#580 The Idea- Raymond Carver

#580 The Idea- Raymond Carver

This is a little cathartic look into the lives of a couple in a settled, normal, happy but boring marriage. Their big daily excitement is watching their neighbors in an odd game. The wife is in their bedroom and the husband is outside peeking through the window as if he is a stalker. Then he goes inside. This goes on for months and it drives them batty.  

The power of their curiosity is only outdone by the indignance of their outrage, their judgment, and probably their envy. The woman also spies ants in her kitchen that she promptly sprays with poison. Her life is watching other things go about their lives with more purpose than she has.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#579 Harvest- Danielle Evans

A group of girls are at college. You learn a lot about the world at college, especially all the things that make us different or unwanted or seemingly less valued. Angel sees this, the different ways the girls change depending on race, wealth, upbringing. She thinks about boys.

“Of course I had a boyfriend. We all did, they were like accessories; We kept then stored at colleges up and down the East coast and pulled them out on formal occasions or in the event of boredom or loneliness.”

The process of growth and adulthood can be empowering, or it can be sudden and halting. The latter’s what happens to Angel when she becomes pregnant. All these pretty white girls at school are selling their eggs for thousands of dollars, and here she is, unworthy of selling her eggs, but a baby is coming anyway. What is its value, its worth, its chance of a good life; and what about her own life at twenty, un-graduated and now with the biggest responsibility she will ever have? There are no answers, only choices.

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31

#578 An Outtake from the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution- John Keene

#578 An Outtake from the Ideological Origins of the American Revolution- John Keene

This is a period fiction short story. We are in Massachusetts pre-independence. A slave owner hides the birth of a child born of one of his slaves. The child’s father is unknown but light of skin, he has been named Zion. Zion’s mother died giving birth, so is kept in the care of another woman, an insolent woman that was eventually sold to another family. This rebelliousness may have been passed on to the child:

“So it is said that one’s sense of law, like one’s concept of morality, originates in the home.”

When Zion is a teenager, he first begins his life filled with escapes, crime, punishment and defiance. Instilled with a sense of freedom and self-worth, Zion’s repeated captures and beatings only fuel his resolve.

“The local authorities again captured, tried and imprisoned him, not only for his crimes but for his defiance of the social order, yet his realization of his own personal power had galvanized him, making life insufferable under any circumstances but his own liberation.”

As the social and political landscape rapidly changes in the northeast in the 1770’s the clasp on the punishment of those once enslaved loosens, but Zion’s crimes mount and he is sentenced to die. Defiant till the end, he pleas to other’s such as him to fight for freedom not to fall to crime or drink. His cell is found empty before he is hung…but somebody must hang, justice may be blind, but so is society.

I am enjoying Keene’s style in this book. After the last story, I mentioned he reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marques. This strengthens that comparison for me. Add also historic fiction works like Edward Jones’ Known World or New York by Edward Rutherford to that list of comparisons.

Notable Passage: “Under duress, one’s actions assume a dream-like clarity.”

Rating: 9-9-10-8 Total= 36

#577 Achille’s Jass- Fatima Shaik

#577 Achille’s Jass- Fatima Shaik

Achille Piron is a old New Orleans trumpet player. He plays as good as ever, but he doesn’t get many gigs anymore. The music scene is a fickle one and talent doesn’t always win out, but even now he has found his own niche. He is the one they call to play a funeral of other musicians. There seem to be a lot of those these days.

“There were only a few musicians alive who could capture a man’s whole spirit—lay him out from birth to death. And even, respectfully honor his foolish heart.”

“Because of his age, he could play loneliness better than ever.”

Mourners would ask for something upbeat or something with more joy, but inevitably they would be swept away by the emotion of Achille’s playing and weep and thank him for his soulful music.

“I’ll Fly Away would play so smooth and sincere that somebody would believe it. The weak-minded, the poor children just learning catechism, the old ladies—all might be apt to believe that God could fill their minds, their stomachs, and remove their wants and regrets. The music would be so convincing that the poor in spirit would let everyone see their tears and their faith for once. And they would convince others that God could relive unending sorrow.”

