#847 The Two Stories- Feslisberto Hernandez

#847 The Two Stories- Feslisberto Hernandez

Which one is more tortured, the lover or the writer? A man working in a toy workshop is tortured with a story in his head. He has been inspired by the love of a woman, he cant concentrate and has been admonished at work for his unfocussed demeanor. He sets down to write the story, but finds it is lost, and so it is for his love as well.

“He has set down with the purpose of telling everything exactly as it had happened—and soon realized this was impossible. And that was when his vague and secret anguish began.”

What follows is some notes from his writing during the period of his infatuation. Like waking from a dream, stories can be fleeting images left in mind. They are left blurry, vague, and maddeningly unattainable, just out of your grasp. The anguish of greatness lost.

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

#755 Black-White- Tove Jansson

#755 Black-White- Tove Jansson

This story is dedicated to Edward Gorey, the American illustrator. Like him, the man in this story drew dark and scary images for books. He has been commissioned to create the pictures for a terror anthology, the chance of a lifetime. When his wife, a talented designer critiques one of his drawings as too gray, he takes it to heart. 

The house she has designed for them is literally a glass house and is too light for the dark subject matter of his book. He moves to a different studio for a few months where he can wallow in darkness and create the proper level of black as the dominant element in his work. How dark is too dark? How far can an artist get lost in his work?

This is a nice homage to an artistic master. The imagery is stark, the black/white symbolism is obvious but handled well. 

Notable Passage: “The darkness crept away, and they stood side by side, throwing no shadows, and he thought, This is perfect. Nothing Can Change.

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

#593 The Reader- Nathan Englander

#593 The Reader- Nathan Englander

This is a love letter to bookstores, or a lament for the loss of the bookstore culture. As the brick and mortar bookshops are closing one by one, Author makes his last reading tour. Notice he is not referred to as “The Author” which would be a title, but as “Author” which means it’s his name, his personal identity. 

Author is a one-book-a-decade type of writer, so he hasn’t seen this new world, and like cicada coming out of the ground after years of hibernation, he is never sure what to expect. His last books were well received and his book tours were packed. This time, things have changed.

“This is what every book had asked of him, that he forgo all distraction and every comfort, that he simply put his head down and work. But some decades are more delicate than others. And from this one, he’d lifted his eyes up and discovered that he was old.”

There are few people showing up to his readings. By the sixth night there appears to be nobody at all. But as he leaves the store, there is one man sitting, waiting, kindly insisting that Author fulfills his social contract to read, even if it’s only him listening. At first it is a fulfilling experience.

“Really, how much richer could a writing life be than finding, even for one night, one true reader?”

All of the remaining dates on his reading tour follow the same pattern. Nobody but this one man eagerly waiting for him to read. He reads, this is what he does after all, but if starts to feel like he’s reading his own eulogy:

“This book…it’s not a novel, it’s a tombstone. Why not just hammer it in the ground above my head? My name’s already on the front.”

At times I felt this was a very touching story, at other times I found it very self-indulgent.  Writers love writing about writing. The meta look into the life of a writer can be very personal, but can also be self-centered. If we take this in any way to be autobiographical (which is hard not to when reading about a writer) than it’s a little insulting to hear a writer complain about not getting enough attention…especially when you are at that very moment giving him attention. 

But again…that is a small fraction of my feelings on this piece. Overall, it was a good read, and Englander as always uses an impeccably clean craft that makes anything he writes enjoyable.

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

#569 A Tangle by the Rapid River- Anthony Doerr

#569 A Tangle by the Rapid River- Anthony Doerr

Like most stories about fishing, this one has a somber, quiet, tone to it. Mulligan is a recent retiree. He has three things going on in his life: his marriage, his fly fishing, and the woman he sees on the side. 

He takes his daily fishing outing, but most days, he goes to see his other woman. That woman has now given him a sort of ultimatum. All Mulligan wants is for things to stay the same, and for people to let him live his life. The flow of the river, the slowly changing currents, the coming winter, the habits of the trout—these are things he understands and likes to contemplate, awake or in his sleep.

“When you get to be my age, Mulligan says, sleep is not so different from being awake. You kind of shut your eyes and you’re there.”

A dumb lapse in concentration and you can lose not only the fish, but the whole line.

Rating: 9-7-8-8 Total= 32

#568 Everyone’s Reading Bastard- Nick Hornby

#568 Everyone’s Reading Bastard- Nick Hornby

People get divorced. It happens everyday. More than half of all marriages will end this way, and they usually follow a period of angry, bitter conversations with family and friends. Usually these family and friends understand that they are blowing off steam and sometimes—in the case of friends—they hear both sides of the post-divorce clamor.

But what if one person of the former couple is a columnist and decides to use this column to do her complaining?

“…her insatiable appetite for self-exposure and, unavoidably, the exposure of those who happened to be somewhere close to her. And that was what fueled her reputation—and she really was quite well known now—for eccentricity and solipsism.”

Elaine’s column was called “Bastard” and everyone in his life new exactly who the bastard was. It was unfair and it was cruel. I don’t care who you are—even Mother Theresa—if all people new about you were the bad things without context and without rebuttal, you’d look awful. That is what Charlie’s life was like. What made it worse was that she was a great writer and the column went viral. Oddly, Charlie was taking this all vey well.

