#882 Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgaiting- Karen Russell

#882 Dougbert Shackleton’s Rules for Antarctic Tailgaiting- Karen Russell

This is a pretty hilarious satire of sports and extreme fandom. You think tailgating at a warm weather football game is being a hard-core fan? Imagine being at the south pole for the “Food-Chain Games.” Only the hardiest of the hardy can make it here.

                                        

Like the title suggests, this is a suggested list of rules for how to survive competitive tailgaiting in the harshest climates. It’s not that there might be fatalities, its that if there are, make sure you bury them in the proper container…nobody likes a litterbug!

“Be prepared to see a black-nosed victim of frostbite; a boatload of probable cannibals, suspiciously fat and sheepish in their snug parkas; a scurvy-riddled tailgater in a lifeboat, vestless and begging oranges.”

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#854 The Barn at the End of Our Term- Karen Russell

#854 The Barn at the End of Our Term- Karen Russell

The 19^th and former president Rutherford B. Hayes finds himself reincarnated into the body of a horse unable to speak or make himself known. He is brought into a large barn with twenty-one other horses. Eleven of those are also ex-presidents from all eras. They don’t know if this is heaven or hell, or something else. But being themselves, they fall into old desires and habits.

“In the yard, the other presidents are still hungry for power.”

“Many of the presidents have sworn themselves in to similarly foolish titles: Governor of the Cow Pastures, Commanding General of the Standing Chickens. They reminisce about their political opponents like old lovers. There is a creeping emptiness to winning an office that nobody else is seeking.”

They wonder about their legacy and some try to escape finding something unnatural is keeping them from the ability to leap over the small fence. Hayes has a revelation about creating your own problems stemming from expectation and vanity. He is able to leap the fence and escape, but escape to where?

Rating: 8-9-9-8 Total= 34

#825 Proving Up- Karen Russell

#825 Proving Up- Karen Russell

The untamed west has always been a thing of American mythology, full of wonder and rich with stories. In reality it was a harsh existence filled with failure and death. The Zenger family has been on their land for five years. It’s been a tough five years.

“My mother is thirty-one years old, but the land out here paints old age onto her.”

They moved here from Pennsylvania, lost three daughters and barely survived serious draught and famine. But they just about qualify for owning their land under the Homestead Act, all they need to build now is a structure with a glass window. Glass windows however are not something the homesteaders in Hox River, Nebraska have much of. Miles’ father has one window that he will lend to all the homes in the area. Miles is sent out on the day of the inspections to install the window, home by home without the inspector seeing that it’s the same window.

Miles is overtaken by a huge storm and gets lost, loses his horse and is approached by a strange, dark man. The man is covered in sod…he is land himself, coming to take his own claim back.

“There are no bones on his fingers. Hey are made of dust. If it ever rains again, he will seep back into the earth.”

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

#797 The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach- 1979

#797 Karen Russell- The Seagull Army Descends on Strong Beach- 1979

Nal is in a weird point of his life. He is a lonely teenager with an out-of-work mother having a nervous breakdown, and a freeloading older brother that has just started dating the girl he has eyes for.

“That summer Nal was fourteen and looking for excuses to have extreme feelings about himself.”

He is the responsible one and the only one in the family that is working. The pressure, his age, and his normal disposition has lead him to a desire for disassociation. He wishes to exist outside of himself, he often has a running dialogue like a play by play sports caster going. This summer he is being followed and haunted by seagulls. While many other birds represent death and an ominous future, gulls are scavengers.

“The seagulls are stealing scraps of our lives to feather this weird nest…These birds are messing with our futures.”

These items act as sort of talismans for Nal and push him along in different directions. Whether they exist as anything mystical or whether he has conjured meaning out of normal avian activity is up to the reader.

Word of the Day: Homunculus- a miniature adult believed to inhabit larger beings.

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

#770 Reeling for the Empire- Karen Russell

#770 Reeling for the Empire- Karen Russell

What I have found over the last few years during this project, is that the entire genre of short story writing is filled with the fingerprints of Kafka, from mere references, respectful homages or outright theft of ideas. So far no other story has come close to reminding me of the depth and soul of Kafka until now. I am left breathless by this story. Where Kafka often goes dark and desolate, Russell infuses hope and human endurance. Imagine metamorphosis meets fight club!

We are in the Japanese Empire mid nineteenth century. Someone has found a tea that can turn a human into a silkworm hybrid. Girls are “recruited” to drink this tea and work in silk factories where they spend their lives in the same room spinning out the best silk the world has ever seen. But they will never see the outside again, never see their families, never truly be human.

We see these Kaiko-Joko (silkworm workers) in a place they have dubbed “Nowhere Mill”. One girl, for the first ever, has drunk the tea voluntarily and a little too fast. She survived the metamorphosis, but remains a little off inside. Eventually this boldness has made her aware of the potential of her new form, or the ability to turn bad to good, weakness to power. She will not be marginalized again, and neither will her co-workers.

“For the past several months, every time I’ve reminisced about the Agent coming to Gifu, bile has risen in my throat. It seems to be composed of every bitterness: grief and rage, the acid regrets. But then, in the middle of my weaving, obeying a queer impulse, I spit some onto my hands. This bile glues my fingers to my fur. Another of nature’s wonders. So even the nausea of regret can be converted to use.”

Wow…I love this!!!

Notable Passage: “These wings of ours are invisible to you.”

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

#741 Vampires in the Lemon Grove- Karen Russell

#741 Vampires in the Lemon Grove- Karen Russell

The title story of Karen Russell’s first short story collection sets a good tone. It’s a vampire story, but original and touching. These characters don’t need to be vampires, they could be anyone going through life with normal emotions—love, loneliness, depression.

Clyde grew up alone hearing all the horror stories about vampires, the killing, the bloodsucking the aversion to sunlight, etc. He built his own life around these stories until he met the only other vampire he has ever met, Magreb.  She becomes his wife and disabuses him of the lore. They travel and live somewhat normal lives, but his hunger once psychosomatically about blood has led them to an Italian lemon grove. Lemons, it seems can quench their nocturnal thirst for a while.

“After an initial prickling—a sort of chemical effervescence along my gums—a soothing blankness traveled from the tip of each fang to my fevered brain. These lemons are a vampire’s analgesic. If you have been thirsty for a long time, if you have been suffering, then the absence of those two feelings—however brief—becomes a kind of heaven.”

He sits all day in the grove looking like an old Italian widower and with Magreb he feels that he need not travel anymore. He is no longer lonely:

“There is a loneliness that must be particular to monsters, I think, the feeling that each is the only child of a species. And now that loneliness was over.”

However, he is not an old man, and Magreb is ready to keep moving. Clyde’s dilemma is a very human one, caught between love and life, feeling lonely and depressed and not wanting to let go of old feelings.

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

#400 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolfs- Karen Russell

#400 St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolfs- Karen Russell

The title says it all here doesn’t it? A group of feral girls, birthed by werewolf parents, are in St. Lucy’s, a halfway house turning wild creatures into productive humans.

Symbolism and metaphors abound in this one. It could be children being dropped off at boarding schools when they are young, it could be culture to culture adjusting, it could mean prisoners of war. Depending on what you tale from this, the tone changes. If it’s a harsh reality of a rite-of-passage thing, then that’s one thing. However if it is taken as one culture forcing assimilation of another, then the following lines are tragic:

“We couldn’t make our scent stick here; it made us feel invisible. Eventually we gave up.”

“The pack hated Jeanette. She was the most successful of us, the one furthest removed from her origins.”

Either case, this is a strong allegory, nice work.

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