#550 On Brazil, or Denouement: The Londonias-Figueras- John Keene

#550 On Brazil, or Denouement: The Londonias-Figueras- John Keene

This is a wildly ambitious story that hits its mark with a hammer. Spanning four centuries in the development of Brazil, this is like something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. The tale is bookended by a murder notice of Sergio Inocencio Maluuf Figueiras, whose nude, headless body was found in an alley in one of Sao Paulo’s worst neighborhoods.

The rest of the story reads like an historical record of Brazil during the 17^th century. We learn of the lineage of the Figueras clan and much about the Portuguese colonial ruling class; How the family gained wealth through sugar plantations, gained fame through military heroics against the Dutch and Native populations, and gained notoriety through abuse and slavery.

Although a complete story and one filled with rich detail, I wonder if there isn’t more than enough here for a larger work, something akin to 100 Years of Solitude. I would certainly like to see that.

Notable Passage: “To the connected and ruthless flow the spoils.”

Rating: 10-10-9-8 Total= 37

#549 Life is For the Living- Fatima Shaik

#549 Life is For the Living- Fatima Shaik

Thomas was a New Orleans eccentric, a creole original. His co-workers thought him odd, but they liked him because of it. Good and bad, they always appreciated the break from normalcy in their lives.

“Thomas thought he was special since he got their attention most of the time. He could not distinguish their negative feelings from positive ones…And in fact, they did not dislike him. Observing his clothes, dramatic conversations, and peculiar perspective was a high point in the day for many.”

Thomas thought of himself as: “Simply a man like other men seeking the meaning of existence.”

His most eccentric habit was taking his lunch break by sitting in the graveyard. He sat in the hot sun, listening for the spirits to talk to him. Even though he was the most expressive person most people had ever met, he was still looking for his own voice. He wanted to teach, to impart, to contribute like all the great men and woman of the past; like the spirits in the graveyard.

His wackiest idea was to create a Po Boy sandwich that stretched from New Orleans to Los Angeles. By his calculations, that would be big enough to feed all the Creole citizens of this world. It would be a symbol of racial unity.

“The point of this sandwich was to make a statement about America and race. The U.S. was completely wrong in the decades when it tried to force blacks and whites together. True integration could be demonstrated by the Creoles showing the unity of all races and human appetites when holding the French bread, Spanish onions, Italian Salami, German mustard, Creole tomatoes and Louisiana hot sauce.”

He tried hard to understand his co-workers, but fell short of being one of them. He was set aside by his own doing, trying to find his voice. There is nothing more frustrating, more oppressive, more heartbreaking than trying to speak and failing. Even for a New Orleans original.

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

#548 Charm City- Robert Stone

#548 Charm City- Robert Stone

Frank Bower falls for a con. He is attending a music recital alone at the museum, and lets himself be seduced by a mysterious woman. He is married but likes the taste of a little adventure and drives her across the bay to his second house. All the while, the woman remains vague and intriguing. When they get to the house, she feigns remorse and asks to be driven home.

We see later that the meeting was not a random occurrence, but a set up, and she had successfully used his vanity to scope out his house for a robbery.

Notable Passage: “Everybody loves you when you’re somebody else.”

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

#547 Misprision of Felony- O’Neil De Noux

#547 Misprision of Felony- O’Neil De Noux

A murder happens in New Orleans. The owner of a corner store was shot and killed in an armed robbery. Unfortunately this has happened more now than it used to.

“Things were different now, AK—after Katrina. The hardcore criminals, who were some of the first to return, had reestablished themselves with a killing vengeance. The murder rate was back up top as new blood carved out drug territories, and the police department, as devastated as the neighborhoods, reeled in turmoil.”

Det. Savary is on the case, but is getting nowhere. He is being stonewalled by the neighborhood, meaning only one thing:

“A local boy did this, but no one was giving him up to the police. It didn’t even matter if Savary was raised three blocks away on Erato Street. The day he started the police academy was the day he’d left the neighborhood—permanently.”

With the help of his FBI friend, Savary tracks down the murderer, and it was a local criminal. Now that the murder is taken care of, he’s going after the culture of silence. Misprision of Felony goes back to English common law. It makes it illegal to knowingly conceal the details of a felony, even if you, yourself are not involved. In other words, rat or rot.

