A Work in Progress

Jennifer Egan and Manhattan Beach

I had the very good fortune to hear Jennifer Egan speak last night.  She is such an engaging and articulate speaker, I think the sold out crowd in attendance was as riveted as I was by her talk.  I'm not surprised, however, as I am thoroughly enjoying her most recent novel, Manhattan Beach, with which I am about halfway finished.  I had hoped to have it read before her talk, but now I don't mind as hearing the backstory will only enhance the second half of my reading.

I wish I had taken notes as she covered quite a lot of ground and shared images from her research and experiences writing the story.  Interestingly, when writing her first draft is composed by longhand and she mostly just wants to get the story out in whatever form it takes and however poorly she thinks it is written.  It is not until she begins her revisions that she begins to shape it and make the story flow.

She spent five years doing research for this book, but she was also working on other projects.  She is a New Yorker and did extensive research on the WWII period.  I think it was, at least in part, going through September 11, where living in the city felt like they had gone through a war that she began to wonder what it really was like for New Yorkers living through the fear of being invaded and bombed.  Also, though she has been living in the city for a long time she had not thought much about it being a port city, but of course that was the reason it was built where it is now.  She spent a lot of time looking at the buildings that made up the Naval Shipyard and spent time looking a photographs of the era and researching the Brooklyn Historical Society for pertinent information.  It must, at the time, have felt like a small city within the city.  There were thousands working for the war effort and no small number were women.

She speaks so eloquently and with a passion for her work and the importance of literature.  It was a pleasure to hear her speak and see how she engaged with the audiences answering questions thoughtfully and with great detail.  Apparently she is now at work on a new book, which is related to A Visit from the Goon Squad.  I am not sure it is meant to be a sequel (I have yet to read it), but she referred to that previous book.  I guess I know which book I will be picking up very soon.

I really enjoy these type of lecture series and wish there were more of them here.  I know there is something in the works for the fall, though now I don't recall who the speaker is, but in February of next year Alan Lightman will be here, so that is tucked away in the back of my mind.  For now, though, I will be spending time with Anna in the Naval Shipyard, where she is learning to dive as part of her war work.

Teaser Tuesday: Some Luck

This is how my reading whims work.  Sometimes something totally random, like a visit to a historical home, will set me off.  So yesterday when I was immersing myself into Nebraska history ca. late-1800s, taking in the architecture, the clothing, the furniture and even the modes of transportation I was building in my mind a story.  This one based on a real family that I can technically read about, but I almost always tend towards fiction.  So, it is a story I want.  One about an American family living at the beginning of the last century and if they happen to be here in the Midwest all the better.  

Funny you should mention it.  Purely by chance (or are there ever really chances in reading--maybe all my paths were leading here anyway?), I had just picked up Jane Smiley's Some Luck, which is the first volume in her Last Hundred Years trilogy. I have a confession to make.  I have never read anything by Jane Smiley.  I own books by her, and I think at one point I even tried to read Greenlanders (but failed, though I still have my copy).  But the time seems right, I am in the mood, and I plan on making a concerted effort to stick with the story and read it through (all hundred years, too).

The first book, Some Luck, begins in 1921 and is set on a farm in Iowa.  Close enough in time and certainly in locale.  This is a family of immigrants, at least a generation or two back.  Walter and Rosanna Langdon are a young couple with a baby boy, Frank.  Interestingly some of the story is told from Frank's perspective--his three year old perspective.  I wasn't entirely sure about this, and I think the story will shift to different perspectives.  I am only a couple of years into the century so there is lots in store for me, but I like the idea of this family's life, these lives, stretching out in front of me.  One war is over and another is somewhere on the horizon.  There is a family tree at the start of the book that reaches down into the lives of Walter and Rosanna's great grandchildren. 

This is a big, chunky book, but not so epic in its reach (at least from my reading so far) that it will be unwieldy.  This is and has been my year of tackling authors I 'mean to read' so I am excited about this journey.  A little teaser to set the tone and give you a picture in your mind of Rosanna and Walter:

"When you looked at Rosanna, you didn't think she'd been raised on a farm, had farms all through her background, even in Germany.  She was blonde, but slender and perfectly graceful, and when she praised the baby's beauty, she did so without seeming to realize that t reproduced her own.  Walter had seen that in some lines of cows--the calves looked stamped out by a cookie cutter, and even the way they turned their heads or kicked their hind feet into the air was the same as last year's calf and the one before that.  Walter's family was a mix, as his grandfather would say--Langdons, but with some of those long-headed ones from the Borders, with red hair, and then some of those dark-haired Irish from Wexford that were supposed to trace back to the sailors from the Spanish Armada, and some tall balding ones who always needed glasses from around Glasgow.  His mother's side leavened all these with her Wessex ancestry ('The Chicks and the Cheeks,' she'd always said), but you couldn't tell that Walter's relatives were related the way you could with Rosanna's.  Even so, all of Rosanna's aunts and uncles and cousins, the Augsburgers and the Vogels, Rosanna was the most beautiful, and that was why he had set his heart upon winning her when he came home from the war and finally really noticed her, though she went to the Catholic Church.  The Langdon and Vogel farms weren't far apart--no more than a mile--but even in a small town like Denby, no one had much to say to folks who went to other churches and, it must be said, spoke different languages at home."

