851 George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine- Adam Johnson

851 George Orwell Was a Friend of Mine- Adam Johnson

This is the powerful story of Hans Backer, the warden of a Stasi Prison in occupied East Germany. The prison was closed in 1990 when the wall came down and his life changed forever, as did the entire culture. It’s been eighteen years since reunification but Hans hasn’t changed a bit. He lived his life and his career with military precision and he thrived in communist East Germany. But the world has changed around him and like it or not he is about to be challenged from the past.

“I do not need to recall the past…I am certain of what it was.”

Although he has lived nearby the whole time, he hasn’t been inside the prison since he finished destroying all the inmate records. He is unaware that the prison is now a museum to the atrocities of the Stasi cruelty and the torture that happened inside its walls. His old office has even been memorialized. 

One day as he walks past, he overhears a tour guide talk about a famous writer interrogated and imprisoned under his charge. He confronts the guide with vehement rebuttals and apologist rhetoric. Not understanding the technology of the day, he doesn’t realize that he has been recorded via a cellphone. He will become a viral video by the next day.

The curator seeing his willingness to talk and shed light on the dark past (even though Hans doesn’t himself see it as a dark past) he invites Hans to give a tour of the prison and freely tell his side of history. The more he talks the worse he comes across and more entrenched he becomes in his own beliefs.

This is a simple man, who chooses to see the world in black and white. He refuses to acknowledge the evils of the past nor his significant role in it. He liked his work and now that his work is seen by the world as tyrannical, he falls back on the crutch of only being a cog in a larger machine. He repeats common refrains like:

“I only ran the prison…I was an administrator.”

This same stubbornness caused him to lose his wife and daughter. They have become ashamed of him as more and more truths about the past come to light. Imagine learning that the wonderful gift your father gave you as a child was stolen from a girl inmate at your father’s torture prison. His wife has taken to alcoholism and that is a sigh of weakness to Hans—not something to be supported or helped. He doesn’t understand how his daughter or his wife cant separate his career with his life:

“But it wasn’t us…I’m talking about family. You’re talking about work.”

This rigidity over what he sees as right and wrong, legal or illegal, even past and present is probably what made him a good prison warden to begin with—at least in communist East Berlin. Some things just can’t be forgiven, but when the perpetrators themselves refuse to admit culpability—phew, that must illicit rage beyond words.

This story is fantastic. Johnson deals with delicate topics by just diving in full force. I’m reminded of two others stories that in vastly different ways tells stories of survivors of prison torture from both sides. The first one is Stephen King's Apt Pupil. This deals with a former Nazi camp torturer living a life as someone else who decades later is confronted with his true identity. He faces his own indulgences from his evil past. That was, in a very King fashioned, over the top and sensational, although dealt with real evil. 

The second is Nathan Englander’s Free Fruit for Young Widows that confronts evil from the other side. How human reaction to confronting absolute evil changes not only the actions of peaceful people but their complete understanding of the world. All three stories stress the importance of history and education of the past. 

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

#704 Cold- John Keene

#704 Cold- John Keene

You have to know a little about American Music history to get the full meaning of this one. This piece is a tribute to a great and tragic musician around the turn of the 19^th century. 

Bob Cole was a composer/songwriter/entertainer with much success, having written and published a couple hundred songs. His music was known to the general public but outside of the black communities he would not have been as recognized physically or by name as well as he should have been. He and his partners, brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamund Johnson wrote minstrel music, some of which has been used to perpetuate negative black stereotypes. After gaining success and creating his own black production company, he used his position to change the entertainment industry, trying to stop the use these stereotypes, of black characters as villainous or aggressive. 

He killed himself in 1911 while staying at a Hotel in the Catskills. The “Cold” of the title represents the creek water in which he drowned himself. This story is the last day of his life. We see his embarrassment at having to change rooms because a white guest requests it, we see his mental anguish at realizing some negative messages in his own songs, and we see the torture of his songs haunting him as they fight to be let loose.