Somewhere in a cemetery, Achille plays, but not for another poor musician, but for himself and the city hears him and remembers and mourns. “Achille blew now as if he were playing his own funeral.”

I can't tell you how much this story has moved me. For those who see music as a religion and listen to music as if in church, Shaik hits home here. Like the tomb of the unknown soldier, this is a remarkably emotional elegy to the nameless musicians that touch our lives at our most raw moments; and this is a celebration to music itself and its power of transcendence. 

Notable Passage: “A person had to know a little about life to understand music.”

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#576 The Wine Dark Sea- Robert Stone

#576 The Wine Dark Sea- Robert Stone 

Steadman’s Island off the New England Coast is a small village community. It is being overwhelmed  by the presence of the Secretary of Defense and a high governmnet conference descending on them all. Eric is freelance journalist, wanderer, alcoholic, trouble-finder. He is on assignment for a former nudie-magazine to cover the reaction by the locals.

He stumbles his way into staying with his ex-girlfriend’s sister and brother in-law, Annie and Taylor. This doesn’t go well. To start with, the island was literally and figuratively covered in a dense fog cover. “It was liberating, the complete obscurity. Past, gone, present solitary, future fading out.”

Taylor, it turns out, is a rabid anti-authoritarian, misanthrope recovering alcoholic with a chip on his shoulder and doesn’t appreciate Eric’s crashing at his house. His anger is exasperated by Eric’s Nihilistic banter and his drunken Tomfoolery. Avoiding a fight, he leaves in the morning to get interviews for his story. As crazy as those two are, the Secretary is even more bat-shit nuts. Eric gets tackled by security, Taylor—a ferry worker—gets thrown overboard by the Secretary himself and all the local and federal law enforcement are taking sides. Everybody gets their story. 

There is a big anger theme running through this one. The buffoonish characters are fun to follow.

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#575 Miss Lora- Junot Diaz

#575 Miss Lora- Junot Diaz

Miss Lora was his neighbor; single, older and was shaped like a body builder. She wasn’t attractive to the other boys in the neighborhood, but to him, a boy in adolescence with a girlfriend that was shy about giving him physical attention, she was the perfect target for affection.

“You were at the age where you could fall in love with a girl over an expression, a gesture. That’s what happened with your girlfriend Paloma—she stooped to pick up her purse, and your heart flew out of you….That’s what happened with Miss Lora too.”

The inappropriate Mrs. Robinson relationship they had lasted until he went off to college. She was the one he remembered and associated with his teenage years, the one that taught him how to be a man. He knew it was wrong but it was his secret, and having that secret was important. 

Word of the day: Fulgurate- To destroy using electricity.

Notable Passage: "Nobody likes children, your mother assured you. That doesn’t mean you don’t have them.”

Rating: 9-7-7-7 Total= 30

#574 Cease Fire- Frank Herbert

#574 Cease Fire- Frank Herbert

Corporal Hulser was stationed at an Observation Post in a remote area. He used to be a chemist and was probably too smart to be a military grunt. At the moment, he was under attack by something that his sensors thought was too small to be a human. He survived the attack but was struck by a brilliant idea.

“It was one of those things that had to remain dormant until the precisely proper set of circumstances.”

It took some convincing by his superiors, but his idea, if successful, could end the war. He thought of a way to project onto a field, and explode any organic munitions, including gas, oil, coal, etc. This would make attacks by weapons using these things impossible. He was given the green-light to produce this projector in a project called Operation Big Boom.

When his invention proved successful, the military brass were not happy. They knew the harsh truth that better weapons didn’t put an end to war. Once one side made something, so would the other. This would only change the way war happened.

“Violence is a part of human life. The lust for power is a part of human life As long as people want power badly enough, they’ll use any means to get it—fair or foul!”

Rating: 7-9-9-7 Total= 32

#573 A More Serene Girl- Maxine Clair

#573 A More Serene Girl- Maxine Clair

A horrible thing happened to Dorla: she witnessed her Father killing her Mother. She doesn’t talk to anybody at school, but Irene reaches out and tries to walk with her after school, but she is too shy. Irene’s new best friend is Geraldine, they do walk together after school and often go to Geraldine’s apartment.

