The Reading Life

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

Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture

"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

"The Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides

2012-01-22T08:08:00.000+08:00

"The Baster" by Jeffrey Eugenides (1996, 17 pages)

Jeffrey Eugenides (1960, USA) won The Pulitzer Prize in 2002 for his novel Middlesex. His latest book, The Marriage Plot is getting a lot of mostly favorable attention from book bloggers. He has also published a number of short stories, mostly in The New Yorker. I read and enjoyed Middlesex shortly after it came out in paperback. It is an interesting story of the lives of three generations of Greek-Americans. The main character is an hermaphrodite.

"The Baster" is another short story from the collection of short stories first published in The New Yorker all of which are set in New York City, Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. The 2010 movie The Switch is based on the plot of "The Baster".

"The Baster" is a funny, insightful development of the lament of unattached women in New York City (and else where!) that "the good ones are all taken". As the story opens we meet a successful attractive forty year old New York City Woman, an assistant producer for a nationwide TV network news show, whose biological clock is pushing her hard to have a baby. She says when she was younger she hoped to meet a man to share her life with but now she has concluded that if she wants to have someone to share her life she had better give birth to them. She decides the best thing to do is to have a child via artificial insemination and picks the seeming genetically high quality husband of a friend as the donor. She even gives an "artificial insemination" party with lots of her friends there including a man she once date and who may still love her (he narrates the story) but he is a reject as the father as he is way to short. The party did feel a but "creepy" to me and I guess that was how it was meant to feel.

This is a good well written story that I am glad I have now read.

Please share your experiences with Eugenides with us.

Mel u

"The Failure" by Jonathan Franzen

2012-01-21T14:00:00.000+08:00

"The Failure" by Jonathan Franzen (1999, 18 pages)

Jonathan Franzen (1959, USA) is the author of two best selling novels. The Corrections (2001) received the National Book Award (major American award) and was also selected by the Oprah Book Club, as was his 2010 book Freedom. He frequently appears on American television, has been on the Oprah Winfrey Show and was on the cover of Time Magazine. Say whatever you like about Oprah, I cannot think of anyone else in the world who has done more in the last ten years to stimulate reading than her. When The Corrections was selected by Oprah for her book club, Franzen at first was concerned this would cause his book to be seen as "for women only". This caused a controversy which helped propel his book to best selling status when he apparently declined to go on her show. In 2010 when his second book was selected he went on her show and it was mutual gushes all round. He seems to be a frequent guest on American talk shows and has even appeared in cartoon form on "The Simpsons".

I recently purchased an excellent anthology of short stories, all of which are set in New York City and all of which originally appeared in The New Yorker, Wonderful Town: New York Stories from the New Yorker. There are stories by lots of new to me writers in the collection, some authors I have read before, and some I am familiar with but have not yet read. I was glad a story by Jonathan Franzen was in the collection.

The central character in "The Failure" is a thirty-nine year man who was recently fired from his position as a professor at a New York City College. He specialized in Renaissance Studies and was fired for several reasons, but mostly for improper sexual contact with a female student. Everybody in his small family seems very successful but him. His parents live in an expensive apartment and his sister is partners in a very popular and trendy restaurant. He has a girl friend but she seems in the process of dumping him.

His relationship with his parents is interestingly depicted. He seems to define himself in opposition to the values of his parents. In one funny scene we learn of the time the man intentionally brought over his very vocal Marxist girl friend just so she could make his rock hard conservative father go crazy.

He sent a two page synopsis of a play he wrote to a well known theatrical agent. She loved the synopsis but once she saw the actual play seemed to show a total obsession with breasts she will not return his phone calls.

The story is really slice of the life of the characters in the story, with the focus on the male lead character.

"The Failure" is written in a light handed easy to read fashion and I am glad I read it. Based on this small sample, I would say if I had a free copy of one of Franzen's books I would maybe start it but I would not buy one of his works.

Please share your experience with Franzen with us.

