A Work in Progress

Short Story Sunday: Until Such Times

In my reading history I'm afraid I have a failed attempt at tackling one of Scottish author, Jessie Kesson's novels.  I don't recall now why I set Another Time, Another Place aside (I saw part of the film that was adapted from the book which is what prompted me to pick it up initially), but after reading this week's short story, "Until Such Times" from Infinite Riches, I feel like giving the novel another go.  It took me two reads to feel like I had an idea of what was going on in the story, though my first attempt was somewhat disjointed.  I think Kesson's prose requires a focused attention and a willingness to give the story time to unfold.

Kesson's protagonist has an interesting voice.  For one thing she is a child, and so perhaps this explains the meandering quality to the storytelling.  She also tells the story in second person.  Is she talking about herself from the vantage point of adulthood looking back?  Or does the way she talks about herself not as "I" but as "you" because she feels outside the world she is living in?  Considering her situation, I think perhaps the latter is the more likely explanation.

I like how Kesson tells the story, which the reader has to piece together from a child's point of view.  She's a child who understands only a little but reveals quite a lot through her observations.  Until such times is some as yet unidentified moment when her mother will come for her and they will live their lives together in happier circumstances.  She tells herself--

"But you weren't here to stay forever!  Your aunt Ailsa had promised you that.  You was only here to stay . . . 'Until such times,' Aunt Ailsa had said on the day she took you to Grandmother's house . . . 'Until such times as I can find a proper place for you and me to bide.  For you should be at school."

* * *

"And biding with Grandmother . . . Until Such Times . . .'  You could never tell when Until Such Times had passed.  But you began to recognize its passing."

Aunt Ailsa was a bit of a stumbling block and the antipathy that Edith, who the young narrator refers to as the Invalid Aunt, feels towards her.  As it turns out Edith is critical of Aunt Ailsa who she sees as at the least flighty and at worst loose and manipulative.  The two women are sisters and for some unknown reason, though the reader can infer lots of things by this time, her daughter calls her Aunt Ailsa.  The child's father?  Another opportunity for the reader to fill in the blank. 

"'She's my Aunt Ailsa', you said, protective of a relationship that was acceptable.  'She's my Aunt Ailsa . . . she's not my mother!'  The implication of the Invalid Aunt's words had penetrated at last, sending you hurtling towards her bedchair."

When the child hears that Aunt Ailsa is coming home but that she is bringing a male guest, the Invalid Aunt speaks disparagingly of her (and the man), it is illuminating for the reader in order to understand how the family dynamics are and how each works against the other.  It also goes a long way in explaining that final momentous sentence and the implications of a possible final deed.  

Jessie Kesson only wrote a handful of books (which, I think, Virago published back in the day--in the 1980s).  I wonder how much of her own life proved inspiration for her work.  Although she wrote, she also did other things, like cleaned a local cinema, was an artist's model and for many years was a social worker in London and Glasgow.  Another Time, Another Place, the novel I set aside takes place in Scotland during WWII where Italian POWs are kept and throw the lives' of the locals into disarray.  

I'm glad I had another opportunity to read her work and now won't be so shy about giving one of her novels another try.    

Next up a story by Leonora Carrington.

* * *

Last week's New Yorker story (from the March 30 issue) "This is an Alert" by Thomas Pierce is a wonderful mixture of the real and the surreal.  Well, maybe not 'surreal' exactly, but a story that takes an average family going to visit relatives and drops them into a world slightly off kilter.  There is no explanation of how or why the world has become what it has become, though it's not too much of a stretch that it might happen.      

"This is an alert" is the announcement that is made every time when one of the many different drones used in a world warfare (fought high above the clouds) breaks into 'our' atmosphere.  They might be completely innocuous--one of 'ours'--or maybe not.  They might be filled with a biological or chemical weapon, so each member of each family (pets included) are given a gas mask (or as this family calls it--headsocks) that must be retrieved and put on each time the alert sounds.  Which over the course of the story seems to grow in momentum and number. 

The story is not particularly scary or unnerving, maybe because the family continues on (and even wants to try and rebel by not listening to the alerts), but it is a perfect story for the times.  It's thoughtful and entertaining.  You can read the Q&A here.  Pierce's New Yorker story from 2014 was equally good and one of my favorites of last year!

Short Story Sunday: Souls Belated

Edith Wharton writes about that segment of society, or shall I say Society, that few of us are probably privvy to--that wealthy class of people that inhabit a certain station in life (of which I am more than a few rungs down) so very, very well.  She knows them, she knows their secrets, and you can tell she doesn't approve but she knows how the game works and either her characters play by the rules and are miserable or don't play by the rules and so are thrown out.  

In this weekend's short story from Infinite Riches, "Souls Belated" (I'm still contemplating what the title means), she trains her scalpel on those people who aren't playing by the rules, but the question is, will they get away with it?  Even at the end of the story I am not sure they will, or have.  "Happy" endings aren't always happy or necessarily satisfying endings.

Two lovers are on a train.  Sounds romantic, doesn't it?  But two such uncomfortable people they are, you can feel their avoidance of each other.  A third person who has just vacated his seat and departed means now they are alone with themselves and each other, and during the course of the story being alone with their thoughts is not attractive.  Something stands between Lydia and Gannett.  Their silence is not companionable and you can sense a question between the two of them.  

"How could it be otherwise, with that thing between them?  She glanced up at the rack overhead.  The thing was there, in her dressing-bag, symbolically suspended over her head and his.  He was thinking of it now, just as she was; they had been thinking of it in unison ever since they had entered the train.  While the carriage had held other travelers they had screened her from his thoughts; but now that he and she were alone she knew exactly what was passing through his mind; she could almost hear him asking himself what he should say to her . . ."

