor, and he comments to the child he encounters that her lion costume makes her surprisingly—because she’s a girl—ferocious. The costumes aren’t just what they wear, I suppose—the meds are part of it, as are the lies they tell themselves. This is not a couple with a happy future.

By the time I got to the end of the story, I wasn’t sure what the title referred to. But one nice thing about the Kindle is that you can run a search, and I found just one use of “he knew” in the story. It’s near the end, when Alice has again accused Stephen of having an affair: “Now he could hear and feel her terror, and he, too, began to feel frightened, because he knew here this fight could take them.” And I think that’s the point. He knows perfectly well where they’re headed, and since there’s nothing he can do about it, they might as well dress up and take their meds. 

Short Story Month 2011: New England Review -- Kathleen Ford (#ssm2011)

New England Review has long been one of my favorite magazines. My story of the day is "Man on the Run" by Kathleen Ford, in the current issue, Volume 31, No. 4.

The story reminds me of another story I've read in the past couple of years, the name of which escapes me. That story also involved older siblings living together, increasingly unable to care for themselves. Certainly the ending of this story distinguishes it, however, and despite the slight familiarity I liked the story very much.

Rosemary and Betty are elderly sisters who live together in upstate New York. They come from a large Irish family and seem to have outlived many of their relatives, including Rosemary's beautiful daughter Moira, killed in a car accident 50 years ago, an accident for which Rosemary still blames herself.

On this occasion, though, the sisters have taken in their great-niece Linda, the victim of domestic abuse. Linda, like Moira, has beautiful hair, and Rosemary, although she can't really manage stairs any longer, makes the difficult climb in order to watch Linda while she sleeps. When Linda comes down for breakfast, Rosemary observes the extent of the beating she has taken, and imagines what more damage might be hidden by the girl's robe. Along the way, we learn that it's difficult for the sisters to get out. There used to be a student occupying a nearby apartment to did chores for them, but he's moved on and they haven't found a replacement. While the exterior of the house is taken care of--preserving their investment--the interior is falling apart: cracks in the plaster, peeling wallpaper. We also learn that there isn't money to do much more.

The arrival of Linda also brings to mind--for Rosemary, at least, although Betty was too young at the time--another "man on the run" their family took in back in 1919, a leader of the Easter Rising of 1916, in Ireland.

And then the abusive boyfriend shows up, discovering Linda's location through the carelessness of her sister. Confrontation ensues.

Although I liked the story a lot, I don't know that it does enough with the reference to the earlier fugitive the McGuire family harbored. And in the climax of the story, where Tommy, the boyfriend, confronts Linda and the sisters, a gun goes off. I won't say what happens, but I do have a question. If it is true, as we've learned from Chekhov, that a gun hanging over the mantel in the first act must be fired in the last act, isn't it also true that if a gun is fired in the last act it must be hanging over the mantel in the first? That is, isn't it too convenient that the gun shows up in the end? (It isn't Tommy's.) Or perhaps--and this seems both plausible and reasonable--the author realized that if readers saw a gun early in the story we'd fully expect it to be fired in the end. (I know I would.) So, in fact, Ford may just be working counter to expectations, which is probably a good thing.

These are small quarrels. It's a very good story.

Short Story Month 2011: The Southern Review -- Bonnie Jo Campbell

It’s short story month, and for my first post of the month I’ve chosen a story by Bonnie Jo Campbell in the latest issue of The Southern Review (Spring 2011). This is the issue that arrived in the mail just days after we heard the terrible news that the editor of TSR, Jeanne Leiby, had been killed in an automobile accident. The magazine has been sitting on my desk since it arrived.

In “What There Was,” Campbell explores one of the dark sides of the circus—way darker than Cathy Day’s The Circus in Winter, which was already pretty dark. The focus here is on Buckeye, a young woman who is pregnant and has an appointment to have her third abortion. But she’s hesitating because she loves “Black Mike,” so called because he’s black and there are other Mikes in the troop. Mike seems fond of her, too, and daydreams about the baby they might have, although Buckeye tells him that if they do settle down together he’ll have to let her see him naked—it is a quirk of his that he always keeps himself covered. Red, an older man in the troop who looks out for Buckeye, insists that they must go; finally, reluctantly, Mike lets go of Buckeye and she leaves with Red. But they’ve not gone very far when she runs back to Mike. When he sees her, he slowly reveals what’s hidden under the shirt: horrific wounds and scars and needle marks. He’s saying, “This is what life with me would be like,” and she finally hears.

The title of the story is vaguely reminiscent of the amazing Tim O’Brien story, “The Things They Carried,” and Campbell also uses repetition of the phrase in somewhat the way O’Brien does. The story begins, “There was the long silver whip of the circus train . . . there was pale-skinned Buckeye, a ditch-water blond . . .and Black Mike, skin as black as coffee.” And then, “Coming down the hallway there was Red . . .” and “There was Buckeye’s bare thigh pressing against Mike’s black-clad thigh.” And later, “There was Buckeye putting her finger to her lips . . .” And later, “There was Buckeye saying a kind of truth that felt nice.” And later, “There was Red standing before her . . .” and “. . . there was Buckeye walking out with Red, leaving Mike sitting on his bunk . . .” The effect of this litany of what there was is to make this dark portrait seem natural, inevitable. It’s just the way it was. That’s what was there. Nothing unusual in this girl who grew up in a household in which she was abused by the men in her mother’s life. Nothing unusual about Mike’s prison experience, his home-made tattoos, his scars, and his apparent self-destructiveness.

Although Campbell does apparently let Buckeye see the light at the end of the story, or at least the truth about Mike, Buckeye lives in a world that isn’t real. Her own name is really Becky (and she's from the Buckeye state, Ohio), but the name Becky is a common one, and she wishes it were Rosella, or Annabella, or Margerina, or Marmalada. She doesn’t like Mike’s name, either, and wishes he’d told the bosses that he was Mitch or Mick (“Those are white names,” he tells her). She also thinks Mitch would be a good name for their baby if it’s a boy (“That’s a name for a white kid,” he says). And if it’s a girl, she thinks they could give her a beautiful name, like Annabelle, or Mirabelle, or Belladonna, Donnamaria. Mike suggests “Mary,” after his mother, but Buckeye insists that a person needs to have her own name. Red’s name is an issue, too. At first Buckeye can’t remember what it is, but at the very end of the story, when she finally accepts Red’s help, she remembers his real name.

There’s more here, too. Heat is a factor. In the train car where they live, pulled over on a siding in Phoenix, the heat is nearly unbearable. And when she shared an apartment back in Akron, Buckeye remembers that she couldn’t afford air-conditioning. She also imagines how happy Mike will be in air-conditioning. Yet she knows that staying in Phoenix with him could be a problem: “Being in heat like this all the time would make anybody crazy.” We get the feeling that Buckeye knows crazy, and maybe she sees it in Mike already.

The story is a short one, but it’s filled with a lot to think about.

Short Story Month 2011

March was Small Press Month. April was Poetry Month. And May is Short Story Month.

I have participated in Short Story Month to varying degrees in the past, but this year I plan to commit to looking at least one story a day, most from literary magazines, but possibly also from a collection or two.

So, stay tuned. The short story comments will begin . . . tomorrow.