Mel u

"Poor Visitor" by Jamaica Kincaid

2012-01-20T12:22:00.000+08:00

"Poor Visitor" by Jamaica Kincaid (1989, ten pages)

Jamaica Kincaid was born in 1949 in Antigua but it can safely be said The New Yorker brought her to life and world attention as a writer. In 1965 she moved to Westchester, N. Y. to be an au pair or as we say in the Philippines, a yaya. She then after leaving this position studied photography at The New School for Social Research and began to write short stories based loosely on her own experiences. Through contacts she made from her writing she ultimately went to work for The New Yorker while frequently publishing short stories in the magazine. She ended up marrying the son of the editor of The New Yorker. She has also written some well regarded novels and works of non-fiction.

I recently purchased a collection of short stories all set in New York City that were first published in the magazine, 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. I was glad a story by Jamaica Kincaid was in the collection.

It appears little of the work of Kincaid can be read online. All of her New Yorker stories are available only to paid subscribers. Given that I will just post briefly on this story.

This story seems very much based on Kincaid's own experiences. The story is a good account of what it must have been like to move from a tropical island that New Yorkers dream of going to in the winter, to New York City to be a yaya. The story is told in the first person. We can feel the loneliness and isolation the yaya feels. She does not have a lot of work to do as her charges go to school during the day so she can do her college homework during the day. The family is quite affluent and also has a maid, who lets the yaya know her place right away.

The fun in this very well written story is in seeing the yaya struggle to adjust to her new environment. She is torn away from everything she knows.

I think a lot readers in the Philippines, many of whom probably had a yaya as a child or employ one now, might find this story interesting. I know I did.

Please share your experiences with Jamaica Kincaid with us.

Mel u

"The Heart Fails Without Warning" by Hilary Mantel

2012-01-19T10:03:00.002+08:00

"The Heart Fails Without Warning" by Hilary Mantel (2010, 15 pages)

One practical use for short stories is as a way of "trying out" a writer before you attempt a longer work. There are millions of readers without access to libraries so this is an important thing to lots of people.

I have lately been looking at the anthologies of short stories available on the Amazon Kindle store for the Ipad from which a sample can be downloaded. (Remember you do not need a kindle or an Ipad to read kindle edition books, just the free Amazon supplied software.) I have found in these samples you get the introduction to the anthology and one to three complete stories. You also get the table of contents so you have all you need to make an informed buying decision.

In Best European Fiction 2011 a story by Hilary Martel, "The Heart Fails Without Warning" is included in the sample. I was really glad to see this as I have been pondering if I wanted to invest the time it would take to read her 2009 Booker Prize Novel Wolf Hall. Wolf Hall is set in England in the 1520s and centers on court intrigue in the reign of Henry VIII. It was a very blogged about novel and most people liked it a lot while calling it "challenging".

"The Heart Fails Without Warning" by Hilary Martel (1952, UK) is just a perfect short story. It introduces the characters, it sets up and resolves a conflict and crisis in a way that helps the characters and perhaps the reader increase their insight into the human condition. It is also a study in loneliness and about those who have no voice for themselves. The prose style is simple, elegant and of great beauty.

Basically the story is about a family, a husband who works very hard and long but does not speak much, his wife who on the surface runs the family, the daughter who is has a very terrible eating disorder which is causing her to waste a way to a skeleton, and their other teen age daughter who is quite the brat but I liked her anyway.

The family life is totally centered on keeping the one daughter alive. The other daughter greatly resents this and may see what the real problem is where here parents do not. Anyone who has ever had their lives dominated by the illness of a loved one will understand this story more than they may care to admit. There is really high intelligence behind this story.

I will leave the rest of the plot unspoiled but I have added Wolf Hall to my TBR list based on this story.

Please share your experience with other works by Mantel, including Wolf Hall, with us.

Mel u

"The Dabba Dabba Tree" by Yasutaka Tsutsui

2012-01-18T07:58:00.001+08:00

"The Dabba Dabba Tree" by Yasutaka Tsutsui (2010, 20 pages)

Yasutaka Tsutsui (1934, Osaka) is considered one of the leading writers of science fiction in the Japanese language. He has received numerous awards and has several well regarded novels including Hell and Paprika.