This thing is a divorce which Lydia's husband has demanded and the paper announcing the expected result of their affair sits tucked away her suitcase just above their heads.  A divorce when you are in love with someone else sounds sort of freeing, don't you think?  But when the two arrive at the Italian resort so very far away from their world, they still must play at being a proper couple.  It would not do to arrive as a divorcée and her lover.

And so they play the game.  The resort is 'ruled' by an upper-class British lady who resides there almost permanently.  To be anything other than a proper married couple would mean being ostracized and unaccepted.  But the two can pass until Lydia is approached by a guest, the wife of another couple, who sees her for what she really is.  This other guest is in the same situation as Lydia, only she is still waiting for word of a divorce.  Gannett and this woman's 'husband' were closeted together the night before and she threatens to expose Lydia for what she truly is unless she finds out whether this man is going to leave her or not.  Lydia refuses, but it is as if the woman has held up a mirror in front of her face.

"'Oh, do you see the full derision of it?  These people--the very prototypes of the bores you took me away from, with the same fenced-in view of life, the same keep-off-the-grass morality, the same little cautious virtues and the same little frightened vices--well, I've clung to them, I've delighted in them, I've done my best to please them'."

Gannett tells her they can go away and marry now that she is free.  They can go to Paris and no one will ever know the difference.  

"Do you know [Lydia says to Gannett], I begin to see what marriage is for.  It's to keep people away from each other."

Lydia feels a fraud.  She wants to live by her own rules and be happy with the man she loves but she knows marriage to him will simply destroy what is important to her.  It's like having your cake but not being able to eat it, too.  So what is the solution?  How do you stay true to yourself and be happy, too?  Is it possible in this turn-of-the-century world where you are wealthy enough to be 'free', but that freedom will come at a price that may be too high to pay.

Edith Wharton is once again such a perfect observer of this world.  I don't know why I've not read my way through her books.  I must pick up something longer by her soon.

Next week a story by Jessie Kesson.  I'm past the halfway mark with this collection and have only six more stories to read.  I have plenty of other collections to choose from, but I am already sad at the thought of finishing this book.  I could breeze through the rest, but I want to continue savoring them.

* * *

In his Q&A with the New Yorker, Colm Tóibín mentions that it sometimes takes years for him to write a short story.  Knowing the intricacy of his writing, that does not surprise me.  There is nothing rushed (and certainly nothing wasted) in his writing.  In this week's issue (March 23), Tóibín's story "Sleep" is very revealing.  Not just about the main character but also about the writer himself since it is somewhat autobiographical.  In the story, an Irishman, keeps having intense and disturbing dreams about his brother.  They are so intense that his boyfriend cannot remain in the relationship and leaves him.  Once again there is a sense of melancholy about the story, which Tóibín does so well.  There is a genuineness to his stories that I like very much.

Short Story Sunday: Out with the Girls

I think Nell Dunn is marvelous and she was just what I needed this weekend, though her story "Out with the Girls" from Infinite Riches is just the tip of the iceberg of what I read these past couple of days, and all of it good!  The story is taken from the book Up the Junction which I read earlier this year.  I remember this particular story, which isn't really a story per se so much as a sketch or vignette.  She captures the essence of life in Battersea London so well.  If you want to know what it was like to live there in the Sixties, you might well pick her book up for a taste of life as a young working class woman.  The descriptions are good, but it's really the language, the dialogue that give her writing such oomph.  The editor of the collection, in the introduction, called the women "refreshingly cheeky" and I think she was spot on.

The story is narrated by Lily, an heiress, who has moved to Battersea and becomes friends with Rube and Sylvie.  The three are out for a night on the town.

"We stand, the three of us, me, Sylvie and Rube, pressed up against the saloon door, brown ales clutched in our hands.  Rube, neck stiff so as not to shake her beehive, stares sultrily round the packed pub.  Sylvie eyes the boy hunched over the mike and shifts her gaze down to her breasts snug in her new pink jumper.  'Kiss!  Kiss!  Kiss!' he screams.  Three blokes beckon us over to their table."

It's hard to say who picks up whom, but off the girls go with the blokes ("dirty ginks" they say cheekily wondering if any of them are married and not letting on).  On to the backs of the men's motor bikes they go and off for an unauthorized (and unsupervised) midnight swim.  Over the fense and into the water only to have to jump out again when the lights turn on. 

This isn't the sort of story where anything happens, but the back and forth banter is what makes it such an enjoyable read.  A bit of the dialogue and you'll see what the editor meant:

"We were crushed into the toilets.  All round girls smeared on pan-stick"

"'I can't go with him, he's too short'."

"'All the grey glitter I put on me hair come off on his cheek and I hadn't the heart to tell him'."

"'I wouldn't mind goin' with a married man 'cept I couldn't abear him goin' home and gettin' into bed with his wife'."

"'Me hair all right?'."

"'Yeah, lend us yer lacquer'."

* * *

"'Know what happend in work today?  I was sittin' on the steps outside McCrindle's eatin' me dinner when this Fred, Indian gink, says, 'Look out, love, I can see yer drawers'."  So I says, 'What color are they then?'  'Pink,' he says.  'No, they're not', I says 'because I ain't got none on'."

* * *

I'm going to order Nell Dunn's Poor Cow, which I what I am sure I meant to order a while back but had a little problem with getting the right book into the virtual order cart . . .  Nell Dunn is an easy read but a good one and an authentic one, too.  

Next week's story is a long one (after this week's very short selection) by Edith Wharton, "Souls Belated" which is, I think, about an affair.  It's online here if you want to read along!

