#123 Zombies- Jabari Asim

#123 Zombies- Jabari Asim

It’s summer in the neighborhood. We see little Crispus take a beating for leaving the safety of his stoop. We see the neighborhood kids play around and give each other crazy nicknames. They call Crispus 'Flip-Flop' because that’s what he got beat with this last time.

He and his brother walk together. His brother like to take him past the funeral home run by Mr. Burk, because he knows how much it freaks Crispus out. They talk to Mr. Burk about the dead bodies and then talk to each other about his grey, plastic, zombie eyes. They’re kids so the myths they tell are pretty fantastic:

“They like to buy black folks’ eyes because ours are so much bigger and better looking. You know how rich white folks are. When black folks die they pay for their eyes.”

Life is rough sometimes, but its also touching, especially through the eyes of children:

“I was always in a hurry to get to sleep because I got revenge in my dreams. I undid the day’s disasters and rewrote them to suit my most fervent desires. I had control. Everyone listened to me and there was no end to my handsomeness.”

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

#122 A Cold Autumn- Ivan Bunin

#122 A Cold Autumn- Ivan Bunin

Bunin was the first Russian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Although his anti-communist beliefs forced him to flee, he was the first exiled author to be published in the USSR.

This is the eve of World War I. A family goes through the emotions of separation before war.  “We sat quietly that evening, only occasionally exchanging the odd insignificant word, hiding our innermost thoughts and feelings with exaggerated calm.”

A young couple not yet married talk of the what-ifs and the promises young couples make when discussing an uncertain future. He dies before they could get married and she lives on, although not without regret.

“Only that cold autumn evening…And that is all there’s been in my life. All the rest has been a useless dream.” Can you tell this is Russian literature?

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

#121 New York Mining Disaster- Haruki Murakami

#121 New York Mining Disaster- Haruki Murakami

I’m not exactly sure I know what’s going on in this story. I think it’s a man trapped in a collapsed mine thinking about death, hallucinating about another life, or his previous existence before the mine.

He’s thinking about a friend of his that has a black funeral suit. His friend hasn’t had to use the suit since he bought it, nobody he knows has died. He has know many people that have died in that time frame and has borrowed the suit every time. He returns the suit and wonders if it smells like a funeral, smells like death.

“Clothes aren’t important. The real problem is what’s inside them.”

Smell is a theme brought back a few times, smell connected with death:

“…there are ways of dying that don’t end in funerals. Types of death you can’t smell.”

The narrator has an odd exchange with a woman at a party about death:

“You look exactly like someone I know”

“If he’s that much like me, I’d like to meet the guy.”

“You would?”

“I’d like to see what it feels like to meet someone who’s exactly like me.”

“But that’s impossible…he died five years ago.”

“Is that right?”

“I killed him.”

This seems like a hallucination due to deliria, bouncing between funerals, zoo visits, caged animals. Intriguing, but I struggled at its meaning.

Notable Passage: “…the ground we walk on goes all the way to the earth’s core, and I suddenly realized that the core has sucked up an incredible amount of time.”

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

#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

#119 The Soul Is Not a Smithy- David Foster Wallace

#119 The Soul Is Not a Smithy- David Foster Wallace

Reading David Foster Wallace can be a commitment. The length and meticulous detail in his works don’t lend themselves to “light-reading.” However, if you are willing to put in the effort, and keep focus (something missing from a lot of internet-aged readers) the payoffs can be huge.

To some, this style of over-prose may seem to be a bit tiresome, but I assume these are the same people that would rather fast forward the first 2 ½ hours of Die Walkurie, a tough opera to get through for a novice, just to listen to the 3 minutes they know…The Ride of the Walkurie. For an opera fan, or an avid lover of the long-form in any of the arts, the adventure and ride of the exposition makes the payoff so much sweeter.

Speaking of focus and boredom, Terence Velen is a fourth grade student having a hard time concentrating at school. He spends his days staring through the classroom window, subdividing his attention through small, reticulated metal mesh squares and letting his imagination create his own reality. Meanwhile in class, his substitute Civics teacher, Mr. Richard Johnson (a nice name for a civics teacher in the 1960’s) “had just written KILL on the chalkboard.” Then KILL THEM, and finally KILL THEM ALL.

