#612 Seeing Through Water- Fatima Shaik

#612 Seeing Through Water- Fatima Shaik

This is truly a story unique to New Orleans. Sister Mary Patrick is having trouble adjusting to her life as a nun in the sweltering south. She is from an Irish Catholic Boston family and was hoping the church sent her out west. Now she teaches children in a town where she feels completely out of place.

Making life hard for her is a child, Pierre, that just cant seem to calm down. He is disruptive and remorseless. When she asks for the child to be removed from class, neither the headmaster nor the child’s grandmother agrees with the change. Pierre likes the Sister and he acts the calmest in her class. One day, in a rain storm, Pierre leads the class in second line parade in a pipe-piper like exercise in disruption.

Disruptive children don’t necessarily mean bad children. Especially in a town like New Orleans, originality and creativity should be celebrated not restricted. Sometimes when the rain falls, all there is to do is start a parade.

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

#611 From the Lowlands- Robert Stone

#611 From the Lowlands- Robert Stone

Leroy is a wealthy man. He was a in-on-the-ground-floor type of guy in the tech world. He’s got mansions, cars, beautiful woman and not an entanglement in the world. To put it another way…he had everything, but he has nothing. He has shaped his life to seem perfect, but he is shallow. He judges everyone with a harsh spotlight, petty even. He stole half of his company from his only friend who needed help. Instead he was happy when he died.

Now, when he walks down the street people resent him, snicker at his presence behind his back. He thinks, as many wealthy people do of such resentment, that is comes from pure jealousy:

“The successful man is resented by the hewers of wood and carriers of water. The wealthy man of taste and means draws the impotent hatred of the mob.”

Perhaps it comes from thoughts like this:

“He often contemplated with satisfaction the brilliance concentrated within his intellect and will. Sometimes, he knew, it burned with too bright a flame.”

Living in his crystal palace, perfection surrounding him, waiting for he storm, knowing that when trouble comes, nobody will be there to help him.

Rating: 7-6-5-6 Total= 24

#610 Horned Men- Karl Taro Greenfeld

#610 Horned Men- Karl Taro Greenfeld

Bob was both a victim and a perpetrator of the over-leveraged mortgage bubble. So after losing his new house, him, his wife and their daughter are now moving back to their old house that they had been renting to a religious family. That family is not happy about the change and curses Bob.

Bob is crawling around in the attic re-running co-ax cable and cleaning up a crawlspace when he discovers several interesting things. There is a small hole in the wall where he can see into his daughter’s new room, he doesn’t see anything inappropriate and vows to cover the hole without telling anyone. He gets bit by a poisonous spider while back there, a seeming punishment for peeking on his daughter. He also finds a plaster figuring of a devil, a kind of evil totem stashed behind the wall. There are two of them, each with scripture etched on the side.

As Bob, tried to reconcile his new post-bubble life, he tries to fix the sins of his past, and make good on new chances. Some holes however don’t cover so easily, and you never know where evil may be hiding.

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

#609 A Matter of Traces- Frank Herbert

#609 A Matter of Traces- Frank Herbert

This is the official minutes for a meeting of “The Special Subcommittee on Intergalactic Culture.” They are convening to look into the finances of the “Historic Preservation Teams of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs.” Thankfully this story is more entertaining than such a meeting would actually be if it really existed.

The testimony relates the story about a cultural and planetary pioneer. On a new planet with strange vegetation and animal life he invented a devise to harness a large amoeba-like beast of burden to help clear land. The device is simple and obvious, but it wasn’t so obvious at first:

“Sometimes the obvious isn’t so obvious until someone’s showed it to you.”

More fun than the sci-fi look at fictitious planets, is the satire about government committees. This one has an official saboteur in order to have built-in excuses for not getting anything done.

Notable Passage: “People had to help each other…and they had to live honest because their lives depended on it. It’s only after we get civilized that we feel free to cheat.”

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

#608 The Great War- Maxine Clair

#608 The Great War- Maxine Clair

“What good is love when you sit alone and wait?” Good question. She sits at home, with the kids, while her husband is out working, playing messing around. He is a “good husband” because he pays the bills and provides, but he is a bad husband because he always makes he wait.

“Then there was the next baby. A long wait for a fertile body to make little legs and fingers, good eyes, and the best-shaped head. A Long wait.

And every one of those hundreds of days filled itself up with small waits—for the iron to heat up, the skillet to sizzle, the child to get home from school, Sunday to come, payday, a word, a glance, the truth.”