* * * * *

This week's New Yorker short story (March 16 issue) "All You Have to Do" by Sarah Braunstein is also available online (two opportunities for you to read a short story--for free--nudge, nudge, go on, read a short story this week!).  There are coming of age stories, I wonder if there can be a coming of age short story? 

"It was 1972 and Sid Baumwell was hungry.  For the salt at the bottom of the pretzel dish, for frozen Mars bars, for appreciation from someone who wasn't a blood relation--preferably a girl with pink cheeks and big sleepy eyes, like the one in 'The Graduate,' his second-favorite movie of all time."

It's that little truth that writers pick up on and shape a story around that makes short stories so pleasurable (irregardless of who the characters are and whether they reflect any part of my own life--some things are universal no matter age or gender) and a success since there isn't a lot of space for lots of plotting.  I see this desire for appreciation and recognition in my own niece, now sixteen.  There was a time when I was the one she idolized and then there was nothing I could really do to impress her or convince her but if a favorite teacher, for example, recommended a book, she was all of a sudden interested.  This is what happens to Sid in the story.  He crosses paths with the representative of an aluminum foil company in the supermarket where he is holding a drawing for a lifetime supply of Reynolds Wrap!

"The man extended a hand.  This was at a point in Sid's life that he was still flattered when an older man shook his hand, flattered by a handshake so hard it hurt.  The handshake went on for a beat too long, but Sid didn't know that."

It's a curious sort of situation, maybe, and one you might not think be tempted to read about, but all the little details create this quite true to life world, that moment when a young person learns something about life, when your life crosses paths with a stranger and it changes you in a quietly subtle way.

I read a bit, too, from Claire Keegan's Walk the Blue Fields but I am planning a little "Irish reading" post on Tuesday, so will share my stories with you then.

Short Story Sunday: House of Clouds

Some interesting things about this week's story by Antonia White, "The House of Clouds".  Her story comes after a story by Djuna Barnes.  Although I've read the first two of the quartet of books about Clara Batchelor (the name of the character is different in the first book than the latter three) that White wrote, I didn't know much about her so I did a bit of digging around this weekend.  She was friends with Djuna Barnes and was "with Barnes" (not sure exactly what that means as the biographical information I read didn't elaborate) when she wrote her famous novel, Nightwood.

White's story has a very dreamlike quality to it, maybe even better to say somewhat nightmarish.  White wrote Frost in May in 1933 but didn't complete the second book of the quartet until fifteen years later.  In the interim she began a second novel but a failed marriage and a bout with mental illness hindered its completion.  White's books are very autobiographical in nature and "The House of Clouds" from Infinite Riches takes as its theme a young woman's experiences in a mental hospital.  Nothing is explicitly stated in the story but after an opening line of: "the night before, Helen tried to drown herself" you know you are not going to be treated to a story of domestic bliss!  And by story's end, that last line, you know just where Helen ended up and just what happened to her--enough to fill in a few blanks, that is.

White's story is one where careful attention needs to be paid, as if your mind wanders even a little you are going to be afloat in a sea of confusion, which to be honest is what happened to me (and hence a bit of extra looking around online for help in deciphering the story).  Just as a frame of reference the story was published in 1954 in a collection of stories called Strangers.  "The House of Clouds" was actually written in 1928 and "anticipates the Bethlem section of Beyond the Glass (the fourth book of the quartet), which makes some additions, transpositions and changes (the 'house of clouds becomes a 'house of mirrors') but which is extraordinarily close to the pre-analysis version of almost thirty years before)" according to the introduction in Strangers.

Hmm, not sure how helpful or interesting any of that is to you, but if you've read her you might find it illuminating and for me it makes me all the more eager to continue on with her Clara Batchelor books.  So the story is filled with dreamlike sequences one after another--it begins with two couples in the midst of a religious argument about the difference between the Virgin Birth and the Immaculate Conception.  "She wasn't very clear what happened next."  What is real and what is imagined, or even hallucinated?  She remembers a prick in the arm--morphia?  And then she was sick, and then a parade of individuals floats past--priests and nuns, doctors and nurses, her family . . . and all the memories . . .

"She was alone in a crypt watching by the coffin of a dead girl, an idiot who died at school and who lay in a glass-topped coffin in her First Communion dress, with a gilt paper crown on her head.  Helen woke up and screamed."

* * *

"Months, perhaps years, later she woke up in a small, bare cell.  The walls were whitewashed and dirty and she was lying on a mattress on the floor, without sheets, with only rough, red striped blankets over her.  She was wearing a linen gown, like an old-fashioned night shirt, and she was bitterly cold."

* * *

"She had forgotten her name.  She did not know whether she were very young or very old; a man or a woman."

And it gets even stranger.  What do these visions mean?  A procession of women, not nurses though they seemed to be dressed like them, women whose sons had been killed in the war come in and sit beside her.

"And each time a woman came in, Helen went through a new agony.  She became the dead boy.  She spoke with his voice.  She felt the pain of amputated limbs, or blinded eyes.  She coughed up blood from lungs torn to rags by shrapnel.  Over and over again, in trenches, in field hospitals, in German camps, she died a lingering death.  Between bouts of torture, the mothers, in their nurses' veils, would kiss her hands and sob out their gratitude."

These dreams, these fantasies, go on and on one after the other.  They aren't all horrible, but Helen seems to have so few moments of lucidity, you wonder just what happened.  What experience, what happened in her life, or was she fated medically for this to happen, causes her to break down?  That's never answered (or I didn't read closely enough).  If you are looking for a little verisimilitude when it comes to what a person goes through in a mental hospital, "The House of Clouds" is quite effective. 