We learn that Mr. Johnson had an obvious nervous breakdown and while most of the class fled the scene in a panic, there were four unwitting hostages, including Terence. These four were among the perceived "slow" or "deficient" students. But its seems that they were neither slow, brave, unlucky, or unwilling to leave. And it seems they weren’t really hostages, as much as daydreamers confused about what exactly was going on around them.

“In testing many school children labeled as hyperactive or deficient in attention are observed to be not so much unable to pat attention as to have difficulty exercising control or choice over what it is they pat attention to.”

Many of DFW stories follow a style such as this, a frenetic accounting of an unfocussed mind. Some have used his writing (unfairly to both him and the mental health profession) as a peek inside the mind of such young people who have suffered misdiagnoses or misunderstandings or worse, mis-medications. Beyond the obvious technical skills of these works, and beyond the comedic or tragic circumstances of the plots, there is a deep truth here, a soul that calls out to be recognized.  At once, impressive, touching, heartbreaking, and hilarious...there is only one DFW.

Notable Passage: “There is something about someone throwing up anywhere within a child’s earshot that serves to direct and concentrate his attention with an utmost insane force…”

Rating: Once again…Not Rate-able…it is unfair to compare DFW to anyone else. To do so I’d have to develop a whole new system.  He ruins the curve…so lets just say he gets a perfect score and move on. Do I sound biased here? Who cares, its my blog and my rating system.

#118 Small Fry- Anton Chekhov

#118 Small Fry- Anton Chekhov

Two office clerks are working late on Easter. As they hear the Easter Bells ringing from the church and the crowds of happy passersby, they lament their sad lives.

“The need for a new, better life wrung his heart with unbearable anguish. He passionately longed to find himself suddenly in the street, to merge with the living crowd, to take part in the festivity…”

But they had chosen to work out of necessity “What’s there to be greedy about: two roubles in cash, plus a necktie…It’s need, not greed!”

As he kills some time writing a letter to his benefactor, “a man he hated and feared with all his soul,” he kills a cockroach he had saved only moments before. It made him feel good. With that his compassion had died, and the circle of life moved forward.

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

#117 A Harlem Game- Henry Dumas

#117 A Harlem Game- Henry Dumas

This one is a pretty straight up story for Dumas. There is none of the spiritual or supernatural elements that make up a lot of his writing. All of the craft is still there however.

Mack wants to go to the late show but needs some money.  Jayjay warns him not to go up stairs to ask for it since he already got 50 cents earlier. But he goes up and presses his luck. Upstairs is the ongoing poker game his mother and father are involved in.

Sneaking past the trash and the blood stained stairs, he enters the smoke filled room to see his mother is running the table. Unfortunately, while he gets more money from his mother, he is schooled by his father and somehow leaves the room in debt.

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

#116 The Revenge of Hannah Hemhuff- Alice Walker

#116 The Revenge of Hannah Hemhuff- Alice Walker

This story has been dedicated: In grateful  memory of Zora Neale Hurston. This story uses the common curse-prayer that was printed in Hurston’s Mules and Men.

Hannah was a proud woman, and like most proud people that lived through the great depression, her pride, dignity and humanity were challenged greatly. Her children starving and on the brink of death, Hannah went against her strong beliefs and went down to the food line to beg for assistance. Unlike the other black families that wore their worst and dirtiest clothing to garner sympathy, Hannah dressed in her finest dress, albeit still ragity compared to those in the white-only line, and was refused. Not only was she denied assistance, she was laughed at by the “the little moppet” of a woman judging her case.

Her children soon died, her husband left her and her will was steadily worn away.

“My spirit never recovered from that insult, just like my heart never recovered from my husband’s desertion, juts like my body never recovered from being almost starved to death. I started to wither in that winter and each year found me more hacked and worn down that the year before.”

All that was left, was the will for revenge.

Notable Passage: “As for happiness, it is something that deserts you once you know it can be bought and sold.”

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