"The Dabba Dabba Tree" is the lead story in Tsutsui's recently published collection of his short stories, Salmonella Man on Planet Porno. Making use of the sample feature on the Ipad Kindle store at Amazon I was able to download this story for free. I mentioned before Amazon lets people down load a sample of Kindle edition books. This works great for short story collections as you seem to always get from one to three stories plus any introduction to the collection.

In the quotes about the book included with the sample, we are told that his style will be favorably received by fans of the work of Hurakami Murkami and I can for sure see this based on this one small sample.

As the story opens we meet a childless married couple who seem to be in their late twenties to early thirties. The father of the husband, the story is told in the first person by the husband, gives him a strange cedar bonsai tree, a dabba dabba tree. The father tells his son to put the tree in the bedroom as it said to produce erotic dreams and the father in law hopes somehow this will stimulate his son and daughter in law to have sex and hopefully produce a grandchild for him.

One of the common themes of the work of Tsutsui and Murakami is the blurring of the lines between the so called real world and alternative universes like dream worlds.

To compress the plot a lot, the man in what he think is his dream, decides to go to the red light district to find a woman. He rejects the hard looking street women and ends up back at a love hotel with a very preppy young woman. They are told to wait in the lobby for a few minutes and a room should be available. Then another couple enters the room. It his wife and the man who lives right next door to them! He then thinks he has woken from his dream and is back in his bed. He hears a knock on the door. It is the neighbor who tells him he is in the midst of a dream and asks his permission to have sex with his wife, offering his own wife in trade for the evening. Thinking this must also be part of the dream, he agrees. At this point I found it very hard to tell what was real and what was a dream. There are more things in this story but I will leave them untold.

This was a fun story and an enjoyable read. I would consider purchasing one of his longer works but I also might stop at this sample.

Please share your experience with Tsutsui or other Japanese science fiction writers with us.

Mel u

"Illusion" by Jean Rhys

2012-01-17T18:14:00.000+08:00

"Illusion" by Jean Rhys (1934, 13:43 as a podcast)

Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast

I was totally amazed by The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (1890 to 1979-Dominica, British West Indies). There is a savage beauty in her prose that transcends Victorian school master approved prose. Don't get me started on Rhys but it is as if she met the devil and invited him for a drink, rum and coke, and it was he who left the encounter the wiser if not the richer. I also read and posted on an interesting biography of Rhys, The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lillian Pizzichini. Jean Rhys went through some very hard times in her life, mostly her problems were her own fault. Not a saintly woman by any standard, she was for a period a street walker in the rough areas of London and Paris. She has other options such as regular jobs or wealthy men (she was a stunning beauty) but in truth she preferred to walk the streets as she never knew what might happen next. Later in life she was one of those crazy old women you turn away from when you see them in the streets of the big city.

The premier source for literary podcasts of short stories is Miette's Bedtime Story Podcasts. I have posted about the wonderful and beautiful resource she has creating before. Miette's Bedtime Story Podcast has online 100s of literary quality short stories as podcasts. The selection is just brilliant including some items you will be shocked to see. Miette has been posting podcasts for four years now and her webpage has a strong personal feel and reflects a deep love and appreciation of the short story as an art form. Miette has a beautiful speaking voice. She does her posts at home and sometimes you can hear her dog barking in the background and the doorbell or phone ringing but this just added to the charm for me.

Recently I listened to her podcast of one of the short stories of Jean Rhys from years ago and I noticed that a bit of the ending seemed missing but I as not sure on this so I asked her about this. I was so happy and grateful when I found Miette has redone the whole story in response to my cheeky comment.

I think Jean Rhys, who I almost feel like I know, would have loved Miette's reading of the story. Basically "Illusion" is a kind of pastiche of bits and pieces of the life of an English woman working in Paris as a painter. When I listened to the story (I listened to it three times and will do so again soon) I thought it almost sounded like Rhys was talking about the life she wished she could have had in Paris. The central female character is described as someone you could be intimate with but never really know, just like Rhys made herself become.

I am so grateful for what Miette says in the podcast about The Reading Life.

