- “Child’s Play” by Eric Puchner (from his new collection, Music Through the Floor). Project X left me constantly yearning for characters that speak in a way that feels as real to me as Shepard’s, and this story delivered. As I’ve told some of you, “Child’s Play” drove me to consider composing my first Amazon reader review (I haven’t done it yet) because when I looked the book up (looking for my like-minded community of Puchner-lovers) there were none. I’m daunted by that little “Be the first person to review this item” link. It feels like too much pressure when all I really have to say will make me sound like a preadolescent boy (apparently the voice I so savor, as my fondness for Project X and “Child’s Play” proves) incapable of any real endorsement beyond yeah, awesome, it totally ruled. The very last line of the piece was expected in a way (I’d say in the best way, really, but maybe in the way that youpeople refers to as being too “pressed penny” perfect). This story utterly crushed me; it’s alive with longing and cruelty, I’m thinking of it still.
- “Natasha” by David Bezmogis (in Best American Short Stories 2005). Somehow I ignored Bezmogis, despite his appearing everywhere, and despite even my mother trying to foist the collection into my hands. You were right, Mom. The very last line of this piece (my litmus test, I guess) disappointed me a little bit but I still rushed to Shaman Drum and bought his collection.
- “Until Gwen” by Dennis Lehane (Also in this year's Best American Short Stories). I think a couple of you are Lehane fans (Toochi? Big Concrete?). I have no experience with him other than viewing “Mystic River” when it came out and being totally enamored of the first half (it was shaping up to be one of my favorite kinds of movies, a character-driven suspense that doesn’t totally blow) and really disappointed by the finish (Ugh, that finger-pointing move at the parade. This doesn’t give anything away to those of you who haven’t seen it, but those who have will know what I’m talking about). I started “Until Gwen” twice and didn’t feel moved to finish but now that I have I don’t know what my problem was. Michael Chabon says in his intro that he selected the stories that “pleased [him] most” and those of you who have been keeping up with his other introductions in recent years know that he’s into good genre fiction, weary of “dewy epiphanies” and interested in stories where stuff happens. I’m not used to reading stories where so much stuff happens (I don’t want to give too much away, but there *is* a heist.). I was unexpectedly slayed by the finish (and, as is becoming quite clear, the ending of a short story gets disproportionate weight with me); I needed to sit down (I was reading it on the elliptical machine at the YMCA which speaks well of the story’s suspense as I can usually only muster the energy to look at pictures of celebrities in sparkly outfits while I half-ass it for twenty minutes and the thirteen-year-old next to me eats Cheetos. I kid you not! She was actually eating Cheetos while she was working out. Excellent.).
- “The Rules” by Andrew Foster Altschul (One Story Issue #62). This is another one that I picked up several times and abandoned (I’m a total tease!) but that I’m now wishing I had in actual book form so I could find it (I love One Story but I’m always losing the damn things). This story is beautiful and sad and has this somewhat complicated but still somehow swirly, hazy (or maybe it only seems hazy to can’t-remember-anything-me) structure to it, and it managed to be both delicate and brutal (in its content and execution). It had one of those “surprising but inevitable” endings (I’m always using that phrase and have realized I have no idea where it actually comes from; so many people toss it around in workshop, and I encounter it sometimes in reviews. I recently saw it attributed to Charles Baxter, but it must have been around longer, no?) that managed somehow to be truly inevitable and still devastatingly surprising. A finish that leaves you begging, no no no no.
- “Battery” by Masticated. This story is not yet published, but will be soon. Watch out for this one; it’s a killer.
Thursday, November 17, 2005
the new nickel
Five short stories that have delighted and/or disturbed me in the past two weeks (Disclaimer: I’m quite a glutton when it comes to short stories, and reading student fiction makes me especially indiscriminate; I adore everything I read that’s not about reptile time travel and murder by flute [ask me for details!], so if you’re not interested in my meandering praise of several short stories, skip all this. Or better yet, post something new for me to read, perhaps your own list? Lists are pretty pain free.):
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2 comments:
On what can we blame the fact that none of use supposed writers have yet commented on this thoughtful, erudite, hilarious post? Maybe it's the fact that I got led astray to the "Fugliness" site and have had trouble reading about Lindsay Lohan's awful outfits. No matter. This is a Guilt Free Blog. I'm working on a "five things" list myself--great idea, Bizness. I'm thinking five books of poetry that I'm currently reading (since I'm apparently incapable of reading any one of them all the way through).
At any rate, I wanted to plug Dennis Lehane. If you haven't read "Darkness, Take My Hand" you should go out and buy it immediately, and not just because it's set in Dorchester, a particularly scummy section of the sometimes scummy city of Boston, which I call home. Lehane is a whip hand with plot, he does dialogue that's the funniest side of Chandleresque, and "Darkness" is also a scary mystery novel, and I love those. I notice he also has a story in "Best American Mystery Stories" this year.
