Short Stories 2009

My 2009 short story project now draws to a close, with the 17 stories reviewed falling well short of my goal of 25. Overall it's been a rewarding experience, with my favorite stories being those of J.F. Powers, Isaac Bashevis Singer and Mark Costello. So please check out the final installment, of the famous Proulx story, if you wish. I'm sure I'll review more stories in the coming year, but this time around I won't impose a similar goal on myself.

Annie Proulx, "Brokeback Mountain"
So many people have the seen the movie that was based on Proulx's story that I don't have much to add here, other than that the story is every bit as laconic, sobering and heartbreaking as the movie, which in turn proved to be remarkably faithful to the original, right down to specific lines of dialogue (including the quietly devastating "I wish I knew how to quit you") and yes, that sex scene in the tent. (Source: Annie Proulx, Brokeback Mountain) (Posted: 12/31/09)

Kendra Grant Malone, "Rape Children"
The story's narrator has a relationship, but it's clearly not the one she wants. She has fun with her significant other; they go out drinking, watch TV for hours, shout provocative but extremely inappropriate things (such as the title phrase of the story) in public just to get a reaction. But she wants it to be more than that - deeper, more emotional, maybe even to the point of saying "I love you", and more intimate than their long-distance relationship allows. Yet she can't get them beyond that level by the end of their weekend together, and faces a long - and longing - bus ride home. Sad and strangely affecting. (Source: ML Press) (Posted: 12/14/09)

Karl Koweski, "Holly Go Darkly"
Vic's online affair has escalated into a physical one and, desperate to escape the emptiness of his loveless marriage, he impulsively professes to Holly his love which she emphatically does not share. When she resists he strikes back, with just enough tact to avoid the sour-grapes litany of her physical shortcomings that suddenly runs through his mind, yet still utters his frustration that their relationship is to her nothing more than a casual fling. She exits the hotel room, likely ending whatever happiness - though temporary and conditional - he might have had with her. Koweski's spare prose is full of longing and sadness, concisely imparting the hopes and sober reality of Vic's life. (Source: Fried Chicken and Coffee, 10/5/09) (Posted: 10/29/09)

J.F. Powers, "Bill"
Father Joe has a small yet comfortable parish, but no curate to help with the work; an established career, but no professional collegiality; a well-stocked liquor cabinet, but no drinking buddy. A curate is finally appointed, raising the priest's hopes and setting him into action. Curiously, though, over the course of a week we see him performing few of his official duties - saying Mass, taking confession or even interacting with his parishioners. Instead we mostly see him fretting over who the new curate will be and furnishing the curate's quarters - haggling with furniture salesmen, conferring with an interior designer, arranging the rooms. But when the curate finally arrives, Father Joe finds him to be neither the deferential nor convivial colleague he hoped for, and in expressing his frustration provides a glimpse of how he feels about himself and his own life. This light and quietly comic story has really whetted my appetite to read Morte d'Urban, Powers' acclaimed novel of the similarly situated Father Urban. (Source: Modern Irish-American Fiction: A Reader) (Posted 10/16/09)

William Walsh, "Muse"
Spare and lean, and consisting primarily of terse dialogue, this story involves every male poet's fantasy: an attractive woman who not only recognizes the narrator as being a poet and offers inspiration for his verse, but is also willing to sleep with him with very little effort from him. But reality concerns aside, her presence isn't strictly literal, but a metaphor for what inspires all writers - that single spark which creates "fifty, sixty" works or more. The story might also be a commentary on the old conceit that creative writers shouldn't marry, that whatever passion and focus they devote to relationships would be better directed to their writing. That's not an opinion I agree with, but the narrator seems to meet it halfway - he gives up "possibly an endless number" of inspirations from her, instead accepting with their new relationship just a single inspiration, one which he'll use again and again. And will likely be happier for it. (Source: Night Train, October 2009) (Posted: 10/15/09)

Mark Costello, "Callahan's Black Cadillacs""
Devastating from the very first line ("Out of World War II he swings, fat, flatulent, hemorrhoidal, hyberbolic, sleepy, lazy, squat, penniless, hypertense."), this great story alternates between the adolescent narrator's interactions with his ravaged and ruined Uncle Mort (just 26 years old but already well on his way to death) and pious, grieving Great Aunt Hatt during and in the aftermath of World War II. Gradually the two story lines draw together, first via Mort's incessant pleas for money from Hatt and then to Hatt's deep secret which only Mort seems to be the only other person to know, and finally to the demise of each, the details of which blur together in the memory of the narrator as he looks back as an adult. Simply stunning. (Source: The Murphy Stories) (Posted 10/14/09)

