#700 The Man with the Hat- Sheila Heti

#700 The Man with the Hat- Sheila Heti

The angst of a writer, the heart of a writer, the soul of a writer—these were all things embraced by the man. Unfortunately he lived the life of a writer, a failed one at that. He hasn’t written a thing, but he feels like he could. Don’t we all?

To his friends and drinking companions he is a bum, and a leach. He gets kicked out of one bar or the next, and his anger turns to self hatred, despair, and then just a little poetic hope. “What right had he to kill himself when there were stars in the sky, twinkling all innocent and not noticing him and noticing nothing.”

Heti’s stories are the epitome of the short form. Most are brain droppings of small nuggets left to ponder, rarely fully developed as stories, and that’s fine, that seems to be the point. This one is more complete, and a good look at the struggles of an unrealized creative mind.

Notable Passage: “The truth’s got nothing to do with your life.”

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

#478 The Dead Hand Loves You- Margaret Atwood

#478 The Dead Hand Loves You- Margaret Atwood

Jack Dace is the revered author of an international horror classic, The Dead Hand Loves You. The story has haunted him his entire life, because of a contract he is bound to.

When he was writing the book he lived with three other housemates, including Irene, the girl he was infatuated with. But he was falling behind on paying rent and they were about to kick him out of the house. So, with desperation and absolutely no foresight, he signs a contract with his housemates. They will forgive his debt for equal shares in the profits of his novel.

“In such ways are devil’s bargains made”

As it turns out his novel was a huge success and his friends kept him to the contract—signed while hung-over at their kitchen table—for the rest of their lives. The issue put a wedge between him and Irene, who married one of the other roommates, and they didn’t speak to each other, except through lawyers for most of following years. Now old, hanging on to the grudge, and a torch for Irene, Jack strikes out to reconnect with the friends he has made wealthy; for reconciliation? Retribution? Reckoning?

I like the story, the concept, although I don’t really feel the love story here at all.

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

#175 Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote- Jorge Luis Borges

#175 Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote- Jorge Luis Borges

Ok, I found this odd at first, but its genius quickly revealed itself. Writers writing about writer’s writing is always a touch-and-go technique that can fall prey to gimmick and hackishness. However, this was pretty amazing.

Borges imagines a fictional author, Pierre Menard penning a re-write of Cervantes’ Don Quixote. It wasn’t going to be a newly imagined or a polished version, or even a sequel. He was going to re-write it word for word…but as himself therefore giving it a fresh take.

“To be a popular novelist of the seventeenth century in the twentieth seemed to Menard to be a diminution. Being, somehow, Cervantes, and arriving thereby at the Quixote—that looked to Menard less challenging (and therefore less interesting) than continuing to be Pierre Menard and coming to the Quixote through the experience of Pierre Menard.”

This is great literary satire, poking fun at meta concepts and over-thought criticism and analysis. Such a great concept, it reads at first like an academic piece. That kind of threw me off center until I saw what he was doing. Then I wished it was longer. This passage I found laugh-out-loud funny. I can picture some dusty, bookish, professor that looks like he shits tweed say this at a pompous campus cocktail party:

“Menard has (perhaps unwittingly) enriched the slow and rudimentary art of reading by means of a new technique—the technique of deliberate anachronism and fallacious attribution. That technique, requiring infinite patience and concentration, encourages us to read the Odyssey as though it came after the Aeneid.”

Perhaps this is just funny to book nerds, but I found it hilariously brilliant.

Rating: 9-10-10-9 Total=38