The Reading Life

"The Night of the Ugly Ones" by Benedetti Mario-A Podcast by Miette's Bedtime Story podcast

2012-02-11T00:30:00.000+08:00

"The Night of the Ugly Ones" by Mario Benedetti- (A podcast-10:36)

I was very happy to get notified that Miette of Miette's bedtime story podcast has posted two more stories on her marvelous web page. I said it before and I will say it again, Miette's bedtime podcast is the only source of literary podcasts (the reading aloud of a literary work) endorsed by The Reading Life. I find her voice and sometimes wonderfully eccentric style mesmerising and her taste is impeccable. She has been doing this for seven years and I think you will be amazed by her collection of podcasts.

One of her new selections was "The Night of the Ugly Ones" by Mario Benedetti (1920 to 2009-Uruguay) I admit freely I have never heard of Benedetti , and unless you are from Uruguay you may not have either, so I, of course, Googled him. It turns out he is is a well known Uruguayan poet, journalist, and writer of fiction. He is evidently famous in Latin American literary circles but is little translated out of Spanish. The only other author from Uruguay I have read is Horacio Quiroga, often called the Edgar Allan Poe of the Amazon. (Miete also has a podcast of one of his stories on her web page.) I loved the five short stories I read by Quiroga and they are all in fact rather scary. Of course there is no reason to assume that Mario's story would be in a similar mode just because he is also from Uruguay but it is also a story about a dark side of life that most people would not even want to think about. If anything it is darker in its way than either Poe or Quiroga!

Have you ever been out late at night in a big city, big enough so nobody knows anybody else? No questions asked about what you were doing that night. You see the people in "The Night of the Ugly Ones" but you turn away, or at least I did, I admit, people so ugly and misshapen either by birth or horrible accident that it hurts to see the common humanity in them. This story is about very touching, real, and passionate romance between a man and a woman from among "The Ugly Ones".

One of the "uses" of literature is it lets us or if well done and we open ourselves to it, forces us, to see the humanity in people very other from ourselves. If this story has a moral, it is an old one, "There but for the Grace of God, go I".

This story is for sure worth the ten minutes it takes to listen to. While you are on Miette's bedtime podcasts, do yourself a favor and look around!

Mel u

"Queen Hortense" by Guy de Maupassant

2012-02-10T00:30:00.000+08:00

"Queen Hortese" by Guy de Maupassant (1885, 12 pages)

Words and Peace does a very interesting meme every Thursday, I Love France, where we are asked to leave notes of our posts on anything related to France. I am currently reading The Complete Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant through a Kindle edition. He published nearly 200 or so short stories in his life so this may seem, like a lot but the volume is no longer than three Trollope novels. The quality of the stories vary a lot. Some justify his claim to be the second best short story writer in world history and some clearly were written by formula in a hurry. I am a bit past the 50 percent point in the collection.

One of the common themes in his stories is a sense of lives ruined by steps not taken, whether from reticence, fear, vanity, love or any of a hundred reasons. "Queen Hortense" is about a older woman who never married, her two sisters did. She is queen over the court yard at her modest house. Her subjects are the cats, chickens, and stray dogs she feeds and holds court over.

She never had a lover of any kind or even it seems many friends. That is the way she wanted things. Her sisters do not seek a lot of contact with her and Hortense has let her appearance and her health go for way to long. One day the sisters are notified that Hortense is on her deathbed. They along with their children and husbands go to see her. As they enter her room she is giving advise to children who are not there, she is scolding a nonexistent husband and swearing her love to a man that never existed. Her sister conclude she is fantasizing about the life she never had and always told everyone she totally did not want. The sisters go in her room and try to talk to her while her brother in laws wait in the outer room. As the attending doctor comes out to tell the men she has passed away, one of them says to the other "that did not take as long as we feared it might".

Not a story for the best short stories of the world list (Guy de Mauapassant has at least ten stories that could go on such a list) but it brings a woman to life for us in just a few pages and has a solid meaning.

Hortense Bonaparte (1783 to 1837) was the stepdaughter of Napoleon and became Queen Consort of Holland so maybe de Maupassant is making a political point with the name of the central character in this story

Mel u

Welcome to All Literary Book Blog Hoppers Feb 9 to Feb 12

2012-02-09T16:13:00.000+08:00

I am always glad to see the Literary Book Blog Hop-sometimes I admit I feel out of place in a world of YA books, vampire romances and ARC reviews. It is good to meet other people with interests beyond these.

When I started my blog nearly two and a half years ago, I planned to focus on books about people who lead at least partially reading centered lives. This is still a core focus of my blog but in reality I post on a variety of topics including Japanese literature, post colonial Asia fiction, classics, and lately I have been very into short stories. My blog is the home of Irish Short Story Week II (set for March 2012). I like to discover new to me authors and I am open to joint projects and events.

I will be glad to follow back all who follow me. If you visit leave a comment so I can return the visit.

Every week the hop host provides us with an interesting question. Here is this weeks question:

In the epilogue for Fargo Rock City, Chuck Klosterman writes:

"It's always been my theory that criticism is really just veiled autobiography; whenever someone writes about a piece of art, they're really just writing about themselves."

Do you agree?

My quick answer to this is "No I do not'. I think this line of thinking comes from a confused way of going from the fact that we experience the literary work with our own perceptions as shaped by our life history to saying that this means that all literary criticism is veiled autobiography. This is a huge leap in logic. I think in saying this you are depriving the word "autobiography" of its meaning and rendering the statement true perhaps but trivial. From this one could just as easily say everything you say is veiled autobiography. This can lead to a kind of celebration of extreme relativism and a glorification of emotion over thought which destroys any point of literary reflection.

Mel u

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

2012-02-09T11:23:00.001+08:00

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West (1918, 80 pages)

The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West (1892 to 1983 London, England) was the only book written during WWI which deals with the war as a subject matter that was written by a woman. Rebecca West had a very diversified authorial career writing several novels, a number of political essays, and some highly regarded travel books. She reported on the Nuremberg Trials for The New Yorker. She was very active in political causes and was a strong advocate of the rights of women. She grew up in a very cultured and intellectually stimulating environment. She had a son with H. G. Wells. (There is a detailed article on her here ).

The Return of the Soldier was West's first novel. It tells the story of the return of a shell shocked British Captain, Chris Baldry, from the trenches of France during WWI. It is told from the point of view of one of his female cousins, Jenny.

As the novel opens we are at the country estate of a cousin by marriage of Jenny. They seem in a place very remote from the hardships of war but for the fact that her cousin's husband is serving in the British Army in France. Then they are shocked when a third woman, Margaret, comes to advise them that she has gotten a notice from the war office that Chris has been injured and is coming home. Of course they are wondering why Margaret and not his wife got the notice and they know Chris has a romance with her fifteen years ago. To tell a bit of the plot, Chris has lost fifteen years worth of memories and thinks he is 21 and not 36 and that Margaret is his girlfriend and he has no idea who his wife is supposed to be. The plot unfolds from here.