The apartment is in a “Tourist Home” a rent-by-the-hour type of place. She lives with her mother in a basement kitchenette, and isn’t allowed to wander into the business side of the house. But kids being kids, the two girls go exploring and peep into the keyholes looking for things they don’t know about.

In a shocking turn, Irene sees her mother in one of the rooms with somebody that isn’t her father. She doesn’t tell Geraldine, doesn’t confront her mother, and gets physically ill due to shock. Her life will never be the same. She no longer wants to be friends with Dorla. Seeing the horrible things that adults do to each other first hand, she wants to stay as far away from that as possible.

Rating: 7-7-7-7 Total= 28

#572 My History- Toure

#572 My History- Toure

This story is pure fantasy. It’s a list bullet points invoking many of the racial injustices and black leaders from the American experience; and instead of listing the awful things that happened, Toure reverses them. For example:

-Hiphop never becomes materialistic and commercial, and continues as Black America’s CNN, putting knowledge on the street, building the political consciousness of a generation…

-Muhammad Ali wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-Vietnam War efforts.

-Basquiat survives heroin—Sly survives coke—Pryor survives himself.

-Stevie Wonder is named Poet Laureate.

Some them are socio-political, some are pop-culture. As a whole is seems at first like a childish exercise, a little naïve even, but given the entirety of the list, by the end it hits home in a way that is both powerful and depressing.

Rating: 7-8-8-7 Total= 30

#571 The Seals- Lydia Davis

#571 The Seals- Lydia Davis

This is a touching story. I found a lot more depth in this piece than I have in the others from her collection. It's not only because of the uncharacteristic length, but here gives us something more than idle observations, or clever concepts. This is something real.

A girl/woman(?) is riding a train thinking about the sister that has just died. Siblings can be very close, but when there is a fourteen-year age gap and a different father involved, there will always be a search for definition. What does that relationship mean and what did I mean to that person?

As the train ride goes on, the narrator is having some kind of internal eulogy for those she has lost, not only for her sister but for her parents as well. She is taking stock of her own life by remembering her sister and remembering things of their lives.

“The first New Year after they died felt like another betrayal—we were leaving behind the last year in which they had lived, a year they had known, and starting a year that they would never experience.”

This is my favorite of this collection (can’t and won’t) thus far.

Notable Passage: “Once she was gone, every memory was suddenly precious, even the bad ones, even the times I was irritated with her, or she was irritated with me. Then it seemed a luxury to be irritated.”

Rating: 8-8-8-7 Total- 31

#570 Grendel’s Mother- Katherine Heiny

#570 Grendel’s Mother- Katherine Heiny

This started out as a pretty straight forward story. Maya and Rhodes are having their first child. As for the title of the story: after their first ultrasound they went to Rhodes’ parents’ house and told them the good news. Rhodes’ wacky mother wanted to name the child Thor if it was a boy, or Grendel if it was a girl. 

Meanwhile, Maya’s stepsister Magellan just broke up with her boyfriend and was devastated.

“Was there any breakup more painful than an unexplained one…It could haunt you for months, even for years, the unknown reason, and take on a nearly mythical importance, until you forgot, or almost forgot, that the truly important thing was that someone you wanted to be with no longer wanted to be with you.”

Like I said, this started out straight forward, then a lot of stuff got dumped on it. Magellan moved in with Maya and Rhodes; they ran into Rhodes first love; witnessed her OB-GYN breaking up with his girlfriend; Maya found out that Rhodes had a brother that died when he was only one day old; She caught Magellan and her ex-boyfriend having sex on her bed, etc.

It isn’t chaotic as much as it’s random. Some of these things make sense for the story but others just don’t add anything that I can see. I guess an argument can be made that all this stuff happens just before a big life moment to test you to see if you are ready, but that’s thin at best. It’s too busy for me—my favorite part is calling the unborn child Grendel.

Rating: 8-7-5-5 Total= 25

#569 A Tangle by the Rapid River- Anthony Doerr

#569 A Tangle by the Rapid River- Anthony Doerr

Like most stories about fishing, this one has a somber, quiet, tone to it. Mulligan is a recent retiree. He has three things going on in his life: his marriage, his fly fishing, and the woman he sees on the side. 