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

#546 The Nothing- Frank Herbert

#546 The Nothing- Frank Herbert

The world is in an era of “Talents.” Due to radiation, some humans have developed advantageous mutations. There are at least eight of them such as Pyros, Prescients, Telepaths, etc. The problem is that evolution may be flattening all that out, making a natural type of correction:

“The direction of development was toward the average…Genius parents tend to have children less smart than they are.”

In other words, the talents are disappearing. When Jean, a Pryo, storms out of her father’s house to let off some steam at a bar, she is in way over her head. She tries to play a role from a movie she has seen but has trouble flirting with the man sitting next to her. He is Claude, a Nothing, a man with no talents; he has escaped from a local preserve and is on the lam.

A police force barges in and tales them both. Claude’s father is a prescient and sees into their future, they will be married. Their blood lines give them a 70% chance of having a mutant offspring. They are trying to save the mutatios and avoid slipping back to a “pretalent civilization.” The problem, as they say, is choice.

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

#545 The Roomers- Maxine Clair

#545 The Roomers- Maxine Clair

Lydia and Thomas Pemberton run a boarding house in Rattlebone. They don’t want no riff-raff and now only take in teachers. October Brown is their latest renter. She is young, quiet and proper, a good fit for the house.

When James “Shorty” Wilson comes sniffing around, things start to get dicey. Men are not allowed in the rooms upstairs, so no impropriety happens on the premises, but when Lydia gets word that they’ve been seen together getting close at a honkey-tonk, she sits down and gives October a talking to. Not that any of it is her business, but she takes personal affront to one of her roomers “acting a fool” in public.

October admits to being pregnant, and that is the final straw; Lydia wants her out of the house. Her husband puts his foot down, for the first time, and wants October to stay until the end of the school year, or until she can figure out what to do next. The fight splits the house in two, and when October leaves so does Lydia’s husband. Lydia is sure he’ll come back…I’m not so sure.

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

#544 Attack of the Love Dogma- Toure

#544 Attack of the Love Dogma- Toure

Mojo is on a date with a beautiful blonde woman. They are having a wonderful time, and they are both feeling like this could be something real.

“He was the smartest guy she’d ever met. She was more at peace than anyone he’d ever known. He loved her lips. She loved his hands. It was too early for promises, but promise was in the air.”

They wanted to continue their date, but Mojo was worried.

“Black and Blonde together in Soul City? He knew better. He knew as every boy who grows up in Soul City knows, that if you were in Soul City with a blonde after dark, the Love Dogma would get ya.”

And that’s exactly what happened when they parked for some ice cream. Mojo got yanked out of his car by a snatch squad and was taken directly to Dr. Ziggaboo at the Love Dogma’s Reassignment Center. Here they took black men that had a blonde obsession and reminded them about black beauty. Like something out of 1984 this Orwellian re-education program that was creepy and over the top. Mojo got out just in time. All he wanted was a chance to see if this woman was the real deal.

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

#543 The Cows- Lydia Davis

#543 The Cows- Lydia Davis

These are some meditative thoughts while watching cows:

-Their attention is complete, as they look across the road: They are still and face us. Just because they are so still, their attitude seems philosophical.

-Because there are three, one of them can watch what the other two are doing together.

-I see only one cow, by the fence. As I walk up to the fence, I see part of a second cow: one ear sticking sideways out the door of the barn. Soon, I know, her whole face will appear, looking at me.”

Reading this I am reminded of a book I once found in a “Free Book” pile on a lower Manhattan sidewalk called Thoughts While Tending Sheep. This W.G Ilefeldt work was a meditative look inside the mind of the narrator as he went about living a pastoral existence. It was a philosophical story about feeling connected to the world around him, and he had these thoughts while tending sheep. It was a fun book, and it has stuck with me for the last few decades, at least enough to remember it now.

This story is nothing like that. It is just observations of cows, with little to no insight into what these observations mean to the observer or why we should care about it now. I have no doubt that sitting on a farm and watching cows can be a peaceful, spiritual experience, but reading about it in such a dry, step-by-step manner is not meditative, or minimalist—its boring.