The story is not told in a straightforward fashion but as typical of a British novel of the period it jumps back and forth in time and mirrors in its structure the fragmented memory of Chris. Even though WWI is hardly mentioned in the novel, it is about its effect on society and the attempts of returning soldiers to fit into society. Back by Henry Green which I posted on last month is a WWII version of the same theme and Ford Madox Ford's great work Parade's End deals with the issues of the returning soldier on a much larger stage.

I am very glad I read this short work and commend it to anyone interested in Modernist Fiction of the Virginia Woolf sort. The prose style is exquisite. This book is for sure worth the time it takes to read it and I would like to read more of her work in the future

I am participating in The War Through the Generations reading challenge which is about books on WWI this year and will be including this book as one of my selections.

Mel u

"The Prophet's Hair" by Salman Rusdie

2012-02-08T10:50:00.000+08:00

"The Prophet's Hair" by Salman Rushdie (1981, 21 pages)

"The Prophet's Hair" is the first short story by Salman Rushdie that I have read. It is one of the most interesting and exciting stories I have read in a while. I have previously read and posted on two of Rusdie's (1947, Bombay) novels Midnight's Children and The Enchantress of Florence. Rushdie has received most of the top literary awards short of The Nobel Prize. He has become very well known outside of the literary world because of the reaction that his Satanic Verses produced.

I love both of these books. Here is what I said about the prose of Rushdie in The Enchantress of Florence.

As I read this work, at times I marveled at the fireworks of the language. At times I was really quite amazed. It is hard to find something easily comparable. Yes at times I did find it almost too lush and rich. Imagine a 25 layer cake made by 25 of the best Parisian pastry chefs with each layer a different flavor made with no expense spared and you get some of the idea of it. Now imagine as you eat the cake you notice small round balls of something mixed in. Maybe it is opium maybe it is goat waste or even a poison that will produce a spectacular disease that everybody else in the court will marvel at as it overtakes you. Maybe even it is a magic potion that will transform you in ways beyond imagination.

The "The Prophet's Hair" is set sometime in the last century in Srinagar, in Kashmir. It is told sort of in the style of an Aladdin's tale. The central characters are a wealthy money lender indifferent to the laws of his Islamic faith, his son, his daughter who adopts modern ways to his chagrin, and his long suffering wife. The man is totally preoccupied with business. As the story opens his son, a pampered obviously rich young man, is venturing into the roughest part of the city, looking for a great thief. He is led into a terrible area and mugged. I do not want to say why as that would spoil too much of the plot. Something happens in the father's life that causes him to become extremely devout and conservative in his observation of religious life. He disowns his daughter for going in public without a veil. He begins to treat the customer of his business in a terrible harsh way, as he never did before. For the first time ever he hits his wife. I really do not want to tell more of the plot of this story.

The fun of this story, and fun is the first word I would use to describe it, is in the contrasts of the lives of the wealthy family and those in the thieves quarter and in just the pleasure in the wondrous prose style of Rusdie.

This story first appeared in The Guardian in 1981. I read it in The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories.

I am considering purchasing a Kindle edition of Satanic Verse and I would appreciate input from all who have read it.

Mel u

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

2012-02-07T16:56:00.000+08:00

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1999 448 pages, 706 KB)

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden (1956, USA) is a book I have wanted to read for sometime now. It is a huge international best seller and has been translated into many languages. A movie based on it was also made. It is fictional story of the life of a young girl sold by her father, a poor fisher man, to the owner of a Geisha house in 1929 up to forty years latter. Her and her sister are both sold but not before it is verified, in a brutal scene, that both are virgins. This is a story about growing up in the "water world" of Japan, a place much written about and visited by the first practitioners of western style Japanese novels. One of the frequent or perhaps the most frequent question about Geishas is are they in effect prostitutes who also knew the intricacies of an elegant tea service. The basic answer of Memoirs of a Geisha is yes they are prostitutes in the vast majority of cases but they are something more also. If a man in the water world just wants to buy sex, there are plenty of venues open to him.

When an older Geisha is speaking with her 14 year old apprentice, her little sister, she tells her why do you really think the chairman of a giant corporation or a distinguished doctor would want to talk to you. In the world depicted in Memoirs of a Geisha, second and third level Geishas are pretty much willing to sell themselves on a onetime overnight or less basis at the end of a party. Higher class Geishas hold out to become the well supported mistress of a wealthy patron.

Golden spent years researching his novel and there really is a lot to be learned about the life of a Geisha and the business side of the occupation. I found it to be a really educational book in terms of the day to day lives of the Geishas.

One of the central events in the novel is the auctioning of the virginity of the central character at age fourteen. Nobody in this dramatic scene comes off looking good, least of all the wealthy men bidding to take her virginity. There is a controversy about whether or not this is based on Golden's misunderstanding of certain cultural rituals associated with a girl coming of age. The book was based on Golden's interviews with a Geisha and she claimed he misunderstood her and this sort of thing did not happen. I do not know the answer to this controversy but it does make you wonder why grown men in their fifties and beyond, captains of industry, cultivate the acquaintance of 14 year old girls if there is no sexual element in their interest.

In part Geishas existed because men, of course, want to have contact with attractive women and are subject to having their vanity played on, the stock and trade of the Geisha. They also wanted their own daughters, sisters etc to have no contact with men so a professional class of women arose to fill the void.

I thought the weakest part of the book was in the portrayal of the male characters, especially, "the Chairman" on whom the lead character has a life time fixation. The best part was the look at the day to day life of the Geisha and seeing how the economics of the water world worked.

I endorse this book to anyone interested in Geishas. Golden also does a very good job, maybe the best part of the book is here, in showing how WWII effect the lives of the people in the world of the Geisha.

Memoirs of a Geisha kept my attention most of the time though it was a little predictable. It is well written, if not great literature and it is very much worth reading for those into Japanese culture.

Please share your thought on Memoirs of a Geisha with us.

Mel u

"Brownstone" by Reneta Adler

2012-02-06T10:44:00.001+08:00

"Brownstone" by Reneta Adler (1978, 28 pages)

1978 O Henry Prize Winner

Best American Short Story

Reneta Adler was born in Milan Italy in 1938. Her parents fled Europe to escape the Nazis and she grew up in Danbury Connecticut. She attended Ivy League schools and the Sorbonne in Paris where she studies Linguistics and Structuralism. She also graduated from Yale Law School. She worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker for a number of years. She has written several highly regarded novels. Her short story "Brownstone" won the 1978 O Henry Award for best short story by an American.