“Then somewhere along the way after the first terrible blues struck you tried to hum a new tune, conjure one, you thought it was just exhaustion, your mind too tired to refresh itself as it always had, that’s why the old ones wouldn’t go away.”

Fantastic story. I love both the music and the history here, and the artistic manner in which Keene delivers a lecture on both.  It’s a shame that Cole’s memory is lost to most people, but I am grateful to Keene for reviving the name in such a meaningful way.  Knowing the reference helps, but even without it, this story stands as masterful.

Notable Passage: “I’m coming until the music breaks into a screaming silence that if you could describe it in a word would be no word or no note or sound at all but fleetingly, fleetingly cold…”

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

#572 My History- Toure

#572 My History- Toure

This story is pure fantasy. It’s a list bullet points invoking many of the racial injustices and black leaders from the American experience; and instead of listing the awful things that happened, Toure reverses them. For example:

-Hiphop never becomes materialistic and commercial, and continues as Black America’s CNN, putting knowledge on the street, building the political consciousness of a generation…

-Muhammad Ali wins a Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-Vietnam War efforts.

-Basquiat survives heroin—Sly survives coke—Pryor survives himself.

-Stevie Wonder is named Poet Laureate.

Some them are socio-political, some are pop-culture. As a whole is seems at first like a childish exercise, a little naïve even, but given the entirety of the list, by the end it hits home in a way that is both powerful and depressing.

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

#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

#253 Love and Hydrogen- Jim Shepard

#253 Love and Hydrogen- Jim Shepard

Gnuss and Meinert are maintenance workers aboard the Hindenburg Zeppelin in May1937 on its last voyage across the Atlantic. They are young, adventurous and madly in love. Life aboard a Zeppelin is dangerous as they must climb and scurry outside to inspect and make repairs.

“The propellers are twenty feet long. When the men are down on their hands and knees adjusting the vibration dampers, those props are a foot and a half away. The sound is like God losing his temper, kettledrums in the sinuses, fists in the face.”

“They’ve taken chances as if cultivating a death wish.” This statement could be for them selves and their chosen profession, their forbidden love which would get them fired and worse, or it could be a statement about The Hindenburg endeavor itself.

But life is short, and as life passes, and dreams are sought, you may ask yourself: “How much happiness is someone entitled to?”

Notable Passage: "Life, motion, everything was untrammeled and without limitation pathless ours."

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

#227 Digging- Beth Lordan

#227 Digging- Beth Lordan

Repressed emotions, unrequited love, and digging in the plush green dirt, a trip to America to find a new hope, in Boston no less. What could be more Irish? This story is both tragic and touching, but like the Irish, always connected to the earth.

It begins with digging, an Irishman digging for something “ancient and splendid and connected to him.” That connection to the earth, to the rich past of the Irish runs a heavy thread throughout this story. Buried right under the surface, but still somehow undiscovered and out of reach. The tragedy of losing that connection, of forgetting or missing the stories of their, barely touching the grains of sand them as they slip through time. “No stories will be told tonight.”

History is solid and rugged like the earth, but our personal connection to it is delicate, especially during modern times as countrymen get scattered throughout the globe. The Irish migration to America is a perfect example of that. A generation removed from Ireland, two people might meet, and connect because of their shared lineage, but even if their pasts intertwine intimately, they might not know how. The beauty of that connection overshadowed by the tragedy of lost knowledge buried just beneath the surface.

I loved this story!

Notable Passage: “His only idea is to be out there, as far from the house as he can go without leaving his own bit of land, digging; what he wants is the heft and smell and slide of his own earth at his command. He doesn’t wonder if a man can own something like land; he owns this field and the dirt within it, and the field goes straight down to the center of the earth.”

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

#200 We Drink the Wine in France- Alice Walker

#200 We Drink the Wine in France- Alice Walker

A holocaust survivor is teaching high school French in the American South.  He hides his past and runs from his memories. He finds beauty anywhere he can, in his students . Although not inappropriate, the thoughts of a beautiful young girl in his class haunt him.