There are a fair few references to the story online--lots of books make use of the story when talking about war and women and hysteria, but it was all a bit over my head for a Sunday afternoon.  It is enough just to experience the story and I think I might get more out of it just reading it a second time than reading the sort of critical analysis I found online (all good, but more than I need at the moment).  I know a work should always stand on its own, but I do think knowing something more about Antonia White's life and maybe even read a biography or a book of her letters would be very interesting.  Maybe it is finally time to pick up which is where I left off, The Sugar House.

When last I left her, Nanda became Clara Batchelor and had left the convent school and was on her way to be married.  Unfortunately I never properly wrote about the book but a little skimming might help in reorienting myself.  Antonia White makes for very rich reading, though in a story like "The House of Clouds" a little harrowing, too! 

* * * * *

I've gone on so long about Antonia White that I've not left much space for this week's (March 9 issue) New Yorker story by Stephen King, "A Death".  It is a story that is equally as harrowing but in an entirely different way.  A man is put on trial for a crime he denies he committed.  It seems a departure from King's usual horror stories, but I've not read enough of his work to know how accurate that feeling is.  The story is from a forthcoming collection called The Bazaar of Bad Dreams.  You can read it here and King's Q&A here. 

Short Story Sunday: A Dream of Winter

Short stories can be really deceptive.  In just a very few pages a whole world is constructed and conveyed to the reader and it is easy to be mislead, well, not mislead so much as it's easy to read only superficially.  I've only read Rosamund Lehmann's first novel Dusty Answer and that was years ago now.  I had this idea I would read all her books and in order that she wrote them (not sure what my fixation is with doing this other than I like the idea of being orderly and watching a natural growth of a writer).  But finally with Infinite Riches I have gotten a chance to read more of her work in the form of her 1946 short story, "A Dream of Winter".

There is a wonderful introduction in this collection of stories and the editor briefly discusses each short story.  Sometimes she is more forthcoming about a story's meaning than other times.  I always read the story and then flip to the front and find the brief passage and see what she has to say about a story to help illuminate or explain what I've just read.  Sometimes it is a mere reinforcement of what I've already read and sometimes I'm surprised by what I've missed. 

The Lehmann story is not at all hard going.  I thought it quite nicely done and for fear of being completely redundant (I think I must say this about every new story I read), this might be my new favorite.  There are little clues along the way, though maybe nothing is meant to be hidden from the reader.  So there are many descriptions of a time and a way of life, if I am simply a close enough reader I will catch them to make this a deeper and more fuller read than otherwise.

On the surface this is a story about a woman sick in bed with the flu.  It's cold, there has been a great frost but nonetheless two workman are just outside her window prying the lead panes out and taking the shingles off the roof in order to remove a bee hive that has grown too large (and too noisy).  It's not the best time of year to do this, bad for the bees, but the lady wishes it. There are hints that war is taking place in the background, no doubt her husband is off somewhere serving.  She is at home with her two children, in a country manor house once lived in by a now departed squire.  So there is the skeleton of the story.

Here's some of the flesh: the lady of the house notices the face of the workman, workmen--though the younger is far too shy to dare look into her bedroom.  The older workman's face is one that could belong to almost anyone.  "She had a lot of leisure in her life to look at faces.  She had friends with revolutionary ideas, and belonged to the Left Book Club."  The workman, friendly though he is, is a little critical of her desire to remove the bees just now with the cold.  She wants to remind him she's been waiting since September to have the work done, but . . .  And then there is the reminder that this way of life, her way of life, is even now vanishing.  "Life doesn't arrange stories with happy endings any more, see?  Never again."  The time of plenty for those in country houses is coming to an end.

And then to fill things in just a bit more with the editor's help--about this story that unravels a sense of "class guilt"--"her young son chastizes his sister for picking up the local dialect."  The editor notes, nodding my head in agreement, how children punctuate the story coming in and out (going up the ladder to look at the bees and down it and up again to bring a serving dish for the workman to scrape in the honey).  "Their natural curiosity, so swiftly  satisfied, their grasshopper minds, are caught to perfection.  The children in Rosamund Lehmann's fiction are always alive on the page."  And they are perceptive observers, too.  At one point the lady's son sort of castigates his mother for complaining about the noise of the bees--if she can't stand the hum of the bees what ever will she do in an air-raid?

Oh, there is some wonderful imagery in this story, too.  I'll just share one more passage and that is that for fear of giving all the best bits away when I think you would better appreciate the story by simply reading it yourself.  But this is wonderful and I can't resist.

"She took her temperature and found it was lower: barely a hundred.  He had done her good.  Then she lay listening to the silence she had created.  One performs acts of will, and in doing so one commits acts of negation and destruction.  A balcony weighed upon her: torn out, exposed, violated, obscene as the photograph of a bombed house."

"What an extraordinary day, what an odd meeting and parting.  It seemed to her that her passive, dreaming, leisured life was nothing, in the last analysis, but a fluid element for receiving and preserving faint paradoxical images and symbols.  They were all she ultimately remembered."

Brilliant!

(Are you surprised?).

I can't let myself start yet another new book (yet) but if I were to walk to my shelves and pull the next Lehmann book to read, it would be A Note in Music.  It never hurts to just look, though, right?

Next week: a story by Djuna Barnes (my first taste of her work).

* * * * *

My New Yorker came a day late, so I have only just picked it up and started reading this week's short story (double issue so I have time to read at my leisure, Feb. 23/Mar 2) by Haruki Murakami.  I'm not very far in but it looks promising so far.