He takes his daily fishing outing, but most days, he goes to see his other woman. That woman has now given him a sort of ultimatum. All Mulligan wants is for things to stay the same, and for people to let him live his life. The flow of the river, the slowly changing currents, the coming winter, the habits of the trout—these are things he understands and likes to contemplate, awake or in his sleep.

“When you get to be my age, Mulligan says, sleep is not so different from being awake. You kind of shut your eyes and you’re there.”

A dumb lapse in concentration and you can lose not only the fish, but the whole line.

Rating: 9-7-8-8 Total= 32

#568 Everyone’s Reading Bastard- Nick Hornby

#568 Everyone’s Reading Bastard- Nick Hornby

People get divorced. It happens everyday. More than half of all marriages will end this way, and they usually follow a period of angry, bitter conversations with family and friends. Usually these family and friends understand that they are blowing off steam and sometimes—in the case of friends—they hear both sides of the post-divorce clamor.

But what if one person of the former couple is a columnist and decides to use this column to do her complaining?

“…her insatiable appetite for self-exposure and, unavoidably, the exposure of those who happened to be somewhere close to her. And that was what fueled her reputation—and she really was quite well known now—for eccentricity and solipsism.”

Elaine’s column was called “Bastard” and everyone in his life new exactly who the bastard was. It was unfair and it was cruel. I don’t care who you are—even Mother Theresa—if all people new about you were the bad things without context and without rebuttal, you’d look awful. That is what Charlie’s life was like. What made it worse was that she was a great writer and the column went viral. Oddly, Charlie was taking this all vey well.

“Taking abuse in a national newspaper without attempting to hit back was actually a pretty good way of wiping the slate clean. He was hoping that when this was all over, his spiritual overdraft would have been paid off, and he’d be allowed to use the cash machine again.”

In a turn worthy of a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedy, Charlie meets the woman made notorious in a countering column called “Bitch,” and the two start their own relationship. Charlie needs only to wait the vitriol out and wait for Elaine to make the wrong enemies, and hopefully his slate will be swept clean. 

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#567 An Orange Line Train to Ballston- Edward P. Jones

#567 An Orange Line Train to Ballston- Edward P. Jones

Marvella is a single mother of three. Each morning during rush hour she has to take her children on the subway, the Orange Line to Ballston. Jones does a pretty great job of conveying the stress it must feel like as Mother trying to take care and keep and eye on three kids in a crowded train.

They meet a man riding alone with long dreadlocks. Being curious, the children began asking questions about his hair, why he doesn’t cut it, it looks like the hair of a guy we saw in a horror movie, etc. Marvella is mortified but the man is genial and answers all their questions. 

They see him again the next day, and become even friendlier. As the weeks pass, they ride the same train often, Marvella likes this man, likes how he treats her children, wishes he would talk more to her, and looks forward to their brief encounters. But, anyone who has ever ridden subways knows, many such encounters, go as quickly as they come. 

Very charming story.

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total= 31

#566 Subject to Search- Lorrie Moore

#566 Subject to Search- Lorrie Moore

Tom has always been an exciting man to her. He probably used to run drugs the length of Europe but now he is much more respectable. He is in the International intrigue business as some sort of consultant for British Intelligence. The undercover secretive thing makes her like him more:

“The closed-the-open-again secrets of his work enchanted and paralyzed her, like the frog who fatally acclimates to the heating water.”

They have a long running relationship, both at one time married, then not. His status in the government makes him important and yet somehow unattainable. She hopes for the best: “We’re all suckers for happy endings.”

Notable Passage: “If you’re suicidal…and you don’t actually kill yourself, you become known as wry.”

Rating: 7-8-8-7 Total= 30

#565 The Third and Final Continent- Jhumpa Lahiri

#565 The Third and Final Continent- Jhumpa Lahiri

Once again, Lahiri delivers a stunningly beautiful story. Reading these stories is like sitting by a lake, quietly watching the small ripples on the water. A man, single in his thirties travels back to Calcutta to be married before moving to America. 

