#631 The Trimmed Lamp- O.Henry

#631 The Trimmed Lamp- O.Henry

It’s been a while since we’ve done an O.Henry story, so here we go. It’s O.Henry Friday! In my collection of 100 of his short stories, I randomly opened to this one, The Trimmed Lamp. Like most of his stories this one seems old fashioned and outdated, but quaint.

Lou and Nancy are two young woman just moved to the big city. They have two different ideals about life and love and go about securing their future. Lou gets a job working at a garment shop ironing clothes. It’s not glamorous but she makes good money and gets to keep some of the nice clothes that are left behind. She is seeing a working class man, but does not take him too seriously; she is having fun. 

Nancy on the other hand gets a job working in a high-end boutique. She makes only half of what Lou does, but she believes being around high-end people, she will meet a millionaire husband. She turns down some offers, waiting for perfection. She doesn’t find it, but she does find love. What does Lou find?

Like I said, the sensibilities of 100 years ago are different from today; a story about woman who’s life mission is to work menial jobs so they can find a suitable husband wouldn’t fly today, or shouldn’t at least. But we judge art from the times they were written, and this is vintage O.Henry.

Notable Passage: “She was surrounded by beautiful things that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another’s.”

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

#527 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer

#527 Drinking Coffee Elsewhere- ZZ Packer

This is a story about alienation. Dina is an outcast at Yale. Being a black woman in this environment made her automatically different, but her isolation—mostly caused by herself—led to a very lonely college experience.

Another girl, an outsider herself, reaches out to her, and Dina reluctantly allows her into her world. “The girl turned to face me, smiling weakly, as though her triumph was not in getting me to open the door but in that fact that she was able to at all when she was accustomed to crying.”

Heidi is gay, and Dina is inexperienced in any sexual or romantic way so she is confused. She is hiding, figuratively behind a strong, gruff personality and hiding literally in her dorm room she rarely leaves. Heidi may seem meek but she is self-aware and honest about who she is. Dina pretends.  She won't let a boy walk her home, because she is afraid he’ll see her poor neighborhood; she is ashamed of being week, so she tells her mother she lost the food stamps; she watches the coming out rally from her window.

Dina denies all opportunities to become less isolated, becoming more and more selfish with each rejection.

Notable Passage: “Constantly saying what one doesn’t mean accustoms the mouth to meaningless phrases.”

Rating: 9-8-9-9 Total= 35

#426 What the Ax Forgets the Tree Remembers- Edith Pearlman

#426 What the Ax Forgets the Tree Remembers- Edith Pearlman

The title of this one alone blows me away. Too often we hear the opinions of those giving offense or those doing damage explaining how that offense or damage isn’t that bad.

“For a half century Gabrielle had avoided good causes as if they might defile her. Efficiency and orderliness were what she cared about, and her own lively good looks.”

Now inspired to do good things, she is taken to work for The Society Against Female Mutilation. However, like many people who suddenly “wake up” and want to help the world, they still cling to their vanity and the viewpoints of their privileged experience. Just because you are not the AX, doesn’t mean you can understand what a tree goes through.

When Gabrielle’s normal speaker gets ill, she employs a stand in for a fundraising event. The stand in gives strong opinions that seem to be against their work. But truth is truth and hearing it may change the way you think, if you are open to it of course.

There is a nice thread through this piece about intimacy and acceptance. I’m not sure I agree with how the group dealt with the two divergent testimonies. With such a short story, I’m not sure there was enough space to give adequate discussing.

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

#412 Superstar- Susan Steinberg

#412 Superstar- Susan Steinberg

Now this is something different. This is a story written in statements only. Each sentence is its own line, its own paragraph. At times it can look like poetry, but for the most part, it is not poetic (exception: the notable passage below). We are getting the inner thoughts of a woman riding in the crowded back seat of her friends car after she has stolen a car radio. It was a revenge theft of a guy she hooked up with.

This is thick with male-female power dynamics. She steals the radio because she wants to own this man completely. Then when she gets into a small fender bender with a guy, he treats her like shit calling her names like only a man can call a woman.  Then comes guy #2 who comes to her rescue and is condescending like only a man can be condescending to a woman.

It’s not something I want to explain.

If you have the parts you understand.

As for the rest of you.

Just know I knew it was good to be a woman.

Meaning it was very bad to be a woman.

This is a very good, powerful start for this collection, Spectacle.

Notable Passage: “A sound I can’t describe.

                                    A Sound that was more like a color.

                                    A Color that was more like a pain.

                                    A pain that was more like an answer.”

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

#282 Kavita Through Glass- Emily Ishem Raboteau

#282 Kavita Through Glass- Emily Ishem Raboteau

Distance÷Longing= Desire. Hassan saw the world as a mathematician. Things could be described using symbols and signs. His wife saw the world through Architecture using meaning through color and shapes. He was a Muslim, she was Hindu. They had trouble communicating with each other. Until she became pregnant it didn’t seem to matter that much. Now, as another life was coming into the world, their own needs became suddenly important.