Doesn't that description just scream for the reader to slow down in order to take it all in.  Such detail.  This seems like book that could easily be read again and you discover something new.

Now if I could just get back to Alan Hollinghurst.  And if I could drum up the courage for Elena Ferrante.  Two (of many) of my authors and books I keep meaning to read . . .

I did read some very good short stories over the weekend, by the way, which I plan on sharing tomorrow.

Words and Their Meanings: Spinster

I'm afraid my regularly scheduled short story post is being preempted.  After a busy week it's been a busy weekend and not much reading has been done (not even as much as I dare).  I am in the middle of a New Yorker story (very interesting one by Jess Row) though a little on the long side.  The next Stefan Zweig story is also quite log, so I am not sure I'll read it next or skip around a bit in my collection.  This is how it starts:

"Grey mist lay low over Antwerp, enveloping the city entirely in its dense and heavy swathes.  The Shapes of houses were blurred in the fine, smoky vapour, and you could not see to the end of the street, but overhead there was ringing in the air, a deep sound like the word of God coming out of the clouds, for the muted voices of bells in the church towers, calling their congregations to prayer, had also merged in the great, wild sea of mist filling the cit and the countryside around, and encompassing the restless, softly roaring waters of the sea far away in the harbour."

Shall I keep reading?  Hmm.  I hope to catch up on my short story post later in the week.  In the meantime I have been reading Stefan Zweig's novella, Fear, which I am finding very good going.  Mostly though, I have been working on this week's class reading, Ron Leshem's Beaufort which reminds me a lot of Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried, which is one of my favorite books.  The Leshem book is so far, very good as well.  

I do, however, have something of interest to share in the meantime that I came across in my reading this past week.  I already mentioned how much I am liking Jill Lepore's Book of Ages, and both of the Franklins.  What I love about reading nonfiction (one of the things anyway), is all the things I learn about people and places and history.  Things I sort of knew (sometimes didn't know at all, too) peripherally.  Lately I have been coming across words that are long established in my own vocabulary but that I have never thought of in terms of where they came from.  Their own histories and hidden meanings.  I keep meaning to jot them down and make note of them, but mostly I file the information away somewhere to retrieve at a later date.

Today, though, I make note of the word here.  I've always known the word spinster means an unmarried woman--normally of an age where she is not so very marriageable anymore.  Have you ever wondered where the word got its meaning?  In one of Benjamin Franklin's letters to his sister, written when he had just turned twenty-one he told her he wished to send her a gift.  "I had almost determined on a tea table but when I considered the character of a good housewife was far preferable to to that of being only a pretty gentlewoman, I concluded to send you a spinning wheel."  According to Lepore this was a joke.  A tea table would have been a huge extravagance, the sort only posh ladies would have.  But he wasn't about to send her a spinning wheel either.

"Whether a girl warranted a gift of a tea table wor a spinning wheel was a measure of her virtue.  The table was a symbol of female vanity, the spinning wheel a symbol of female chastity.  'Who can find a vertuous woman?' asks Proverbs 31.  'She layeth her handes to the spindle, and her handes hold the distaffe'."

At the time Benjamin was living in London and leading a somewhat decadent lifestyle.  Did you know that the "wanton tea table" and the "virginal spinning wheel' were the subject of early eighteenth-century satire?  In a 1702 poem by Edward Ward the city madam is:

. . . ripe to be undone
Loosing at last, so little in her Care,
Her Virgin Treasure on a Founder'd Chair

(Because she does not spin)

. . . bred,
Scarce knowing Hemp from Flax, or Yarn from Thread

While the virtuous country maid spends all her time spinning:

Her Needle, Bobbins, Knitting Pins, or Reel,
Some new Device, or the old Spinning Wheel
Are still Employ'd, and with Content Caress'd

So, a woman who spins is a virtuous woman, a virgin.  A Spinster!  I never thought of a woman who was an 'old maid', an unmarried woman as being one who spent her time in such a virtuous activity as opposed to those adventurous ladies with decadent tea tables and their intrigues!

Interesting, I thought!  Something new tomorrow, however.  (Though this is not the end of my fascination with the world Lepore is writing about I suspect).  And short stories later in the week. 

"I Read as much as I Dare."

"I Read as much as I Dare" confided Jane Franklin to her brother Benjamin.  I've been eyeing Jill Lepore's Book of Ages: The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin since it came out in hardcover.  A while back I invested in the paperback as it seemed like something worth owning and now that I have started reading I have confirmed that that is indeed the case.  It is not terribly long, but I will be reading it slowly--both by choice and not.  It is filled with all sorts of interesting bits about Jenny and Benny and life in America ca.1700 as well as (and maybe most importantly) all kinds of wonderful bookishness.  So I want to savor what I am reading as it is so enjoyable.  But like everything else in life at the moment, I seem to be reading really slowly.  I might just be able to squeeze in this last (of so very few this year) nonfiction read before the year ends.

