#336 Fragments of Justice- Dashiell Hammett

#336 Fragments of Justice- Dashiell Hammett

Three men completely different from each other sit on a jury. One man old and addled just wants to feel important one more time; the second an old world protestant, who’s crowning achievement in life was quitting his social club after they let in a Jew, wants the world to be like it was; and the third is a beaten down man that just wants someone else to be punished.

Hammett tales are often a “long-standing interest in the ways in which men struggle to find their places among each other and in the world…” This is one of those. It was not published during his lifetime.

Rating: 6-6-5-5 Total= 22

#335 Her Cousin Jamie- Edith Pearlman

#335 Her Cousin Jamie- Edith Pearlman

Fern and Barbara are teachers who meet once a year for drinks at the annual teachers conference. Usually Fern doesn’t tell stories but this year she shares one about her cousin, Jamie…”Fern’s Cousin of Perpetual Penitence.”

Fern once had an affair with a man, a prominent educator and speaker. He had a weak heart, and he dies while they were in bed together. Gasp! That’s all there is. I seem to be missing something with this one. I don’t see any other layers here, or hidden symbolism or meaning. It’s juts a bit of gossip, wrapped in a short story. Not that a short story needs meaning or depth. But then it should be more than just a bit of gossip.

Rating: 7-4-5-5 Total= 21

#334 Scout- Henry Dumas

#334 Scout- Henry Dumas

There are such great stories in this collection, Echo Tree, I probably wont be able to get to all of them. However, before I get to Scout, I would like to make mention of a great short parable called The Eagle the Dove and the Blackbird. Like most of Dumas’ work, it is meaningful, well-crafted and beautiful prose.

Scout is about a young man retelling a story about his youth. He is confused, frantic, and un-prepared. He is loved, mocked, taken advantage of, robbed, and taken-in. That’s a full day. As he deals with his own problems, time marches on.

“Harlem has changed”

“Toward progress…the progress of death.”

Notable Passage: “It takes time to teach yourself. It takes time to break the chains inside us. We waste too much of our time of foolishness.”

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

#333 Taped to the Sky- Luis Alberto Urrea

#333 Taped to the Sky- Luis Alberto Urrea

Hubbard is in a bad way. His wife, the woman he bought a car and an education for, the woman he just helped get through an AA program, left with her sponsor. He decided to take the car back and drive his troubles away.

South to Louisiana, West to Texas, North to Colorado, etc…“This whole chunk of the map was written in poems and liquor bottle labels.”

His grief subsided with each state, each dumb roadside attraction, each violence run-in with the local drunks. As the sky got bigger, his head got clearer:

“There were patterns moving across the sky, high, where small scallops of cloud shimmered like mother-of-pearl. He felt a part of the great becoming, the revelation of the West.”

Sometimes when you feel abandoned, maybe you’ve really been set free. Sometimes, you still need to be taught a lesson.

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

#332 Loser- Chuck Palahniuk

#332 Loser- Chuck Palahniuk

It’s Zeta Delta pledge week and as is tradition, the fraternity brothers all get dressed in ZD t-shirts, goes to a taping of the Price is Right and—of course—eats tabs of Hello Kitty blotter acid.

One of them gets selected as a contestant and wins his way on stage. Just when the acid kicks in, he has to try and make sense of what exactly is going on:

“They make you spin this doohickey so it rolls around. You have to match a bunch of different pictures so they go together perfect. Like you’re some white rat in Principles of Behavioral Psychology 201, they make you guess which can of baked beans costs more than another. All that fuss to win something you sit on to mow your lawn.”

Anyone who has ever seen an episode of Price is Right—and like this kid, most people of my generation know it from days we are home sick from school—knows that too many details of the game are off. That’s ok though, lets just say this is a satire on all televised TV game shows. In any case, this college kid, nearly spinning off the planet on acid, makes it all the way to the Showcase Showdown (trademarked I’m sure).

“It’s just you and the old granny wearing the sweatshirt from before just somebody’s regular grandma, but she’s lived through world wars and nuclear bombs, probably saw all the Kennedys get shot and Abraham Lincoln, and now she’s bobbing up and down on her tennis shoe toes, clapping her granny hands and crowded by supermodels and flashing lights while the big voice makes her the promise of a sport-utility vehicle, a wide-screen television, a floor length fur coat.”

“And probably it’s the acid, but it’s like nothing seems to add up.” Nope, sure as shootin’ it don’t.

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