I read "Brownstone" in A Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker and enjoyed it a lot. For those not from New York City, a brownstone is a row house constructed from brownstone, often a multistory building building. The story is told in the first person by a woman living in the building. It is kind of a running commentary on her life and the lives of her neighbors and her observations on the neighbors. It is very much a New York City slice of life in the big city story. I enjoyed reading it a lot. I would read another short story by Adler but probably will not seek out her longer fiction at this time. Just too much else out there.

Please share your experience with Adler with us. Reading suggestions are always greatly appreciated.

Mel u

"Philomela" by Emma Tennant

2012-02-03T21:00:00.000+08:00

"Philomela" by Emma Tennant (1975, 15 pages)

"Philomela" by Emma Tennant (1937, UK) is based on the ancient Greek myth of Philomela, a princess of Athens who was raped and had her tongue torn out by her brother-in-law.

Tennant comes from a well connected and distinguished family. Her father was a baron. She began her writing career as a travel writer for Queen Magazine and was the editor of the British edition of Vogue. She has published novels that are sequels to Pride and Prejudice as well as Jane Eyre. She also wrote a novel based on her affair with Ted Hughes, Burnt Desires. (There is more information about her life and work here.)

"Philomela" is set in ancient Athens and is told in the first person by a woman of Nobel rank who was given in marriage for the sake of political alliances. She sees herself more or less as a glorified slave when she talks to her beloved sister Philomela about whether or not she should accept her future role as a wife of a war loving political leader. They agree that the sister has no choice but to accept the marriage. As she travels to her new home she and Philomela make plans for Philomela to join them. The rest of the story is pretty much a retelling of the myth.

I enjoyed this story a lot, especially the ending where the sister of Philomela takes terrible revenge on her husband for his rape and mutilation of her sister.

I read this story in The Penquin Book of Modern British Short Stories edited by Malcolm Bradbury. The story originally appeared in Banana, a literary magazine edited by Tennant, in 1975.

Mel u

"The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" by Graham Greene

2012-02-03T13:13:00.001+08:00

"The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen"   by Graham Greene (1987, 8 pages)

The work of Graham Greene is often seen as sort of at the boundary line between popular and literary fiction. Greene (1904 to 1991) was a very prolific and successful author. Several of his novels were made into movies. Among the most read of his novels are The Third Man, Our Man in Heaven, and The Power and the Glory. (There is a good article about his interesting life and career here).

"The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" is a funny clever well story written in a pleasant style. An engaged couple are in a restaurant celebrating the acceptance of the woman's first novel for publication. She is trying to pressure the man into marriage right away, saying they can live from the proceeds of her book sales. Her publisher has given her a nice advance and told her she is one of the most perceptive new writers whose work he has read in years. The woman is very thrilled by this remark and keeps telling her finance what the publisher said about how perceptive she was over and over. Seating right next to them is a loud party of ten or so Japanese men. There is a well done ironic and sharply undercutting ending that puts the publishers observation on her very much in doubt. You cannot help but think maybe everything the woman hope for is based on the shaky predictions of the publisher.

""The Invisible Japanese Gentlemen" is included in The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories edited by Malcolm Bradbury. It is an interesting well written twist ending short story.

Please share your experience with Graham Greene with us.

Mel u

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry

2012-02-02T13:48:00.000+08:00

Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry (2002, 448 pages)

Before I begin my post on this very powerful novel about family life in Mumbai, once called Bombay, I wish to thank Prashant C. Trikannad of Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema for suggesting I expand my meagre readings in Indian Literature to include a novel by Rohinton Mistry, known for writing about the lives of people who live in Bombay. (Call me old fashioned but I prefer "Bombay" to "Mumbai" and if Mistry is right so do most of the people who live there.)

Mystry was born in India in 1952 and emigrated to Toronto Canada in 1975 with his wife. He studied at The University of Toronto, writes in English and is a Canadian citizen. All of his novels are about life in India in the second half of the 20th century. He has won numerous literary awards including the Governor General's Prize for Canadian works and has been short listed two times for the Booker prize. Thanks to Oprah Winfrey selecting it for her book club, his second novel, A Fine Balance, sold several hundred thousand copies.

Family Matters is set in Bombay in the 1990s. It focuses on the lives of the extended family of a former professor, now very elderly and dependent on his relatives for care due to his numerous health problems. After a long romance with woman he truly loved, at the aggressive suggestion of his parents, he married a woman that was, like he and his family as far back as anyone knows, Parsi. Parsis in India are descended from immigrants from Persia in the 10th century who left Persia for India so they could practice their religion, Zoroastrianism (a religion six centuries older than Christianity). As I learned in the novel, the Parsi are declining in numbers due to a low birthrate so there is a lot of pressure not to marry outside your religion.

The drama in the story comes from the impact taking care of their step father has on his step-daughter and son and their families. The families are beautifully done and I really felt like I was listening in on real conversations. One of the dominant forces in the novel is Bombay (it is almost always called that in the novel). There are so simply great descriptions of life in the city. Mistry does not in any way hide the corruption, crowding and huge amount of religious and caste discord that can make the city a miserable place but you can tell the city is very much loved for its deep history and its powerful ambiance.

I was emotionally involved with the characters and felt their joy and pain and the tedium of their lives when the book began to focus on the medical needs of the step father.

Family Matters is a very good novel. The dialogues are great. The relationships are totally perfect. There is more or less a happy ending after lots of troubles. I really liked the epilogue that flashed five years forward to show how the people were all doing. There is also a lot to be learned about the culture of the Parsi and the religion of Zoroastrianism from this great book. I hope to read his A Fine Balance in the not too distant future as it is considered his best work and the definitive Mumbiai/Bombay novel.

Be sure to check out Chess, Comics, Crosswords, Books, Music, Cinema by Prashant C. Trikannad for some great posts on a wide range of topics.

Please share your experience with Mistry with us-

Mel u

"Smart Money" by Philip Roth

2012-02-01T16:51:00.000+08:00

"Smart Money" by Philip Roth (1977, 22 pages)

Philip Roth (1933, Newark, New Jersey, USA) is a very prolific much awarded writer with over thirty novels published plus numerous short stories and essays. He has won two very prestigious American literary awards, The National Book Award and The Pulitzer Price. The last work I read by him was way back when the novel that made him famous Portnoy's Complaint was first published to public outcry for its explicit account, told through a monologue, of the sex life of a Jewish bachelor obsessed with his mother.

Roth also wrote several novels, loosely autobiographical, centering on a novelist, Nathan Zuckerman. "Smart Money" is a short story based on this same novelist (0r perhaps it is a prior topublication extract from a novel).

"Smart Money" is a very interesting, entertaining story that held my attention throughout. As the story opens in New York City where he now lives, Zuckerman has just published a hugely popular best seller based on the life of Jewish people in New York City. Most people love it but there are a vocal majority who feel his sexually explicit novel shames the people it depicts as well as their heritage.

