#372 Better Latitude- Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

#372 Better Latitude- Antonio Ruiz-Camacho

A single mother is raising her child and trying to make sense of his father’s disappearance. The whole story is written like a letter that will never be sent. Laureano, used to his father’s sparse company, only believes his father has taken a long trip and will soon come back. His mother knows better, although she herself is in some denial:

“I realized you had a capacity for disposing of people like they were ziplock bags, but I considered this trait of yours the same way I did tragedy or bad luck, only affecting other people, never myself.”

There is something both noble and tragic about this delusional mother, hanging on to any thread of hope, her son in a state of suspended emotional development. The end will not be good, no matter how hard she works as a mother, something is missing. Maybe it’s not just his father, maybe the missing truth is more damaging.

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

#371 The Purple Hat- Eudora Welty

#371 The Purple Hat- Eudora Welty

It’s a rainy day in New Orleans, men sit in a dark bar:

“Beyond the open door the rain fell, the heavy color of the sea, in air where sunlight was still suspended. Its watery reflection lighted the room, as a room might have lighted a mousehole.”

As the slow scene unfolds, a fat man tells a story about the woman in a purple hat. Everyday at five o’clock she can be seen at the Palace of Pleasure, a gambling hall. There she meets a young man and stays till midnight—this has happened everyday for the last thirty years.

The fat man tells his story as the bartender dismally looks on. She is a ghost, the fat man believes, as he himself has seen her murdered twice! When the clock strikes five, a young man listening at the end of the bar takes up and leaves—probably to go search for the lady in the purple hat. “New Orleans…is the birthplace of ready-made victims.”

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

#370 Junius Dogman and the Mischief- David Dante Troutt

#370 Junius Dogman and the Mischief- David Dante Troutt

Junius once got locked up for four years for punching a white man that just severed his finger with a shovel. Image what would happen to him when he killed a white cop? He managed to avoid the death penalty by claiming an insanity plea, but he still got life in prison.

He was certain he was square with God, and was going to heaven--“I didn’t bother tryin to bring God into it, because I figure he knew about it already.”—but he still had the rest of his time of earth to worry about. You know life is bad when you have to think, before answering this question:

“What’s worse, life or death?”

Notable Passage: “Honor is tricky. That’s why so few men really have it. Honor brings imposters to make you think it’s honor, but maybe it’s just your pride. I’d take one man with honor over one proud-ass army any day.”

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

#369 Orange- Neil Gaiman

#369 Orange- Neil Gaiman

“The way a story is told is as important as the story being told,” Gaiman said in the introduction to this piece. This is written as a questionnaire, where we only see the respondent’s answers, only to guess at the questions. It’s subtitled: “Third Subject’s Responses to Investigator’s Written Questionnaire.”

Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsey, a Scottish woman recounts a kind of absurd story about her sister. Think of the movie “The Mask” with Jim Carey. He finds a mask that, when worn, brings out your personality traits and magnifies them to an absurd level. OK, now picture that with a vein teenaged girl that likes to wear too much fake orange tanning cream.

Unlike the Bill Self Story from a few days ago about the car manual, this one was both clever, and laugh-out-loud funny. I’m sure there is satire here about consumerism and vanity, but it’s juts a entertaining story.

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

#368 Silk & Silk- Jerome Charyn

#368 Silk & Silk- Jerome Charyn

Marla was the daughter of Mortimer Silk, a rich real-estate man from the Bronx. She was smart, independent, and after graduating from Columbia Law, joined her fathers firm. “Silks defend Silks.”

Mortimer was a corrupt, selfish, tough-nosed, philandering, criminal, with loose morals. Like Father, like Daughter.

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

#367 Revenant- Margaret Atwood

#367 Revenant- Margaret Atwood

Gavin is a poet, coming of age during the sixties. Now in his old age, he lives in Florida with his third wife, thirty-years his junior. He struggles with vitality, in all forms:

“How to describe the deliciousness of ice cream when you can lo longer taste it.”

He is drying up, as a poet, as a lover, as a man. What he has left is his legacy, which he has ceded somewhat unwittingly to his wife. She controls his papers, his house, his correspondence. She has scheduled an interview with a grad student to talk about his work. Only the interview ends up being about his first love, Constance, the world famous fantasy author (whom we saw in the first story of this collection).

He is angry, hurt, confused and betrayed by this onslaught of memory: “To show anger would be to reveal his soft underbelly, to pile more humiliation upon the primary humiliation.”

But instead of keeping his composure, he gets sucked into a place he wished to keep to himself: “It’s like being drawn into a time tunnel, the centrifugal force is irresistible.”

The world sees Gavin in a public way. They study him, discuss his ex-girlfriends, and now even read back to him private letters he wrote when he was younger. He wanted to keep some things for himself.

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32