“Taking abuse in a national newspaper without attempting to hit back was actually a pretty good way of wiping the slate clean. He was hoping that when this was all over, his spiritual overdraft would have been paid off, and he’d be allowed to use the cash machine again.”

In a turn worthy of a Meg Ryan/Tom Hanks romantic comedy, Charlie meets the woman made notorious in a countering column called “Bitch,” and the two start their own relationship. Charlie needs only to wait the vitriol out and wait for Elaine to make the wrong enemies, and hopefully his slate will be swept clean. 

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

#510 Nausea 1979- Haruki Murakami

#510 Nausea 1979- Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami is talking to a friend with an odd story. This friend has a very unique philosophy on life and friendship. He likes to sleep with his friend's wives and girlfriends. He doesn’t have relationships with them, and doesn’t want them to break up, but he finds no moral issue with it either. In fact he thinks it helps their friendship.

“It was the act of sleeping with his friends’ girlfriends and wives that really turned him on…[he] had absolutely no interest in tricking [his] friends—in turning them into cuckolds, that sort of thing. Sleeping with their woman makes [him] feel closer to them. It’s a family thing.”

The problems he is having don’t seem to revolve around the infidelities of friendship. Once for forty straight days, he vomited every day. He could only hold down enough food so he wouldn't starve. Strange phone calls accompanied the sickness. No matter where he went or tried to hide, both the phone calls and the vomiting continued. Then just like that it stopped.

The vomiting could have been a prank, or could have been retribution from one of his friends, or it could have been his own guilt. Since it only happened when he was alone, maybe he was sick of being alone. It is never revealed.

Because Murakami inserted himself into this one, I’d like for minute to think that this was a story about him talking to a potential character in one of his books. When discussing what all this meant he says:

“Anyway it’s a just a theory. I can give you hundreds of those. The problem is which theory you’re willing to accept. And what you learn from it.”

Murakami has often written shorter pieces that go on to evolve into larger things. I think he’s telling this character to think about this idea and predicament I put you in, and lets see if it goes anywhere. Very Meta.

Notable Passage: “Things that start for no reason end for no reason. And the opposite can be true.”

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

#354 Alphinland- Margaret Atwood

#354 Alphinland- Margaret Atwood

Constance is a successful writer of a speculative fiction series called Alphinland. Despite its success, like with many works of fantasy, the literary intelligencia, including her husband and former boyfriend, look down on such writing, calling it sub-literary fiction.

“It’s astonishing how folks can get so worked up over something that doesn’t exist.”

Ewan, her husband has recently died and she, getting older and less able to live on her own, has yet to let him go. She hears his voice speak to her, guide her and comfort her as she lives her life.

“…his voice, when it turns up, is firm and cheerful. A striding voice, showing the way. An extended finger, pointing. Go here, buy this, do that! A slightly mocking voice, teasing, making light: that was often his manner towards her before he became ill.”

She has created “memory palaces” a kind of mnemonic device, keeping her memories locked up in both her house and the fictitious Alphinland. Once those two memory banks open up, and borders are crossed, Constance goes searching for her next adventure.

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

#337 Solid Wood- Ann Beattie

#337 Solid Wood- Ann Beattie

A famous writer, Jacob Foxx Greer has died. An old friend and colleague comes to visit his daughter and wife. He brings his sister, a former student and lover of Greer’s.

It’s a quiet, contemplative piece that makes the reader steadily try to put the puzzle pieces together. It seems at times that all the other characters know something more than the narrator (and thus the reader). There are questions left unanswered and should probably stay that way.

The paragraph where the narrator is struggling to see the check, and has a flash memory caused by the pen-light is exceptionally written.

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

#214 To Hell With Dying- Alice Walker

#214 To Hell With Dying- Alice Walker

This is the final story in this great collection- In Love & Trouble: Stories of Black Woman. Reading these slowly, space-out over the course of several months, I appreciated the subtle beauty of her prose in a way I wouldn’t have if I consumed them all at once.

“Mr. Sweet was a diabetic and an alcoholic and a guitar player and loved down the road from us on a neglected cotton farm.”

He liked to play with the children from the area and they loved to play with Mr. Sweet. “Toward all us children he was very kind, and had the grace to be shy with us, which is unusual in grown-ups…his ability to be drunk and sober at the same time made him an ideal playmate, for he was as weak as we were and we could usually best him in wrestling.”

Such a sweet and touching love story, a perfect way to end this collection.

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

#210 The Last Mohican- Bernard Malamud

#210 The Last Mohican- Bernard Malamud

Fidelman is a failed painter and on sabbatical in Italy to study and write a book about Giotto. He was a perpectual student like Chekhov’s Trofimov. “If there was something to learn, I want to learn it.” (yet another writer doffing their cap to Chekhov)

He is set upon by a crafty beggar and cannot seem to get rid of him. He follows him and begs for his suit. When finding his briefcase stolen, assumingly by this beggar, he drops all his plans for study and travel and pursues his lost property.

He allows his regrets and poor decisions define him. We are all victims of something, but why be a victim twice, one of our own doing?

Notable Passage: “History was mysterious, the remembrance of things unknown, in a way burdensome, in a way a sensuous experience. It uplifted and depressed, why we did not know, except that it excited his thoughts more than he thought good for him.”

Rating: 7-7-6-6 Total=26