You can feel the anger, resentment, pride, shame in this piece. The seething emotion of a woman, a mother being wronged—strong, righteous, knowing. She will wait, and wait—and when she is don’t waiting, look out!

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

#607 The Playground of the Ecstatically Blasé- Toure

#607 The Playground of the Ecstatically Blasé- Toure

Jamias (never) is a new hot club in a lost corner of New York City. Despite it’s location, it if always packed and full of celebrities and the city’s A-list names: “They were that overnight New Crew all ecstatically blasé”

The DJ played only songs from artists who died tragically young—Biggie Smalls, Curtis Mayfield, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Tupac, etc. and the menu was all creepy delicacies like spider’s legs. The place was a house where aspirations went to die, the entire staff was “an army of soulless dreamers.” This story is a good piece of satire for all those artists, singers, actresses that never make it past waiting tables. It’s like hotel California. Hey, sometimes being a hostess at a big time club in New York City is fame enough.

Notable Passage: “There’s no place like home, but New York City is a close second.”

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

#606 The Letter to the Foundation- Lydia Davis

#606 The Letter to the Foundation- Lydia Davis

This is a fictional thank you letter from an author to a foundation that has rewarded her with a grant. It’s scatterbrained, frantic, way too much personal information, and it was written many years after the grant had already expired. You can see from this letter why. She is the most unorganized and unfocused person you can imagine. It’s a wonder she got a grant in the first place. The foundation community for would certainly have had second thoughts if this was her application letter.

Seriously, this letter made me both nervous and angry. It was like listening to someone on speed tell you their life story. 

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

#605 The Marriage of the Red Fish- Guadalupe Nettel

#605 The Marriage of the Red Fish- Guadalupe Nettel

Guadalupe Nettal’s collection Natural Histories came to me highly recommended. With influence from Mexico, Paris and Montreal I expect a pretty broad spectrum of input in these stories. The opening piece is The Marriage of the Red Fish. A couple living in Paris is about to have their first child. They live modestly and have a pair of Red fish to keep them company.

The wife, having left her job for maternity leave, has time for contemplation and notices a lot about these fish living in the same bowl. She gets books to learn more an realizes that they are an aggressive species and need more space. As she is more conscious of the fish, they seem to reflect the emotional ups and downs her and her husband are experiencing.

“You tend to learn a lot from the animals you live with, even fish. They are like mirrors that reflect the buried emotions and behaviors we don’t dare see.”

In the aquatic equivalent of her husband sleeping on the couch, she puts one of the fish in a second tank. The human couple also separates briefly causing even more emotional turmoil. In the end neither the fish, nor the couple survive living together. 

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

#604 Rust- T.C. Boyle

#604 Rust- T.C. Boyle

Walt and Eunice are old and living out their retired lives in their old house. They had a dog, but at this moment Walt didn’t know where it had gone to.

“He didn’t know where the dog was, though he knew where his first bourbon and water of the day was—right there on the TV tray in front of him—and it was 11:00 a.m. and plenty late enough for it.”

He went outside to the yard—a place he hadn’t been in years—to find the dog. He falls, and is unable to move. He calls out for his wife, but there is no answer. His hearing isn’t all that good and she’s been drinking as well. She’s probably just sitting in front of the TV.

“…where time was meaningless, a series of half-hour slices carved out of the program guide, day melding into night, breakfast into dinner, the bright electrons dancing eternally across the screen.”

By nighttime, she finally goes looking for him, and by the time, she sees him, she has already tripped over his fallen body and she joins him on the grass—her hip now broken. Depending on how you look at this story, it’s either very funny, or extremely depressing. Old age like this is not exactly something to look forward to.

Notable Passage: “You measure your life in dogs, if you’re lucky you’ll get five or six of them.”

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

#603 Snake River Gorge- Alexander Maksik

#603 Snake River Gorge- Alexander Maksik

This is from the 2013 Best American Non-Required Reading collection. Theo needs a job. He’s eighteen, his parents are struggling and his older sister is away with the Army. He answers an ad in the Penny Saver and the recruiter comes to his house. He is a fast talking salesman and convinces Theo and his parents that this is a great opportunity for someone willing to work hard.