There are lots of places to hear podcasts of short stories but only Mittie's Bedtime Story Podcast is recommended by The Reading Life.

Please share your experience with Jean Rhys with us.

Mel u

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

2012-01-17T16:24:00.000+08:00

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (1859, 428 pages, 524 KB)

The 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens will be on February 7, 2012. Dickens has been a very important part of my reading life. About fifteen years ago I read all of his novels in order of publication. I read pretty much only Dickens during this period. Shortly after I completed this project I went to London and made a pilgrimage to the Dickens House Museum. Since then I have read only one Dickens novel, Oliver Twist, for a read-along event.

I wanted in some small way to do what I could honor Dickens so I decided I would try to reread two of his highest regarded works by his 200th birthday.

I choose to start with A Tale of Two Cities in part because of the many posts by book bloggers lauding the work. Some consider it his best novel though most do give that honor to Bleak House.

The novel takes place during the French Revolution, 1775. I do not see a need to recap the plot. I will basically say a bit about what I liked most about this work. The two cities are London and Paris. It its history the book has sold over 200 million copies.

The opening chapter is perfect. I cannot really recall many better ones. If I had been a subscriber to All Year Round, a literary magazine owned by Dickens, I would have been very eager to read the next installments.

Dickens is at his very best when he is describing the injustices of life in France. The scene where we learn that peasants on the estates of wealthy nobles were sometimes made to stay awake on the grounds outside the big house just to keep the frogs quiet so the nobles could get a good night sleep was just such a brilliant conveyance of a whole system of injustice in one sentence.

The scenes set in Paris during the worst excesses of the French Revolution are to me the most exciting parts of the book.

There is melodrama in this book and sentimentality and perhaps the book might be a bit "anti-French", a sure way to sell magazines is my guess!

This is among the most serious, humor free of the novels of Dickens. You can feel the passion of Dickens for the poor of France.

I know this will seem a bit much, but as to reading suggestions for Dickens, I would say start with his first novel and read through to the last one.

I think I am going to start Great Expectations soon followed by Bleak House.

In observation of Dickens 200th Birthday, Fig and Thisle is hosting an event culminating on Dickens 200 Day which will enable those observing the event to share their posts on Dickens.

Mel u

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

2012-01-16T10:57:00.000+08:00

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe (1959, 209 pages, 268 KB)

Before today I have posted on two short works by Chinua Achebe. One was on one of his short stories, "Marriage is a Private Affair" and once on an essay he wrote about Joseph Conrad's The Heart of Darkness in which I compared his view that The Heart of Darkness is a deeply racist work to the very contrasting opinion of Edward Said.

Chinua Achebe is the "dean" of contemporary African literature. Born in Nigeria into a Christian Ibo family in 1930, his book Things Fall Apart (1958) is the most read ever book by an author born in Africa and is a classic of post colonial literature. I am very glad I can now move this book out of the TBR category.

Things Fall Apart is Achebe's first novel. It is set in Nigeria and opens just before the colonial take over of the area begins. It is a very interesting and unsentimental look at life among the people of the region. It does not glorify life in pre-colonial Nigeria but portrays it as a place just like any other place on earth at the time, full of the weakness of humans and the suffering brought on my natural and man made tragedies.

The central character, a man we meet in his late teens or so, Okonkwo is a self made man, his father does not really help him as all as he should have. Through a foolish mistake, he ends up losing everything he has and is driven, along with his wives, into exile. In lots of ways Okonkwo is a very cruel man and there are real cruelties among the customs of the people of the time, such as the leaving of new born twins to die as it is felt they are somehow evil. He is very abusive toward his wives as appears to be the normal mode of behavior.

Achebe does not introduce European colonists into the work until it is nearly 75 percent completed. We first learn of them through the reaction of residents to others who have been converted to Christianity.

Things Fall Apart is an interesting well written book. I think perhaps it is read as much for its cultural importance as for any intrinsic merit it might have. I am glad I read it.

