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Available Short Story Collection
Playing at Cruelty, a short story in this collection, written in 2019, is my attempt to protest Trump’s propensity to rename things and a warning about the cruelty and danger inherent in such behavior. I don’t think I was far off! Paperback copies and Kindle editions available at all Amazon sites. And at various Book Boxes across Germany!
Fat Time and Other Stories, Jeffery Renard Allen, 2023.
This is an impressive short story collection with far ranging settings and narrative styles. I didn’t sense that there was a universal theme between stories other than the exploration of Black lives, and this worked really well. Many stories were written in a style that I have seen called fictionalized history, speculative history, and alternative history where Allen reimagines the lives of well-known figures, such as Mile Davis and Muhammed Ali. I read in an Allen interview his suggestion that he sees this as riffs on small incidents in these peoples life’s and I found them quite pleasurable. Stories take place in Tangier, during an albino revolt, in Australia and in more local settings such as a high school.
If there is commonality between the stories I see it as the exploration of time. For example, in several stories there is the suggestion of Fat Time, or what I took to mean the moment that past, present, and future occur at the same time. For example in the story Circle we learn of a young woman caring for her dying mother but we also learn that she is also dying in the same manner. It’s more subtle than that in most stories, more like the feel of the narrative style where you float between past, present, and future. It is a fun, circular story telling method but not without worthy reading challenges.
The most straight forward story as far as narrative style and setting, and also one of my favorites in the collection, is Big Ugly Baby. The story deals with friendship, bullying, masculinity, and developing sexuality. It is beautifully written and expertly deals with coming of age in a time when norms are so aggressively militant.
I will definitely search out and read more Jeffery Renard Allen. He has an older story collection as well as a couple of novels available. Based on how much I enjoyed Fat Time I think it would be time well spent reading him further.
Enjoying Zsolt Lang
The Birth of Emma K. and Other Stories, Zsolt Láng, 2023, translated from the Hungarian by Owen Good & Ottilie Mulzet, 2023.
Often, while reading these stories, I was lost as to what was going on. It turns out, though, this uncertainty is partly what makes these stories so beautiful. Strange characters in strange settings and situations feed the uncertainty and kept my interest high as each story unfolded. The first story in the collection begins with ‘Our Lord’ sitting on a hill in Budapest contemplating who gave him the power to create the world. While this never gets resolved, we see him wrestle with his problem throughout the narrative, which seemingly has nothing to do with him. Lang describes this approach in the later story Chestnut where the narrator states, ‘We could go on in this banal but well-oiled style, because the external events aren’t important, rather it’s the invisible line of force of the internal happenings that guides the thread, woven from these sentences into a new pattern.’
Another invisible aspect of each story is an observer, sometimes seen but often not. He or she may be observing from a window or while sitting at a bus stop. We never learn if the observer is the narrator or simply a bystander but it is a powerful tool within the narrative, like the reader is sharing the observation, living alongside the characters and their ruminations. The story Loneliness takes place entirely at rubbish bin with the protagonist, Ildiko, standing by the bin while being observed by a stranger several floors above her. The narrative involves her observations, thoughts, and memories while taking out the trash but we know there is someone watching her and this ads a bit of menace and again, uncertainty to the story.
How The Birth of Emma K. informs my writing.
I found this collection intriguing and incredibly enjoyable. Not sure how I could pull off Lang’s style as I do not completely understand his accomplishment. However, I have experimented with the style in my stories such as Tiny Points of Contact and The Remove, both included in my collection Not So You’d Notice which is available at Amazon. In the former, the plot basically involves a kayak outing to observe manatees but there is a lot more going on in the protagonist’s head. And in the latter, the protagonist begins a car collection but it is what he is struggling with internally that holds greater importance.
Lang’s collection is worthy of a second read: for pure enjoyment but also to investigate his artistry, his building of a philosophical view of the world, and the comfort of dwelling in uncertainty.
Almost No Memory, Lydia Davis, 1997. Included in The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis, 2011.
Davis’ short stories have been labeled as miniatures, prose poems, and contemplations, among other descriptors as a way to understand what she is doing in her work. I do find myself questioning what each small offering is supposed to be but ultimately it really doesn’t matter. Davis explores the inner workings of the mind as it works to make sense of relationships and reality and her form is an excellent way to do so. While sometimes confused as to the message of a particular story I was intrigued with each piece. The Thirteenth Woman, where the first twelve women completely ignore the thirteenth, is simply delightful. In Foucault and Pencil, a woman strives to understand the meaning and cause of an argument with her partner. And my favorite, The Race of the Patient Motorcyclists, reads like a paean to slowness.