Not much is known (or rather remains) about Jane Franklin, Benjamin's youngest and most beloved sibling.  But the fact that she was the sister of such a famous man means there is a little that remains about her life.  Like so many others who came before she would have fallen into obscurity for sure otherwise.  She led a mostly typical life for a woman of her age and station but she was an inveterate reader like her brother.  The book, it seems is as much about Benjamin as Jane but it seems fitting considering how close the two were.

It would seem that Jane Franklin was named after another famous Jane, the Nine Days' Queen Lady Jane Grey.  How fitting that Lady Jane was such a woman of learning.  Grandniece of Henry VIII she could read the Old Testament in Hebrew and Plato in Greek.  When asked by her tutor how she came to such deep knowledge of things?

"I will tell you," she obliged: when she was in the company of other than books, she said, "I thinke my selfe in hell."

Jane Franklin was destined for a far less illustrious (and surely safer) life than Lady Jane.  She never left home,  never learned to spell, became a wife and other, and a widow.  She kept up a lifelong correspondence with her (very progressive) brother Benjamin.  While he went off to do grand things, see the world and make history, she lived the life that was expected of her.

"While Benny was improving his writing by arguing about the education of girls (you'll be pleased to note he was all for it!), Jenny was at home, boiling soap and stitching.  Quietly, with what time she could find, she did more.  She once confided to her brother, "I Read as much as I Dare."

I like her.  And I like Benjamin, too, and look forward to learning more about both.  Lepore compares and contrasts sister to brother but also the pair or Jane alone to others, women, of that same era.  Like Jane Colman, a contemporary with a much different life.  Jane Colman was a minister's daughter who had the great good fortune of being allowed to not only learn and study but was taught and tested by her father.  She knew her letters before she was two and could recite psalms before she was five, could write at six, composed hymns by age eleven and soon thereafter was writing poetry and essays.  Jane Franklin's education was nothing like that of Jane Colman's, but for all that she was not unhappy.

I want to know more about Jane Franklin and so onwards in the book, but these first few introductory chapters were a fine enough teaser for me.  Just the sort of nonfiction I love to read--interesting and engaging.  I'll never remember all the details (what mostly slows me down in reading nonfiction--trying to absorb it all), so I might share those bits most  interesting to me along the way. 

She might not have led the life of adventure like that of her brother Benjamin, but I bet it was in its own way just as interesting!

Short Story Sunday: The Courting of Sister Wisby

I've been very slowly reading Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of Pointed Firs, which is a novella-length collection of interlinked short stories.  It has been an easy book to pick up and set down (and maybe too easy, as it has allowed me to set it down more often than not).  The stories are not exactly short stories per se.  They read more like sketches of a time and place.  Like last week's A New England Nun there is a very strong regional flavor to the story.

"The Courting of Sister Wisby" is this week's selection from Fifty Great American Short Stories.  I had not yet come to it in The Country of Pointed Firs, but I have no worries of it being pulled out of context.  It stands quite nicely all on its own.  The story is once again a story within a story--or rather Orne Jewett takes her time getting to the real subject of the story. 

As in all the sketches in the novella, this story is told by an unnamed narrator, whose voice I like very much.  The collection was originally published in 1896, and while the setting is distinctly of another time, there is a feeling, too, of everything happening in the now.  Or maybe I just was amused by some of the things she reflected upon.  I've noticed that all the sketches have a very strong element of the natural world to them.  Of course the setting is the coast of Maine and I can easily imagine weather beaten rocky outcroppings in my mind as I read.

"This was one of those perfect New England days in late summer, when the spirit of Autumn takes a first stealthy flight, like a spy, through the ripening countryside, and, with feigned sympathy for those who droop with August heat, puts her cool cloak of bracing air about lead and flower and human shoulders."

I can feel it almost myself.  I am ready for that cool, bracing air (just cool mind you, not cold).  The  narrator, who is a writer, decides to have a 'outdoor holiday' for the afternoon.  She is a woman after my own heart.

". . . but I saw that somebody else had come first to the rendezvous; there was a brown gingham cape-bonnet and a sprigged shoulder-shawl bobbing up and down, a little way off among the junipers.  I had taken such an uncommon pleasure in being alone that I felt a sense of disappointment; then a warm glow of pleasant satisfaction rebuked my selfishness.  This could be no one but dear old Mrs. Goodsoe, the friend of my childhood and fond dependence of my maturer years.  I had no seen her for many weeks, but here she was, out on one of her famous campaigns for herbs, or perhaps just returning from a blueberrying expedition."

I am more apt to be like the narrator rather than Mrs. Goodsoe as I am certainly no healer, but I like both women for their independence of spirit and mind.  The two chat about this and that and pass a happy afternoon, so it takes a while for the story to come into sharper focus.  Mrs. Goodsoe begins to tell about Mis' Deacon Brimblecom, or Lizy Wisby.  It takes several promptings (as she tends to digress . . . ) to get Mrs. Goodsoe to tell the story of Lizy and her 'strange' marriage.

"The way he came a-courtin' o' Sister Wisby was this: she went a-courtin' o'him."

And Mrs. Goodsoe goes on to tell about the courting of the pair which is quirky and has a folksy slant to it.  What must readers have thought of so many strong, opinionated woman at that time (though the narrator talks of being a 'modern woman' being a product of the times with those telegraph machines and cars!). 