I, too, was led astray and ended up pretty absorbed in Fugliness. I am still laughing at the teen eating cheetos. Bizness, was she that cute little girl who has the little sister, about five, who looks absolutely like she does? And who works on the treadmill just because her dad does? And, the mother who looks just like them both? They speak Greek in the locker room, and the little one is really pretty hilarious. I've stolen the mother to be the mother in my novel.
Anyway, I feel like I always love everything I read--if I'm not loving it halfway or even a quarter-way through, I abandon it. Although there's always just one thing, in many of these books, that I don't like, and it makes me wonder what that THING will be in my own book, which puts me into a sort of writing paralytic state. Or, at what point people will abandon my book.
But before I give my list, I'll make a plug for Bezmogis. I, too, adored "Natasha." I rarely sit and read a collection story by story, which is a little inane, considering the amount of time we spend ordering around our stories and planning our collections. but I think I've read almost all the stories in the collection. I particularly remember really liking the one about the dog; I think it was called "Tapka"? I won't be redundant and include it in my list, though I highly recommend it.
1. Just recently (finally) finished On Beauty by Zadie Smith. There was one element of the story during which I kept yelling COME ON, although I do wonder if that was her point, in a way. But her social satire, her dialogue about race and class and the ridiculousness of academia: lovely indeed.
2. I'm determined to finish War and Peace, on recommendation of Julie Orringer when she spoke at a recent Round Table. i don't know why I've never even attempted the book or have never been forced to read it (well, I can give reasons on both counts, but I won't go into that here). I already love it, and I'm not far into it at all. In fact, I keep losing my place, which is fine, because then i just read pieces over again. I often begin reading these big works and then abandon them for a piece of contemporary, voice-driven, hipster doofus fiction, and I really don't know why. I tried picking up a highly acclaimed new piece of fiction by one of the A-list It writers right now during all this and kept also thinking COME ON, SHUT UP. Shut up shut up shut up. Idiot. Sigh. Not to say I won't return to it.
[[Hey, Toochi, you're saying, War and Peace is good? Wow. What a radical statement.]]
3. Also reading Saturday by Ian McKewan. The prose is so, I don't know, thick and captiviating and feels just so inviting, like I want to wrap myself in it. Did someone else just say they want to wrap themselves in something? I feel like I'm repeating someone, and for that I apologize.
4. Prep, by Curtis Sittenfeld. I resisted this one for a long time, probably because of all the hype. I do this often, though I'm not sure if it's because of some sort of strange elitism (if people like it, it can't be good) or jealousy. But I think it's well-deserving of its praise, though I do hope Sittenfeld will move beyond the boarding school world so she doesn't get pegged as only the voice of the 16-year-old and nothing else, because I do think she's quite good.
5. Housekeeping, by Marylinne Robinson. I read this when I was about 19, a summer in college, and I remember really liking it. But I didn''t remember a lot about it, which makes me wonder if I was too young for it, or not as close of a reader or something. But I do think you get different things from art each time you approach it (at least, hopefully!), and so perhaps that's what happened here. I don't remember feeling like I was socked in the gut, though I was partying a lot then and perhaps pretty numb to most things. Nick Hornby just reviewed it--or, reflected on it, which is often what he does, and does so well-- in his Believer column. while he's not calling it inaccessible, he does call it "deep, and dark and rich," and he says of the accessible, easy novel: "it's possible to whiz through it without allowing it even to touch the sides, and a bit of side- touching has to happen if a book is going to be properly transformative." Robinson doesn't write her books this way, he seems to be saying, and you can't really read Housekeeping this way, which I think I might have done the first ime. I think a lot of my reading then, of things obscure and easy, took a lot of whooshes right down the middle. Although his point perhaps is that WRITERS do too much side touching these days, and not enough of side touching and concurrent flushing. This is exhausting me, and while I love Hornby's musings, it's not the point. The point is that Housekeeping is a poignant, heartbreaking, dark-as-hell and sad and moving novel, and I can't believe I either forgot about how much it affected me the first time or just didn't pay attention.
One a *side* note, I'm not sure exactly what Hornby is getting at with all this side-touching business--is he charging the reader, the writer, or both?--but I've been spending a lot of time thinking about it.
Addendum: This book was from this summer, but it affected me so much that I feel I have to mention it here. The First Desire, by Nancy Reisman. I've read plenty since then, but for some reason, when anyone asks me what I've read recently, it always comes up. The prose just grabs you and folds you in, her characterization is stunning, and when the book was over I turned to page 1 to start again.
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