There is a scene I love in a Samuel Beckett story about a character holding three pebbles as he goes through the iterations in his mind of how he can put them in two pockets one at a time: an incredible scene. Many of the stories in Almost No Memory are like this: characters thinking through the possibilities of doing a particular task but being unable to reach a conclusion. Other stories are essentially lists but read like dynamic and meaning-filled short stories.
How Almost No Memory informs my writing.
As I read these stories, I did have some confusion of what the meaning was, especially in light of the title of the collection. Ultimately, my take away is that Davis is suggesting that in our present conflicts or disagreements we have no memory of how we got into that situation or into that particular relationship with the partner we are having a conflict with: we are totally consumed with thinking through the current problem. I realize this is a simplistic interpretation but with it I was better able to process each story. And I am not suggesting that I know what Davis meant with the individual stories or with the collection as a whole. But what I appreciate is that her art is not really about a particular meaning or take away. The stories stand on their own but they also work well as a unified whole. This is what I would like to accomplish with my newest short story collection I have been putting together. My stories are about the current US political situation and the effect many of their dictates have on everyday people. I am hopeful that the stories add up to a powerful message but one that I am not blatantly proclaiming. I would like it to be as subtle as Davis’.
My story Fragility comes closest to the method Davis uses, though I am in no way comparing my work to hers: hers is a genius I will most likely never attain. In my story a mother is tormented by her son’s behavior of talking to his dead grandfather and is put off by the ‘help’ his school offers. It is a mere 1700 words and I have been told that people love it or hate it; there doesn’t seem to be any in-between. But I mention it because I feel it is short on explanations and simply presents a situation that I hope the reader will analyze independently. Fragility was first published by the now defunct Slag Review but can be found in my collection Not So You’d Notice, available at Amazon.
My story collection!
In a Human Voice, Carol Gilligan, 2023.
In a Human Voice is a follow-up to Gilligan’s 1982 book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development, after she challenged her own use of the word ‘different’ to explain the “feminine” voice she heard when considering moral development. Here, she redefines the different voice as a human voice, or an ethic of care. After reviewing her original studies for In a Different Voice, discussing how boys and girls are initiated into patriarchy, Gilligan goes on to suggest that “relational capacities such as empathy and emotional intelligence…are recognized for what they are: human strengths” in care ethics. This is an incredible read and a powerful antidote to the dominant view circulating about how strength is the ability to use force and take whatever you want from whoever you want. Gilligan’s writing is clear and well supported, incredibly descriptive concerning child development, and most importantly, hopeful in the quest for a more decent society.
How In a Human Voice informs my writing.
Voice is central to Gilligan’s text and of special interest to me is how voices are silenced. I have explored silence in much of my writing. I have an unpublished short story called Let There Be Silence where the protagonist spends years attempting to leave his/her abuser and desires above all to be free from the oppression of another’s harmful words. In another, Bluebird, a school bus driver bullied throughout her childhood escapes into silence to escape her memories and her own hated voice. Bluebird is available online at the journal Twelve Winters who first published it and in my short story collection Not So You’d Notice available at Amazon.
Resistance is another important element in this text, primarily in children’s potential resistance to the masculine and feminine roles dictated by a patriarchal society. Gilligan suggests that most human beings do not resist these roles, hence its ongoing repetition, but that it is possible and necessary in order to realize our human capacity for care. I address this resistance in The Arc of His Sword, available in the same story collection. In this story, a young girl’s father attempts to break the generational abusive childrearing he grew up with by building a more nurturing and understanding parent-child relationship with his daughter. I developed the character in order to explore the possibility of challenging traditional roles and Gilligan’s text would have been perfect to better understand this process.
I will use In a Human Voice a great deal as I further develop my characters in my ongoing novel project. The idea of a silenced voice and possible resistance are central to the novel. I envision my main character resisting with the help of others who have been resisting and the information I have gleamed from Gilligan’s book will be invaluable.
The Wind Whistling in the Cranes, Lidia Jorge, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Annie McDermott. This is a Portuguese novel that takes place in Valmares, a fictional town along the Algarve coastline. It portrays two rival families: the owners of the town’s previous canning factory (the Leandro family) and working class immigrants from Cape Verde (the Matas family) who now reside in the abandoned factory. The main character Milene is a Leandro and her suitor, Antonino, is a Matas. It is a slow moving novel but still quite good. I became impatient with Milene’s slow decision making but the behavior fit her character well and as the novel developed I enjoyed her introspective tendencies and freewheeling spirit. While a lot of the story centers around the developing romance between these two characters, Jorge also explores postcolonial memory and consequences, racial antagonism, economic divisions, and the nature of evil. The novel also includes a strong sense of place, from the placement of the factory near the coast, to Milene’s inherited isolated home, from the Matas matriarch longing for Cape Verde to the Leandro’s desire to develop the property. Overall, an enjoyable read.