Zuckerman likes to go out and about in New City but where ever he goes now people recognize him and approach him. People want to thank him for his book and tell him what it means to them. There is one other major character in the story. It is a man who was involved in the infamous quiz show scandals in which contestants were given the answers in advance. The man in the story lost to another contestant who was given the answers. This was a long time ago but he has been an embittered and obsessed with telling his story ever since then. He more or less traps Zuckerman into a long and hilarious conversation which is really just his monologue.

This story is included in Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker (2007)

Please share your experience with Philip Roth with us.

Mel u

"A Star Trap" by Bram Stoker

2012-01-31T16:35:00.000+08:00

"A Star Trap" by Bram Stoker (1908, 5214 words, 14 pages)

Please Consider Joining Us For Irish Short Story Week Year Two March 12 to March 22

List of Bram Stoker short stories-nearly 100

When we hear Bram Stoker (1847 to 1912-Dublin, Ireland) Dracula at once comes to mind, as well it should. However, Bram Stoker wrote in addition to Dracula over 100 short stories, all of which can be found online. Most of his short stories are in the Gothic horror genre (I have posted on two of them as well as Dracula and there is more background information on him in these posts.)

Professionally Stoker spent most of his life as a theatrical manager. He was director for twenty seven years of the Lyceum Theatre, in London, started in 1765, with a seating capacity of 2000. It was a very high prestige venue. I was very happy to find a short story by Stoker that was based on his experience working in the theater.

"A Star Trap" is a simple murder mystery about the killing of an actor. It is an interesting story for the behind the scenes look it gives us of life in the theater seen not from the point of view of the actors or playwrights but that of the stage hands who do all the behind the scenes work. The story is narrated by a young man just starting out as a stage hand specializing in building sets, called a "theatrical carpenter". The master carpenter is married to a very pretty much younger woman. The life of the theatrical people are very much wrapped up with others in the same world. There is always lots of gossip about who is cheating on who and which women are infatuated with the handsome actors.

This is a fun story though not a big mystery. It is for sure worth reading.

I downloaded a Kindle version of it from Manybooks, you can find a lot of Stoker's works there.

There are lots of horror and Gothic stories to pick from for Irish Short Stories Week Year Two.

Mel u

A January Reading and Blogging Look Back and a Look ahead to February

2012-01-31T04:00:00.000+08:00

January Reading Review

Novels

January was a good reading month for me. Here are the highlights from the eleven novels I read.

A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens -read in honor of Dickens forthcoming 200th Birthday on Feb 7.
The Untouchable by Mulk Arand-simply a great book about one day in the life of a Dalit in India in the 1930s-
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe also a very good book-pretty much a must read for those interested in post- colonial literature
Back by Henry Green-quirky and strange and wonderful

I also read the very popular young adult Mockingjay series by Suzanne Collins. I got all three books free. I got bored with it once I understood the basic concept. I would have liked to see the world of the story better developed.

The Changeling by Kenzaburo Oe-a must for Oe readers

I have also joined a year long read along on Clarissa by Samuel Richardson.

Short Stories

Short stories are no longer a side line in my reading life or my blog. Of the ten most popular posts of the month for January every one was about short stories.

In January I a Simple Clockwork and I began what we hope will be a long term project in which we post once or twice a month on short stories by authors from the Philippines. We will start out focusing on older stories and as much as we can we will pick stories that can be read online in English.

I also read a collection of the short stories of Issac Babel which is really a world class cultural treasure. I read on in collections of the complete short stories of Guy de Maupassant and Flannery O'Connor.

All of the novels and short stories I read in January can be found here.

February Blogging Plans

I will be doing a number of posts related to Irish Short Story Week Year II scheduled to take place March 12 to March 22. I will do several posts on resources for the event. I will do a small post of some kind on Feb 7, 2012 in honor of Dickens 200 day. I also plan to post on Mongolian short stories from the 1930s based on a great suggestion from a Mongolian book blogger.

January Blogging Look Back

I ended the month with 646 GFC followers and 1597 Twitter Followers. My page views and visits increased over one year ago about 135percent.

February Reading Plans

Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden-8 percent completed
Family Matters by Rohinton Mistery 75 percent completed
Cousin Betty by Honore Balzac-15 percent completed

Beyond this I have no rigid plans.

In short stories I will continue reading on in the complete short stories of Flannery O'Connor and Guy de Maupassant. I hope to read more stories by George Moore, Ivan Turgenev, and a diverse collection of short stories from a wide range of authors.

I as always offer my thanks to my quite brilliant cousin from Texas for editing suggestions. I am terrible as a proof reader of my own work.

As always I thank the readers and above all the commentators on my blog.

I am very open to reading suggestions, joint projects, participating in events and suggestions for improving my blog.

Mel u

"Aisling" by Colum McCann

2012-01-30T16:18:00.001+08:00

"Aisling" by Colum McCann (2011, six pages)

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Story Week Year Two March 12 to March 22

Colum McCann (Dublin, Ireland, 1965) is a much awarded author of fiction. His most recent book, Let the Great World Spin (2009) is an allegory based on the New York City events of 9/11. It won the very prestigious American National Book Award for fiction. He has written for numerous periodicals. He is a professor of Fiction at CUNY Hunter's College Fine Arts program.

I have recently been reading some of the short stories in New Irish Short Stories edited and introduced by Jim O'Connors. There are lots of short stories in the collection by new to me writers, including Colum McCann.

"Aisling" (it may have been published prior to its 2011 publication in the anthology) is a very interesting story. It is narrated in kind of a tale of my day by a married woman with children. There are no dramatic developments and no big revelations but it is a wonderful slice of life and a touching look into the consciousness of the woman narrator. The first sentence is about 150 words or so long. It is not complicated or difficult prose it is just how people think when they go through their day in their minds. We get to see how she feels about her sons and her husband and her life. The prose has a wonderful rhythm that feels completely right to me. It was a lot of fun to read this beautifully written story.

I would like to read more of the work of Colum McCann based on reading this short story.

Please share your experience with Colum McCann with us.

Mel u

"Magnificence" by Estella Alfon A Powerful Early Short Story from Cebu

2012-01-30T07:20:00.000+08:00

"Magnificence" (1939, 6 pages) by Estella D. Alfon-

Estella Alfon

With a note on the development of the Literature of the Philippines

My Prior Posts on the Literature of the Philippines

Today is the second post for what I hope will be a long term project featuring short story writers from the Philippines. In a joint venture with Nancy Cudis of Simple Clockwork we will be spotlighting once or twice a month the work of a short story writer from the Philippines. Nancy is based in Cebu City and focuses according to her profile on  PHILIPPINE LITERATURE, CLASSICS, CHILDREN'S and MIDDLE-GRADE BOOKS, CHRISTIAN FICTION, and clean ROMANCE.   Her blog is just getting started and I can already tell she has a great passion for what she does and I hope a lot of my readers will also follow her blog. She recently did a very insightful post on O. Henry.