I fear I am reading the novella in too disjointed a fashion and will have ot reread it again sometime and a bit more closely.

* * * * *

This week's (from the July 21 issue) New Yorker story is "Wagner in the Desert" by Greg Jackson, and it has one of the more 'seductive' opening paragraphs that I've come across.  It will certainly draw you in and make you want to read more.  I won't share it here (as you can read the story in full for yourself), but go take a peek at least and tell me what you think the story is about!

If we read to understand or to see the world in a different light or to even experience a world we wouldn't otherwise know, this one surely fits the bill on several counts.  Two couples spend a (hmm, do I really want to tell you all and spoil it for you)?  Okay (I will just give a teaser), two couples spend a weekend in Palm Springs--a weekend to remember as one of the pair are getting ready to take a big step in their lives and have something of a 'bucket-list' they want to work on before their lives become rather more staid.  I'm not quite sure what I think of the story, but only because my life has so little resemblance to any of the characters, though maybe that is the beauty of it.  I might otherwise shake my head, critical of their actions, but I could only sit back and watch and read in fascination.  And I  know somewhere in that wild weekend are a few of life's truths.

Next week: Maybe something by Edith Wharton--unless I need a little something different for a short break.  I have a few other story collections that might appreciate a little attention.

Short Story Sunday: A New England Nun

I sometimes think I read too many novels of suspense and thrills.  They ruin me for other stories with their tricky plot twists.  When a story is quiet and thoughtful and not much really happens I tend to stop and think that I missed something.  Surely there must be more, right?  That's what I was thinking this weekend when I read Mary Wilkins Freeman's "A New England Nun".  (I decided to stick with Fifty Great American Short Stories after all and am so glad I did).

Freeman straddles two centuries--she was born in Massachusetts in the mid-1800s and died in 1930.  Maybe because her story comes just before one by Sarah Orne Jewett in the collection I think of Freeman (who I am not at all familiar with) as a regionalist.  Is it just me or are so many 19th century American women writers considered regionalists?  (Even Willa Cather!).  Not that there is anything wrong with that in my book, but it seems to sort of pigeon-hole them and send them to a lower echelon of the literary sphere.  But I am digressing here. 

"A New England Nun" is indeed a quiet, thoughtful story where not much happens, and it left me wondering initially, but the more I think about it the more I like it.  It is very spot on when it comes to showing what life is like, which is mostly quiet and thoughtful and in actuality that is a much better thing than the twists and turns crime novels take a reader on.  I think I much prefer normal regular routine (most of the time anyway) to pure, adrenalin-drenched drama.  At least in real life.  And maybe I like the story so much because my own life is not such a stretch from that which Louisa Ellis lives in the story.

Louisa Ellis's life is very routine, maybe even a little staid.  She has her home just as she likes it--each thing in its place and a place for everything. 

"Louisa was slow and still in her movements; it took her a long time to prepare her tea; but when ready it was set forth with as much grace as if she had been a veritable guest to her own self.  The little square table stood exactly in the center of the kitchen, and was covered with a starched linen cloth whose border pattern of flowers glistened.  Louisa had a damask napkin on her tea-tray, where were arranged a cut-glass tumbler full of teaspoons, a silver cream-pitcher, a china sugar-bowl, and one pink china cup and saucer.  She used china every day--something which none of her neighbors did."

Everything she does seems measured and thoughtful.  Some might even say a little boring verging a little on the eccentric.  She has an old dog that she keeps tied to her house and one day she hears a voice calling out to him.  It's a voice from someone who was near and dear to her and who she has not seen in many, many years.  Fifteen to be exact.  Joe Dagget arrives and the two share pleasantries about his mother and the things that have kept him busy on his farm.

He seems a nice enough man, though he fills the space of her cottage and fingers her things and shifts them about unconsciously in ways that bother her just a little.  She straightens the books he touches and remarks to herself on the dust he has tracked inside the house which she will now need to clean up.  It's been a long time since they have seen each other and the two seem a little restrained, so it is surprising to learn that the pair are engaged.  As it turns out Joe set off for Australia to earn his fortune just after the two were betrothed.  He hoped it would not be for long, but in order to marry and live a comfortable and respectable life, he needed to earn money and save it--however long it took.  Joe worked and Louisa waited.

And she waited. And she became comfortable in her life and the way she kept her home and prepared her meals and the china on which she ate.  Joe is an honest, hardworking man who when he sets out to complete a task does it well, no matter how long it takes and is serious about his responsibilities.  So when one night she is out walking Louisa overhears him talking to another woman from the village with whom has has obvious fallen in love with and that emotion is obviously reciprocated, it does not pain her to let him go.  As a matter of fact she is surely secretly happy that they have both been released from their earlier commitment.  It's a relief for them both.

On the surface it seems a little sad and melancholic, doesn't it?  But I find it very poignant and even pleasing.  Is it a narrow life she leads?  Maybe, but maybe not considering the times (the story was published in 1891), and the fact that Louisa was living an independent life.  But it is a happy one, and likely far happier knowing her limitations and desires and how it is meaningless to be with someone you don't love in order to just not be alone.  I think the story says a lot about happiness and contentment and that solitariness and being alone is sometimes better than being with someone else just because it is expected of you.