Paul Lamb, "The Manuscript"
The premise of this story is terrific - a hardluck guy named Quincy who proves to be the angel of death for every organization he's ever been associated with, the portentous job he's about to assume, and the rash act committed by the narrator which presumably averts global disaster - and the telling is straightforward and logical. Just two problems: first, the narrative device used - a secondary narrator discovers the primary narrator's written confession - adds little to the story; and second, the narrator's over-explaining of the implications of Quincy's employment history, when just a recital of the company names (Braniff, Enron, WorldCom) would have been more than enough to get the point across. Still, an entertaining story overall. (Source: Mirror Dance, June 2009) (Posted 9/21/09)

Dan Chaon, "The Hobblers"
A spare and sorrowful work of flash fiction that explores marital loss and grief. The narrator's feelings about the old couple who walk past his house every day, and his subtly-rendered resentment over what they represent, have a quietly powerful impact. (Source: Smokelong Quarterly.) (Posted 9/10/09)

Walter S. Tevis, "The Big Bounce"
Odd story, sort of Sci-Fi Lite, about two amateur scientists and their accidental discovery of a rubber-like substance with amazing - and soon to be ominous - qualities. The piece is awkwardly structured, with the first half a stiff, dialogue-heavy narrative that reminded me of the here's-how-it-all-happened conclusion to a Hardy Boys mystery (with plenty of scientific jargon that to my layman's ear might be realistic but could just as well be nonense) while the second half is a rollicking adventure yarn as the two chase their creation as it careens out of control. Mildly interesting but less than compelling overall, and not at all what I expected from the writer of such realistic dramas as The Hustler and The Color of Money. (Source: Project Gutenberg.) (Posted 9/9/09)

Eudora Welty, "Why I Live at the P.O."
After reading this rollicking, darkly funny story, the question is no longer why the narrator lives in the back room of a small-town post office, but instead why she lived with her family - ignorant, insensitive, mean-spirited and any number of other negative adjectives - for as long as she did. A terrific little slice of Southern life, as I suspect most of Welty's stories are. (Source: Short Story Masterpieces, edited by Robert Penn Warren and Albert Erskine.) (Posted 8/24/09)

Spencer Dew, "Scrapbook of Fatal Accidence"
Jack has woman problems: there's his ex, Larissa, who he won't be getting over any time soon; and Z, very desirable but married with kids and forever unattainable; and Eileen, who may be his ex-lover but is more than likely an old friend or even sister, a painfully self-aware young woman who endlessly spews her acute self-diagnosis, which Jack only listens to some of the time. But despite his difficult interactions with these three women (or non-interaction, in the case of Larissa), Jack is too passive to do anything decisive about any of them. So on he goes, meandering through life and clearly getting nowhere. The title is a nod to Nelson Algren (in The Man With the Golden Arm, Zosh keeps her own "Scrapbook of Fatal Accidence", a collection of newspaper clippings of grisly car crashes and train wrecks), and it's a good fit with Dew's story, which is sort of Jack's own scrapbook of tragic wrecks. Like a scrapbook, the story is a scattershot collection of events and places from Jack's life, each of which may seem disjointed in isolation but taken collectively present an effective portrait of a very lost soul. (Source: Thieves Jargon, Issue 81, January 5, 2009) (Posted 8/14/09)

Randa Jarrar, "The Life, Loves, and Adventures of Zelwa the Halfie"
Having followed the author online for several years, I wanted to like this story much more than I did. And there's plenty here to like - the concept of half-human/half-beasts living in the everyday world (rendered very matter-of-factly, just enough for suspension of disbelief), the "halfie" narrator's use of the movie Splash as a litmus test to see how her dates really think of her and her kind, the tense relationship with her father. But the delivery just seems a bit off. There is too much explanation of the narrator's life, instead of illustration; I would have preferred to see that life shown in a few more vivid scenes rather than having the narrator tell everything. A little more left unsaid, and a lot less explanation. (Source: Oxford American, February 2009) (Posted 6/9/09)