Be sure and read the post on Simpleclock work for an insight into the literature of Cebu that you will find no where else.

Estella D. Alfon (1917 to 1983-Cebu, The Philippines) is considered to be one of the very best early short story writers of the Philippines and perhaps the first woman to have written from the point of view of the ordinary woman of the Philippines. She was a student of Paz Marquez Benitez on whom Nancy and I have previously posted.

When the Spanish established their rule in the Philippines (1521 to 1898) they found that in many parts of the area (of course it was not a country then at all) women had the right to inherit property, rule over households and even territories. Upper class (most people were slaves or near slaves) women were taught how to write. There was however, as a practical matter, really nothing to write on. What writing was done was on banana leaves, hardly a medium for literary composition. The Spanish did not believe in women having basically any freedom at all and they abolished all women's rights. For the long years of their rule, they did not start or even allow schools. Promising and docile young men were taught Spanish by the church and they became the administrators for the Spanish. Women were not allowed to learn to read or write and the very idea would have been considered ridiculous and reading anything not approved of by the church was very much not done.. Under these conditions it is not surprising that literature did not thrive at all.

When the USA became the ruler of the Philippines in 1898 they at once established public schools for all, including women. The medium of instruction was English. Ambitious students (and their parents pushed them) began to realize they must master English. The indigenous languages began to be almost looked down upon by the elite classes. Of course the teachers were a mixed lot, just like today, but some were totally wonderful and began to expose their students to the best of American and English literature. From this some students began to express themselves in short stories in English. The first authors who had been educated fully in English came into their 20s around 1920. This why when one speaks of the early short stories of the Philippines we mean short shorties from the 1920 and 1930s.

Estella Alfon was from Cebu. Almost all of her stories are written in English. She attended the University of the Philippines and was later given a position of fellow of the University Institute of Creative Writing. She had five children. Her parents were shop keepers, not highly educated people as most of the parents of other writers of this era were. Her stories are told from the point of view of the non-elite woman during 1930s to 1950s. Some are about the Japanese occupancy period, I really wish these were online but I could not find them.

"Magnificence" (1939) has a shocking and disturbing ending. It also tells us of the near powerlessness of poor women in an era with no laws to protect them or their children. I will briefly give the whole plot of this story (it is powerful enough to be read knowing the basics of the plot). Pencils were very prized by school children and needed in school but very expensive for the poor. To have two pencils was a wonderful thing for a child. One day the central female character in the story is out in the park with her children, girls and boys all under 12. She meets a bus driver who complements her on her children. Of course she is flattered and begins to see him periodically for simple conversations in the park. The one day he offers to give each of her children five pencils (and amazing gift for a working man). At first she says no she cannot accept then she says if he will come to her house and meet her husband and have dinner with them he can personally give the pencils to her children. To compress a bit, the man calls her ten year old daughter, a big for her age girl, over to sit in his lap and give her the pencils. Then he begins to bounce her up and down on his lap over and over until she becomes frightened and call for her mother.. When the mother realizes what he is doing she attacks the man with her fists and he strikes her back. As the story closes we see the mother totally debased emotionally cleaning up her daughter and washing a stain out of the girl's clothing. When she tells her husband what happened he blames the mother and tells her she is an idiot who should have seen this coming.

This is a short story about a period in time most readers do not know a lot about (I know I do not). Alfon deserve a wide international readership. For a period of years some conservatives in the universities felt her stories where somehow too bold to be taught in schools but now she is rightfully celebrated as one of the very first feminist authors of the Philippines. In just a few pages she opens up a new world to us. As I said, the language is a bit formal but we understand why.

Cebu where Alfon lived and where most of her stories are set is on a separate island from the main island, Luzon, where Manila is located. In the 1920s when Alfon wrote most of her stories it was almost culturally as if it was a different country.

We plan to make this a once or twice a month feature. Any and all are invited to join in also for this event. You can either pick your own author or we can all work together to post on one author.

Please share your experience concerning short story writers from the Phillippines with us.   In the next few months we will focus mostly on older short stories.

Nancy's post provides some very interesting background information on the literary history and culture of Cebu.

"Servant Girl" can be read online here (reviewed on Simpleclock Work)

"Magnificence" can be read online here

Great resource on short stories of the Philippines

Mel u

"One of a Kind" by Julian Barnes A Short Story by the 2011 Booker Prize Winner

2012-01-30T06:58:00.000+08:00

"One of a Kind" by Julian Barnes (1982, 15 pages)

Julian Barnes (1946, UK) won the 2011 Booker Prize for his novel The Sense of an Ending. Three others of his novels have been short listed for the award. I have seen a number of very favorable posts on his work from book bloggers whose judgement I have learned to trust so I was very happy to see one of his short stories, "One of a Kind", was included in a collection of short stories I recently acquired, The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories. (A sample of The Sense of an Ending can be downloaded from Amazon but I not like ready selections of novels.) One use of short stories is to sample an author, especially for people who see themselves as pretty much exclusively readers of longer fiction. Based on reading "One of a Kind" I would for sure be interested in reading one of his longer works.

"One of a Kind" sounds like it might be based on the experiences of Barnes at a literary conference in Bucharest. The story, told in the first person by an author, begins with the narrator offering a grand theory about Romania. His theory is that Romanian only has the cultural energy to produce one great philosopher, one novelist, one one poet, etc. He offers this theory to a Romanian writer and intellectual living in exile because of his political views who of course takes exception to this notion. There are a number of interesting conversations in the story. It was fun to see the narrator and an Italian writer visit the book stores of Bucharest. There is a lot to enjoy in "One of a Kind". It is straightforward story telling written in a pleasant fashion and the character insights displayed are very good.

There are no great events or revelations in this story. It is an interesting slice of life at a writer's conference.,

Please share your experience with Barnes with us.

Mel u

Back by Henry Green

2012-01-29T13:14:00.002+08:00

Back by Henry Green (1946, 340 KB)

I was very happy when I saw Stu of Winston's Dad was hosting a Henry Green Week from Jan 23 to Jan 31, 2012 to encourage people to read and post on the work of Henry Green. I have read three novels of Henry Green, Loving, Living, and Party Going. Penguin Books has in a very generous gesture packaged all three of these books (average length about 175 pages) in one volume (also available as a Kindle edition).

I admit I had never even heard of him until Victoria Glendinning in her biography of Elizabeth Bowen mentioned that Green and Elizabeth Bowen were friends. Bowen is quoted as saying Green was one the very few English novelists who could reproduce the actual sensations of living people talking.