How The Wind Whistling in the Cranes informs my writing.
The novel’s sense of place is outstanding, something I often neglect in my stories. While setting is important in my writing, such as in my short stories Bluebird (a school bus) and Sorting Through Clams (a clamming boat), they could have been stronger had I been clearer about the importance of those places in the development of my characters. Jorge does that really well.
Jorge explores the nature of evil (something I am studying now) in her novel and I appreciate how she wove it into daily conversations and internal thoughts, rather than a blatant exposition about evil. It is masterfully done and nicely parceled out throughout the novel. It is what I am attempting with the novel I am currently writing and I will revisit Jorge’s success in implementing this skill.
Check out my stories in my collection Not So You’d Notice available at Amazon. Let me know how sense of place is used in Bluebird and Sorting Through Clams.
· The Extinction of Irene Rey, Jennifer Croft. Fun novel centered on a cult-like group of translators representing different languages gathered together to translate their beloved author’s newest manuscript. Explores various extinction events from the smallest animals to large societies, including the extinction of particular human behaviors and preferences. As the translators struggle to understand their separate relationships with their author a mystery unfolds and drives the plot of the novel. Really nice exploration of identity and group personalities and our tendency to overlook flaws in people we admire.
· Break It Down: Stories, Lydia Davis. The copy I read is part of Davis’ giant The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis: I plan on reading each collection separately between some other works. These are quite short stories, there are 34 here, exploring the inner workings of their characters. I especially like the theme of ‘breaking it down’ where the characters analyze a situation to find meaning. Great narrative style and overall enjoyable reading.
· A Sunny Place for Shady People, Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell. The latest short story collection from Enriquez (Argentina) with her usual focus on horror. These stories are well-written and address interesting themes, such as responses to trauma and our relationship to the dead, and are populated with ghosts and hauntings. I appreciate the art of her storytelling but in the end the style does not appeal to me.
· James, Percival Everett. A great retelling of James’ story, from Huckleberry Finn, from his point of view. Completely engrossing tale as James discovers his own identity after being oppressed as a slave and a black man. Essential reading when considering race relations in the United States and elsewhere.
· The Place of Shells, Mai Ishizawa, translated by Polly Barton. A novel investigating memory and the role of the past in our daily lives. I especially enjoyed Ishizawa’s discussion of masks and layers of multiple masks we wear, as well as the idea that memories and places wear masks too. The novel unfolds as a sort of stripping off of each character’s masks.
· Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Olga Tokarczuk, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. It was certainly worth my time and energy to read this novel a second time. Dead bodies, human and animal, frequently appear and the protagonist Janina, a beautifully developed character, gets involved in solving who is doing the murdering. A wonderful exploration of our relationship to the natural world, the origin of gentleness and cruelty, and the role of anger in addressing the wrongs of the world. Incredible read from an outstanding Polish author.
· The Nickel Boys, Colson Whitehead. This is a completely enjoyable and intriguing novel. Centered in the black boy’s section of a reform home Whitehead explores brutality, hatred, and the exerted effort by many to thwart the progress of well-meaning individuals. One of my favorite lines, applicable to the perpetrators in the novel as well as those in our current administration is: ‘There was no higher system guiding Nickel’s brutality, merely an indiscriminate spite, one that had nothing to do with people.’ The ending of the novel was superb and brilliantly written.
· United, Cory Booker. A memoir covering Booker’s early social and political development with a cast of inspirational activists. His focus in on responsibility towards and connection with others. While the concept of empathy is taking a bruising these days, Booker applauds it and encourages it as a mainframe of ethical living. He acknowledges the privileges and opportunities he was granted simply by being born in the right place and the right time and suggests the concept of paying it forward as a means of paying the debts accrued from receiving these gifts. While I remain a cynic as far as how effective kindness can be in today’s toxic relational climate, I support living a life based on kindness in opposition to cruelty and self-centeredness, which is a main theme throughout this book.
· A Fan’s Notes, Frederick Exley. This novel was recommended to me by a friend and it sat on my shelf for years before I finally got around to reading it this month. It fits well alongside books by Henry Miller and Charles Bukowski. The main character, soured by life and alcoholism at an early age, splits his time between mental hospital stays and making a mess of his life and relations. Fairly routine situations albeit with a host of keen observations, my favorite being the following where the narrator is discussing the aggressors in World War II: ‘…my brother would in no time at all be in a rather ludicrous uniform of his own, with a few million other Americans called upon to pay the heavy toll for having failed to recognize insanity for the pernicious evil it is.’
