#613 Rivers- John Keene

#613 Rivers- John Keene

This is a great idea for a story, and very executed. If written by somebody else about a more modern topic, I suppose this would fall under the genre of “Fan Fiction” but I wouldn’t dare call this that. Seeing as Keene is a professional, maybe it’s “Peer Fiction.”  In any case, this is a story about a famous fictional character, Mr. James Alton Rivers, aka Jim Watson, or the “slave” that was on the raft with Huckleberry Finn.

He is a freed man now, and runs into Huck and Tom Sawyer in the street. They are now in their early 20’s. Tom is a proper southern gentleman and a lawyer, Huck is still a bit of a troublemaker and an adventurer. They start talking about their lives and it becomes clear right off that Tom has no interest in seeing Jim as anything but an inferior person. Jim sees this and decides not to tell him about his life, his travels to Chicago, St. Louis, becoming a shrewd businessman, etc.

The country is on the brink of the civil war and race tensions are high and Tom has certainly taken a side on the matter. Jim is probably smart not to talk about his family escaping north, or the reality of living in the shadow of the Dred Scott case for instance.

“Though I’ve always made sure to have an escape route and a safe house on the other side of the river ready to flee given the trials the courts are putting Mr. Dred and Mrs. Lizzie Scott through.”

Tom and Huck are the ones to bring up the name of Abolitionist heroes:

“Well sounds to me like Jim is keeping himself out of trouble, and the worst thing for anybody these days is getting caught up in all that trouble, getting involved with people like Lovejoy or Torrey or that new agitator writer Mrs. Stowe what likes to stir up a whole heap of trouble too.”

Before parting we see the two youths as something different, and Keene I think writes them as two white archetypes in the struggle for racial equality. This is illustrated by the warnings Tom and Huck each give Jim as they say goodbye. Tom’s warning is straight out “know your place:”

“You’d better watch yourself, Jim, you hear me? Good thing we know you but you walking these streets like they belong to you, and they don’t to no nigger, no matter what some of you might think these days, so you watch it, cause the time’ll come when even the good people like me and Huck here have had enough.”

Huck’s warning is softer, and if not coming from a friend necessarily, it’s at least from a fond acquaintance; one that doesn’t want to see harm come but also doesn’t want to get involved:

“You take care of yourself, Jim, and keep out of all that trouble, please, cause this world is about ready to break wide open, and I sure don’t want to see you swallowed up.”

Overall I think this story is brilliant. The allegory wrapped-up in characters we are acquainted with is a great idea. Keene fills-in a perspective to the Mark Twain story that historians and critics have complained are missing in the original tales. I’m not sure if this story works as well without the original, but  I think it would be great if this story was read side by side in schools (or like I’ve said earlier teaching Henry Dumas side by side with Twain to show two different perspectives on classic Americana).

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

#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

#501 Man From The South- Roald Dahl

#501 Man From The South- Roald Dahl

This is a classic story. If it seems familiar it’s because it has been adapted into a couple of movies. Most famous of these adaptations was the 1960 short by Alfred Hitchcock starring Steve McQueen and Peter Lorre; and the most recent was Quentin Tarantino’s Four Rooms.

The plot is simple but brilliant. A young man is lured into a high stakes wager against a wealthy stranger. The man bets the youngster that he cannot successfully ignite his lighter ten times consecutively. The man bets his expensive green Cadillac.  The younger man not having that kind of loot to put up, agrees that if he loses, he will allow the rich man to chop off the pinky of his left hand.

They retire to the hotel and make arrangements for the wager to commence. The younger man, with his left hand tied down, strikes the lighter once, twice…seven, eight times. As the tension builds, a woman bursts into the room to put a stop to the bet. The car is hers, she has already won it from the man…she has won all of his wealth in fact. When she picks up the keys to the car, we see that she only has one finger left.

Clearly this is a monster of a story. We see its fingerprints in so many places. Besides the many film and television references I also remember a short story by Stephen King that paid homage to Man From the South. The finger cutting wasn’t a straight wager but an incentive to quit smoking, and the woman at the end revealing her lost fingers was a previous client. The story was called Quitter’s Inc.

Rating: 10-10-10-10 Total=40

#459 Taste- Roald Dahl

#459 Taste- Roald Dahl

This is a fun story. Once a year, Mike Schofield hosts a dinner party attended by the famous gourmet, Richard Pratt. He prides himself on his taste and is proud of having such an honored guest. The last few years, they have had a little wager. They bet a case of wine on whether Pratt could name the vintage of the wine served in a blind tasting. So far, Pratt has won each time.

This year, Schofield has scoured the wineries looking for a selection so remote and rare that there is little chance Pratt would being able to match his previous feats of taste. At the dinner, Pratt seems nonchalant and a his non-interest in the meal irks his host. So, when the yearly wager is broached, there is a tension in the air that causes Schofield to be duped into upping the bet to ridiculous stakes. He will put his daughters hand in marriage on the table against Pitt’s two country homes.