I liked the story a lot.  So much more to think about despite nothing much happening.  Next week is Sarah Orne Jewett's "The Courting of Sister Wisby" which sounds interesting and perhaps a good story to compare with the Freeman. 

* * * * *

I'm a bit behind in my New Yorker short story reading but I hope to catch up this week.  I did manage to read Allegra Goodman's "Apple Cake" this weekend from the July 7/14 issue earlier this month (so only two issues behind now).  Feel free to read along if you like.  I love the Q&A with Goodman for the light it sheds on the story, and the subtle bit of humor I got out of it.  I have long wanted to read Goodman (I seem to have collected several of her novels . . .), so this was a nice quick taste (and no pun intended considering the title of the story) of her writing. 

This is another really excellent story which perfectly describes the death of a youngest (at 74) sister who so obviously isn't ready to die yet has lung cancer and is spending her last days at home in hospice care.  Her family is gathered around her and they are like any normal family you might imagine--meaning despite all best intentions of all parties involved there is still conflict.  Death is so inconvenient--both for the dying and especially for those waiting for death (well, the reverse actually especially for the dying).  If you are lucky you get to say goodbye.  In the case of Jeanne, who is on her deathbed, she gets to say goodbye numerous times as she tenaciously hangs on while everyone else thinks 'this is it' she's ready to go, and then she lives another day and another.  It's a well done story, serious yet with a light touch.  Must read more of her soon.

Short Story Sunday: The Two Faces

You've probably had this same experience.  You're reading a book, seeing the words, turning the pages and then think about what is going on and realize you have absorbed very little of what you've read.  Flip back and start over or skim and see if you pick up the thread.  It might be a case of a really difficult read, or it might be there are just too many other things going through your mind and not being able to take in the story.  In the case of this weekend's short story, I think it was a combination of the two.

I might need a little break from Fifty Great American Short Stories.  Then again the next three stories (finally) are by women writers, so maybe I'll press on next weekend.  But this weekend's story by Henry James, "The Two Faces", just didn't seep into my brain.  I blame it on the weather--the heat and humidity.  Normally I get lots of reading done while walking on my treadmill, but the unpleasant weather made me hot and cranky and sweaty and poor Henry James just could not compete.

Now normally this is a story that would be up my alley.  It's set in a British country house.  There's a party of people in attendance including a newly married couple, and a matron of Society who agrees to take the young woman under her wing, but some sort of social gaffe occurs.  I completely missed it.  To be honest I had to dig around online to find a little plot summary to get to the 'aahhh, so that's it' moment.  At least it sounds as though the twist of the story was never overtly described, so maybe I took in more than I thought.  In a nutshell--do you know the story of Dangerous Liaisons by Choderlos de Laclos?  You know the nasty business of a spurned lover and general wickedness trying to play games with a pair of young lovers?  While this is not quite the same, it turns of the same premise.  There was an accepted love affair going on but then the pair broke it off and one of the two decided to take it out on the other and when a new paramour discovers the nasty business decides maybe a possible attachment might be better avoided.  Well, more or less.

Now that I know what it's about, I think I might have to try it again.

* * * * *

But I did read another short story that was quite entertaining, easy to read and went at just about the right speed that I needed to deal with the heat.  I really do need to avoid the aisle that has books in it when buying groceries.  I had two in hand and put one back, so maybe I shouldn't feel too guilty.  I had never come across Grand Central: Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion edited by Kristin Hannah, but I was intrigued by the idea so had to have it.  These are original stories by ten authors which take as their inspiration one day in September in 1945 with Grand Central Station in New York featured somewhere in each story.

I've only read the first story so far, "Going Home" by Alyson Richman.  It's a story of two European immigrants who have been displaced by the war--far from their original homes and without their families.  Gregori is a young violinist who earns a bit of money by busking in the train station.  Liesel is a seamstress in NY but in Czechoslovakia had begun a career as a dancer.  Gregori sees her each day as she makes her way to work and tries to catch her attention with his music.

I think this would make a perfect beach read or book to have in hand while traveling.  I am not expecting to be thrown any curve balls with this collection, just nice, entertaining stories with a hint of romance.  And sometimes that's just what you need.  While I likely won't write about each of the stories (or perhaps in one or two posts only), I think I'll keep reading one or two stories a week.  By the way Alyson Richman's most recent novel is The Lost Wife set in WWII-era Prague.

* * * * *

I'm afraid I've run out of time this afternoon for my weekly New Yorker story, which is Allegra Goodman's "Apple Cake".  Hopefully I will get to it tonight, though it sounds like the subject matter is on the heavier side--the death of a 74-year-old woman.  Feel free to read along with me as it is one you can read online.  The Q&A with Goodman is here.  Another author I have long wanted to read.  I have at least two of her books on my shelves.  

Next week's short story?  Maybe something by Mary Wilkins Freeman.  Or maybe something else entirely.