Henry Green (the pen name for Henry Yorke-1905 to 1973, UK) was born into real wealth. His father was a wealthy industrialist, land owner and was an intensely cultured man. John Updike in his brilliant introduction to Green works tells us that Green's father was an amateur connoisseur of country dialect. I could see this spilling over in the novels in Green's wonderful handling of the speech of Birmingham factory workers. I have said before that I do not like the use of country dialects in novels. Green is so good at this I loved it when he did it. Green was descended from barons on both parental sides. He grew up in and would always live in a great manors house. He was educated at Eaton and Oxford. Upon leaving Oxford (he never completed a degree) he of his own volition went to work on the floor of one of his father's factories. He would later become a manager but always worked for the family company. During WWII he was a volunteer fireman. He married a second cousin and had an odd but enduring marriage.

Back (you have to love the title's Green gave to his novels) centers on Charley Summers who spent four years in a German prisoner of war camp. He lost his leg to a German sniper. He was repatriated to England before the war was over in exchange for a German captive of the British who was also in need of medical care. When he returns he finds the woman he loved with all his heart, Rose, has died.

Back in terms of plot action is about Charley's issues in getting over the death of Rose, he does not, and in fitting into the austerity of WWII England. It is really hard for me to describe the brilliance and wonder of Back. It is about people trying to survive a war among other things. In one very hard breaking scene Charley goes to call on the parents of the woman he loved who had married someone else while he was gone. The parents of Rose had lost a son in the war and this seems to have nearly unhinged the mother. It was very real and very sad to see the father dealing with his wife when she thought Charley was perhaps their son returning from the war.

We feel for Charley as he somehow confuses Rose's half sister for Rose and I felt bad for him as he tried to cope with working as clerk in a government job. We hear very little of the years he spent in the German prison camp but it must some how overshadow all his other issues and make it hard for him to relate to those who have not had these experiences. He may be back physically but he will never really be back in spirit.

The prose of Henry Green is a great joy to read. I find I cannot describe or explain why I like it so much but I do. He is a real master at conversations. Charley cannot really express his emotions and maybe he is expressive of the muted character of the British Green's prose is probably not for everyone, it is odd. It needs to be read slowly and savored.

The ending which I will leave unspoiled is simply devastating. I admit I was shocked by it and find it hard to fully understand.

Green stopped writing novels and lived on for another twenty years. During this time he became very absorbed in study the Ottoman Empire and did some very serious drinking.

I suggest those new to Green start with Loving, which most consider his best work, or my personal favorite, Party Going. If you do not have access to a library which will have one of Green's books, the practical thing to do is to buy the three book collection which actually costs about the same as just Back does. I also have his novel based on his experiences as a volunteer fireman during WWII in London, Concluding and hope to read in in 2012 or maybe I will wait for Harry Green Week in 2013!

Please share your experience with Green with is and go to Winston's Dad for a lot more information and links to other posts on Green.

Mel u

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

2012-01-28T13:44:00.000+08:00

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861, 185,258 words)

Feb 7, 2012 is the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens birth. He is surely one of the most loved authors of all times. I am pretty sure I first read Great Expectations as a high school student and I also read it about 17 years ago when I did a read through in publication order of all of the novels of Dickens. Great Expectations, the second from last completed novel, is the only one of his novels told in the first person. I recently also read in observation of Dickens 200 Day A Tale of Two Cities. The opening and closing chapters of A Tale of Two Cities are really flawless.

The plot of Great Expectations is probably well known to a lot of people who have not read it through one of the several movies that have been based on it. I will not spend much time retelling the plot. It is all about the life and development of Pip, an orphan and his ups and downs in life. I will just say what I like about this novel and what picky points I might make. Great Expectations is for sure part of the literary canon.

I like the great subtly and sheer brilliance of some of the characterizations. As in most of his other works, the "good" people in Dickens tend not to be as well developed as those with a bit of an edge to them. I thought the characters of the attorney Mr. Jaggers and his clerk and man of all work John Wemmick were just perfect. As to Pip himself, an overall well realized central character but not perfect. I found the character of Estella really not that well done and in small note if her mother was a Gypsy as the story line suggests, then Estella's appearance does not fit in with this. One of the noted characteristics of a Dickens novel is the fixation on an adolescent female and I think the character of Estella could have been better done. As to Pip's brother in law who was a father figure to him, Joe, he is your typical Dickens saintly figure along with the teacher Biddy.

While I am being difficult, how do people like the scene where Miss Havisham catches on fire?

Dickens does his usual great job describing the events in the novel. His descriptive or scene setting sections may not have the depth as those in some of this other works but this is because the story is being told by the young Pip.

Given the large role an escaped convict who has done well for himself and for others plays in this book, I could not help but think of another book I read last year, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. OK hard for a Dickens lover like me to admit, Les Miserables is the more powerful work, in my opinion. Please share your opinion on this with us.

The only advise can give in good consciousness to literary autodidacts such as myself is to read all of the novels of Dickens in publication order.

I had hoped to also read Bleak House, his consensus best novel, by Feb 7, 2012 but I will not be able to fit this in but I will hopefully read it very soon. I am keeping the whole year open to posting in honor of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens.

Mel u

"A Family Man" by V. S. Pritchett

2012-01-27T15:00:00.000+08:00

"A Family Man" by V. S. Pritchett (1980, 22 pages)

"A Family Man" is the first work by V. S. Pritchett (Victor Swandon-1900 to 1997-Suffolk, UK) I have read. He is best known for his numerous short stories and he has also published essays on literary theory and criticism. Like a lot of writers, Pritchett first got started in writing working for a newspaper, in his case The Christian Science Monitor which sent him to Ireland and Spain. He also wrote five novels but he said it was his short stories that he loved writing and that was the part of his work that mattered to him.

I was happy to see that a story by Pritchett included in a work I recently acquired, The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories edited and introduced by Malcolm Bradbury contained a short story by V. S. Pritchett as I knew he was a highly regarded short story writer, though perhaps a bit neglected.

There are two on stage characters in "A Family Man", Bernice Foster who is having a clandestine affair with a married man, William Clark, and his wife Mrs Clark. The affair does not seem to be a serious emotional entanglement on either end and Bernice seems to like the wicked thrill of being the other woman. It is exciting not really knowing when her lover will show up. Bernice asked him if his wife was beautiful and he told her yes she was very beautiful. This only made Bernice feel all the more beautiful herself.

One day there is a loud knock on her door. A huge woman is at the door, so large she almost seems to fill up the complete door. Bernice cannot tell if she is also pregnant or simply a very big woman. The woman tells Bernice she knows what she has been doing with her husband, she in fact paid someone to watch Bernice's apartment for her. All of a sudden Bernice does not feel like the glamorous other woman any more and she no longer feels admiration for William as a man of sophisticated good taste.

At first Bernice does not know what to say. It was very interesting to see how she was able to manipulate Mrs Clark into believing a lie about her relationship with her husband and distract her from the truth.

"A Family Affair" is a very intelligent story about the self deception and rationalization of things we know sre wrong . I felt sympathy for everyone in the story except Mr. Clark.