Pratt’s wine tasting process and the outcome of the wager is built up and crafted wonderfully. This is short story writing in a very pure sense. I loved it.

Rating: 8-9-10-9 Total= 36

#264 Lily Daw and the Three Ladies- Eudora Welty

#264 Lily Daw and the Three Ladies- Eudora Welty

So far for this project, I’ve leaned more to modern, current authors. O. Henry, Chekhov, etc. have been the exception. Eudora Welty deserves to be on that list. So I begin with a small story about Lily Daw and the Three Ladies.

Lily is a woman with a mental disability of some sort. She has been taken care of by three busy body woman who may or may not have Lily’s best interests at heart. By coincidence two rare opportunities occur for Lily on the same day. She gets accepted into a special program for woman like herself, and she gets proposed to by a xylophone player visiting with the big Tent Show.

Ignoring slightly cringe-worthy stereotypes, the dialogue heavy story telling is humorous if a bit old fashioned.

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

#256 Thanasphere- Kurt Vonnegut

#256 Thanasphere- Kurt Vonnegut

“…a short story, because of its physiological and psychological effects on a human being, is more closely related to Buddhist styles of meditation than it is to any other form or narrative entertainment.”

The second and last collection of short fiction by Kurt Vonnegut, Bagombo Snuff Box, is his stories which appeared in magazines. This was the hey-day of magazine writing. Households would have subscriptions to dozens of magazines and these small fictions would be entertainment for the whole family.

Because of the large scale number of these magazines and stories, much of what was printed was of relatively low value, probably the same value as what’s on TV. Sure there maybe a good show here and there, but most of it was blind entertainment. Vonnegut, however became a sought after voice in post-war American letters, so this collection should be fun.

We begin with Thanasphere (dead space so to speak), a tale about the first manned space craft as it orbits the earth. It was launched for military purposes, but when reports come back from its pilot Major Rice, all he can do is talk about the voices he hears, voices of dead people talking in the cosmos.

Vonnegut taps into the age’s imagination like no one else. Space, the great unknown. What is out there and how does it effect us? Great thought often happens before we know the truth of such mysteries…and with it, interesting fiction.

Notable Passage: “Maybe that was the spirit of this era of the atom bomb, H-bomb, God-knows-what-next-bomb—to be amazed at nothing.”

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

#225 Sisters of the Golden Circle- O. Henry

#225 Sisters of the Golden Circle- O. Henry

We are aboard a Glaring-at-Gotham tour car. There is a Newlywed couple in the back. We have a case of mistaken identity and a fun vintage O. Henry twist. I’m not sure which adage fits more aptly here: Behind every man is a good woman-woman are crazy- you never know what you’re going to see in New York, etc. Take your pick.

As usual, the writing here is fun and theatrical. I particularly liked this gem about NYC people watching:

“The sidewalk was blockaded by sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers, justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by some other creature.”

Notable Passage: “The scent of flowers, the booty of the bee, the primal dip of spring waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon peel on the cocktail of creation—such is the bride. Holy is the wife; revered the mother; galliptious is the summer girl—but the bride is the certifies cheque among the wedding presents that the gods send in when man is married to mortality.”

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

#204 An Unfinished Story- O. Henry

#204 An Unfinished Story- O. Henry

This O. Henry story has a darker lean than most. I could tell you that ths one was about dreams, or self-worth, etc. but these are all so short, you should just read them yourself. Here are a few of my favorite passages:

“There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital.”

“Piggy needs but a word. When the girls named him, an undeserving stigma was cast upon the noble family of swine.”

“The liquorice was an extravagance—almost a carouse—but what is life without pleasures?”

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

#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

#130 The Welcome Table- Alice Walker

#130 The Welcome Table- Alice Walker

An old life-worn black woman at the end of her days tries to go to church for the last time, but it is a white church. After politely telling her to leave, and trying to shoo her out, they get forceful and carry her to the church steps and leave her suffering outside.

Inside the church they stand and prayed about: “the protection and promise of God’s impartial love.” Bewildered more than hurt, she sings and stares down the road, finally spotting Jesus who has come to lead her to salvation. She is found later dead by the side of the highway, she walked herself to death.

Among the many wonderful traits of Alice Walker is her poignant descriptive phrases. They paint a picture that sticks with you. These are just some of the great quotes about this woman:

“She was angular and lean and the color of poor grey Georgia earth, beaten by king cotton and the extreme weather.”

“Perhaps she had known suffering. There was a dazed and sleepy look in her aged blue-brown eyes. But for those who searched hastily for reasons in that old tight face, shut now like an ancient door, there was nothing to read.”

“On her face centuries were folded into the circles around on eye, while around the other, etched and mapped as if for print, ages more threatened again to live.”

Heartbreaking story, beautifully written. That pretty much sums up all of Alice Walker stories.

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