“My wife’s name was Mala. The marriage had been arranged by my older brother and his wife. I regarded the proposition with neither objection nor enthusiasm. It was a duty expected of me, as it was expected of every man.”

After only a few days of knowing his new wife, he settles in Massachusetts for six weeks by himself, before his wife joins him. He gets a small room in an large house owned by a very elderly woman, Mrs. Croft; she is alone and bit addled, but finds him to be a perfect gentleman. He moves out when his wife finally comes. They are a bit uncomfortable with the strangeness of each other at first, but seeing themselves through the eyes of Mrs. Croft settles them down.

Soon, while they get comfortable with married life, they see a notice in the paper that, Mrs. Croft has died. He is moved to tears for the loss of this woman he barely knew.

“Mrs. Croft’s was the first death I mourned in America, for hers was the first life I had admired; she had left this world at last, ancient and alone, never to return.”

The beginning of this story happened while American astronauts had first landed on the moon. The world was suddenly new and full of possibility.

Notable Passage: “Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination.”

Rating: 10-9-10-9 Total= 38

#564 Dip in the Pool- Roald Dahl

#564 Dip in the Pool- Roald Dahl

A cruise ship is sailing along in the mid-Atlantic. Part of the tradition on this ship—as a means of alleviating boredom and have a little gaming fun—they hold an auction. Each day the captain makes an estimate of the next day’s travel distance, and the participants bid on the real distance the ship will travel. 

On a day where the seas suddenly get rougher after the Captain’s estimate, but before the auction, an enterprising passenger, Mr. Botibol, bids heavily on the lower numbers assuming that the ship will run slower in bad weather. Unfortunately when he awakes the seas are calm as glass and there is no way he will win the pool unless the ship suddenly stops.

His plan of jumping into the ocean—1,000 miles from land—seems like a bad plan, but it just might work. Only, somebody has to see you do it, and that person has to be of a right mind to warn the Captain—otherwise, bon voyage!

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32

#563 Friction- Craig Davidson

#563 Friction- Craig Davidson

This is a story about Sam, he’s a sex addict, and because his addiction lead to the loss of his “real” job, he is now a porn star. He has an ex-wife, and a daughter who he has partial custody of.

We hear some of his testimonials at various Sex Addict group meetings, he goes to several a week. Him and his sponsor often call each other when they are in weaker moments, and instead of talking each other down, they usually “give this one a pass.” When he sees a girl he knows at a meeting—a recent fluffer from a porn shoot—he thinks she could be a match. So, I guess this is a love story.

You get what you get when the topic is sex addiction, so expect most of this to be NSFW, but its not really all that different from any other good short story, minus the explicit nature. Imagine Chuck Palahniuk writing about addiction groups in Fight Club but this one doesn’t go over the edge or take wild dark turns like a Palahniuk story (not saying that’s good or bad).

Rating: 8-7-7-7 Total= 29

#562 St. Jude is Persia- Lucia Perillo

#562 St. Jude is Persia- Lucia Perillo

The narrator is a recovering addict just out of St. Jude’s rehab. She hopes some time at home will do her good.

“A little animal interaction, a few weeks of my mother’s cream cheese and chutney sandwiches, an I figured I’d be back to my old life.”

Home isn’t exactly the calming influence she was hoping for. He father has left, leaving her mother confused, irate and literally murderous: “My mother may be short and squat, a victim of too many shortbreads with her tea, but she’s still not a woman you want to go up against when she’s got a bee in her bonnet and a gun in her hands.”

The mind can create chaos, and it can create peace if you use your imagination. It can also create walls that both protect and isolate. After experiencing rehab, being left by her father, and watching her mother go a little crazy, she was feeling a bit on her own. “And somehow it was thrilling…to be the last remnant of a dying outpost while the enemy encroaches on all sides.”

