#246 God- Jack Kerouac

#246 God- Jack Kerouac

For this New Year I begin with some Jack Kerouac. Who better? It’s filled with hope, adventure, and expectation. We start with a blank page: “This page is long blank and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.”

A young writer talks with God, it’s not a prayer as much as a conversation.  He ruminates on life, survival, and his will to write original words. Not unlike many who have tried, he struggles with his voice, and sometimes must sell his talents for the mundane needs of life.

“Tonight, I wrote a short story for a fellow on this floor. I toiled with it for an hour and a half. I had to make it exciting, fill it with colorful and authentic descriptions, and pound it out into the conventional whole. That is, wholeness of what is called the common short story. Beginning, middle, end. It has to introduce, enlarge, burst, and die down. So I plunged into it and finished it. It would net me one dollar.”

This was fun to read and think about the art of short story telling, and very house of mirrors. I’m now writing about a writer writing about short story writing.

Notable Passage: “You can’ be an artist unless you’re a member of humanity. Hermits make awful poets, I think. You can’t ruminate peacefully by a little stream in the woods unless you’ve been liberated from the turmoil of civilization. Peace is a relative thing. And it always turns out to be short lived."

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total=35

#150 Eveline- James Joyce

#150 Eveline- James Joyce

Joyce is the literary pride and shame of Ireland. He is also one of the main reasons I became an avid reader. Picking up a dusty copy of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man while I was myself was a young man, stoked a fire I was unaware burned inside me. I understood little of that book my first read through (and probably not much more now). But seeing that reading could be more than just an entertaining way to spend an afternoon, could be a tool for sharpening your brain, a key to unlocking parts of yourself that lay hidden to the pale light of mundane pursuits—was a revelation.

Eveline is not the dark, thick style of Portrait or Ulysses, but it is no less an important piece of art. While his novels are on the denser, cerebral side, his short stories like the ones found in The Dubliners, are fluid and soulful; The kind of sober, earth-born feel that can only come from the Emerald Isle.

This is a story about change, growth and about home. Eveline is a young lass, about to be married. Her mother has passed and her drunken father doesn’t seem geared towards raising her or her two brothers, so she becomes a surrogate mother, and the target of her father's anger. “Even now, though she was over nineteen, she sometimes felt herself in danger of her father’s violence.”

She longs for change, but she struggles with it as well: “It was hard work—a hard life—but now that she was about to leave it she did not find it a wholly undesirable life.”

Though they are pains, and hardships, and crosses to bear…they are her pains, hardships, and crosses.

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

#145 Solid Objects- Virginia Woolf

#145 Solid Objects- Virginia Woolf

We like to collect things, shiny things that make us feel good, make us look good, or just make us reflect upon ourselves.

“…a mind thinking of something else, any object mixes itself so profoundly with the stuff of thought that is loses its actual form and recomposes itself a little differently in an ideal shape which haunts the brain when we least expect it.”

John was a promising politician when he began collecting these items obsessively. His things were all he cared about, even when he could no longer even pretend a practical use for them anymore:

“The finest specimens he would bring home and place upon his mantelpiece, where, however, their duty was more and more of an ornamental nature, since papers needing a weight to keep them down became scarcer and scarcer.”

Beware of collecting nice but useless shiny objects, before long all you’ve collected is wasted time.

Notable Passage: “You know how the body seems to shake itself free from an argument, and to apologize for a mood of exaltation; flinging itself down and expressing in the looseness of its attitude a readiness to take up with something new—whatever it may be that comes next to hand.”

Rating: 8-8-9-9 Total= 36

#110 Mary Postgate- Rudyard Kipling

#110 Mary Postgate- Rudyard Kipling

England during WWII. The Fowler household is Mrs. Fowler, her son Wynn, and their house maid Mary Postgate. Wynn is training to be a fighter pilot but dies before seeing action. One day a young girl is shot and killed during a German bombing raid. That’s the story.

It’s a very proper English setting telling a very proper English story in a very proper English manner. The characters to my ears seem cold and unsentimental. Her son dies and the Mother doesn’t cry: “It can’t be natural not to cry…I’m so afraid you’ll have a reaction.” But she doesn’t, she just makes sure that Mary systematically takes care of all Wynn’s belongings, mostly burning them. They wonder why he kept old letters from them.

And Mary is a prototypical image of a dutiful English servant:

“Mary was not young, and though her speech was as colorless as her eyes or her hair, she was never shocked.”

Noticing Mary for the first time is 11 years of service as an individual person, Mrs. Fowler asks: “Mary, aren’t you anything except a companion? Would you ever have been anything except a companion?”

To which Mary coolly replies: “No…I don’t imagine I ever should. But I’ve no imagination, I’m afraid.” Fun times!

After witnessing a child die bleeding in the street, her reaction: “One mustn’t let ones mind dwell on these things.”

I can recognize a good story and a talented hand when I read it, but that doesn’t mean I will always enjoy them. There is just something about these old English stories about the lives of high society and their servants that misses me completely. I know I’m showing my ignorance, but this is my blog and I want to be honest.

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

#97 In a Tub- Amy Hempel

#97 In a Tub- Amy Hempel

When I began this project I asked everyone I knew what their favorite short stories were, or who their favorite short story authors were.  I got way too many recommendations for a mere 366 slots, so I had to triage the list a bit. The books I put on the top of the pile were from passionate recommendations. Amy Hampel came via those. The friend’s that liked here writing REALLY liked here writing.

So, I have Collected Stories which includes all of her short story books to date, too many to read this year, but enough to understand what all the fuss is about. I start with a short In A Tub. I see immediately how people like this style of prose. Its thoughtful, poetic, musical. Almost every description is an instruction manual for how to stop and enjoy life better.

“Here is what you do. You ease yourself into a tub of water, you ease yourself down. You lie back and wait for the ripples to smooth away. Then you take a deep breath, and slide your head under, and listen for the playfulness of your heart.”

If formatted differently, this could be read as an unmetered poem, in fact I’d like to read it that way, slow, purposeful and aloud. Beautiful. Proving that the short story doesn’t have to be a novella to be meaningful.

Notable Passage: “My heart—I thought it stopped. So I got in my car and headed for God.”

Rating: 10-8-8-8 Total= 34