Short Story Sunday: The Sentimentality of William Tavener

I love Willa Cather's work.  Who ever would have thought my adult self would say that since when I was a teenager in high school she was so 'talked up' by the nun's that I did everything I could to avoid her work.  She wasn't just talked up but more thrust upon us, and being just the tiniest bit rebellious and thinking that anyone else must be better than a Nebraska author (I was dreaming of traveling and of Europe so nothing so close to home could possibly tempt me), but I have changed my tune.  She's marvelous. 

She tends to be lumped into a class of authors known as regionalists, but she is really so much more than that.  Why does that make it sound like her fiction is something less than other classic writers?  (Or is my perception off?).  Actually as I was reading "The Sentimentality of William Tavener" in Infinite Riches I was thinking how versatile she is.  How does someone who was never married write so elegantly and so perceptively about a marriage?  I've never thought an author could or should only write about those things they have experienced or that were closest to their lives, but maybe it makes it easier?  It certainly doesn't matter in the case of this story--yes, another cracker of a story in a collection filled with them.

The Taveners are a married couple with several children all boys.  They are a farm family and so are used to hard work and a certain hardness of character and restrained emotion. 

"It takes a strong woman to make any sort of success of living in the West, and Hester undoubtedly was that.  When people spoke of William Tavener as the most prosperous farmer in McPherson County, they usually added that his wide was a 'good manager'.  She was an executive woman, quick of tongue and something of an imperatrix.  The only reason her husband did not consult her about his business was that she did not wait to be consulted."

She's a strong woman and determined, well-spoken and practical.  But underneath it all, too, there is a soft spot.  For farm boys in a rural area with strict parents and in the early part of the twentieth century proper off the farm entertainments are surely few and far between so when the circus comes to town, it is going to be celebrated and anticipated . . . if you are lucky enough to be able to go.  Which the Tavener boys are not allowed. 

It's Hester's careful maneuvering and insistence that nothing ever bad came of a group of well-brought up boys like their own going to a circus that will throw new light on her own marriage and subtly change the relationships and dynamics for all of them.  As a matter of fact her own story of a youthful outing to a circus brings to light a shared memory they didn't realize they had.  Both were at that circus so many years ago not knowing the other at the time.  At that moment their marriage takes on a different hue. 

"Their relationship had become purely  a business one, like that between landlord and tenant.  In her desire to indulge her boys she had unconsciously assumed a defensive and almost hostile attitude towards her husband.  No debtor ever haggled with his usurer more doggedly than did Hester with her husband on behalf of her sons."

That shared moment of this forgotten incident in their youth begins a reminiscence between the two and they begin to really talk again for hours and hours.  And it sets a different tone between the two, a remembered history and what initially brought them together.  And William pulls from his wallet the money for the boys to go to the circus.  An astonishing moment for them when they wake up with the news that they can go and a moment, too, of a tinge of melancholy knowing that in their mother they have perhaps lost a powerful ally.  So beautifully told this story of lost or maybe forgotten love remembered and renewed.  Such a perfect story for any weekend but especially on Valentine's Day!

Next weekend a story by (an author I keep meaning to get back to) -- Rosamond Lehmann.

* * * * *

This week's (February 16 issue) New Yorker story is a curious one, but I liked it very much.  To be honest I wasn't sure what I thought when I read it, but now that I have sat down and must think about it to write something, it's hit me how much I do like it.  I've had an interest in mazes and labyrinths for a while now, just one of those things that hovers in the back of my mind and every once in a while I will come across something about them that will make me think.  Amelia Gray's (another new-to-me writer) "Labyrinth" is part of a story collection due out in April called Gutshot: Stories.  If you click through on the link and take a peek at the cover illustration you can get an idea of what this story is like--yes, a eerie sort of story indeed.

"Dale had been doing a lot of reading on Hellenic myth, so when he said he had a surprise for us at his Pumpkin Jamboree we knew he wasn't screwing around."

And he wasn't though whether the labyrinth took on a life of its own or if Dale had something to do with it does make me wonder . . .   Oops getting ahead of myself here.  The jamboree is a fall festival that you would find in a small town or in the countryside and this one includes a labyrinth.  Not to be confused with a maze as the two are not alike.  " . . . the path is unicursal, not multicursal.  There's only one road, and it leads to only one place."  You can't get lost, but that doesn't mean there is no point to getting to the middle.  And what is in the center is the point and what the reader discovers in the very last line of the story.  And I'm not telling, because this is a story you can read for yourself since it is online!  So, go on, nudge, nudge.  This is a very short story and you can easily read it in a short sitting (and get in a short story this week).  Then go and read the author's Q&A here.  I'm quite intrigued by her and what she had to say.  I like the idea of a retelling of the Theseus myth.  And I like what she has to say about short fiction:

"What’s the most a writer can say in the fewest lines? There’s a breathtaking quality to brevity. W. S. Merwin’s 'Elegy' is the poetic equivalent of a leg-sweep takedown. Even when I’m writing longer pieces, I look for small moments, turns of phrase, which allow each scene to stand alone."

I'm definitely going to check out her new collection of stories, and maybe while I'm waiting I'll look for her Museum of the Weird because something 'beguiling' and 'bewitching' sounds like great fun indeed.

Short Story Sunday: Flesh

If you've read Elizabeth Taylor already you are going to know exactly what I mean when I say--Elizabeth Taylor's writing is why I love reading so much.  If you've not read her, find one of her novels or pick up a short story and give yourself a treat.  She is an absolute master of the written word.  She is so assured and eloquent.  I knew from the first book I read by her that I would want to read everything she has written and I have certainly collected most of her work.  Why I've not yet raced through the pile is beyond me, but she is someone you want to read slowly and thoughtfully and appreciate her gorgeous prose and styling. 