The Damned Thing by Ambrose Bierce

The unknown in the natural world is a subject that authors seem to enjoy writing about.  Short story writers especially.  First there was Guy de Maupassant's The Horla (1887) which is my favorite of all these sorts of stories that I have read so far, and then there was Fitz-James O'Brien's What Was It? (1859).  Actually the O'Brien came first, but I read the Maupassant years ago so it has always set the bar high in my mind.  Then there is Edgar Allen Poe's Ms. Found in a Bottle (1833) with a seafaring slant and I am sure I have read a small handful of others that don't come immediately to mind.  Now I have Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing" to add to my growing collection of supernatural-ish/unexplainable short stories. 

Bierce is another writer I have not read before (that I can recall anyway, but I might have read one of his better known stories in school) and I don't know anything about him.  He was an editorialist, journalist, satiri9st, fabulist and wrote short stories.  He had a nickname of "Bitter Bierce" thanks to his sardonic view of human nature, which goes a long way to explaining the story I read.  He spent time in Omaha which was the starting point of a survey he did of military outposts of the Great Plains.  He disappeared in Mexico in 1914 during the Mexican Revolution when he was 71.  He seems to have led an interesting life. 

The story is divided into shorter segments with very tongue-in-cheek subtitles.  So, in "One does not always eat what is on the table" describes the brutalized body of woodsman Hugh Morgan.  Yes, he is laid out on his table, the center of attention and the main guest at a coroner's inquest.  The coroner is a man set apart as being more worldly than the others.  He sits with his nose in a book, which turns out to be the deceased's diary.  And the jury sits along the wall but close enough for them to reach out and touch the body.  William Harker, a friend of Hugh's, who had been visiting Morgan, is a writer and 'saw' what happened.  And the result is not pretty.

In "What may happen in a field of wild oats" Harker describes what you would never ever want to happen in a field of wild oats or anywhere else.  The two had been out looking for quail, so both had rifles in hand.  They came to this field and heard a rustling noise thinking perhaps they had disturbed a bear.  Neither was quite sure and when Harker asks "what is it", the reply is "this damned thing" which gives the impression Morgan had a run in with it some time earlier.  Morgan was visibly shaken and clearly in a state of fright. 

"Before I could get upon m feet and recover my gun, which seemed to have been struck from my hands, I heard Morgan crying out as if in mortal agony, and mingling with his cries were such savage sounds as one hears from fighting dogs.  Inexpressibly terrified, I struggled to my feet and looked in the direction of Morgan's retreat; and may Heaven in mercy spare me from another sight like that!"

In "A man though naked may be in rags", the coroner lifts the sheet from the body for the jury to view.  Well, needless to say, they wished he hadn't.  It was an unpleasant sight and it was obvious that the body had been brutally attacked.  When Harker explained what happened, which was more or less unexplainable, as there was literally nothing there in the field to see despite his friend's body being in such a state, the jury calls the death the result of an attack by mountain lion. 

In "An explanation from the tomb" the coroner notes the interesting things Morgan had to say, some of which might even have a certain scientific value.  Strange reactions his dog had to whatever unknown presence seemed to lurk about were noted, strange constellation formations in the night sky were observed and blackbirds in the trees that seemingly all take flight (or maybe that is fright!) at the same instant made Morgan fear that something was out there.  What was it?  Something indiscernible to the naked eye . . .  Something just outside the view of what we can see and smell but obviously something that can be sensed.  Something frightening.

"The Damned Thing" has been filmed before and I can imagine in the right hands it might indeed be quite scary. 

Next up is a story by Henry James, which should have a very different tone and flavor than the last few stories I've read.  I am looking forward to it.  And after the James, finally a story by a woman author--Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. 

* * * * *

This week's (rather, the June 30 issue) short story is "The Pink House" by Rebecca Curtis.  It is a ghost story and one of the quirkiest I have yet read.  It's certainly not a traditional haunting and not really scary but an interesting take on the genre.  The narrator is a young woman who moves from New York City to Syracuse and is told that the house she has rented is haunted.  Of course there would be no problem as long as the person inhabiting the space doesn't 'invite' the ghost in.  Unfortunately the narrator's annoyed father very tongue in cheek does so when she tells him she's found the ring of a dead man.  You'll have to read the story for yourself to find out what happens--it has a nice modern, and very liberal twist to it. 

The narrator's voice is sort of in your face and the story she tells is to a group of writers (the framing device) who are on a sabbatical-like vacation (working vacation?  what do you call these set-ups anyway where you get to go away somewhere cool and practice your art for six weeks . . . ).  The are strangers and having a meal together complete with spirits (of the liquid sort) which always loosens the tongue.  She prefaces her story by telling them it's on the tawdry side.  Definitely this is one of the more unusual stories I've read (then again, the one with the brother-sister who are being held captive by two angry dogs was a little on the unusual side, too).  You can read The New Yorker's Q&A with her here.

Short Story Sunday: Outcasts of Poker Flat

Perhaps (Francis) Bret Harte (1836-1902) is my way back into my 'Western Lit' reading that I set out to do so enthusiastically earlier this year.  Bret Harte this weekend and Laura Ingalls Wilder next weekend and maybe a little Larry McMurtry along the way, too.  I thought I had read "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" before, but if I did it has faded so far from memory that on reading the story I had no recollection of it.  Harte is apparently best known for his accounts of pioneering life in California.  Gaging by the number of schools named after him he certainly made an impression in American cultural life.  The story has been filmed a number of times--in the 1930s and early 1950s, though neither adaptation seems currently available.  I read a little about Harte and whatever his literary legacy, it sounds as though he is known for creating a certain "type" when it comes to stock Western characters.