In his introduction to the collection Malcolm Bradbury says some of the stories in the anthology are experimental works that attempt new literary techniques and some are examples of old fashioned straightforward story telling. "A Family Affair" is squarely in the second of these categories.

I would read another of his short stories, if I could find it online for free but probably would not now buy a collection of his work.

Please share your experience with Pritchett with us.

Mel u

"Rain Horse" by Ted Hughes

2012-01-27T12:14:00.000+08:00

"Rain Horse" by Ted Hughes (1995, 20 pages)

Please consider joining us for Irish Short Stories Week Year Two March 12 to March 22

Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath

Edward -Ted-Hughes (1930 to 1998-UK) was the poet laureate of the United Kingdom from 1884 until his death in 1998. He is perhaps most known now as the husband of Sylvia Plath. He wrote mostly poems and children's books but he also wrote some short stories, among them "Rain Horse".

I recently acquired a Kindle edition of The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories edited and with a very good introduction by Malcolm Bradbury. I was very happy to see that a short story by Ted Hughes, a new to me writer, was included in the collection. (My page lengths on Kindle edition books are just an estimate, they can go up and down depending on the print size you select.)

As the story opens a man, the only person in the story, is walking down a country road. He is returning to a farm he left twelve years ago. Suddenly a horse seems to be watching him, almost stalking him. The horse seems to be intently looking at him. To compress a bit, the horse begins to behave to him in a threatening fashion.

He tries to evade the horse but he follows him down the road, acting in an increasingly threatening way. It begins to rain and he seek shelter. The horse somehow seems personally intent on harming him. He begins to fear the horse may be mad. He picks up some rocks and throws them at the horse, hitting him several times but the horse only retreats a bit. He then begins to throw even more rocks at the horse but cannot hit him.

As the story ends and he reaches the horse barn where he spent time twelve years ago he begins to wonder if any of this really happened.

"Rain Horse" was, as one would expect, a beautifully written story. It leaves us to ponder what the symbolic meaning of the horse might be.

I am glad I read this story.

Mel u

"Beer Trip to Llandudno" by Kevin Barry

2012-01-26T14:36:00.000+08:00

"Beer Trip to Llandudno" by Kevin Barry (2010, 25 pages)

Irish Short Story Week Year II will begin March 12-please consider participating

Some Ideas and Resources for Irish Short Story Week

Not long ago I acquired a Kindle edition of New Irish Short Stories (2010), edited and with an introduction by Joseph O'Connor. The introduction is very interesting and I will talk a bit more on it later but it is the very diverse collection of authors that makes this book so great. I was glad to see that in addition to big name authors like William Trevor and Rodney Doyle it also includes a story I posted on a couple of months ago by Orfhlaith Foyle, "Somewhere in Minnesota". The collection also includes small biographies of each author, a practice I wish all editors of short story anthologies would adopt.

The lead story in the collection is "Beer Trip to LLandudno" by Kevin Barry from County Sligo. He has published a highly regarded collection of short stories about life in small town Ireland There Are Little Kingdoms and a novel City of Bohane. He has also published a in The New Yorker and elsewhere.

The public stereotype of Ireland is that it is a heavy drinking pub centered place with men having perhaps their closest bonds to their "beer buddies". In the effort to know the truth, I did a bit of research on world wide per capita consumption of beer. The top country is the Czech Republic, then Ireland, then Germany, France and Australia.

"Beer Trip to Llandudno" is all about beer drinking. It is about a group of men, drinking buddies. One of them says they look like they could all pose for the before picture in a poster of heart attack victims. Much of the story is devoted to their life long quest to find the absolute best beer of all which is for sure going to be an Irish blend. The have devised a one to ten system of rating beer that would shame the most particular of tea connoisseurs. It looks like they are in their late thirties or so. They do have wives and such and jobs but that is not the focus of their lives. They live in the pubs, elsewhere they exist or work to get money for the pubs. This is not a sad story even though it may seem that way. The men are living the best they can through very hard times. There are lots of great conversations in the story. I loved a scene where the girlfriend of one of the men from twenty years ago happens to come into the pub. His buddies comments on the attractive woman are really great and ring totally true.

"Beer Trip to Llandudno" gave me a real feel for the life of the men. They are all decent people trying to make their way in the world and finding what joy in it they can.

I plan now to post on another of Barry's short stories (it can be read online at The New Yorker) during Irish Short Stories Week Year Two which will run from March 12 to March 21 or so.

If you know of other short stories by Irish writers that are in the public area of the archives of The New Yorker, please leave a comment. If you have a favorite lesser known short story writer whose work can be read online please leave a comment.

Mel u

"Midair" by Frank Conroy

2012-01-25T18:56:00.003+08:00

"Midair" by Frank Conroy (1986, 30 pages)

"Midair" by Frank Conroy (1936 to 2005 New York City, USA) was first published in the The New Yorker. I read it in a very good collection of short stories Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker (2007) This is the first work by Conroy I have read.

Conroy was a well regarded novelist, a respected Jazz musician (he won a Grammy for liner notes) and was the director of the renown Iowa Writer's Work Shop and the University of Iowa from 1887 to 2005.

I will just post briefly on the story as I do not think it can be read online. A great deal of time is covered in the thirty pages. The story opens on a frightening note when the central character in the novel, Sean at age six, and his sister go to visit their insane father. He end up dangling Sean outside the window of his high rise apartment until attendants from a mental hospital take the father away. Sean seemingly forget this and leads an interesting a diverse life. The story seems to end in a circle thirty years latter when he and a young man are trapped in a falling elevator.

I found this story interesting and the style of writing was kind of captivating though it did begin to wear on me a bit. Based on this sample alone I would say I a glad I read this story but will not seek out longer works by Conroy.

Please share your experienced with Conroy with us.

Mel u

"Albert Nobbs" by George Moore

2012-01-24T17:19:00.001+08:00

"Albert Nobbs" by George Moore (1895, 53 pages)

Frank O'Connors in The Lonely Voice: A Study in the Short Story ranks George Moore's (1852 to 1933, County Mayo, Ireland) collection of short stories, The Untilled Field as one of the greatest collections of short stories of all times. Recently I had something to do that involved going somewhere and waiting around a couple of hours so I took William Trevor's The Oxford Book of Irish Short Stories with me and read Moore's "Albert Nobbs" while I was waiting. I admit somehow I thought maybe this story would not stand the test of time but I was completely shocked by what a totally great story it was. I got an even bigger shock when I just now Googled "Albert Nobbs" and found out a movie staring the great actress Glenn Close will be premiering world wide in less than a week. (It has already opened in some venues.) I wish so much George Moore could be here to see this movie and reap the rewards.

"Albert Nobbs" really goes beyond mere story telling into total brilliance. Ford Madox Ford famously said of Moore that he would be better regarded if he had not had such an arrogant personality (of course leaving aside the question of Ford's own case!).