What it turns out to be is a door-to-door canvassing gig selling magazine subscriptions. By itself, it’s a harmless job, no worries, right? Except the crew travels together, stays in sleazy motels by night and has a horrible caste system. Henry is at the top, with his own room, the top selling get the bed, everyone else gets the floor. The low man, called the bunker boy, is tied up all night to a chair. This doesn’t sit well with Theo, so he unties bunker boy. Retribution is harsh and swift for Theo, and just like that his “great opportunity” is done. 

There is some stuff here about class and privilege, but it’s clumsy and forced. The story itself was interesting enough without that theme.

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

#602 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day- Edward P. Jones

#602 The Sunday Following Mother’s Day- Edward P. Jones

This is a pretty violent story. Madeleine’s father killed her mother by stabbing her to death when she was four. Her older brother Samuel was also there. Violence begets violence and son’s take after their fathers. Twenty years later, Samuel killed his wife in the same way, leaving his children Maddie and Sam behind for Madeleine to take care of.

There are obvious parallels in these characters starting with the names. Sam-Samuel, Madeleine-Maddie, etc. It shows that the people in our families can be reflections of ourselves, extensions of our potential or weaknesses. How connected are we to our families? How large is our need for that connection that we would still feel that connection after such horrible acts?

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

#601 Rapture- Julia Elliot

#601 Rapture- Julia Elliot

This is the first story of Julia Elliot’s new collection, The Wilds. It’s described as southern gothic, so I suppose we’re in for some mysterious and eerie tales. This one is about a girls sleepover party.

Brunell Hair is turning eleven and has invited her classmates over for a party. Not being at all popular, only two other girls show up. Her lowly status with her friends is due to the weirdness of her family, known to be overly religious. Meemaw is the grandmother and she speaks in tongues. She says it’s a power passed down through the family for twelve generation, always going to the eldest child upon the passing of the parent. 

Embarrassing for the family is Uncle Mike, who’s gay. He also does famous TV commercials. All this is highly entertaining for the visiting girls who watch Meemaw with wide eyes and fawn over Uncle Mike like teenagers and give the religious zeal a sideways glance. In the morning Meemaw has died and a sudden light appears on Mike’s forehead. Coincidence or the passing of the power?

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

#600 Sisters of the Rain- J. California Cooper

#600 Sisters of the Rain- J. California Cooper

“Some people say with a smile, ‘You write all love stories.’ Well, I say…I try to write about needs…and Love is our greatest need.”

This quote opens the collection Some Soul to Keep, by the wonderful writer, J. California Cooper. I am looking forward to the six stories in this book. Sisters of the Rain is about progress and family. A dying woman, wants her daughter to learn to read and makes sure she gets to school at least for a month a year. On her death bed she writes a note pleading for the teacher to give her daughter a book so she can continue to learn.

That daughter cherishes that book (a book of geography) and names her own children after things from the book, Egypt, Pyramid, Superior and Africa. Like mother like daughter…she dies leaving a wish that her children stay in school. Superior, her eldest daughter takes the wish to heart and takes a job so she can stay in school.

Her struggle is to keep true to her promise, and her family. She fights shame, degradation, jealousy, and desire to pass on to her children the promise she has tried to fulfill.

Notable Passage: “If you ain’t watching life, you won’t know what to do with the life you got in your hands.”

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

#599 Galloping Foxley- Roald Dahl

#599 Galloping Foxley- Roald Dahl

Perkins commutes to work every morning by train. He takes the same train every day, with the dame people, sits in the same seat and enjoys it.

 “Believe me, there is nothing like routine and regularity for preserving one’s piece of mind. I have now made this morning journey nearly ten thousand times in all, and I enjoying more and more every day.”

“I am in every sense of the word a contented commuter.”

He is a man of habit and anytime there is a change in this habit, he is thrown off. One day a large man stands on the platform waiting for the train. He is new and all the daily commuters shift nervously. He dares to sit across from Perkins, and Perkins is appalled and offended. Worse, he recognized him as his childhood bully from fifty years ago. At least he thinks that is who it is.

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

#598 Life in the Flesh- Craig Davidson

#598 Life in the Flesh- Craig Davidson

There has always been drama in boxing. Pure aggression mixed with elegant precision; years of work put in to a three minute round; facing a brutal opponent but the real battle is inside the fighter’s head. The stories almost write themselves. 

“A prizefighter is a freak. He’s got maybe ten years in the roughest business in the world, a business ruled by a strict hierarchy: winners and losers. He’s not a paperhanger, a lawyer, a beancounter. He doesn’t put on galoshes, grab his briefcase, catch the trolley, the same daily grind for thirty, forty years. He gives it all now, or never.”