I don't think I feel the draw of reading more of Harte's work, but "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" was an interesting read--a study in irony perhaps, a morality tale of sorts with the twist being that it's the characters of questionable or low morals who end up the heroes and those who are the town's upstanding citizens revealed to be the hypocrites. 

Maybe it's thanks to Mr. John Oakhurst's success at cards and the fact that he lightened the wallets of several prominent citizens by a hefty amount of coin that he was shown the way out of town (never to be allowed to return and lucky he didn't end up at the end of a noose hanging from one of the town's taller trees). 

"A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons.  This was done permanently in regard of two men who were then hanging from the boughs of a sycamore in the gulch, and temporarily in the banishment of certain other objectionable characters.  I regret to say that some of these were ladies.  It is but due to the sex, however, to state that their impropriety was professional, and it was only in such easily established standards of evil that Poker Flat ventured to sit in judgment."

Whatever their own sins, these prominent men have no qualms about throwing stones, or in this case throwing people out of town.  Along with the gambler Oakhurst the expatriated party consists of a young woman familiarly known as "The Duchess", another with the infelicitous title of "Mother Shipton" (infelicitous since she is the mother of a band of prostitutes) and a drunkard and general ne'er do well called "Uncle Billy".  The group is escorted out of town and told never to return. 

Maybe had they continued directly to their destination (only a day or so's journey away) and not taken a break on the road, only to get caught in a snowstorm, their ending might have not been so tragic.  Do you want to know what happens?  Read on (and if not, skip the next two paragraphs please).

The group is joined by a young man named Tom Simson but known as "the Innocent" and his even younger fiancé, Piney.  Oakhurst and Simson had a run in before.  The boy lost all his money in a card game, but being the man Oakhurst is, he took the boy aside, told him never to gamble again and gave his losses back.  And forever after Tom looks on Oakhurst as the most admirable man he's ever met.  The group finds temporary shelter in a small cabin with enough provisions to last a little over a week.  But luck is not on their side, as Uncle Billy absconds in the night with their horses and mules.  Limited supplies, a ferocious snowstorm and no animals to help them to their destination.  You can probably imagine what is going to happen.

The group spends days in the cabin before Tom decides he will set out for help and fashions a set of snow shoes to wade through the snow.  Oakhurst decides to accompany him part of the way.  Mother Shipton, after hiding away her portion of the food to give to young Piney has slipped away peacefully in the night having starved herself.  As the days merge together and no one comes for them The Duchess and Piney know they are all alone and have only each other to pass away their final hours.  When finally a party of townspeople finds the outcasts, The Duchess and Piney are in a final embrace--impossible to tell which is the virgin and which the fallen woman.  And Oakhurst?  I had imagined a better end for him.  He has left the two of clubs (not being a card player . . . significance of this one, anyone?) tacked to a tree noting the streak of bad luck that has struck the gambler.  Has his luck truly run out or as another reader has interpreted his action--decided that he can no longer live by Fate?

I wonder what the movie version of the story is like.  And I wonder what the Law of Poker Flat made of all this?   All rather sparingly and quickly described, but I never quite felt as though I connected with anyone in the story.  I can certainly see, however, how nicely this would start a discussion in a classroom setting.

Next week a story by Ambrose Bierce.

* * * * *

Didn't I just read a 'dog story' in the New Yorker?  It says something about the author and the story that the Q&A about Maile Meloy's "Madame Lazarus" garnered not just one but (at the moment I am reading it) six comments.  Most often there is not a single comment or maybe just one.  If the dogs in the last story I read were threatening, Cordelia is something else entirely.  It is probably because so many people can sympathize with the owners of Cordelia that the story seemed to resonate so.  This is an intriguing story for a number of reasons, not least as it is an interesting way into a character's personality by how they act and react to a pet that comes into their life unplanned and unasked for.

While (and I hate to admit this) I felt sort of 'meh' about the Harte story, I have to say I loved Maile Meloy's "Madame Lazarus".  I loved how she used the gift of a small dog by an Englishman to his older French lover as an "in" to the Frenchman's life--his past and his present, his emotions--all without sentimentality, so matter-of-factly presented yet offering the reader a chance to empathize.  It's a beautifully told story (one of my favorites of the New Yorker this year, I think) and she does it in so few pages.  With short stories every word, every paragraph must count and they do in Meloy's story.  

Meloy is not only a short story writer but she has also written novels, her first was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2005.  Yet another, 'how did I miss this author' find for me.  Yes, I'm going to look for more of her work. 

Short Story Sunday: Mark Twain's Luck

I've not read enough by Mark Twain to be any sort of a judge but I get the feeling that there is always more to what he wrote than what you see on the surface.  Maybe the story is meant tongue in cheek or as a satire or is told with irony.  Maybe if I knew more about him personally I could gage better, but then maybe it really doesn't matter at all.  All that does matter is what is printed on the page, what I bring to the story and how it affects me upon reading it.