Rating: 5-5-3-3 Total= 16

#542 The Rhett Butlers- Katherine Heiny

#542 The Rhett Butlers- Katherine Heiny

There is nothing more depressing than a story about a forty-year old teacher having a sexual relationship with one of his seventeen-year old students. But here it is. What starts out as an innocent crush, turns into this girl’s first real boyfriend, only it’s not real because she can’t tell anyone.

She, of course is naïve, but as it turns out she is the more mature of the two and she breaks it off as soon as she realizes that this can’t be a real relationship. He is naïve too, naïve to think that this is not a creepy thing to do. What’s more creepy is that he tells another teacher about the affair, and it seems to be a non-story between them.

This is just something that happened in her life, and she seems to have let it go, being more upset at her slipping grades than being taken advantage of by an older man. The readers of this story will probably be more outraged than the narrator, or maybe they’ll be more like the mother, and pretend she doesn’t see anything.

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

#541 The Caretaker- Anthony Doerr

#541 The Caretaker- Anthony Doerr

Doerr’s short stories are not like any of the others I’ve read. They don’t tell stories about everyday occurrences, they don’t try to tap into common themes or try to make connections that the reader can relate to. These are singular tales, each an emotional undertaking that takes us into an experience we would otherwise never think possible.

Joseph is a thirty-five year old Liberian man, doing anything he can do to survive, including theft and looting. His mother is a loving woman, teaches his son English from a dictionary and tends to her garden. When civil war breaks out, she disappears and he is lost. He searches for her but only finds death, and he is forced to kill a man.

He finds his way aboard a freighter and is given an American refugee visa. He gets a job as a winter caretaker at a beach resort in Oregon. When he witnesses a pod of beached whales on the shore, he goes into a depression he cannot find relief from. He buries the hearts of the whales. He is fired from the job because during his depression the house was left in extreme disrepair and he settles into the adjacent forest tending to a garden he has planted over the whale hearts.

One day he saves the life of Belle, the daughter of his former employer. She was about to commit suicide. They begin a secret friendship. She is deaf and teaches him sign language like his mother used to teach him English. They grow the garden together, the only thing Joseph has left of his mother. He is discovered, arrested and when he won’t eat, he is hospitalized. He is on the brink of death, and he seems resolved with his plight.

“There is no fight is Joseph, no anger, no outrage at injustice. He is not guilty of their crimes but he is guilty of so many others. There has never been a man guilty of so much, he thinks, a man more deserving of penalty."

When Belle brings his the fruits of their garden, he eats with absolute joy. It might be a last meal, or it might be redemption. But it is pure light.

Rating: 10-10-9-9 Total= 38

#540 Malaria- Michael Byers

#540 Malaria- Michael Byers

Orlando was living an OK life in college. He had a girlfriend that he could not imagine living without. “I wasn’t headed anywhere on any fast track, that was plain even then, and I didn’t have any kind of natural flair, but I had Nora, and it felt to me like a fair exchange.”

When he went to visit her parents he met Nora’s brother, George. After playing tennis together, George told Orlando that he had Malaria. It was an obvious lie and it stuck in Orlando’s head. He didn’t tell Nora and life went on. Later that year George began showing signs of mental instability. He felt guilty about not mentioning the Malaria lie, thinking it might have been an early warning sign. It wasn’t, it had nothing to do with him or what lie he was told.

As Orlando and Nora broke up, and things went forward, he learned about creating or finding his own identity. “I think this summer was also the period when I first struck on the idea of ambition, that I could be something in particular, rather than just myself in general.”

All this time, however, he couldn’t stop thinking about George. This one person, with one moment taking up an unfair amount of importance to Orlando, trying to find meaning where none existed.

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

#539 The Store- Edward P. Jones

#539 The Store- Edward P. Jones

Al was a normal twenty year old. He had a job after graduating high school (he called it a slave) but that only lasted till now. He was living with his mother and in no hurry to get another “slave” anytime soon. But his brother made him feel guilty about being a drain, and his mother, as only mothers can do encouraged him to apply for a job as a corner store clerk.

“Each Monday morning, like a whipped dog that stayed because he didn’t know any other master but the one that whipped him, I was at the store’s front door, waiting for her to open up.”