Mel u

Paz Marquez Benitez-The Philippine's First Highly Regarded Short Story Writer-1925

2012-01-15T07:29:00.002+08:00

"A Night in The Hills" by Paz Marquez Benitez (1925, 7 pages)

Today is the start of what I hope will be a long term monthly feature on short story writers from the Philippines. In a joint venture with Nancy Cudis of Simple Clockwork we will be spotlighting once 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.

Paz Marquez Benitez is considered the first modern English language short story writer from the Philippines. Her literary publications were just limited to two short stories (I will post on one, Nancy the other) but she had important editorial and academic positions as well as a very high social standing that enabled her to greatly influence several generations of writers, especially women authors. I will return to her background in a moment but first I want to look at the wide literary world in 1925.

1925 was a very good literary year that saw the publication of some truly great novels. Among the works published were The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, No More Parades by Ford Madox Ford, The Trial by Franz Kafka, and Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf.

In the Philippines in 1925, the first generation of women educated in English in schools run under American rule had just finished college a few years ago. Under Spanish rule, women were not given any real formal education and of course the instruction was in Spanish in at higher levels. The only novels from the Philippines that can be considered to have world class status, those of Jose Rizal, were originally written in Spanish.

Paz Marquez Benitez (1894 to 1983) was born in Lucena City in the Quezon Provence, five hours or so south of Manila now but who knows how long the trip was in 1925? She was born into a very prominent and affluent family. She graduated from the University of the Philippines (not far from where I live in fact) in 1912 and two years latter she married the dean of the college of education (they had four children). She became a professor at The University of the Philippines and specialized in classes on writing short stories. Through this she became greatly influential on future writers. She founded the first magazine in the country aimed at women in which she published the short stories of lots of other writers and she helped found the Philippine Women's college. She edited the first collection of short stories by authors from the Philippines, all of whom were former students of hers.

"A Night in the Hills" is a very moving story about the life of Gerado Luna, a salesmen in a jewelery store in the Intramuros area of Manila. Benitez is very skilled at letting us see his character in just a few lines. She also lets us see how he lived. I confess when I read about how someone lived in a time or place remote to me one of the things I want to know is what they ate and Benitez brings Gerado fully to life for us in just a few pages. I will quote a bit from the story to give you a feel for her prose style.

"HOW Gerardo Luna came by his dream no one could have told, not even he. He was a salesman in a jewelry store on Rosario street and had been little else. His job he had inherited from his father, one might say; for his father before him had leaned behind the self-same counter, also solicitous, also short-sighted and thin of hair.

After office hours, if he was tired, he took the street car to his home in Intramuros. If he was feeling well, he walked; not frequently, however, for he was frail of constitution and not unduly thrifty. The stairs of his house were narrow and dark and rank with characteristic odors from a Chinese sari-sari store which occupied part of the ground floor.

He would sit down to a supper which savored strongly of Chinese cooking. He was a fastidious eater. He liked to have the courses spread out where he could survey them all. He would sample each and daintily pick out his favorite portions—the wing tips, the liver, the brains from the chicken course, the tail-end from the fish."

He had always had a dream which he had shared only with his wife. He dreamed of sleeping in the hills in a forest. His wife tells him this is a foolish idea for a someone like him who has spent all of his life working inside. She tells him to forget the foolish idea as he will get sick if he follows through on it. He give up on the idea as he does not want to argue with his wife over it. Then just as he turns forty, his wife passes away. A friend who gathers wild orchids for sale invites him to spend a night in the forest with him and there is nothing to stop him now. He tells people he is going to be looking for some land to buy when they ask him why he will be doing this. An aunt (a very broad category in the Philippines that includes nonrelatives also) who introduced him to his late wife already has a another wife in mind for him and tells him that he should go partners in a pawn shop with this lady and forget buying land. Gerado misses being married as his wife always took good care of him and does want to marry again soon. His reasons are not real romantic. He is divided, he wants to be in a comfortable relationship but he also likes his freedom to go to the forest if he wants.

"Now that Gerardo was a widower she intended to repeat the good office and provide him with another poor relation guaranteed to look after his physical and economic well-being and, in addition, guaranteed to stay healthy and not die on him. “Marrying to play nurse to your wife,” was certainly not Sotera’s idea of a worthwhile marriage.