Of course, they don’t write themselves, and Davidson takes his story to an interesting place. This story is about a boxer, Roberto. He killed a man in the ring. It was a legal fight and a fair contest, but a man died, and everyone saw him do it. It immediately ruined Roberto. He stopped training, started drinking and eventually moved to Thailand running away from his demons.

Once a fighter always a fighter. In Thailand, Roberto found the world of Muay Thai. Now twenty five years later he is a trainer still living in Thailand: “You can’t outrun this life. Sounds weak, I know, but it’s the truth. Whether it was bred into me or whether I’ve always harbored the best has long ceased to matter.”

His old manager now sends him hard-cases to train with the Muay Thai fighters to toughen them up. The most recent is a bruiser named The Kid. When his ego and body take a beating in his first fight, Roberto gets a fight he wasn’t expecting. 

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

#597 Cowboys- Susan Steinberg

#597 Cowboys- Susan Steinberg

I like reading these stories, if for no other reason than they challenge the normal form of a short story. Of course being different isn’t in itself a virtue, but I appreciate the attempt at originality. For the most part, this piece works. The short sentences are staccato notes peppering the reader, creating anxiety and tension, kind of like oncoming road rage during start-stop rush hour traffic.

A woman gets a three-way call at 4 a.m. from her brother and the doctor who is been trying to revive their father. He is brain dead and on a respirator and they need permission to pull the plug. She is a mess of a woman, emotionally unstable, and unwilling to make this decision alone. Immaturity seems to be her defining characteristic but she is the oldest sibling and it is up to her. 

There are moments that come together in this story where an honest emotion makes its way through the barriers. But as the narrator says, don’t look for much meaning:

-There is no intentional metaphor in this story.

-There is no intentional meaning in this story.

-I would not subject you to intentional meaning.

-I would not subject you to some grand scheme.

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

#596 The Sailor in the Picture- Eileen Dreyer

#596 The Sailor in the Picture- Eileen Dreyer

It’s one of the most famous pictures ever take. A sailor kissing a nurse he just met in times square on the day Japan surrenders, marking the end of WWII. Alfred Eisenstaedt was following the sailor as he jubilantly made his way through the crowd kissing any woman he could. What about the other woman, the other pictures? A picture if the sailor kissing Peg hangs in her living room. It happened just before the famous kiss and wasn’t captured as elegantly, but it was the most important day of her life.

Her husband, Jimmy was about to get home. She got the telegram a week earlier and was getting prepared to have a husband again. She had survived by herself, a single mother with twins, working at a butcher shop. She was the fastest woman with a knife. Now everyone was congratulating her because she could now go back to being “just a wife and a mother.” 

There was something ominous about Jimmy’s return, something more than Peg losing her job and her independence. We see what it is after Jimmy witnesses the sailor kissing his wife in Time’s Square. Good thing she learned how to use the knife.

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

#595 The Ditch- Naguib Mahfouz

#595 The Ditch- Naguib Mahfouz

An old man and the building he lives in are falling apart and not long for this world. He laments the too rapid passing of time and remembers the life that once existed inside these walls:

“In my childhood days, the house was of mature age and in fair shape, and the alley, paved with stones and with two sidewalks…”

Now:

“The shadow of times long past, the expectation of the house collapsing, and the diffusion of filth all pervading my feelings and gave me a sensation of disease—and of fear as well.”

He knows he cannot avoid the inevitable, but wishes for something, a memory, more time, acknowledgement, something. He visits his family's burial plot and takes stock of the past and of the future.

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

#594 Anyone Else But Me- Lucia Perillo

#594 Anyone Else But Me- Lucia Perillo

Prairie Rose doesn’t know who her father is. Her mother Ruth either doesn’t know or won’t tell her enough information for her to track him down. After all these years, it is becoming harder and less likely she will ever find out. It would, in a way, take a miracle.

Oddly enough, Rose’s current job is working maintenance for the town’s Miracle Management Response Team. Chemical runoff and environmental conditions has caused the image of the Virgin Mary to appear on a seawall causing all sorts of havoc for the area. People coming from all around just for a look, usually leaving trash and spending money—and isn’t that a perfect description of modern life: leaving trash, spending money, and staring at a wall looking for meaning, waiting for a miracle.