He never did quit, and before long he got his own apron, got small raises and eventually got part ownership. He was responsible and a staple in the community, but as things are, that wasn’t enough. His relationship didn’t work out and the store was closing down. Thankfully sometimes hard work pays off, and its time to take the next step.

Jones does a great job at writing literature that sounds like a chronicling of real life. This could be a real oral history of a real corner store in D.C. It doesn’t bowl you over with excitement, or hit you with strong emotion, but it remains as something very real.

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

#538 Referential- Lorrie Moore

#538 Referential- Lorrie Moore

There is a strong bond between a single mother and her only son. The son has mental problems and has been institutionalized for four years. He has been suicidal. His mother has understandably changed her whole life around her son’s condition. Caught in the web of this misfortune is Pete, the mother’s boyfriend.

“At one point he had been poised to live with her, but her child’s deepening troubles had caused him to pull back—he believed he loved her but could not find the large space he needed for himself in her life.”

This isn’t Pete’s son, and as much as he wants to do the right thing, it’s hard for him. He has been struggling with his own life. And now it seems that the son’s situation has gotten worse.

“Once her son had only wanted a distracting pain, but then soon he had wanted to tear a whole in himself and flee through it.”

When Pete and the mother go to visit, it is uncomfortable and awkward. The mother wants to bring his back home. When she gets anonymous calls the truth of her future with Pete becomes obvious. Sometimes even when people are calling for help, you can’t hear them

“How could people be mentally well in such a world?”

Notable Passage: “Mutilation was a language. And vice versa.”

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

#537 The Treatment of Bibi Haldar- Jhumpa Lahiri

#537 The Treatment of Bibi Haldar- Jhumpa Lahiri

Bibi is afflicted by an unknown ailment that gives her violent seizures and causes her to live a strained life. She has been brought to every doctor, healer, spiritualist around, but nothing seems to help. She is not treated like a human, she is treated like a sick person.

“Bibi had never been taught to be a woman; the illness had left her naïve in most practical matters.”

So when she is old enough to see and wonder about the world around her, she gets resentful and wishes a normal life. “Her soliloquies mawkish, her sentiments maudlin, malaise dripped like a fever from her pores.” A doctor prescribes a cure for Bibi…marriage will help her out.

Her cousin and his wife are her caretakers and refuse to allow her to marry. They won’t offer a dowry and think of her as a shame to the family. “What won’t be cured must be endured.” Their ill-treatment of BIbi causes a backlash in town and they are forced to close up shop and leave town. They leave Bibi behind to fend for herself. Months later she is found to be pregnant, father unknown. She raises the child, restarts her fathers old business, and her illness dissipates.

Treat someone like s sick person, and that’s all they will be; treat someone like a human, and…

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

#536 My Lady Love, My Dove- Roald Dahl

#536 My Lady Love, My Dove- Roald Dahl

Another nice example of a Roald Dahl classic. We see a proper upper class couple about to entertain another couple for the weekend. Arthur seems like a nice gentleman and is looking forward to it, while his wife is represented as a pretty awful person. She is katty, pushy, judgmental, and an all around miserable person. She invites the Snapes over for appearance sake and because they like to play bridge.

She has an idea that she says will make the night “fun.” She forces Arthur to set up a microphone in their guest’s room so they can overhear their real thoughts. Arthur thinks it’s a horrible thing to do, but is ultimately bullied into it. The night progresses, and the Snapes prove to be wonderful guests, making the spying seem even more of an evil thing.

There is a turn of opinion when we overhear the guests plans on cheating at bridge. They practice hand signals so they can rob the “Rich Bitch” during the next match. Just when you think you’ve taken Pamela’s side, she proves once again that she can stoop to whatever level her guest can reach, even lower actually.

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

#535 On Sleepless Roads- Craig Davidson

#535 On Sleepless Roads- Craig Davidson

Graham is a repo-man. He gets up in the pre-dawn hours to repossess vehicles from those missing payments. 95 % of the time, he manages to complete his job without incident; other times, things can get violent. He has been doing this work, on sleepless roads, for twenty-five years.