The story in question is "Luck" from Fifty Great American Short Stories, which I am back to reading again.  It was originally published in Harper's Magazine in 1891and then later in a collection that also contained the novella I read last year, The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg.  It is one of the shorter stories in the collection and you can read it online here should you have the desire to do so.  I did a little digging around to see what others had to say about the story and came up with a different 'interpretation' than the more obvious one I came away with.

At the start there is a footnote telling the reader that "this is not a fancy sketch.  I got it from a clergyman who was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its truth."  An unnamed narrator is telling the story, which was told to him by a man of strict veracity and good judgment.  The story he tells is about a celebrated military man who has 'made his name' on the battlefields of the Crimean War and who is in attendance at a banquet in London.  Real names have been withheld (the narrator refers to him as Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, Y.C., K.C.B., etc, etc, etc), but no doubt he is likely to be known to all.  (And if we don't know him, we all know someone like him).

"It was food and drink to me to look and look, at that demi-god; scanning, searching, noting: the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his countenance; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over him; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness--unconsciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship welling out of the breasts of those people and flowing towards him."

Lord Arthur's reputation precedes him.  Every undertaking, every decision, every battle he takes part in is golden.  He can do no wrong.  You know the sort of man who is simply touched with luck no matter what the circumstances?  The thing is every one of these undertakings, these battles and decisions begin quite contrary.  This hero is no hero--the reverend calls him a fool!  He himself was an instructor at the military academy at Woolwich where he taught young Scoresby.  He literally got by by the skin of his teeth and it's almost spoofish to think of the man's ineptness and how he managed to know nothing and do nothing well at all yet would not only pass but do so in a way that made him appear as though he was top of the class. 

The worst is when he was leading a regiment of men in the Crimean War and accidentally turned the wrong way (not knowing the difference between left foot and right!) and set his troops in the way of the Russians.  Lots and lots of Russians.  It was with disbelief that they saw these British soldiers marching in (bungling in must be more like it).  Surely so few men would never try something so bold as to attack so many men, thus there must be an army of British soldiers behind them.  Instead they  turned tail and ran.

As I was reading I could only think of this tale as being of the "Emperor's new Clothes" ilk.  Scoresby is unfit and foolish and not worthy of the accolades he as received.  Was there someone Twain had in mind when he was writing this story.  Some famous man who was in this position without having actually earned the respect he receives?  But there is another way to 'read' the story, and I think I like it almost more.  Not to be contrary, but it's always good to question those telling tales.  It's always good to question and be a little critical.  What exactly is the Reverend's motivation anyway?  And shouldn't a clergyman be more christian and charitable (ow well, then again we're all human, but . . .).  Maybe it is jealousy that is fueling the telling of (downright negative) tales.  Certainly something to think about.  And isn't that always the beauty of a well written and thoughtful short story?  Some little kernel of truth at heart and then an interpretation best left up to the reader!

Next week is Francis Bret Harte's "The Outcast of Poker Flat" (which I have a vague recollection of having read in high school).

* * * * *

I am beginning to fall behind in my New Yorker reading.  (Good thing that a long weekend is just around the corner--and so looking forward to it am I that I am almost counting the days.  The June 2 issue has a most interesting story, which I will tell you about it in a moment.  The June 9 & 16 is a double issue chock full of longer and shorter stories what I hope to get to this coming week, and already queued is the June 23rd issue with a story by a new to me author, Maile Maloy, an American woman writer--yay.  I'm always happy to see more women fiction writers in the pages of the New Yorker (and elsewhere, of course).

This week's story, however, is by Thomas Pierce.  Tell me, what do you think a story called "Ba Baboon" is about?  I bet you won't guess.  You're in luck, though.  You can read the story here, and see the accompanying illustration, which might just give you a hint or two to the content of the story.  (Have I mentioned before how I always think of short stories as being like a box of chocolates?  You never know what you're going to get.  It might be a delicious butter-cream or my least favorite that has coconut in the middle).  "Ba Baboon" is definitely a vanilla butter-cream, which is always a nice surprise when at the outset I could only think oh no, coconut.

I'm not going to tell you much about the story as the telling and unravelling is all the fun.  But let me set the scene and hopefully you'll be tempted to click the link and read it for yourself.  There are two people in one of those walk in pantries.  They are brother and sister, Brooks and Mary.  It's small and coffin-like and they are surrounded by cans of food.  Someone else's food and someone else's pantry.   Why are they there?  To make it all more interesting Brooks has suffered an accident to the brain, which has changed him, changed his personality and memories.  It's all pretty curious really, and quirky sounding but it works. 

I always like reading the Q&A that the New Yorker does with the author (you can read it here).  One of the things Pierce wanted to explore in this story is "what makes us what we are?"  The impetus for the story was an accident his grandfather had which also subtly changed him, making Pierce wonder which was the true man.  Was the true self before the accident or after?  Yet again, another story that raises interesting and provoking questions.  One of the reasons I love reading.

Something to look forward to--Thomas Pierce has a collection of stories due out early next year, Hall of Small Mammals: Stories.