This time, however, he was not so tractable. He never openly opposed her plans, but he would not commit himself. Not that he failed to realize the disadvantages of widowerhood. How much more comfortable it would be to give up resisting, marry good, fat Peregrina, and be taken care of until he died for she would surely outlive him.

But he could not, he must not. Uncomfortable though he was, he still looked on his widowerhood as something not fortuitous, but a feat triumphantly achieved. The thought of another marriage was to shed his wings, was to feel himself in a small, warm room, while overhead someone shut down on him an opening that gave him the sky."

We go along on Gerado's big night in the forest. His wife was right, it is very hard on a city man not in the best of shape.

I will not tell more of the plot. The ending is not a surprise and is not meant to be one. It is really a beautiful story. I could feel the sad but real elation in Gerado as he felt he was in charge of his life for the first time in years but you can see he is not a strong person through the brilliant treatment of his relationship to his aunt. She is not at all really related to him but how she became to have the status of an aunt (tita) is really hilarious.

You can read this story (and a lot of other stories by authors from the Philippines HERE.

I think almost everyone will enjoy this very well written and wonderfully plotted short story. I wish she had more than two stories to her credit.

We plan to make this a once 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.

I urge you to read Nancy's post on Paz Marquez Benitez's more famous short story "Dead Stars".

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.

Mel u

Anne Beattie Two New Yorker Stories Plus a Small Tip on Reading Free Short Stories on your E-Device

2012-01-13T10:21:00.001+08:00

"A Platonic Relationship" (1974, 20 pages)
"Wolf Dreams" (7 pages,1974)

Maybe everyone into the Kindle/Ipad reading experience already knows this but I recently found that if you download a sample of a Kindle edition collection of short stories you will get for free from one to three complete short stories of a work under copyright. This is great for those of us who live where there are no public libraries in that it allows us try out an author whose work might not be other wise accessible on the web.

Yesterday I downloaded a sample of The New Yorker Stories (2010) by Anne Beattie (1947, USA) and was very happy to see the sample included three of her stories. In the collection of her stories, all of which were originally published in The New Yorker over a 22 year period, the works are arranged by order published so the sample is of three early stories.

The two short stories I read are both written in a very nice kind of "easy reading" prose style that one would enjoy reading while looking at the ads for expensive consumer goods like Mount Blanc pens, Hermes Hand Bags and $20,000 watches.

Both of the stories are about women whose lives center around men with whom they have perhaps comfortable but still uneasy relationships.

"A Platonic Relationship" is about a woman who divorces her attorney husband but remands friends with him. She gets her own place to live and she ends up renting a room to a male college student 10 years younger than her. She is in her early thirties. There never is any romance or sex between them and no clear suggestion the woman even wanted that. She begins to develop an odd nurturing relationship with the man. I found this story to be well written but I was not engaged by the plot line or characters very much. I am glad I took the time to read it.

"Wolf Dreams" is another story about a woman who gets her identity from the series of men she has married and divorced. We have to put together a lot of her life for ourselves, one of the characteristics of the short story so that is fine. I found this to also be an OK story.

I am glad I had the option to read these stories for free and I know I cannot access her as a writer based only on some of her very first stories. I would like to read her older works but, I admit, probably not enough to buy them when there are huge amounts of stories I can read for free.

Please share your experience with Beattie with us.

Mel u

The Reading Life Guide to Getting Started in The Indian Short Story

2012-01-12T08:38:00.001+08:00

A Guide to Getting Started in The Indian Short Story

When Risa of Breadcrumb Reads asked me to do a guest post on short stories to help kick off a year of postings on short stories I was very honored but I was worried about finding a good topic to write about. I have been following her blog almost since its inception and I share her passion for short stories.