The woman are polar opposites and are each in need of different things. Ruth is looking for peace, while Rose is looking for answers. “Prairie Rose doesn’t understand how her mother could be satisfied with so little; Ruth doesn’t understand how a person’s life could accommodate much more.”

Ruth is kind of a modern take of people’s view of the Virgin Mary. She keeps pretty silent and yet everyone has an opinion about her—she is promiscuous, she is a nun, she is deaf, etc. Eventually unless protected and bolstered by faith, all miracles fade and wash back into the ocean.

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

#593 The Reader- Nathan Englander

#593 The Reader- Nathan Englander

This is a love letter to bookstores, or a lament for the loss of the bookstore culture. As the brick and mortar bookshops are closing one by one, Author makes his last reading tour. Notice he is not referred to as “The Author” which would be a title, but as “Author” which means it’s his name, his personal identity. 

Author is a one-book-a-decade type of writer, so he hasn’t seen this new world, and like cicada coming out of the ground after years of hibernation, he is never sure what to expect. His last books were well received and his book tours were packed. This time, things have changed.

“This is what every book had asked of him, that he forgo all distraction and every comfort, that he simply put his head down and work. But some decades are more delicate than others. And from this one, he’d lifted his eyes up and discovered that he was old.”

There are few people showing up to his readings. By the sixth night there appears to be nobody at all. But as he leaves the store, there is one man sitting, waiting, kindly insisting that Author fulfills his social contract to read, even if it’s only him listening. At first it is a fulfilling experience.

“Really, how much richer could a writing life be than finding, even for one night, one true reader?”

All of the remaining dates on his reading tour follow the same pattern. Nobody but this one man eagerly waiting for him to read. He reads, this is what he does after all, but if starts to feel like he’s reading his own eulogy:

“This book…it’s not a novel, it’s a tombstone. Why not just hammer it in the ground above my head? My name’s already on the front.”

At times I felt this was a very touching story, at other times I found it very self-indulgent.  Writers love writing about writing. The meta look into the life of a writer can be very personal, but can also be self-centered. If we take this in any way to be autobiographical (which is hard not to when reading about a writer) than it’s a little insulting to hear a writer complain about not getting enough attention…especially when you are at that very moment giving him attention. 

But again…that is a small fraction of my feelings on this piece. Overall, it was a good read, and Englander as always uses an impeccably clean craft that makes anything he writes enjoyable.

Rating: 9-7-8-9 Total= 33

#592 Playin With Punjab- Toni Cade Bambara

#592 Playin With Punjab- Toni Cade Bambara

There are different kinds of leaders in the neighborhood. There are those that get elected to public office and those that you just know are in charge. Punjab is the latter type of leader. It takes a certain type of stupid to mess with a man like that.

“First of all, you don’t play with Punjab. The man’s got no sense of humor. On top of that, he’s six-feet-something and solid hard.”

I doesn’t matter who gets elected or appointed to represent that district, they will hear from the real leader, one way or the other. 

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

#591 Dirty Wedding- Denis Johnson

#591 Dirty Wedding- Denis Johnson

Johnson seems to like to write about assholes, degenerates and dark corners of society. Normally that's right up my alley. However I just haven’t been able to connect with much in this collection, Jesus’ Son. Besides the dirt and the shame and the fear and the pain, there is nothing here. Even a sense of loneliness would be welcoming, but all the characters seem to have a fatalist view of the world that makes me neither root for them or wish them ill. 

So what’s left? Nothing that I can’t find somewhere else, I can take these or leave them. After reading Tree of Smoke, I had such high hopes for his other works. Maybe he’s better at novels.

Notable Passage: “She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she’d done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother.”

Rating: 7-6-6-5 Total= 24

#590 Geese- ZZ Packer

#590 Geese- ZZ Packer

Dina is young and wants to get out of Baltimore. “Back home, money was the ony excuse for leaving.” Well, she didn’t have a plan for money, in fact she had no plan at all. However, with nothing but the adventure of youth, she went all the way to Japan. She found temporary work at an American themed amusement park. She didnt make much money but she made a friend, Ari.

After that job finished, she couldn’t find any work, and Ari allowed her to move into his small apartment while she looked. Over the next several month the apartment filled with other foreigners needing help. Ari seemed to collect lost causes. It was like the island of misfit toys. There was an ex model with a damaged face, a broken down Hungarian body builder, and a Moroccan man that fled his family after marrying the wrong woman, a woman who has now left him.

