#748 Min- Rebecca Lee

#748 Min- Rebecca Lee

Sarah and Min are students and best friends at college in Missoula. Min is from Hong Kong, a son to an influential family that deals with Vietnamese refugees back home. Min is marrying age and when he returns for the summer his family is to choose a bride. Because his mother, normally the person to recommend a bride, has passed, the father is left to the task. Min asks Sarah to come home with him this summer. She can work for his father and get to see Hong Kong. She agrees, but when she gets there the job the father wants her to do is screen the bride applicants. 

It’s a confusing time in Hong Kong, and it’s a confusing situation for Sarah. Things get more difficult when she befriends a union leader and gets a whiff of the class politics she has fallen into. A large part of this story is about the political landscape of late 80’s Hong Kong, but it’s also about friendship, family and culture. Not least of which is the story about father and son: 

“I wondered how that would be, to be a father and stare across a table, through the crackling candlelight, and see your own face, younger, broadened and transformed by both time and race. How interesting it would be to see the future that precisely.”

Notable Passage: “Only a man who hates his privilege can be trusted with it.”

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

#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

#385 Jubilee- Kirsten Valdez Quade

#385 Jubilee- Kirsten Valdez Quade

Andrea has a big chip on her shoulder. She is the eighteen-year old daughter of Mexican immigrants and finds herself going to a fancy blueberry harvest at the farm of her father’s employers, the Lowells. Although not strictly invited, she is welcome. She hopes to use this party as validation of her becoming as successful or worthy of her wealthy acquaintances.

“She would show up full of breezy, sparkling confidence that would startle these people. Andrea was an equal now, a Stanford student, poised and intelligent, no longer just the daughter of one of their laborers…by her very presence today, she would prove to them their snobbery and make them ashamed of their entitlement and their halfhearted acts of charity towards her family.”

Of course, as it often is with such things, those who are the cause of resentment don’t harbor the same feelings of weight or importance to those that feel the resentment. Andrea wanted to make a big deal of her worthiness of attending a high-class function. Instead of getting a strong backlash and a fight, she was welcomed with open arms as if she actually did belong there. This drove her to even more resentment, and caused her to embarrass herself.

The only person to whom she needed to prove her own worth, was herself.

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

#319 The Discipline of Haircuts- Sandip Roy

#319 The Discipline of Haircuts- Sandip Roy

Looks make the man, or the boy too, I guess. Avinash hated getting haircuts, sitting outside his house for his neighbor friends to watch, afraid the barber was going to cut his ear. So when he turned seven his mother allowed him to go to a proper barber, thinking that the act of independence would make his feel older and not mind so much.

When he began attending private school, long hair was forbidden, it was for slobs, slackers and movie stars (meant as a negative). His short hair became a kind of status symbol he didn’t want:

“In his clean white school uniform with his striped school tie, Avinash felt like a creature from another planet. He was a mother’s boy without his mother to protect him.”

The story is about coming of age, or Avinash not quite being ready to come of age. The haircuts, drinking milk instead of tea, being scared by sudden sexual desire. There is also a theme of class and generation gaps.

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

#318 The Package- Kurt Vonnegut

#318 The Package- Kurt Vonnegut

Earl Fenton just sold the plant he spent his life building and after spending months traveling the world, he comes home to his brand new state of the art home, the whole package.

He wasn’t always rich however, he was the poorest of his college fraternity brothers. He wasn’t “exactly behind the door when they passed out looks and brains.”

“No—but when they passed out money, they handed me a waiter’s jacket and a mop.”

So, he has got a bit of a chip on his shoulders. When he gets a call suddenly from one of his wealthier Frat brothers, he sees it as a great opportunity for a little bragging. But as he starts showing off the opulence and grandness of his life, he doesn’t get the satisfying jealousy and envy he wished for…and that deepens the resentment he has unfairly held for Charley the last forty years.

It turns out that Charley isn’t exactly the person Earl thinks he is, but that chip on his shoulder is hard to remove after all these years.

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

#206 The Blush- Elizabeth Taylor

#206 The Blush- Elizabeth Taylor

Lying, deceit, domestic squabbles, and class warfare, this story had a little of each but not enough of any to make it all that interesting. The mistress of the house is a judgmental gossip. Here she begins by making it sound as though she supports and defends her house maid, but then by the end she turns her harsh eyes on the ugliness of the lower class:

“She did not deliberately mislead him, but she took advantage of his indifference. Her relationship with Mrs. Lacey and the intimacy of their conversations in the kitchen he would not have approved, and the sight of those calloused feet with their chipped nail varnish and yellowing heels would have sickened him.”

But then we have nothing to actually celebrate in the servant either. She’s a drunk, absentee mother, and lying, cheating spouse. So, without a true protagonist, there was little to hold onto.

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

#199 Love- William Maxwell

#199 Love- William Maxwell

I got this story from the That Glimpse of Truth short story collection. It says of Maxwell: “..was the New Yorker’s fiction editor for many years but, since his death, his own work has come to be highly appreciated. He edited many of the best-known writers of the last century including Nabokov, Updike, Salinger, Cheever, Gallant, Welty and Bashevis Singer.” This is my first time reading him.

Love is a quaint story about a fifth grade teacher stricken with Tuberculosis. Her class adores her in a way that no class has ever adored a teacher. It lovingly illustrates the power that educators can have over children. We will always remember out teachers. I remember my fifth grade teacher…Thanks you Mrs. Abels!

Notable Passage: “She didn’t belong to us anymore. She belonged to her illness.”

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