We see this story from Hassan’s perspective. We see his resentment, confusion, and ultimate acceptance and enjoyment over her designs in the house. We see his confusion over her sudden emotional change when she gets pregnant. We see his hurt as she pursues a secret desire. We are with him…right up to the point that we see her side. Our mistake is apparent in one quick statement:

“Do you realize you never look at me?”

Not only has Hassan been selfish in his thoughts, so have we, the readers. Of course we are used to following along with the author of a story, but this was brilliant! Bringing us along for the sole reason to show us our own blind spot. We all need to step outside ourselves every so often to see how we are can be so selfish.

In the liner notes for this story, Raboteau says that 30 journals rejected this story before Tin House printed it, and eventually was selected for the Best American Short Story compendium for 2003. I wonder how many of those rejections happened without the reader ever getting to the revealing end?

Notable Passage: “White is a color without depth…or a thing without depth, since it is not a color at all, but a thing that makes depth possible.”

Rating: 8-8-10-9 Total= 35

#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

#192- The Smallest Woman in the World- Clarice Lispector

#192- The Smallest Woman in the World- Clarice Lispector

It is part of human nature to be self centered--not selfish necessarily, in a malicious way, buts self centered in an instinct to survive type of way. When something abnormal or new appears, we always, instinctually put in in perspective of how it effects us, or how it would be in our own world. Thus when French explorer Marcel Pretre discovered the world smallest human in the deep jungles of Africa, the picture printed in the paper set off many reactions.

Some thought is creepy, some thought of the delicate nature of life: “She considered the cruel necessity of loving. And she considered the malignity of our desire for happiness. She considered how ferociously we play. How many timed we kill for love."

Some barely lifted their heads from the paper and thought: “I bet if she lived here it would end in a fight…in this house everything ends in a fight.”

Back in the jungle the smallest human had her own self-centered thoughts, albeit understandably so: “She was laughing, warm, warm—Little Flower was enjoying life. The rare thing herself was experiencing the ineffable sensation of not having been eaten yet.”

Humanity however is all consuming and eventually we gorge on that which is unique and different.

Rating: 7-6-6-6 Total= 25

#107 Birthday Girl- Haruki Murakami

#107 Birthday Girl- Haruki Murakami

A young waitress is turning 20, an important day in the life of a woman. She tries to take the night off from work, but her replacement becomes ill. She must come in to work.

At 8 pm, For the last 10 years, everyday without fail, the manager of the restaurant takes a meal upstairs for the owner. Its always chicken, and despite every chef trying their best to impress the owner with their best culinary skills, he never responds. Only the manager brings the meal, and then retrieves the cart one hour later.

A half hour before his nightly duty, the manager becomes so ill he must go to the hospital and for he first someone else must deliver the nightly meal, as it turns out, it’s the birthday girl.

Upon meeting the manager, mysterious and polite, she is invited inside. When he learns of her birthday, he reveals that he has a gift for her. He will grant het one wish, but only one wish and she cannot change her mind once it is granted. He is surprised that her wish is not that of a normal young woman, but grants it nonetheless.

What is her wish, what does it mean, and does it matter? Those are the questions we are left with. I believe we are supposed to look inward to wonder what it is we would have wished for. A good story make story remember it, and this one I will be thinkin about all night.

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

#46 Roselily- Alice Walker

#46 Roselily- Alice Walker

This is the first story from In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Woman. It’s a woman’s thoughts on her new marriage.  A Mississippi seamstress is marrying a rich Chicago man, and she wonders what her life will be like.

“She wonders how to make new roots. It is beyond her. She wonders what one does with memories in a brand-new life.”

The layout of the story is interesting. It’s a flow of thoughts broken into sections, each headed by a piece of a wedding ceremony: Dearly beloved/We are gathered here/In the sight of God…etc.

As the narration goes on we see her life as a mother of three children, and we see the man to whom she is betrothed. It is not an enticing prospect to her marrying into a unfamiliar religious (he is muslim) culture:

“She thinks of ropes, chains, handcuffs, his religion.”

The story is full of stark ideas and it’s pretty straight forward.

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

#41 A Private Experience- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

#41 A Private Experience- Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

Two Nigerian woman find themselves together in an abandoned storefront helping one another stay safe during a riot. These two woman are polar opposites in everything external; Chika studies medicine at the University, the other woman sells onions in the market. Chika loses her expensive Burburry bag while fleeing the mob, the other woman loses her cheap plastic necklace. Chika is an Igbo Christian, the other woman is a Hausa Muslim. When riots break out, these differences do not matter.

The unrest began when a Christian man ran over a Koran in the street. The Hausa woman seems to be used to these cultural uprisings, while Chika is overwhelmed.

“Riots like this are what she read about in newspapers. Riots like this were what happened to other people.”

Despite being in close confines and sharing very intimate personal moments, these woman remain somewhat distant and very detached, each retreating to a personal bubble. Thus the title. The scene with the woman worrying about her cracked nipple is a powerful metaphor for her inability to protect her children when they need her the most.

Notable Passage: “The room is stuffy and smells nothing like the streets outside, which smell like the kind of sky-colored smoke that wafts around during Christmas when people throw goat carcasses into fires to burn the hair off the skin.”

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