Together they were jobless, moneyless and starving. They became indigent, and the epitome of everything that the locals resented about foreigners. Forced by fear, shame, and need, Dina turns to the thing she didn’t want to resort to. But at least it isn’t Baltimore?

Notable Passage: “There were two types of hunger—one in which you would do anything for food, the other in which you could not bring yourself to complete the smallest task for it.”

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

#589 The Seventh Man- Haruki Murakami

#589 The Seventh Man- Haruki Murakami

Delicate, imaginative and dreamlike as usual, Murakami hits a nice note with this one. It seems like a man is at a support group or something giving a testimonial about the worst thing that has happened to him.

When he was a teenager he had a best friend, K, who was smaller, slower, and sweeter than he was. He was his protector, and the two were like brothers. During a massive typhoon each was huddled inside their own homes, but during the eye of the storm they walked outside to inspect the damage while it was still calm. 

The seashore was the place of interest, the waves had receded and the shoreline was riddled with debris and others things for them to inspect. Suddenly he felt a rush of fear and felt as if danger as coming. He called for K and ran. K didn’t hear until it was too late.

“I knew instinctively that they were alive. The waves were alive. They knew I was here and they were planning to grab me. I felt as if some huge man-eating beast were lying somewhere on a grassy plain, dreaming of the moment it would pounce and tear me to pieces with its sharp teeth.”

K was swallowed up by the tidal wave and dragged out to sea. For forty years, he has lived with this guilt, this pain, this fear. He left town and didn’t return until now. He may have found peace, but he will never get back the years he lost to grief.

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

#588 The Voice- Henry Dumas

#588 The Voice- Henry Dumas

It’s been a few months since I did a Dumas story. As always, It’s good for the soul. The Expressions are a local Harlem Gospel group. Their best singer, Spencer has died. The remaining members wander the streets in the snow looking for answers, arguing over the existence of God.

They come across a Rabbi, but find no answers; they met a priest but are no closer to a satisfying response. They visit Spencer’s house and gather with family and friends. They sing a song together and feel at peace. If you can’t find God in music, you can’t find God anywhere.

Notable Passage: “If you got a clean heart, and ask a good, honest question, God will answer you."

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

#587 A Present for Big Saint Nick- Kurt Vonnegut

#587 A Present for Big Saint Nick- Kurt Vonnegut

This is a funny story. Bernie was a great boxer until he lost the use of one eye. Now he was a body guard for Big Nick, the baddest gangster this side of Al Capone. Bernie is out Christmas shopping for Big Nick and his son is in tow, and he hates all the Santa’s he sees in the stores. So does the son of Big Nick’s lawyer; the kids are all taught by their parents to hate Santa.

Apparently, at Big Nick’s annual Christmas party, he gets dressed as the jolly old man, and takes each of his employees kids one by one. Before he gives them a gift, he asks them what their parents really think of Big Nick. They’ve been coached for this as well, and they each dutifully tell “Santa” how their parents would be nothing without the man. 

This year, Bernie’s son slips up and everyone at the party gets the present they really want.

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

#586 Painted Ocean, Painted Ship- Rebecca Makkai

#586 Painted Ocean, Painted Ship- Rebecca Makkai

An albatross is a harbinger of bad fortune. When Alex, convinced to go hunting for the first time, accidentally shot and killed one of these majestic birds, misfortune was on its way. It wasn’t enough that she had to pay a huge fine, or that the story made it onto the campus newspaper where she was a tenure-tracked professor, or that she was the butt of jokes at every faculty function—her penance for the albatross would touch her career and her engagement too.

She decided to try to roll with it and started telling the story herself at parties: “The telling was an attempt, of course, at penance. It never did work; penance so rarely does.”

The irony of teaching Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner was not lost on her. But in the attempts to forget her mistake, she makes a bigger one in class. She accidentally assumes a quiet student of hers is from Korea, when in reality she is from Minnesota and of Chinese descent. The gaffe creates a stir on campus and Alex goes into a tailspin that ends in her dismissal from her position. 

“The point, the moral, was how easy it was to make assumptions, how deadly your mistake could be, How in failing to recognize something, you could harm it or kill it or at least fail to save it.”

This is some of the point. The other, perhaps more important point is that we all make mistakes. It’s how we act after those mistakes that determines the course of our lives, not the mistake itself.

“I am the master of my fate, the captain of my soul.”

