#299 The November Story- Rebecca Makkai

#299 The November Story- Rebecca Makkai

Christine is a producer of a reality TV show. Her job is to interview the contestants, get them to say interesting things, create arc and character for the show. She often has to prompt the interviewee, make them feel: “…compelled to say more and more interesting things—more outrageous, more emotional. More likely to make their relatives to change their names and move to Arizona.”

Reality TV has become such a part of our culture, that is acceptable to cast the lowest common denominator, they look for crazy over depth:

“The casting directors are great at spotting borderline narcissistic personality disorder, the kind that makes you just crazy enough for great TV but not crazy enough to destroy a camera with a baseball bat.”

As her own life starts to feel like a produced TV show, she begins to hate her job, but she also resents her girlfriend for being unlike some of the characters on the show: “The camera doesn’t have patience for someone who feels iffy, weighs the options, equivocates.”

I’m sure this story has been written before, the meta-look into a meta-art form. However, Makkai adds some layering here that makes it more human and less pure satire.

Notable Passage: “The loneliest thing in the world is lying awake beside someone asleep.”

Rating: 9-7-9-8 Total= 33

http://366shortstories.blogspot.com/2015/04/grading-each-story.html

#263 Glow in the Dark- David Dante Troutt

#263 Glow in the Dark- David Dante Troutt

David Dante Troutt put together a unique collection here. The Monkey Suit: And Other Short Fiction on African Americans and Justice, is fictionalized tellings of true court cases. The truth about these cases have been obscured by shady history, bad reporting, and about the ways we never truly can know certain facts. Just because these stories may not represent the facts, doesn’t make the telling of them any less truthful.

The opening salvo is Glow in the Dark. John Henry, a runaway slave is tied to a Sheriff awaiting his fate. He is struggling with killing the lawman in his sleep. He holds this conversation with the rope itself:

“Hush rope, John Henry whispers hard at it. I ain’t wanna hurt dis boy. I see bout runnin tomorruh.”

The heavy dialect sets the correct mood for this story. John Henry has no allies except for his anthropomorphized bindings, and fate, as expected runs it course.

Rating: 7-7-7-6 Total= 27

#170- The Human Fly- T.C. Boyle

#170- The Human Fly- T.C. Boyle

With a name like the Human Fly, you’d expect Metamorphosis, and then when you get a Kafka quote at the head of the story, its from The Hunger Artist. Then you start reading it and it’s about a circus performer pushing the boundaries of his daring and you think about First Sorrow and the trapeze artist that wants to stay on his trapeze a all times. Cleary this is literary tribute to Franz Kafka.

This homage comes in the form of an inside look at the world of a low-level entertainment agent. At this moment, he had three clients: “A nasally infected twelve year-old with pushy parents…a comic with a harelip that did only harelip jokes; and a soft rock band called Mu, who believed they were reincarnated court musicians from the lost continent of Atlantis.”

That was until a man dressed in a red cape with a swim cap walked into his small back office. The man was Zoltan Mindszenty aka. La Mosca Humana, the Human Fly. He wanted to be famous. He had already gotten press for his public climbing stunts in Mexico, but wanted exposure here. He began by hanging himself 21 stories above the street in a sack.

“As it turned out he, stayed there, aloft for two weeks. And for some reason—because he was intractable, absurd, mad beyond hope or redemption—the press couldn’t get enough of it.”

Sounds like a familiar mix of modern reality TV and David Blaine. He survived the stunt, and a few more before taking one step too far. But he did become famous. Boyle, like many writers seem to have a love/hate thing for entertainment agencies. They can be

“…a mercenary, a huckster who’d watch a man die for ten percent of the action.”

While they always disdain the agency or the business, the agent themselves seem to be written with a more gentler pen, be it respect, empathy or just pity, who knows?

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