I'm always ready for an excuse to pick up one of her works, so I was happily anticipating this weekend's short story, which is Taylor's "Flesh".  It was originally published in The Devastating Boys in 1972.  It is a story firmly planted in the domestic arena (though perhaps this one has a bit of a twist on the usual themes), which is what Taylor excelled in writing about.  Also why she was largely forgotten and pushed to one side.  She deserves to be read and Virago (and now NYRB Classics, too) has reissued most of her work. 

There was a time in my life I would have been exceedingly critical of anyone who strayed outside the boundaries of their marriage or even a serious relationship.  I still cringe at the idea, but in the hands of someone like Elizabeth Taylor, so capable of eliciting understanding and sympathy, I realize that life is rarely simply black and white.  There is something almost tender and sweet in the amorous (and extracurricular) adventures that the pair in this story embark upon.

Of course if ever I found myself in a situation where the temptation of straying from a happy or comfortable relationship occurred, this is exactly what I imagine would happen to me (just my bad luck).  This is a story of an adulterous relationship--for grownups.  This is exactly what I can picture happening in the real world.  Two people meet by chance while on vacation, find they have an attraction and decide to do something about it.  It's the sort of thing that happens on vacations away from real life.  It's an artificial situation where anything, really, is possible.  Where two people can connect knowing that they will return home to their regular lives and will pick up and go on after a brief interlude of 'passion'.

But wait a moment.  This is domestic fiction and Taylor is writing about real life.  It's fiction but it's not fiction and let me explain.  Not everything goes quite as planned for Phyl and Stanley.  The two meet on a sunny foreign island.  It's the end of the tourist season but there are other British tourists about forming a little community away from home.  Phyl's husband has sent her off on her own to recuperate after an operation of a female nature.  The two never had a proper away-from-home vacation, even for their honeymoon.  She and her husband Charlie are pub owners and Phyl thinks to herself what a wonderful story her adventure would make for those back home, if only she could ever share it.  Which, of course, she can't.  Stanley is a widower, who's on his holidays as that's what's expected of him.  It's his first time abroad and it's obvious he misses his wife, but he admires Phyl, too, and thinks what a lucky (and probably unappreciative) husband she must have. 

Very discreetly the two, Phyl and Stanley, begin a brief holiday romance.  I said this is fiction but it's not?  It is fiction.  But this is not a romanticized and unrealistic story, a fairy tale.  Discretion means their little interlude must be furtive and on the sly so as not to set tongues wagging.  They decide to spend a day away from the hotel where they can be together without fear of being caught in compromising circumstances.  And this is where reality and sweetness come into play.  I want to tell you all about it, fill in all the lovely details, but I don't want to spoil it either.  I much prefer you try and find the story and read it for yourselves!  let's just say things don't exactly turn out as the pair hoped and expected. 

This is yet another brilliant story in the collection Infinite Riches.  I've yet to come across a story I didn't like and this one is so far my very favorite.  I love that Elizabeth Taylor captures all the little nuances of a holiday romance that goes subtly awry.  It's not a "happily ever after" story, but a story that is happy in its way despite the little blunders and bad luck.  And I liked it all the more for that reason.

Next week another favorite, Willa Cather.

* * * * *

The story appearing in this week's (February 9 issue) New Yorker is by Toni Morrison, a writer I have not read in years.  It explains a lot that "Sweetness" is not actually a short story but an excerpt from Morrison's forthcoming novel, God Help the Child.  It felt both heavy (in terms of content) and slight while reading--if that makes any sense at all.  It was more a narration of a life than a story about a daughter who is born with skin the color of a deep blue-black to parents who are fair enough to "pass" and so was therefore resented, and, if not mistreated, then not loved and cherished like every child needs to be.  This was too much of a teaser since there are so many unanswered questions to be a short story I can feel comfortable inhabiting.  it does make me curious about the whole story, so I might have to look for it when it comes out in April. 

Have you read any good short stories recently?  You didn't think I have forgotten to ask, did you?  Nudge, nudge.

Short Story Sunday: I Stand Here Ironing

It's very fitting that on the last day of January, a grey snowy day better spent inside tucked under a blanket with a book, my short story reading was about Depression-era America and Australia.  In both stories young women, girls at the outset, are raised in households were circumstance, attitude or situation mean unhappy childhoods due in great part to their being females.  Melancholy stories for a melancholy day.

I read Tillie Olsen's "I Stand Here Ironing" in Infinite Riches yesterday afternoon followed up by my weekly New Yorker story.  First the Olsen.  Tillie Olsen is a Nebraska author who was born in Wahoo in 1912.  She lived in Omaha for a time but eventually moved to San Francisco.  She knows well of her story topic as she had to work most of her life in order to support her family.  A nod to public libraries as that is where she educated herself.  She was also a political activist and a feminist.

"I Stand Here Ironing" is a story from the collection, Yonnondio: From the Thirties (a Virago Modern Classic by the way, to help you set the tone--I have the book in a different edition). 

"I stand here ironing, and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron."

"'I wish you would manage the time to come in and talk with me about your daughter.  I'm sure you can help me understand her.  She's a youngster who needs help and whom I'm deeply interested in helping'."

So begins the story.  A mother reflecting on her daughter's life, nineteen years, a difficult life.   "There is all that life that has happened outside of me, beyond me."  Because you see, this mother has had to work outside the home at various times.  She hasn't been there always for her daughter, her eldest child.  Of all her children, Emily was a beautiful baby, though the child was never convinced she was anything but plain.  She nursed her but had to leave her with neighbors when she went out to work or to look for work.  She had no choice since her husband left her and the family.