Ambrose Bierce, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Kind of an odd story - the first two sections are straight, realistic narrative, the first showing the impending hanging of a Southerner during the Civil War, the second showing some of the protagonist's backstory which lead him to his fate, with both sections being fairly static and heavy on physical description. Then the third section continues in the same realistic vein but ramps up the action as the protagonist suddenly makes his escape from the Northern troops. Or so it seems, as the very last line delivers a devastating twist which abruptly proves the preceding action to be false, and the mere fantasy of a doomed man. Extremely well done, and a story very much ahead of its time. (Source: Project Gutenberg) (Posted 4/29/09)

Nelson Algren, "Entrapment"
I'm not sure "Entrapment" fully works as a short story, but it certainly does so better than its original intended form - a novel, for which Algren wrote 300-something pages but never completed. A full-length novel like this would have been unbearable to read - not because of the writing, which is typically wonderful Algren, often at his very best, but instead the tone. While Algren leavened his grim fiction with black humor and glimmers of slim hope, there is none of that in "Entrapment", just bitterness and regret, as the utterly disconsolate narrator talks in circles as he punishes himself for pushing away the only woman he would ever love. This is a touching and emotionally devastating sketch of a man's life, drawn heavily from Algren's own experience, that gives an intriguing glimpse into the writer's inner self. (Source: Nelson Algren, Entrapment and Other Writings) (Posted 4/5/09)

Isaac Bashevis Singer, "Joy"
"Joy" is the lovely story of Bainish, a revered and beloved rabbi in a small European town who has a crisis of faith after four of his children die of an unnamed disease. The rabbi abandons his leadership of the local synagogue and privately renounces his faith, completely retreating from the world in his stricken grief. But one day he has a vision of his recently-deceased daughter, who admonishes him to return to his religious duties and tells him that she will come back for him (clearly, to lead him to death and the afterlife) after the high holidays. Her appearance (or his hallucination, if you prefer) revives him from his torpor and doubt, and he resumes his duties with an enthusiasm and vigor not seen before, his religious faith restored just before his daughter's return. It's not entirely clear what makes the rabbi suddenly recover his faith - the shock of the vision of his daughter, perhaps, or his realization that a state of doubt at the time of his death will doom him to eternal damnation. Maybe seeing truly is believing - though the rabbi didn't actually see God, he did see a manifestation (or delusion) of deity, and that was enough for him. Faith is a tricky and delicate thing - sometimes, Singer seems to be saying, simply wanting to believe is enough to foster belief - and the rabbi clearly wanted to believe, never abandoning the personal pious rituals even during his time of doubt. Though this is a very religious story (as are all the other stories in this collection), even the non-religious can be heartened by it: for the rabbi's vision of his daughter, as a reminder to him of what was lost, makes him realize what is truly important, and gives him the strength to celebrate life again with the time he still has left. (Source: Isaac Bashevis Singer, Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories) (Posted 3/3/09)

Colum McCann, "Phreak"
McCann's story revolves around the Philippe Petit's 1974 tightrope walk between the towers of the World Trade Center. The first section is absolutely wonderful in its depiction of the bustling street milieu of Lower Manhattan, as some people congregate on street corners, craning the necks upward in wonderment at the tiny blot in the sky between the towers, while just as many hurry past, intent on reaching their destinations. But the second section falls completely flat as the writer attempts to introduce a bored computer hacker in California who dials in to payphones near the WTC, hoping for a firsthand account of the event. The vivid street scenes of the first section are abandoned for a long and unsatisfying series of choppy, back-and-forth phone dialogue. The third section reverts to the style of the first as it tells of the aerialist's arrest, completing the story but mostly failing to connect with the second section - which, quite unintentionally, drives home the point that the second section is mostly irrelevant. The first section would have made a great short story on its own, but the writer simply took it too far. (Source: The Paris Review, Fall 2008) (Posted 1/19/09)

Franz Kafka, "The Judgment"
Starts slowly (too slowly, I think) but ends swiftly and with a bang. Plenty of father-son dynamic tension, from an aging father who feels shoved aside and a son who may not have been aware that he was the one who shoved. Interesting story, though not the true classic I had been lead to believe it is. (Source: Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis and Other Stories) (Posted 1/18/09)