#245 The Furnished Room- O. Henry

#245 The Furnished Room- O. Henry

We end this calendar year where this project began, with an O. Henry Story. I hope this past year treated you well, and I hope your New Year is prosperous, and happy. I urge you, as you celebrate with family in warmth and comfort, to spare a thought to those less fortunate souls that suffer in the cold; hungry, needy and just steps outside our doors.

This is an apt tale to tell in such times. “Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished room—transients in abode, transients in heart and mind.”

Of course this story is more than just about that. It’s about change, and loss, and loneliness, and longing. This encompasses all the emotions one can feel being alone in an apartment in New York City. The impermanence of apartment living, wondering who lived there before, can make you feel insignificant, meaningless, and cold.

I sincerely hope your New Year’s is happier and less ominous than this story.

Word of the Day: Fugacious –tending to disappear, fleeting. (google)

#244 Surrounded by Sleep- Akhil Sharma

#244 Surrounded by Sleep- Akhil Sharma

Ten-year-old Ajay is dealing with grief. His brother had a near drowning accident in a local pool and is in a coma. Ajay and his mother desperately set up a shrine and plea to God for help, any God will do.

Prayer became a hodgepodge of beliefs. They would make appeals to the cross, the star of David, the altar even had a picture of Gandhi on it that they would sprinkle only water on because he was fasting. Ajay prayed to the “S” on superman’s cape.

“Prayer, Ajay thought, should appeal with humility and open heart to some greater force. But the praying that he and his mother did felt sly and confused. By treating God as someone to bargain with, it seemed to him, they prayed as if they were casting a spell.”

At night, while he slept he would imagine conversations with God. His projection of God became his mourning, as he went through the stages of grief.  “But now Ajay was starting to understand that the world was always real, whether you were reading a book or sleeping, and that its eroded you every day. He saw the evidence of this erosion in his mother, who had grown severe and unforgiving.”

Life goes on.

Notable Passage: “People will cry with you once, and they will cry with you a second time. But if you cry a third time, people will say you are boring and always crying.”

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

#243 The Student- Anton Chekhov

#243 The Student- Anton Chekhov

Winter is upon us once more, the cruel, bitter, cold and lonely darkness covers our lives and nothing can escape, not even truth.

“…in their time there had been the same savage poverty and hunger; the same leaky thatched roofs, ignorance and anguish, the same surrounding emptiness and darkness, the sense of oppression—all these horrors had been, and were, and would be no better. And he did not want to go home.”

But with such things, to endure, to survive, there must be hope. “…an inexpressibly sweet anticipation of happiness, an unknown, mysterious happiness, gradually came over him, and life seemed to him delightful, wondrous, and filled with lofty meaning.”

Rating: 8-7-7-6 Total= 28

#242 The Rug- Meg Mullins

#242 The Rug- Meg Mullins

Ushman Khan is a rug merchant selling his high-end floor coverings to New York’s elite, some of which, like Mrs. Roberts, are particular and demanding. He is here to build his business so his wife will come to America from Tabriz, but she is reluctant. This is his dream not hers, and she resents him leaving her to care for his crippled mother.

This and the many miscarriages she has suffered causes their marriage to strain: “He did not come to America to lose his wife.”

One day, while he is appraising an antique expensive rug, the man who has left it in his shop, dies. He knows that, if he wants it, the rug could now be his for free, and the sale of this rug could make him a fortune. But money won't buy him the happiness he wants, he is surrounded by loveless greed, vanity, death, and failure.

Notable Passage: “Except for your threshold, there is no refuge in this world for me; except for this door, there is no shelter for my head. When the enemy’s sword is drawn, I throw down my shield in flight because I have no weapon except weeping and sighing.”

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

#341 Ado- Connie Willis

#341 Ado- Connie Willis

It’s springtime and the English Lit teacher is about to begin her section on Shakespeare. However, in this period of time, due to oversensitivity, most literature has been banned or halted by injunction. Just by announcing the start of Shakespeare, protests sprung up.

“Delilah was outside the school when I got there, wearing a red Seniors Against Devil Worship in the Schools t-shirt and shorts. She was carrying a picket sign that said ‘Shakespeare is Satan’s spokesman.’ Shakespeare and Satan were both misspelled.”

Trying to figure out which works were still allowed, the teacher and principle sifted through the objections:

-The Royal Society for the Divine Rights of Kings objected to Richard III because there was no proof that he has killed the princess…they in fact objected to all the plays about Kings.

-Angry Woman’s Alliance objected to the Taming of the Shrew, Merry Wives of Windsor, Romeo & Juliet, and Love’s Labor Lost.

-The American Bar Associating objected to The Merchant of Venice…as did Morticians International due to defaming of the word casket.

-The Sierra Club objected to As You Like It because Orlando carves Rosalind’s name into a tree.

ETC.

They settle on Hamlet but now must go line-by-line taking out any and all objectionable lines. What they have left amounts to a few lines of nonsense.

“Hamlet…is that the one about the guy whose uncle murders the king and then the queen marries the uncle?”

“Not any more.”

Somewhere in here is a great idea for a satirical look at censorship in education, but this widely misses the mark. It follows a formulaic spiral down the slippery slope of the rabbit hole. The end, where another group gets a court order to make Delilah change her sign and she angrily asks: “What’s happening to our right to freedom of speech”—is so cliché it’s, almost a pun. I guess with such rich subject matter, I was hoping for a little more edge, a little more bite, more nuance. Maybe the editor cut those things out.

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