“He really must stop thinking of her. Must remember he is old. That death has had its hands on him. That his odor is of ashes while hers is of earth and sun.”

That odor of death lingers in his mind so much that he shirks away from students when he thinks it will mingle with their alive. More vibrant auras, as if his will sully their innocence.

He spent 7 years in frozen hell, while his family died in the camps, he survived and has been a “monster” for doing so, an oddity, a freakish show piece. He runs from that kind of attention, and runs to warmth.

“The surrounding beauty has crept up on him gradually since his arrival three years ago. He can no longer ignore it and it hurts him, terribly. In Mexico he will find an even slower-infecting beauty. When it becomes painful he will begin to explore countries even further south. He has been chased across the world by the realization of beauty. He folds the letter, looks with horror at the narrow walls and low ceiling of the post office, rushes out into the bright sunshine.”

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

#165 Drunk on History- Jabari Asim

#165 Drunk on History- Jabari Asim

Reuben Edward Jones Sr is an artist, a painter. He’ll paint anything with the same spirit and enjoyment, be it a portrait or a sign outside a barber shop. He enjoyed his work and was proud to have the identity his work gave him.

“He’d never get rich, but he’s never get bored either.”

He worked from home in a little studio, “He calls his space a studio, Pristine calls it a firetrap.” His reputation was above reproach and he always had steady work.

After taking a job from a man he recognized by could not remember, Reuben was blocked. He couldn’t feel that artistic inspiration he called The Surge. He was weighed down by thought, by the thought of his family and history, history he learned in his favorite book: Notable Negroes. 

He sat in his work space waiting for The Surge to come-- “Anything will give up its secrets, if you love it enough.”—Eventually, it always does.

I really enjoy the way this collection is coming together. It’s a true collection, not  a compendium of random stories by one author. As each one passes, the characters reveal themselves one by one, but there is no real through line to make it a novel. So, each story stands alone.

Notable Passage: “Nothing was beneath the spirit of art.”

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

#67 Goodbye, Sweetwater- Henry Dumas

#67 Goodbye, Sweetwater- Henry Dumas

Sulfur Springs and Holly Springs, Arkansas…"The mineral richness below the surface has transformed the once cotton and tobacco lands into little pocket mining communities sticking like hardened sores beneath the white dust.”

As the Second Great Migration of black southerners to the north and western parts of the country was slowing down, the new industrialization left these communities dried up—literally and symbolically.

Families that survived slavery, war, and economic disasters were now being decimated by Jim Crow laws, and systematic upheaval.  Communities like the ones mentioned above were left with only the very old and the very young remaining to fend for themselves as best they could.

Layton is a teenager living with his grandmother. They are tight and cling to the only thing left to them, an intermittent sweet water spring. “The spring played a hide-and-seek pattern going underground and reappearing later.”

But like everything else in that part of the world, the spring will dry up eventually:

“Layton knew that staying was like dying. He could not die. He would go off and take his chances.”

His grandmother, being smart and practical agrees and encourages him to go, to do anything but stay and dry up with the sweetwater: “Go on and finish school. Go in army. Go to college. Get yourself some learnin’. Take care of your mama.”

Layton’s main source of strength and inspiration is his grandmother, it would be hard to leave her behind: “The only thing that gave Layton any real consolation was the fact that his grandmother was indestructible.”  “Somehow his grandmother was bigger and stronger than the land.”

Another beautiful story by Dumas filled with emotion, truth, and soul. There is strong commentary in here about the civil rights activism that is perfectly expressed, straight-forward, not heavy handed, and honest. As I say after each one of these: THIS SHOULD BE REQUIRED READING IN SCHOOL!

Notable Passage: “A mad dog will bite his own mother, son. So I’m sayin, son, be mad but not like a mad dog. Be right first. Be truthful first. And when you get mad at something, you got all that to back you up.”

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