#390 A Calendar of Tales- Neil Gaiman

#390 A Calendar of Tales- Neil Gaiman

What a tremendous story! This is told is twelve tales, each tale is a month of the year. This could be something out of Grimm’s Fairy tales. It is a battle with time, or a representation of spiritual limbo, a crossing, or it could be something else entirely. Whatever it is, it is what story telling is all about, and with it, Gaiman's creativity is peerless.

The story can turn from the utterly fantastical:

“I slept in my igloo made of books. I was getting hungry. I made a hole in the floor, lowered a fishing line and waited until something bit. I pulled it up: a fish made of books—green-covered vintage Penguin detective stories. I ate it raw, fearing a fire in my igloo.”

To the deeply philosophical:

“I heard distant thunder, and in the night, while we slept, it began to rain, tumbling my igloo of books, washing away the words from the world.”

The tale for October should be it’s own thing, a parable of great simplicity and elegance.

Notable Passage: “She spoke the truth, and the March winds blew madness around them.”

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

#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai

#352 The Briefcase- Rebecca Makkai

A chef is among 100 prisoners, chained together, being marched through town. He was caught giving aid to rebels, although all he did was feed people who sat at his table. He was after all, a chef. Somehow he escapes his binding, but that leaves the chain, one man short. The guards arrest the nearest man, a professor, strip him of his briefcase, and clothes and add him unjustly to the prison ranks.

The chef, after all the prisoners leave, picks up the professors briefcase and creates a new life in exile. He spends his time reading the professors papers on the nature of the universe. For months, he eats, sleeps and ruminates philosophically on existence:

“The light of my cigarette is a fire like the sun. From where I sit, all the universe is equidistant from my cigarette. Ergo, my cigarette is the center of the universe. My cigarette is on earth. Ergo, the earth is the center of the universe. If all heavenly bodies move, they must therefore move in relation to the earth, and in relation to my cigarette.”

Of course, not having any training in physics or science, his theories about the cosmos were all wrong, but it didn’t matter, did it? The war had flipped the world upside-down and…“The universe has been folded inside out.”

When you literally can no longer be yourself, who are you? Where are you? Why are we here?

Notable Passage: “History was safer than the news, because there was no question of how it would end.”

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

#235 Nachman From Los Angeles- Leonard Michaels

#235 Nachman From Los Angeles- Leonard Michaels

This is a clever piece about metaphysics. Nachman is tricked by his friend to write a paper for Ali, who is willing to pay him a thousand dollars. Ali is a Persian prince, handsome, rich and persuasive.

“A line had been crossed. Nachman hadn’t noticed when he crossed it. Maybe Ali had crossed the line so that, to Nachman’s surprise, it now lay behind rather than in front of him.”

While he learns about Metaphysics, his field normally being mathematics, Ali takes him to an expensive dinner flaunting his riches and power. The conversation they have is contentious: “The conversation was more like a game of ping-pong than a fight with knives, and yet the hostility was obvious.”

The story itself becomes an exercise in metaphysics. After conversing with and experience life with someone like Ali, “Nachman felt that he was on the verge of grasping the complexities at the highest levels of the universe.” But then “he’d made Nachman feel meaningless. The idea of himself as meaningless compared with Ali made Nachman chuckle.”

The paper doesn’t get written down, as if the act of recording it will nullify its very existence, but if willed hard enough it still may appear.

Word of the Day: Invidious – likely to arouse or incur resentment or anger in others. (Google)

Notable Passage: “Love isn’t funny. Love is an example of what’s real.”

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