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

#584 Deliverance- Edith Pearlman

#584 Deliverance- Edith Pearlman

Mimi interviews for a job at The Ladle, a soup kitchen. She will replace the woman, who will replace the director who is about to have a baby. Mimi proves to be hard-working and very resourceful.

There is a couple of woman at the center that without medication are having issues, or have demons that need to get out. Mimi provides a unique solution, even as a deluge fails around them. Birth, death, and human kindness, not bad themes for a story.

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

#583 Dolan’s Cadillac- Stephen King

#583 Dolan’s Cadillac- Stephen King

When I began this project the idea was to try read short stories by authors I hadn’t read before, or at least hadn’t read their short fictions before. Up till now, that’s been the case. I’ve read dozens of new authors like Rebecca Makkai or Luis Alberto Urrea, or I’ve finally read short works by authors I admire like Chuck Palahniuk or Haruki Murakami.

Now that I’m well past the one-year I panned on doing this, I wanted to add an old friend. I am an avid reader of Stephen King, and I’ve especially liked his short stories. Night Shift and Skeleton Crew are two phenomenal collections. King’s novels are great and while read by millions somehow under-appreciated by the tweed-shitting literary snobs that devalue his work. However, I think it’s the short story genre that King’s talents are best showcased. His creativity and ability to conjure situations that are immediately gripping, is only surpassed by his story telling chops.

So, here is the first story from Nightmares and Dreamscapes. It’s a bit on the novella side of things, but it reads fast and should be engulfed in one sitting. Robinson is a grieving widower. Seven years ago his wife was killed by Dolan, a rich gangster she was about to testify against. Now he is hell-bent on revenge. Although he is very much out of his depth in such matters.

“More and more I felt like a man who has jumped out of the bay of a B-52 with a parasol in his hand instead of a parachute on his back.”

The plan for revenge is pretty convoluted and over-the-top insane, but in the heat of the action, that is forgotten. King is wonderful at creating tension and motion in his storytelling. You feel the pace pick up as the plan is carried out. Often you see quotes from favorable critics on dust jackets of mystery novels that say things like  “makes your heart race”—well this one actually did that for me. 

Notable Passage: “Schoolteachers and high-priced hoodlums do not have the same freedom of movement; it’s just an economic fact of life.”

Rating: 8-9-9-7 Total= 33

#582 The River- adrienne maree brown

#582 The River- adrienne maree brown

Like her name above, the story is written with no capital letters. It’s an interesting decision; I guess in a book put together and published by an anarchist collective, even the writing is non-hierarchical. It’s a fine idea. It didn’t really change the way I read the story and I’m not sure I understand the choice entirely. To keep names and other “proper nouns” un-capitalized I understand, but as a sentence starter, I’m not sure I quite get it. No matter, I will continue to think about it, and at least it’s interesting.

The story is about a boat captain in a Detroit ravaged by economic and environmental disaster. The river is toxic and unstable but it is still the heart of the city.

“man detroit is in that river. the whole river and the parts of the river. certain parts, it’s like a ancestral burying ground. it’s like a holy vortex of energy.”

As the city struggles, the class divide has never been more obvious:

“the few people with jobs sat in icy offices watching the world waver outside. people without jobs survived in a variety of ways that all felt like punishment in the heat.”

Outsiders have come in to “help” the city. That means an appointed white mayor from New York, hipsters, opportunists, all the key folks needed for gentrification. Old industry is destroyed and the city is now the leading processor of solid waste—how appropriate. Then, the river literally fights back. There has been a rash of deaths in and around the water this summer. Because of the demographic diversity of the victims they are slow to realize that only “outsiders” have been taken. Help or not, they don’t belong, and although it might not be the way that she would have done it—for the city—it had to be done.

Notable Passage: “hipsters and entrepreneurs were complicated locusts. they ate up everything in sight, but they meant well.”

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

#581 No One Had Lit a Lamp- Felisberto Hernandez

#581 No One Had Lit a Lamp- Felisberto Hernandez

There is a gathering in a parlor, and the narrator is giving a live reading. He is telling a story about a woman who attempts to commit suicide. As he reads, his mind wanders around the room, to the listeners, an intriguing young woman, the a statue outside, to the light hitting a vase of flowers in an adjacent room, making it look like its aflame. 

After the reading he is surrounded by admirers, each trying to impress him or get his attention. All he wants to do is talk with the young woman. They eventually do speak, but only of superficial things, or only of things one talks about in a parlor. As the sun fades, the crowd dissipates, because “no one had lit a lamp.”

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

#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