#228 The Paper Menagerie- Ken Liu

#228 The Paper Menagerie- Ken Liu

The Paper Menagerie won the 2013 Nebula Awards for the year’s best Science Fiction or fantasy. This falls in the latter category. Since this is not a genre I read a lot of, it’s always a special treat to find such creativity and heart somewhere I don’t usually look.

Jack is the son of a Chinese mother and a white American father. They live in Connecticut. Growing up, whenever Jack got sad, his mother made him origami animals out of used Christmas wrapping paper. They came alive and became his companions. “I didn’t know this at the time, but Mom’s kind was special. She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic.”

As he got older, as with most children imagination fades and the need to fit in becomes paramount, especially with a bi-racial child. What used to make you unique and individual, are things that teenagers start to resent in themselves. Jack resented his mother’s foreignness, her language, her looks, her entire being.  He couldn’t see that he was just like her; and he couldn’t see that those things were his mothers only connection to her past and her culture. Rejecting them, meant that Jack was rejecting her. But children are sell-centered and sometimes it’s too late to see such things.

His mother died very young and made Jack promise that he would take out his collection of origami animals once a year on Qingming and think of her. When she died,  “The paper animals did not move. Perhaps whatever magic had animated them stopped when Mom died. Or perhaps I had only imagined that these paper constructions were once alive. The memory of children could not be trusted.”

On Qingming, the animals came alive, as did his connection to his mother and his Chinese heritage. This is a fantastic story, and although it has a tinge of fantasy elements, this is no niche work of fiction. It’s truly remarkable.

“The language that I had tried to forget for years came back, and I felt the words sinking into me, through my skin, through my bones, until they squeezed tight around my heart.”

Notable Passage: “Contempt felt good, like wine.”

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

#183 The Chimpanzees of Wyoming Territory- Don Zancanella

#183 The Chimpanzees of Wyoming Territory- Don Zancanella

This is a road/trail journal from the frontier during the post civil war 1860’s. Two veterans travel to meet a partner and mine their gold claim. They are entertainers who have acquired two performing Chimpanzees.

“I pity mankind. We have contracted a disease of the spirit. IT robs us of our compassion. It is contagious madness. It is worse than typhoid. It compels us to murder the innocent. We bleed the grace from the everlasting souls.”

Notable Passage: “Miners are like poker players. They continue because all their hardships can be redeemed by a single run of luck.”

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

#141 Movietone: Detour- Peter Weltner

#141 Movietone: Detour- Peter Weltner

Movietone was the name of the black and white newsreels shown before films during W.W. II. Weltner said that just like some of the horror movies of that period, these newsreels represented films in which “…dread and beauty, horror and wonder are nearly indistinguishable.”

Sayler the Sailor (yes, you read that correctly) is on shore leave. He explores NYC and looks to exploit the local scene to make a little money. He meets up with other seamen and all goes well until it doesn’t. Drunken nights, prostitution, gay strip clubs…then murder, awol, on the run, new identity, etc.

At first this reads like a kind of pulp-noir story, with writing like:

“The night is stubborn, the stars like pins. Saylor squats by the shore-end of the pier and watches the day’s second lover disappear behind the stacks of crates and boxes that had hid them from the streetlight.”

By the end it reads more like a Burroughs or Kerouac Beat adventure. Either way, I enjoyed it.

Notable Passage: “Dead eyes are as lusterless and scratched marbles.”

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

#127 Boot- Reginald McKnight

#127 Boot- Reginald McKnight

An old Marine Corps. Private is telling the story of his boot camp.

“You fear the [drill instructor]; you fear looking like a puss in front of the other boots; you fear shaming your family. You fear going to jail. It’s that fear that keeps seventy-five recruits with loaded m-16s from shooting their drill instructors to fucking rags.”

He was his squad’s best marksman. He was told by his Drill Instructor to take the marksmen tests for other recruits so that his squad’s marks would be high enough to get the DI a promotion. When found out, he was caught between being loyal to his DI or loyal to the Corps. He failed both and his future was shot.

I feel like I’ve read this story before, probably several times, seen the TV show and the movie. It’s hard to make marine stories new. This year I read Redeployment, Phil Klay’s collection of short stories about the Marines. Almost everything would pale next to those.

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

#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

#113 Eating Dirt- Carolyn Cooke

#113 Eating Dirt- Carolyn Cooke

This story appeared in the 1998 O. Henry Prize Stories collection. This is my first time reading Cooke.

There isn’t much I find in this story to like. We find ourselves at summer family picnic with two distinct sides of the family. They appear to be poor, very poor, dirt eating poor. The visiting family is catty, petty, judgmental, especially the grandma.

Grand has a new grandson, Troy, she hasn’t seen, noticed, or cares to know about. When she finds out about him, she goes into a drunken rage, having to be held back. She even goes so far as threatening to shoot people. Her rant is so convincing people hide the frightened Troy, not sure what kind of damage Grand is actually capable of.

Even to the very end, these characters are superficial and the ones we know the most about become loathsome. There is no redemption or moment of familial warmth. I’m not exactly sure why we needed to read about these people.

Notable Passage: “I think my life was more real to me when I was six than it is now.”

Rating: 6-3-4-3 Total= 16