His wife, Nell is suffering from a degenerative disease called Bradykinesia. It has caused her to lose control over the movement of her body. She shakes uncontrollably and her walk, once a thing of amazement and beauty to Graham, is no longer what it once was.

We see graham go through a few repo stops, and we see some of the tactics people use to beg for their stuff back. In a rare scene, we actually see graham take pity on a man and lets his temporarily keep his trailer.

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

#534 Torching the Dusties- Margaret Atwood

#534 Torching the Dusties- Margaret Atwood

This is kind of a morbid story. Inside an assisted living home, Ambrosia Manner, Wilma suffers with Charles Bonnet’s Syndrome, a condition with very lively hallucinations. Her manifestations are benign however, and all she sees are little people climbing around her things.

One day there appears outside her window a protest of people wearing baby masks and signs saying “Our Turn.”

“Our Turn is a movement, it’s international, it appears aimed at clearing away what one of the demonstrators refers to as ‘the parasitic dead wood at the top’ and another one terms ‘the dustballs under the bed.”

Old age homes across the world are being attacked and burned to the ground, alleviating the world of an aging population that is selfishly draining resources when they should acknowledge that their time has come. At Ambrosia Manner, they have surrounded the compound, removed the staff and plan on starving them out. When it seems like they plan on escalating the action to arson, Wilma and Tobias head for an adjoining structure hoping to avoid the attack. The Manner burns with them looking on.

Whether this happens for real or whether it’s a manifestation of her Syndrome, it's still pretty morbid. This is the last of this collection. I enjoyed some of it. There being a majority of stories about woman in the advanced stages of their lives, I didn’t find much to connect with personally. I’m not sure I see why the subtitle of this collection calls them “nine wicked tales.”

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

#533 Bewildered Decisions In Times of Mercantile Terror-Jim Gavin

#533 Bewildered Decisions In Times of Mercantile Terror-Jim Gavin

Nora and Bobby have been friends since before college. She went to a junior college, is an over achiever and now makes six figures in a job she can't stand. Bobby went to Cal-Berkley, dropped out ten years ago, is a classic underachiever that floats through life and relies on other people being friendly.

Their friendship is complicated, partly because of their life choices. When Bobby ends up broke and needy, he not only asks Nora for help but he expects it. For her part, she straddles the line between being really good at corporate life and wanting to live happier.

“He envied Nora’s ability to turn herself on and off, to indulge in vial misanthropy one minute and false pleasantry the next.”

Bobby comes from a working class family but doesn’t really keep to working class ideals. He now has a big idea for a product that he hopes to get rich with via infomercials.  “He was broke and the walls were closing in, but in this moment of darkness he had found inspiration.”

It’s called the Man-Handle. It’s a contraption that helps make executives hands stronger so they don’t feel un-manly when they shake the hand of a plumber. Yeah…I’m sure he’ll make a ton of money with that one. It’s unclear where their friendship is going but it seems that as she cuts the cord of her job, she tries to get Bobby to clean himself up a bit, so maybe they’ll meet each other somewhere in the middle.

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

#532 The Time and the Place- Naguib Mahfouz

#532 The Time and the Place- Naguib Mahfouz

A man is in state of transition, physically, spiritually, symbolically. These are the “days of insecurity” and as he is about to leave his home, he has a crisis of conscience.

“All at once I felt that I was being required to do something, something from which there was no escape.”

“For no reason a listlessness gripped at my feeling of well-being, after which I was overcome by a mysterious sense of unease. I steeled myself to fight against it, but the whole of life piled up before my eyes in a fleeting flash, like a ball of light flung forward with cosmic speed; in no time it was extinguished, giving itself up to the unknown, submerged in its endless depths.”

He has dreams and he is unsure whether they are real occurrences or prophetic visions. His soul is struggling in a waking limbo of uncertainty. But he is being lifted by this experience.

“My imagination went roaming through the vastness of time that comprised past, present, and future together, drunk with the intoxication that total freedom brings.”

This is such a rich and fulfilling style of prose. It amazes me that even in translation and separated by age and culture, that these stories can still exude such emotion. I cant imagine what it must have been like to first read this in it’s original language.

Notable Passage: “My heart became filled with the delights and pains of living in expectation.”

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