About two years ago along with most of the book blog world I was not into short stories at all. I felt that they did not give me enough of a world to enter and that they left you hanging. With this prejudice in place I went decades without reading ten short stories. Then I to my great joy discovered what a wonderful literary form the short story can be. In the last two years I have read nearly 1000 short stories. A good short story in just a few pages can take you into worlds very different from your own or can help you understand yourself better. A good short story can do more with a plot and characters than many long novels. I cannot prove this and I know most book bloggers are just “not into short stories” but I now know I was missing out on some of the world’s greatest literature, some real wisdom and just a lot of fun. I will never recommend a work of literature because it is something one is “supposed to read”. If I do not think a work can be read for enjoyment as well as art I will not endorse it to others.

A good short story does often require more work on the part of the reader than a novel in that you have less to work with and must be a more active reader. Short stories go back further in the literary culture than novels, much further to pre-literate days. They go back to the very start of what we like to call civilization and helped create the world’s major cultures and religions.

No literary tradition has older roots than that of India. I will always admire Edmund Burke for telling the English Parliament that they had no right to rule India, a culture much older than their own. Today I am going to do a post on getting started in the Indian short story. I make no claims to expertise and am purely self taught in literary matters and history.

The Indian short story has opened up a marvelous new world of authors, cultures, traditions, history and languages for me. The Indian short story is in a way many different sub genres. Some of the short stories I will post on were written originally in English, some in Bengali, some in Urdu or Punjabi. Some of the authors were as rich as kings and might as well have been kings in fact. Some come from the Dalit, Untouchable caste. Some are Muslims, some Hindus, some Sikhs, some atheists, some Buddhists and some Christians. Some are deeply cultured educated by private tutors and speak and write several languages. Some barely made a living. Several of the stories are about the 1947 Partition of India. Most of them deal in one way or another with the colonial experience, just like older Irish short stories do. Most of the writers are men but there are some great women writers on my list, I think.

Every story I will post on can be read online and I will provide a link. I personally hate to read a post on a short story knowing I have no real way to read it. My postings are always done as much as I can to help the millions of readers like me who live where there are no public libraries. I will post on the stories more or less starting with the authors furthest back in time. I will share some things about the author’s life and cultural importance and then tell enough about the story to hopefully make some people interested in reading them.

Rabindranath Tagore

“The Story of a Muslim Woman” (1941,six pages)

An Amazing Look Into the Future

The first Asian Nobel Prize winner was Rabindranath Tagore who won in 1913 for his vast output of poetry and short stories. Tagore (1861 to 1941) was born in Kolkata, Indian into a family whose wealth and life style can now only be seen in movies. His father owned an estate so huge that at one point in his life Tagore traveled through it on a luxurious barge and was met on the river bank by tenants paying token rents to him. Tagore was educated in classical Indian literature and at age eight began to write poetry and ended up reshaping the Bengali Language. His moral authority became so great that he was able to write the national anthems of both India and Bangladesh,. He is considered prior to WWII and perhaps even now the most widely read Indian author both in the west and in India. He wrote a lot of very much loved short stories, mostly in Bengali. His stories are almost like parables and read like they could be from the wisdom books of any of the great religions.

“The Story of a Muslim Woman” is the very last short story that Tagore completed. It was completed in 1941 but not published until 1955. I do not know why it took so long to be published but it seems almost like a total prophecy of the events horrors caused by the 1947 partition of India and even the Bangladesh War for Independence in 1971.

The story opens in the home of an affluent of family. The niece of the husband is in the care of their family because her parents are dead. The wife hates her and wants her put out of the house, whatever it takes. She feels a beautiful young girl will attract rapists and thugs to their household. Daily life in the region had gone

to conditions of near anarchy and their was no real leadership anywhere.

These words say much about the history and lot of women in India:

“ Kamala was very beautiful, though her parents were dead. The family would have welcomed her death too; but that did not happen. Her uncle Banshi brought her up with great affection and extreme caution till now.

However, her aunt would often complain to her female neighbours, “Look, her parents left her to add to my burden. Nobody knows what can happen to her any moment. I’ve children of my own, and among them she’s like a burning torch of destruction. She can’t escape the evil gaze of wicked fellows. She alone will sink my boat. For this reason I can’t sleep at night”

Her aunt wants her dead but she does at last receive an offer to become the second wife of a wealthy man of the same caste as her family. The offer is at once accepted even though women want to be first wives, not second, third or fourth. Her aunt is just so happy to be rid of her.