Rating: 7-7-8-7 Total= 29

#561 Underfed- Susan Steinberg

#561 Underfed- Susan Steinberg

Have you ever sat next to somebody at a bar who has just taken a hug line of cocaine? That is what this story is like. It is a non-stop ramble from the onset. In fact the whole story is a single paragraph with no periods. The statements are separated by colons and semicolons. The story even begins and ends with a semicolon making is seem like we entered somewhere in the middle of this coke-fueled diatribe, this late-night drunken confessional. Each statement begins with “I,” “I’d,” or “I’m” adding to the self-centered tone.

The narrative bounces from subject to subject focusing on her family or the man she took home from the bar. As many substance-filled blatherings, it ranges from pure rationalization to oddly poignant and honest, like this passage about her not wanting to go hiking with a boyfriend:

“I wasn’t adverse to dirt; I was adverse to something else: like the pressure of having to pretend I cared about a bird, a stone, a star: like the pressure of having to be so fucking nice: like the pressure of having to be a certain type of guy when I was just a certain type of girl;”

I appreciate the style here. I don’t want to call it fresh or original because she isn’t the first author to write a story like this, but as someone who reads short stories everyday, it is refreshing to be out of the box a little—and it works. I don’t find it different for the sake of being different. Two stories in and I am enjoying this collection (spectacle).

Rating: 7-9-8-7 Total= 31

#560 Eleanor- Sheila Heti

#560 Eleanor- Sheila Heti

This is a very odd story, playing in a surreal kind of world.

-Eleanor’s Grandmother is suffering from dementia.

-She has a stroke that she blames on Eleanor.

-Grandmother falls down two flights of stairs, an act that is witnessed by Tim.

-Tim’s friends are jealous that they didn’t see it.

-Tim is a kind of depressed kid that kicks rocks at cars.

-Grandmother wrote a will on a notebook…she leaves everything funny to Tim.

-Eleanor has a date…but only if he agrees to buy her ice cream.

-Her date runs at her screaming her name.

-He brought her a gift…it was a six-colored beanie.

-She doesn’t like the gift…”It didn’t even make her laugh.”

-“This is my fucking life.”

I like what this story tries to do, but I thin it falls a little short—or else I just didn’t get it (always a strong possibility).

Rating: 7-7-6-5 Total= 25

#559 Blessed Night- Naguib Mahfouz

#559 Blessed Night- Naguib Mahfouz

“Yesterday,” said the bartender, “I dreamed that a gift would be presented  to a man of good fortune.”

That is the proclamation that Safwan heard at the bar before departing for home. Only he never found his home. Drunk and confused he stood before an empty lot that was once his house and his family. He was taken in by the police for being drunk and disorderly before being pitied and sent back to his address. This time, there was a house there, but still not his.

There is a crazy series of events that are confusing to both the drunken Safwan and to the reader. It appears that he had made an unwitting deal, a deal of a lifetime, to exchange his family, home, and his life for what was in a suitcase: “In this suitcase is all that a happy man needs in this world.”

I wonder what it is?

Rating: 8-8-9-8 Total= 33

#558 Camp Sundown- Nathan Englander

#558 Camp Sundown- Nathan Englander

This story starts out innocent enough. We are at a Jewish summer retreat. Young people come for summer camp and old people come to play bridge and relax in a nice serine environment. Josh is the new director, having been there as an assistant the previous six years. Josh sees a synchronicity between the young and the old:

“Every summer the old people grow smaller as the children grow big. Josh as decided that there is only so mush height in the world and the inches must change hands."

The summer is winding down and Josh starts losing the rein of control. The veteran old people have worn down his patience and he has become uncharacteristically angry and demonstrative.

“They are old. They talk a lot. They push buttons. They have lost the sense, or the will, to self-edit. They enjoy the privileges of old age.”

The dialogue is funny and the story seems benign. Then it turns dark and deadly serious. One of the older woman, a Holocaust survivor, swears she recognizes another old man as one of the Nazi guards at the camp where she was imprisoned. Josh is befuddled and deals with the situation poorly. The camp members take things into their own hands. The outcome of which will be something that will stick with Josh for a lifetime. Like elephants, turtles, and survivors, he will not forget easily.

This story deals with some pretty heavy topics, and as always Englander handles them deftly. I will leave it to the readers to draw their own thoughts on them.

