#236 Under No Moon- Amy Hempel

#236 Under No Moon- Amy Hempel

The narrator and her parents are on a cruise to the mouth of the Amazon to see Halley’s comet. The mother believes upon seeing this sight, she will die.

“This was not superstition; it was sixth sense, or second sight. Clairvoyance. It was something she said she knew the way she said she knew the moment her children were conceived. It was how she said she knew which song would be played on the radio next, how she knew to circle one more time around the block before a parking space would open.”

She never got to see the comet due to sickness, but then, or because of that she didn’t die either. The viewing for the other passengers were said to be the worst visibility of the comet in 2,000 years. However, even after trekking into the jungle with tri-pods, and heavy gear, nobody left disappointed.

It’s funny. Sometimes you read something and can imagine it in another voice. Hempel always reads to me as genuine, and straight forward. Even when she’s writing something funny or ironic, it doesn’t have a biting edge. That’s hers style and it’s wonderful. However, reading this story about 45 taxis (out of the whole country’s 47) taking old people into the interior of a tropical island to barely see a comet--one whole taxi used to carry a portable toilet—I imagine the buffoonery that would spew out of the pen of someone like T.C Boyle or better yet, Hunter S. Thompson.

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

#120 Relief- Peter Ho Davies

#120 Relief- Peter Ho Davies

O. Henry Award Story Friday!

I read the first sentence and it’s a story about flatulence. Then I look again at the story title, Relief, and groan. Is this really a story about farting? And for the most part I guess it is. There are many topics one might take on while writing a short story, I guess something as ubiquitous a gas would eventual make it into one.

However, the title is a double entendre of sorts, or maybe a triple one actually. The senior officers are gathered at dinner when Lieutenant Wilby makes his social gas-gaff. The men are gathered round and telling war stories. When Lieutenant Chard is asked someone facetiously how it felt being a hero.

“I would have to say, principally, the sensation is one of relief. Relief to be alive after all…but also relief to have learned some truth about myself. To have found I am possessed of – for want of a better word—courage.”

Chard continues to expound on his bravery and reveals himself to be a blowhard. Wilby offers his comic “relief” (yes I went there), and we are left wondering was Wilby’s fart the real flatulence or was it what just can out of Chard’s mouth?

Wilby’s final relief comes when the room shares stories of their own public farting, and it becomes a bonding point between fighting men. All except Chard of course:

“Now that man…mark my words—has never farted in his life. It’d break his back to let rip now.”

Funny story.

Rating: 7-6-8-5 Total= 26

#112 Emergency- Denis Johnson

#112 Emergency- Denis Johnson

A few years ago somebody left Tree of Smoke at my bar. The book was on the Pulitzer short list. It was never claimed from the lost and found so I took it home and read it, loved it, passed it on to the next person in a fun read-it-forward string of events. I am very happy to be reading one of his short stories.

Just like his book, everything here is completely off kilter, bonkers, fubar. There is a bunch of craziness going on in an Emergency room. The orderly has been mopping up the same blood from the O.R. floor for hours. Its like the blood spot from Macbeth.

A man comes in with a knife sticking out of one eye, the other eye is plastic, but he can still see.

“[The doctor] peeked into the trauma room and saw the situation: the clerk- that is, me- standing next to the orderly, George, both of us on drugs, looking down at a patient with a knife sticking up out of his face.

‘What seems to be the problem?’ he said”

When asked by the hospital staff what happened:

“My wife did it, I was asleep”

“Do you want the police?”

“Not unless I die.”

Everyone in the story is messed up, or on drugs, it’s the theatre of the absurd, or something out of the LSD crazed mind of Ken Kesey.

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