Moore is, I think, considered the first great Irish novelist. He was a hugely prolific writer, his collection of short stories comes to nearly 2000 pages and he wrote at least thirty books ranging from novels, to dramas, to art criticism and political reflections. (There is a good article on him here)

There are all ready a number of outtakes from the movie posted on the net so you can easily get the basic idea of the story from these videos if you like but you really need to read this story first. I do not care to spoil any of the plot of this wonderful story.

I admit I was shocked by the secret in this story. The character of Albert Nobbs is just so brilliant. His life as a waiter in a hotel is perfectly done. I know I praise a lot of the stories I read but "Albert Nobbs" is truly amazing. As I read it I wondered if it should be seen as a GLBT story or not and I think others will have the same question.

This is a heartbreaking story. It is perfect.

You can down load it from Gutenburg.org under the title Celibate Lives.

George Moore will be one of the writers I will focus on during Irish Short Stories Week Year II. I plan to post then on his perhaps most famous story, "Home Sickness". I have also read the first story from his collection The Untilled Field and I may post on that soon as it was also amazing.

Please share your experience with George Moore with us and please suggest other writers whose work is now in the public domain that might be good choices for Irish Short Story Week II which will be from March 12 to March 22 with St. Patrick's Day in the middle on March 17.

Everyone is invited to join in for this event-details to come but all you have to do is post on one short story by an Irish author and send me a comment with a link to your post so I can do a master post. Last year there were posts on 57 stories by people from all over the world. There are 100s and 100s of stories you can read online or download for free if you like. I will do a resource page for the challenge before it begins.

Mel u

"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag

2012-01-23T14:16:00.000+08:00

"The Way We Live Now" by Susan Sontag (1986, 24 pages)

I recently purchased a great collection of short stories all set in New York City, Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker. There are stories by lots of new to be writers, some authors I have read before, and some I am familiar with but have not yet read. Among the short stories in the collection is Susan Sontag's (1933 to 2004-USA) very well know short story about the start of the aids epidemic in the Gay community in New York City. Sontag was born in New York City and is thought of as a New York City intellectual ready to challenge the establishment whenever it seemed like the thing to do to her. She has written a few works of fiction, a well known book on photography, lots of diverse essays but I think she is best known and will mostly be remembered for her landmark essay "Notes on Camp" (1964). I spoke a bit about "Notes on Camp" in my post on Alfred Jarry in which I pondered whether or not Ubo Roi should be classified as camp. In addition too "Notes on Camp" which even though it is almost 50 years old now (yikes) still needs to be read by anyone trying to understand the artistic and literary sensibilities of the 20th and 21th century.

"The Way We Live Now" opens with a successful New York City man finding out he has the "new disease", the word aids is never used in the story. We do not learn what he does but we do know he goes to conferences in places like Helsinki. There is a very elitist quality to this story. One of the characters even says it is a shame this disease will strike down so many men would have the potential to make valuable contributions to the arts and sciences. The lead character has lots of friends in the gay community. Nobody really quite understands the disease yet but people keeping saying a cure has to be right around the corner. There is debate over whether or not women can get it. One of the characters says his biggest regret is he will no longer be able to have completely uninhibited sex. One of the emotionally hardest aspects of the disease is that it can lay dormant for years so when it does become serious many people have no idea from whom they might have contracted it. Sontag does a great job of letting us see the huge wave of fear that was over taking the New York City gay community. The disease both built feelings of community through a joint fear and destroyed it as you might never know who might be a carrier.

(Note on page lengths-my page lengths are estimates-I am reading a kindle edition so the page count may be higher than than in a print book-I do wish all kindle editions had page numbers in edition to percent completed.)

"The Way We Live Now" is a very well done story that lets us see first hand an important part of New York City history.

Please share your experience with Susan Sontag?

Is "Notes on Camp" still important?

Was Sontag a bit of a poser and attention seeker given to theatrical remarks like "Mozart, Pascal, Boolean algebra, Shakespeare, parliamentary government, baroque churches, Newton, the emancipation of women, Kant, Balanchine ballets, et al. don't redeem what this particular civilization has wrought upon the world. The white race is the cancer of human history".

Mel u
'

Red Cavalry and Other Stories by Issac Babel

2012-01-22T15:12:00.001+08:00

Red Cavalry and Other Stories by Issac Babel (2006, 400 pages, translated by David McDuff)

Red Cavalry and Other Stories is a wonderful world class cultural treasure that lets us into a way of life that was destroyed by war and prejudice. The stories are mostly set in the Jewish communities of Russia. Most were written in the 1920s and 30s with a few earlier stories included. Babel (1894 to 1940) was from Odessa and most of the stories in the collection either take place in Odessa or are about the author's experience in the Russian Army fighting in Poland during WWI. Russian has produced two great 20th century short story writers and one was helped get his first work in print by the other. Fortunately the literary reputation of Babel has nothing to do with that of his one time mentor Maxim Gorky. I have posted before on the huge damage done to the literary future of Maxim Gorky by his status as the pet writer of Stalin. Gorky was probably killed by the Russian secret police and Babel certainly was. In retrospect Babel's long term affair with the wife of the head of Stalin's secret police was probably not a real bright idea. (You can read more about Babel here and I have previously posted on one of my favorite of his short stories, "Guy de Maupassant" about a man hired to help produce a Russian edition of the complete short stories of de Maupassant.)

Frank O' Connor in The Lonely Voice: A Study of the Short Story says that Babel in many of his stories somehow wants to explain the conflict in the soul of the central character in the Russian Cavalry who wants badly to fit in with the brutal hyper masculine Cossack troops while at the same time being true to a culture that value learning and reading above almost everything. In one of the stories it was somehow very moving to me to see people talking about reading Spinoza. Babel had all of the life experiences in the stories in terms of military service. He makes no effort to make himself out a hero. It is the story of an intellectual and a man very into the reading life trying to cope with horrible brutalities. One can see the real attraction this violent world had for him. He was not a hero at all, just an ordinary man.

There are scenes of horrible senseless cruelty in these stories. Babel is considered the leading voice of Russian Jewish Culture and I think these stories are probably required reading for anyone interested in this area.

The stories in the Red Cavalry section of the book are connected through sharing a common lead character. Those in the famous Odessa stories are stand along works.

There is a lot one could say about in praise of this collection of short stories. As I read these stories I felt very sad knowing what was coming for the Jewish community in Odessa.

Red Cavalry and Other Stories is a great treasure. To anyone who would say the short story is somehow an inferior literary genre I would simply say read these stories.

These stories are not light reading. They can be hard to take at times as they are so real and the horror in the stories is so undisguised.

I totally endorse this collection of short stories. There is a well done introduction and a very informative afterword by Lionel Trilling. Babel wrote no longer works of fiction and got his start writing as a journalist. He was a dedicated communist all of his adult life, though not blind to the flaws in Soviet society.

Please share your experience with Babel with us.

Mel u