Rating: 9-9-9-8 Total= 35

#557 Happy Birthday- Toni Cade Bambara

#557 Happy Birthday- Toni Cade Bambara

It’s Ollie’s birthday. She woke up early and excited, but there was nobody there or awake or sober enough to remember. She takes a trip around the neighborhood but she cat even get anyone to talk to her, the big boys are even too lazy to make fun of her.

“You should never have a birthday in the summertime...cause nobody’s around to wish you happy birthday or throw you a party.”

“Everyone was either at camp or at work or was sleeping like the boys on the roof or dead or just plain gone off.”

Poor Ollie! Happy Birthday.

Rating: 7-6-7-6 Total= 26

#556 Work Denis Johnson

#556 Work Denis Johnson

  

OK, let’s see: we have an abusive drug addict beating up his abusing drug addict girlfriend; we have an alcoholic so riddled with the DTs that he needs help lifting the day’s first shot up to his mouth; we have robbery, fights, and crooked card games…must be another Denis Johnson short story.

This is a world filled with misery, regret, shame, and little chance of redemption, unless your definition of redemption is a few ill-gotten dollars so you can partake in more bad decisions that lead to misery, regret and shame.

This story isn’t as fun as it sounds.

Notable Passage: “To me you don’t make no more noise than a fart in a paper bag.”

Rating: 7-6-5-5- Total= 23

#555 Speaking in Tongues- ZZ Packer

#555 Speaking in Tongues- ZZ Packer

Tia was a religious girl. She lived with her aunt and played the clarinet. She and her friend Marcelle were the only girls at Rutherford B. Hayes High School to be “Saved,” but she didn’t feel the spirit. She couldn’t speak in tongues like the others at her church, and she didn’t want to pretend. She wanted to really feel the Lord’s presence.

“You could only truly speak in tongues when all worldly matters were emptied from your mind, or else there was no room for God. To do that, you had to be thinking about him, praising him, or singing to him. She had tried at home, but nothing worked.”

She felt lost and abandoned. She decided to run away from home and look for her mother in Atlanta. She was on a quest not only to find her mother, but to find salvation, faith, and truth. What she found was a city too big for a fourteen-year old girl toting around a clarinet case with only a few dollars in her pocket. She fell in with a drug dealer and a prostitute. She narrowly missed irreparable damage and while not finding the things she set out to find, she may have found more valuable truths about life.

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total=32

#554 The Token Superhero- David F. Walker

#554 The Token Superhero- David F. Walker

Parents often have contradictory hopes for their children. On one hand they want them to be safe, normal, comfortable, but they also want them to be extraordinary, better than they were and someone that helps make the world better. Kelvin Ramey is in such a quandary. His son Alonzo is a superhero, and as much as Kelvin wants to be proud of him, he is worried that he will be in danger.

“Daddy K, are you really going to be angry that our son was blessed with wings and has decided to use them to fly?”

A genetic anomaly called K-24 has given superpower mutation to a select few in society. Most of the power are called “Standards” like extreme strength, speed, and bullet proof skin. But some have developed even more anomalous mutations that are uncontrollable. Kelvin is happy that Alonzo is a “Standard” because he believes that the world would look unkindly to a black man with super-human abilities. As it is, he is unhappy that his son will be part of a force called the Teen Justice Force, worried that Alonzo will become a tool for “The Man.”

Exploitation of Alonzo manifested itself first in his name, The Black Fist. He was also the only member of the force not to get his own comic series or an action figure.

“At the age of twenty, Alonzo was already bitter, cynical, and tired of being a token. He tried to reinvent himself, with a new costume and a new name, but none of it took. Twice he’d been attacked by other superheroes who’d mistaken him for a supervillain, and then there was the time he’d been shot by cops. Fortunately the bullets had bounced off.”

There is some pretty good satire here. And like most super hero stories there is a few good lessons to learn about symbolism, identity, and materialism…and that’s one to grow on.

Rating: 7-7-8-8 Total= 32

#553 The Stray Horse- Felisberto Hernandez

#553 The Stray Horse- Felisberto Hernandez

Now this is writing! In a period where some writers try too hard to make virtue out of the mundane, it is refreshing to read a story like this. Language can be an art-form in itself without having to be lofty. It can uplift without looking down its nose. Too many writers try too hard to be clever, mistaking word play for depth. Hernandez has no such affliction.

