#158 Entertaining God- Alice Walker

#158 Entertaining God- Alice Walker

Entertaining God encapsulates many of the themes found in Walker’s collection In Love & Trouble. Mostly it talks about identity; finding it, keeping it, understanding it, and mostly falling to false truths. This falseness is found on the deepest levels and in the most shallow of places:

“He has married his first wife in a gigantic two-ring ceremony, in a church, and his wife had had the wedding pictures touched up so that he did not resemble himself. In the pictures his skin was black and olive brown and smooth when in fact it was black and stubbly and rough. He had married his wife because she was light and loose and fun and because she had long red hair. After they were married she stopped dyeing it and let it grow out black…well, she was just no longer anyone he recognized.”

Like many characters that Walker writes about, finding identity often leads them to radical politics and the Nation of Islam:

“He too changed his name and took an X. He was not comfortable with the X, however, because he began to feel each morning that the day before he had not existed. He knew what it was, of course; without a last name John would never be able to find him.”

Religion permeates the search for identity, truth, and self, but as expected, finding these things are hard battles ending in false shadows or at best small fleeting victories.

“…one of the millions who needed the truth their religion could bring. He had finally accepted himself, but it seemed that in the moment the beauty of this acceptance was most clear he must say goodbye to it.”

This search is a lonely crusade, a singular path. To go this route one must leave the past where it is, and go through that door alone:

“Softly, she would call to him…and through he never answered her, he would amble down…and stand waiting…He would wait for her to wipe her eyes. Then he would go with her as far as the door.”

Notable Passage: “The very air seemed alive. It was like singing or flying and the boy felt exhilarated. He stretched his hands above his head as high as they would go as he greeted the sun, which rose in slow distant majesty across a misty sky, nudging clouds gently as it made its way.”

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

#157 The Rocking-Horse Winner- D.H. Lawrence

#157 The Rocking-Horse Winner- D.H. Lawrence

“There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck.” She was never able to see the good things in life. She had married for love, but it soon wasn’t enough. She had bonny children but they gave her no joy. Her and her husband had jobs, but they spent too much.

“Only she herself knew that at the center of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love…”

But children are exceptional at a few things, perception (especially when it comes to their parents emotions) and imagination. Her son Paul spent his entire life trying to find the “luck” that his mother thought she lacked. He heard the house whisper the needs of his parents:

“And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: ‘there must be more money!”

Paul had a toy Rocking Horse that he believed could ride him to this luck. He rode himself tired, sick, and frenzied to where he believed he could foretell the winners of the real horse races. And when he won, he could give that money to his mother, to make her happy. But, of course it was never enough for her. He hung onto that rocking horse until he was too old to be playing with such toys. But holding onto his childhood meant that he could still imagine his mother happy.

Paul wanted what all children want most—his mother’s love. By the time he rode enough to give his mother all the money she could want, she would lose him forever.

Lawrence was known for his risqué subjects and is remembered most for pushing the boundaries of what topics could be considered literature. Here we see none of that. Here is a beautiful tapestry of symbolism and story telling; at once imaginative, and heartbreaking. I’d say this is the pinnacle of short story writing craft in its purest sense.

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

#156 Sinking House- T.C. Boyle

#156 Sinking House- T.C. Boyle

After 50 years of marriage Murial buried her husband. She is relieved but unhinged. She needs to cleanse herself, she needs to wash away the bad years. So she turns on all the water faucets in her house. For weeks the water runs, and she sits and listens to the water pouring like she used to listen to her husband pouring his vodka:

“When it was quiet—in the early morning or late at night—she could distinguish the separate taps, each with its own voice and rhythm, as they dripped and trickled from the far corners of the house.”

Next door, a younger couple starts to notice flooding in their yard, and under their house. They confront Murial and demand she stop her foolishness. The man's actions and demeanor remind her of her dead husband, before he got violent. But his aggression shocks his wife who doesn’t like this new side of him:

“Sure there was a problem here and she was glad he was taking care of it, but did he have to get violent?”

The water eventually gets turned off but it doesn’t solve anything: “The place was deadly, contaminated, sick as the grave—after all was said and done, it just wasn’t clean enough.”

Meg sees her future in Murial, battered, dejected, wasted away: “Meg had felt like sinking into the ground.”

Clearly water is a powerful theme, as is the power of nature and time. Perhaps there are homage intentions here to Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher, with the connecting theme of woman being trapped.

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

#155 Incarnations of Burned Children- David Foster Wallace

#155 Incarnations of Burned Children- David Foster Wallace

“If you’ve never wept and want to, have a child.”

What a horrifying title! As it suggests, this story is about a child burned, or scalded really bad by a pot of boiling water. Mother is overwhelmed trying to both cook and hold the child, Father is busy outside fixing the tenant's front door.

Once again DFW pushes the boundaries of what short fiction can be. This isn’t a vintage DFW weighty novelette. In fact this story is just a single paragraph…a single paragraph three pages long of course. These are the thoughts of the Father as he attempts to understand the situation, calm his child’s pain, quiet the voice blaming the mother and angry at his own failure to see the obvious.

Notable Passages: “Daddy bent in and was face to face with the child on the table’s checked edge repeating the fact that he was here and trying to calm the toddler’s cries but still the child’s breathlessly screamed, a high pure shining sound that could stop his heart.”

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

#154 The Ring- Isak Dinesen

#154 The Ring- Isak Dinesen

Lise and Sigismund are newlyweds, married juts a week ago. He is a sheep farmer and takes Lise out around his farm to show her the sheep. They seem happy and content.

“The landscape around her was still, as if full of promise, and it was hers. Even the swallows cruising in the air was hers, for they belonged to him, and he was hers.”

When it is discovered that there is a sheep thief about, Lise is ordered by her new husband to follow the path back home. She obeys, she says she likes to obey (I can’t tell how much of her thoughts are ironic).

She plans a little game of hiding for her husband as she walks back and walks quietly to a secluded spot where she runs into an unkempt, knife-wielding man. They have several unspoken meaningful moments. She offers him, her ring, he kicks it away, then leaves. Something has changed inside of Lise.

“The movement was definitive and unconditional. In this one motion, he did what she had begged him to do: he vanished and was gone. She was free.”

She doesn’t retrieve the ring and pretends not to know where it fell off. Perhaps the thief has stolen one more sheep.

“With this lost ring she had wedded herself to something. To what? To poverty, persecution, total loneliness. To the sorrows and sinfulness of this earth.”

Notable Passage: “Their distant paradise had descended to earth and had proved, surprisingly, to be filled with the things of everyday life.”

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