· Natural History, Carlos Fonseca, translated by Megan McDowell. Natural History is a novel with a wide cast of characters and narrative points of view. The story encompasses art and science, politics and religion and explores the theme of identity, specifically repetition, camouflage, anonymity, and the masks we wear. Three related story lines, and perhaps a few minor ones, intersect in this wonderfully complex and engaging novel.
· White Nights, Urszula Honek, translated by Kate Webster. A short story collection out of Poland that deals with a cast of characters surrounded by and enmeshed in death. I found the subject matter and the harsh living conditions described engaging, as well as the plight of the characters as they searched for a reason to go on living and a way out of their dismal environment. The best story in the collection is Hanna where the main character, in explaining the behavior of those around her, states “they’re not consumed by sorrow in a single moment, but throughout their lives…” Through somber and bleak prose these stories speak to the difficulty in rising above stark surroundings and fighting against ever-present brutality.
· Surrender, Brian O’Hare. A collection of short stories with the Marines and soldiers at war as the backdrop for O’Hare’s exploration of what defines a man in America. A nice addition to my research into gentleness, the recurring cast of characters in these stories struggle with generational definitions of masculinity as they forge their own paths and make similar, sometimes unique mistakes of their own. Well worth reading while Trump and Hegseth push an aggressive war in Iran along with their ‘macho’ posing.
· The Power of Words, Simone Weil, translated by Richard Rees and Arthur Wills. A powerful set of philosophical essays addressing the emptiness of words in social and political discourse. She suggests ways around this problem presenting what she finds are the ethics which should be guiding our lives. Incredibly topical arguments considering how the current administration hurls empty words and phrases at us (except for the inherent cruelty which lies behind those words and phrases).
Like January, a mere five books read this month, however the Weiss and the de Beauvoir both took a lot of time and effort. Very impressed with the Weiss and have the second and third volumes on my ‘to read’ shelf.
· The Ethics of Ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir, translated by Bernard Frechtman.
· The Secret of Evil, Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews and Natasha Wimmer.
· The Will to Change, bell hooks.
· Forensic Songs, Mike McCormack.
· The Aesthetics of Resistance: Volume I, Peter Weiss, translated by Joachim Neugroschel.
· A Different Kind of Power, Jacinda Ardern. One of several books I am reading to make sense of the lack of gentleness in our world and my desire to see it practiced more widely. Ardern’s memoir discusses what she would later term empathetic leadership during her years as New Zealand’s prime minister. Beautiful story about the power of kindness over brutal and caustic social and political behavior.
· Overcome Hardness with Softness, Sam Choo. Nonfiction addressing gentleness, flexibility, and calm thought as a kind of strength. More of an overview of this approach than an in-depth analysis but nicely written with encouraging thoughts about the viability of gentleness.
· Power of Gentleness: Meditations on the Risk of Living, Anne Dufourmantelle, translated by Katherine Payne & Vincent Sallé. Dufourmantelle was a philosopher and psychoanalyst and provided an incredible account of gentleness in this brief text. She cogently discusses the power of gentleness and what a risk it is to live a gentle life: a risk she argues is worth taking. I will return to this amazing work sometime soon.
· The Man of Feeling, Henry Mackenzie. I chose this book to understand how the author characterized gentleness. Written in the 18th century the story presents the protagonist’s gentleness as a virtue as opposed to the common view of gentleness as a weakness. Overall a decent story of one man’s life spent fiercely clinging to his empathetic approach towards others.
· The Last Novel, David Markson. The conclusion to the trilogy includes more author notes and reminisces about artists and the creative process. A greater focus on death this time as the Novelist approaches his own. An enjoyable and challenging trilogy.
· Soft Power, Joseph S Nye. Non-fiction explaining the role soft power plays in successful world politics, with emphasis on the United States. Written in 2004 so the data is outdated and much has changed in the world since then. Still, a useful text in my exploration of gentleness.
· Good and Evil and Other Stories, Samanta Schweblin, translated by Megan McDowell. I could read Schweblin stories all day long. This collection explores the things we lose during our lifetimes, from our voices, to loved ones, to valuable relationships. In the end, the characters are left to themselves to understand their losses. Quite supreme!
· Flesh, David Szalay. Novel which just won the Booker Prize, I read it to see how Szalay presented the male voice, something many critics discussed. Another story of a man’s life, this time growing up in Hungary, emigrating to London, and finally returning to Hungary. The protagonist has very little to say so we learn about him from the situations he falls into, his successes and his failures. One of the main characters says about the protagonist Istvan he “represents a primitive form of masculinity” which I found to be an apt description of the character throughout the text.
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