What better place to showcase beautiful language than through the imagination of a child. The boy in this story remembers fondly his childhood piano lessons. Like many lonely children, he sees the world around him and bends the things he doesn’t understand to a creative world he can. Inanimate objects suddenly have personality and life:

“Although the secrets of grown-ups could be glimpsed in their actions and conversations, I had my favorite way of uncovering them—when the people were absent and I could find their traces in something they had left behind…the moment it was left unattended I could begin to trace that person’s secrets in it.”

He idolizes and falls in love with Celine, his music teacher. Such a crush can have a lasting effect on a person:

“Celine would make me spread my hands on the keys and, with her fingers, she bend mine back, as if she were teaching a spider to move its legs. She was more closely in touch with my hands than I was myself. When she made them crawl like slow crabs over white and black pebbles, suddenly the hands came upon sounds that cast a spell on everything in the circle of lamplight, giving each object a new charm.”

Story aside, there are myriad phrases and paragraphs in this story that ooze with emotion and make the reader stop, breath deep, take a moment, and go back to read them again, only this time slower and with more time to savor:

“Someone dumps chunks of the past at the feet of the imagination, who hastily sorts through them in the swaying light of a small lantern it holds over them, mixing earth and shadows. Suddenly it drops the lantern on the soil of memory and the light goes out. Then once more the imagination is an insect flying over forgotten distances to land again on the edge of the present.”

Notable Passage (as if there were only one): “What never went quite to sleep was the specter of magnolias. Although I had left behind the trees where they lived, they were with me, hidden in the back of my eyes, and suddenly I felt their presence, light as a breath somewhere blown into the air by thought, scattered around the room, and blending into the furniture.”

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total= 40

#552 Neighbors- Raymond Carver

#552 Neighbors- Raymond Carver

Can you really trust your neighbors? Bill and Arlene Miller live across from the Stones. The Stones seem to live a much more exciting life than they do. They’re always going on vacations or taking work trips. When they do, they ask the millers to watch their apartment and feed their cat.

They do watch the apartment and feed the cat, but they also drink their booze, steal pills from the medicine cabinet, try on their clothes, and rifle through drawers looking for dirty pictures. This peek intro somebody else’s life excites them, and puts a bit of an adventurous spark into their otherwise dull lives. Living vicariously through somebody else’ existence may be fun, but be careful you don’t find yourselves locked out.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#551 Snakes- Danielle Evans

#551 Snakes- Danielle Evans

A rift in a family can be absolutely toxic for children. Tara is eight, her mother and grandmother do not get along, but this summer as her parents are on a research trip to Brazil, Tara will stay with her grandmother. Also staying there is her cousin, Allison, who’s parents also don’t get along with grandma.

The summer goes along with the cousins attached at the hip. Grandmother proves to be miserable, and judgmental and even when well-intentioned, does nothing but inflame and belittle Tara. Disaster strikes when Allison pushed Tara into the lake, and she barely makes it out alive. Her parents come back and for the next 15 years, none of them speak to either the grandmother, Allison, or Allison’s parents.

We learn later that before that summer, Allison was having “problems” and sent to grandmothers semi-permanently. The lake incident was just a manifestation of the girls trying to get back to their parents. But the situation and the split pretty much ruined Allison’s life. The isolation from the family drama may have helped Tara, but the details of the grandmother’s psychosis (or whatever you want to call it) are frightening. The story, Tara’s survival, and the revealing truth make for one hell of a story.

“My recovery turned my scars into part favors. If you had seen them—the dot on my leg, the line on my elbow, the water in my eyes when I talked about Allison—then you had something about me to take with you. If you knew what was behind it, you had even more.”

I was feeling towards the middle of this story that is trended a bit too long, like there might have been too much “filler”, but I was proven wrong. The story developed exceptionally well and unfolded perfectly by the end.

Notable Passage: “We are safe, with our families, until we are not.”

Rating: 9-9-9-9 Total= 36