Even as a child, it showed in her face--her sadness and disappointment.  The pain left its mark in her own somberness.  Unlike other children her age, she never protested or threw fits. 

"I put the iron down.  What in me demanded that goodness in her?  And what the cost, the cost to her of such goodness?"

Circumstances shape the child but shape the mother as well.  What is a single mother, especially during the Depression, to do?  She does only the best she can.  And if that means sending her away to recuperate from illness, then it must be done.  To a place her family never visits and she's not allowed to keep even a single letter from home.  Or to send her away to family in times of difficulty she must go, or stay alone when all she wants is for her mother to refuse to go into work just one day.

The world has not changed so very much in some ways.  Children and parents must still make the best of it.  They will forever view themselves and measure themselves against the perceived beauty of others and find themselves wanting (even if they shouldn't).  As Emily's mother thinks about her daughter as she irons, trying to form her response to the counselor who is worried about this young woman, now nineteen, she knows everything in her daughter will "not bloom--but in how many does it?  There is still enough left to live by."

This is an elegant story yet a sad one.  I wouldn't be surprised if it was heavily used in anthologies and in classrooms, too.  In it, there is much food for thought. 

Next week: Elizabeth Taylor (a favorite of mine).

* * * * *

Elizabeth Harrower's "Alice" appears in the February 2 issue of the New Yorker.  Harrower is an Australian writer who was active in the 1950s and 60s but then abruptly stopped publishing.  Her work went out of print until Text Publishing began reissuing her work (new to me publisher which I am eager to explore).  Alice grows up in Depression-era Australia, but her circumstances differ in that her younger brothers are the beloved of the family. 

"Alice knew only that something was not fair.  Here she was, a good girl, a nice girl, pretty to look at, obedient, kind, clever at school, and with beautiful hair--yet none of it was good enough.  While the boys were somehow perfect.  And not because they didn't try but because they never had to.  They were welcome when they arrived."

The story follows Alice's life from childhood to adulthood through two marriages and motherhood and her own quest for happiness and contentment.  I think I'd like to look for more of Harrower's work.  You can read a Q&A with the author here.  The story appears online here.  Have you read this or any other good stories this week? 

Short Story Sunday: The Secret Woman

I really need to read more of Colette's work.  I've read very little, but in every case there is more to the story than meets the eye.  And what's impressive is that she manages to do in just a few pages what other writers sometimes can't do in an entire novel.  This weekend's short story from Infinite Riches, "The Secret Woman", was originally published in 1971 in a collection called The Other Woman.  I think surely Colette must have been both in real life and in her fiction subtly subversive (and for which I have the greatest respect). 

In this story, a woman finds a certain liberation by showing herself in disguise.  Thinking about the title and knowing the female character, I think it can have more than one meaning.  She's secret for how she appears at the Opéra ball dressed as a Pierrot, but also maybe her real personality is disguised, or secret, too.  Which is the real woman?

Telling his wife a "schoolboy lie", a doctor decides to feign being called out by a patient in order to get out of taking his wife to the ball, yet he himself goes alone in costume.  He's never been before and his wife laughs and jokes that had she known, perhaps she would never have married him.  He tells her she should go without him, but she gives a shudder of disgust at the idea of "all those hands". 

So there the both of them are together but not, each independent of the other, but the husband hears a familiar voice and is astonished to think she has indeed come alone.  Or maybe not so alone after all.  Soon he would know the truth about her and whether she is here to meet a lover.  But some pleasures are just for the brief moment.  It isn't to meet a lover or any man, she is there, he decides.  Maybe it is just a matter for the senses--a certain desire for sensory pleasures we allow ourselves, that have no other meaning but for the moment and for the physical. 

I love this story.

" . . . he was sure that she was neither waiting nor looking for anyone, and that abandoning the lips she held beneath her own like an empty grape, she was going to leave again the next moment, wander about once more, collect some other passer-by, forget him, and simply enjoy, until she felt tired and went back home, the monstrous pleasure of being alone, free, honest in her crude, native state, of being the unknown woman, eternally solitary and shameless, restored to her irremediable solitude and immodest innocence by a little mask and a concealing costume."

Does the wife ever catch on that she has been spotted?  Does it matter since the husband knows she's not there out of an act of disloyalty to him (yet an act of loyalty to her real self maybe). 

Such a simple story and a simple act, yet it is all weighted with meaning.  Colette is a master of short story writing.  And she wonderful in her vivid descriptions,too. 

"He had wandered along all the corridors of the Opéra, drunk the silvery dust of the dance floor, recognized bored friends and placed round his neck the indifferent arms of a very plump girl who was disguised as though humorously as a sylph."

* * *

". . .  [he] saw someone sitting astride the balustrade, wearing a long and impenetrable disguise, looking like Pierrot because of the smock with the vast sleeves, the loose trousers, the headband and the plaster-white color which covered the small area of skin visible below the fluffy lace the mask.  The fluid fabric of the costume ans the cap, woven of dark purple and silver, shone like the conger eels that you fish for at night with iron hooks from boats lit by lamps burning resin."

* * *

"Irene walked in front of him, nonchalantly; he was astonished to find that she rolled her hips softly and dragged her feet a little as though she were wearing Turkish slippers."

Reading Colette is always a treat for the imagination and the senses.

Next weekend a story by a Nebraska author, Tillie Olsen.

* * * * *

This week's (January 26 issue) New Yorker story is an interesting one.  How fitting, and serendipitous that both are translations and both written in the 1960s/70s.  "Inventions" by Isaac Bashevis Singer was published in Yiddish in 1965, had been translated a few years later into English but was never published until this week.  It's unknown whether he simply decided not to allow publication or if it was rejected by magazines.  The history of the story is fascinating, you can read about it here.  The story itself is sort of a ghost story, but one involving the ghost of a former "comrade" who visits his colleague on the eve of a Communist conference that takes place in Warsaw in the 1930s.  It's a curious story and one I think I need to go back and read again now that I have the backstory to it.  A cautionary tale?  Thinly veiled criticism? 

