#209 San Francisco- Amy Hempel

#209 San Francisco- Amy Hempel

Of all the authors I’ve read for this blog, and all the sizes, shapes, and forms of short stories highlighted here, Amy Hempel is the absolute best at the short vignette. Some of her stories, like this piece here is a quick two-page single stroke work of art. It can be read, and tossed off like it never happened, but there is meaning and emotion floating there, like a mint leaf in a cup of tea, subtle and lasting. Read, breath, close your eyes, and let it sink in.

The premise is simple, as San Francisco trembles, a mother dies, daughters squabble over her heirloom watch. But deeper underneath is what happens in those lives to get there, the implications of the watch, entitlements, recognition and true loss.

This won’t be on anybody’s list for greatest short stories because of what it is; a lingering, delicate thought. I read a Hempel story and it truly does linger with me all day. That is a rare talent. This is like the haiku of the short story world.

Rating: 9-8-10-7 Total= 34

#208 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities- Delmore Schwartz

#208 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities- Delmore Schwartz

The title is a homage to a W.B Yeats poem. The narrator is dreaming on the night before he turns twenty-one. He dreams of his mother and father before they were married.

The dream is of himself watching a movie of their courtship. It’s a quaint old black and white scene of meeting her father, taking a lovely trip to Coney Island and his father proposing marriage to his mother.

He gets progressively anxious as he watches the movie, shouting at the screen for them to stop. He knows the mistakes they will make and want to warn them, but he cannot, this is only a movie, it’s only a dream. He is anxious about making mistakes in his own life as he embarks on adulthood.

Notable Passage: “I am anonymous, and I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes to the movies, it is, as they say, a drug.”

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

#207 The Wheat from the Tares- Jabari Asim

#207 The Wheat from the Tares- Jabari Asim

Rose is Pristine’s next door neighbor. She has had a rough winter, sick and friendless. Her husband is abusive, physically and verbally and doesn’t like her going outside the house for any reason. The whole neighborhood knows about the situation, but what does one do? Her meekness aside, her one defining trait is her singing voice.

“Roses voice was an extraordinary thing, an effortless blend of longing, power, and love.”

“When the feeling overtook Rose, she’s shuck her customary shyness, stand an grab the porch railings. Her voice would pour out over the garage roofs, garbage cans, and backyards of Sullivan Avenue. Pristine would later swear that the entire neighborhood grew quiet to give Rose center stage. Gone was the sound of trucks and buses belching exhaust…Into thin air went the leonine roars of the Dobermans standing guard behind Hudson’s Package Liquor. Everything that had made the world teeming with noise just moments before vanished.”

“She sang only when her husband wasn’t home. The silence that followed his arrival was not a kind that encouraged peaceful contemplation; it was troubling and electric, like calm before a storm.”

There are few secrets in communities that live so close, pretenses maybe, but there is nowhere to hide, even if you sit inside and close the blinds. People will see, and people will talk. Friends are good to have if you are just willing to come outside.

Rating: 8-7-8-8 Total=31

#206 The Blush- Elizabeth Taylor

#206 The Blush- Elizabeth Taylor

Lying, deceit, domestic squabbles, and class warfare, this story had a little of each but not enough of any to make it all that interesting. The mistress of the house is a judgmental gossip. Here she begins by making it sound as though she supports and defends her house maid, but then by the end she turns her harsh eyes on the ugliness of the lower class:

“She did not deliberately mislead him, but she took advantage of his indifference. Her relationship with Mrs. Lacey and the intimacy of their conversations in the kitchen he would not have approved, and the sight of those calloused feet with their chipped nail varnish and yellowing heels would have sickened him.”

But then we have nothing to actually celebrate in the servant either. She’s a drunk, absentee mother, and lying, cheating spouse. So, without a true protagonist, there was little to hold onto.

Rating: 7-5-5-4 Total= 21

#205 Year of the Spaghetti- Haruki Murakami

#205 Year of the Spaghetti- Haruki Murakami

You could name this one 'Zen and the Art of Cooking Spaghetti'. “Thinking about spaghetti that boils eternally but is never done is a sad, sad thing.”

Or you could name it 'Apocalypse Pasta' or something like that. “Spring, summer, and, fall, I cooked away, as if cooking spaghetti were an act of revenge. Like a lonely, jilted girl throwing old love letters into the fireplace, I tossed one handful of spaghetti after another into the pot.”

This man has two things going on in his world: he’s going crazy, and he loves spaghetti, although I don’t think one thing necessarily led to the other. He sits in his room on the floor where the sun warms the floor, and thinks people are outside his door, people like William Holden and himself from a few years ago.

“Not one of these people, though, actually ventured into my apartment. They hovered just outside the door, without knocking, like figments of memory, and then slipped away.”

He can no longer handle the everyday responsibilities of life, so he cooks spaghetti, alone, in a pot big enough to hold a German shepherd.

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