I started reading a novel by Singer this past summer, but it got shuffled out of the reading pile.  Must get to him this year!

Short Story Sunday: Plain Pleasures

Three stories in and I think I can tell you that Infinite Riches: Classic Stories by Twentieth-Century Women Writers is no cushy, breezy read.  There is always more going on beneath the surface than first meets the eye here.  The stories are definitely like chocolate truffles in a box--you want more than one, but know better than to take a handful.  They're too rich to gorge on, and better appreciated by taking a mere one to savor.  These are stories to mull over and roll around in your mind.  I think I can already tell you that this is a collection worth having on your bookshelves.

This weekend's story is "Plain Pleasures" by Jane Bowles.  Her reputation precedes her.  I know a little of her biography--or her myth.  She seems like she is a woman who has had a mythical sort of reputation built up around her, or that's how I imagine her anyway.  I read Paul Bowles's The Sheltering Sky years ago and always assumed inspiration for it must have been based on his experiences living in Morocco with Jane.  "Plain Pleasures" is my first taste of Jane Bowles's writing, and it is as intriguing and sophisticated as I expected it to be.  And a little perplexing, too.

"Do you like plain ordinary pleasures?"

Alva Perry asks this of her neighbor Mr. Drake as they share a meal of baked potatoes in the tenement's back yard.  Alva is a dignified reserved widow who remains "as industrious in her solitude as a woman who lives in the service of her family."  Mr. Drake is equally as serious and mild mannered.  They've lived in the same building for years with little interaction.  When he tells her he does believe in ordinary pleasures, it's unclear whether he really thinks so or just wants to keep the conversation going.

"'Don't you think that plain pleasures are closer to the heart of God?' she asks him."

"He was a little embarrassed at her mentioning anything as solemn and intimate on such short acquaintance, and he could not bring himself to answer her.  Mrs. Perry, who was ordinarily shut-mouthed , felt a stream of words swelling in her throat."

She's critical of the life of (what she sees as) dissipation that her sister leads, and when Mr. Drake invites her to go share a meal in a hotel restaurant she's not sure how to respond.  But she does agree to go.  At dinner, which he arrives late for, the two seem to be talking at cross purposes, and it doesn't help that she's drinking more than she can handle and becoming more and more resentful with each glassful.  He almost seems to be ready to make a proposal of marriage, or she thinks he will, but then she lapses into a tirade about how he probably just wants her to prepare his meals for him every day and things spiral down from there on out. 

The drinks have made her tipsy and so she leaves the table.  Mr. Drake assumes she is off in search of the Ladies', but instead . . . (maybe this should be a spoiler alert for the rest of the paragraph?) she goes up to one of the bedrooms and passes out.  It's somewhat subtly stated but the hotel proprietor follows her and assaults her.  This is what is both curious and perplexing--she wakens, not feeling the ill effects of her previous night's drink, she rests, clothes herself and returns to the restaurant thinking of her "sweet John Drake". 

The editor has not thrown much illumination on the story saying only:

"food--and alcohol--albeit -plainer fare, is equally significant to Jane Bowles's story, and served with offbeat wit."

Strangely, I like the story though I can't tell you what any of it means.  Is this some kind of sexual awakening?  Does she think her John Drake, her potential suitor, is the man who took advantage of her?  I have to think about this one.  Maybe look for a little help in explaining what just happened and why!  I'll let you know if I find out.

Okay, I pulled out my copy of My Sister's Hand in Mine: The Collected Works of Jane Bowles and here are a few things the editors have to say:

"Jane Bowles has long been regarded by critics as one of the premier stylists of her generation.  Enlivened at unexpected moments by sexual exploration, mysticism, and flashes of wit alternately dry and hilarious, her prose is spare and honed, her stories filled with subtly sly characterizations of men and, mostly, women, dissatisfied not so much with the downward spiral of their fortunes as with the hollowness of their neat little lives."

***

And about the story I read:

" She focuses her eagle eye on . . . the doomed efforts of the neighbors Mr. Drake and Mrs. Perry to form a connection  out of their very different loneliness . . . "

* * * * *

J. Robert Lennon's Breadman, this week's New Yorker offering (January 19 issue), is a pitch perfect story.  I tend to approach these NY stories with equal parts happy anticipation and apprehension.  Reading outside your comfort zone is almost always a good thing, and with a short story not too much of a hardship since the stories are, well . . .  short.  Good stories are always a thrill to read and the ones that I am not as excited about can turn into a slog. 

But "Breadman" is just the sort of story I wish I could read every week.  It is ironic and funny and so true to life, as a matter of fact Lennon based it on one of his own experiences.  Not much happens in the story--a man goes out to buy bread for his wife who's sick at home.  The bread isn't just your average everyday bread, but the kind that is almost art--you know, that artisanal style bread, so beautiful and delicious that people queue for it and there is a long and complicated process to even get in line for it.

Really--not much happens--a man stands in line for bread, but lots happens.  It's literally a life altering undertaking.  The husband, who tells the story, tells it with a keen eye for observation and a dry wit and maybe a short temper.  And the last few lines are perfection.  Maybe because I would feel the same way and could relate.  I always appreciate an author who can elicit a guffaw or two from me!

Nudge, nudge.  Go on, read it for yourself.  Then you can read the Q&A here.  I hope I cross paths with Lennon again sometime soon.