In order to get to the house of her soon to be husband she has to pass through lawless countryside. Her caravan is attacked and she is kidnapped by bandits. As she is quite beautiful she is taken as bounty to the home of the bandit leader. The bandit, a Muslim, allays her fears and tells her she will be allowed to live in peace in his house. She and everyone knows she can no longer marry a Hindu and will be considered a disgrace to her family and caste. In the culture of the time, if a woman was raped it was considered her fault, she was damaged property and would often end up thrown out of her own house and family. Her family would never believe that a Muslim leader would protect her and keep her totally safe in better fashion than her birth family ever would.

The house of the Muslim chief has apartments for eight wives. He allows the woman to live in peace totally unmolested. There is even a temple dedicated to Shiva which allows the woman to practice her religion. He never attempts to force himself on her and does not allow her to be disrespected in any fashion. In time she falls in love with a man from the leaders family. She repudiates her old faith and her caste saying she has found her destiny in her new home. She is proud to become a Muslim woman and falls in love with a man of her own choosing. (spoiler alert)-

As the story closes, years have gone by, the woman is along on a raid on a caravan. She discovers that in the caravan is her cousin, the daughter of the aunt who hated her and wished her dead. As a gesture of the sincerity of her face, she allows the young woman to proceed on her way to her arranged marriage to a man she has never met.

I can see this story as perhaps at one time offending the core audience of Tagore. That he would write such a story in 1941 shows deep wisdom and an incredible insight into the future of India.

Khushwant Singh

“Karma” (1957, 5 pages)

Colonialism of the Mind

Khushwant Singh (1915-Hadali, Khushab, British India-now Pakinstan) is one of the best known Anglo-Indian writers. At ninety six years old (I think he still has a weekly newspaper column) he is one of the premier Anglo-Indian authors. He was born into a Sikh family and initially pursued a career as an attorney. He was driven to begin writing in a reflective often acerbic way about life in the Indian subcontinent by his experiences of the 1947 Partition of India. He was very traumatized when just prior to the Partition of India he encountered a platoon of soldiers of his faith who boasted to him that they had just completely massacred a peaceful village of Muslims, men, women and children.

“Karma” is very acid, almost cruelly funny story about Sir Mohan Lal, a man who is portrayed as being in love with the British and every thing about their culture. He can be said to be an Indian version of “Uncle Tom”. He sees anything from India as stupid, dirty and inefficient compared to an English counterpart. This contempt extends to the people of India and his own wife. You can almost feel the bloated way he insists to himself that he is “Sir Lal” and he is sure the English see him as their equal. He and his wife are going on a train trip. His wife does not feel comfortable in the first class cabin that Sir Lal insists he must ride in so she rides in the back in second class. Two English soldiers board the train in the first class section. They are very annoyed when they see Lal in the compartment. He tries to speak to them but they cannot figure out what he is saying (the English soldiers are from the bottom rank of society based on their dialect). The soldiers look upon him almost as if he were a monkey trying to speak English. Then one of them says “throw the nigger off the train”. The next thing “Sir Lal” is seen face down on the train platform as his astonished wife looks out on him from second class as the train pulls away.

Amrita Pritram

“The Stench of Kerosene” (1960, 5 pages)

Stories of the Real Lives of Women in the Punjab Region of India and Pakistan

Amrita Pritram (1919-2005-She was born in Pakistan) is considered the first prominent Punjabi woman writer. She wrote poems, essays, novels and short stories. Her work is highly regarded in both India and Pakistan. Punjab before the partition of India was in Northwestern India. There is now a Punjab state in both Pakistan and India. The Punjab region is home to some of the world’s oldest civilizations. There are around 100 million speakers of Punjabi today. Some of the worst impact of the partition of India was felt by the Punjabi people whose homeland was divided up by two countries. When India was partitioned Pritram moved from Lahore in what is now Pakistan to India. She was of the Sikh faith and this is why she moved to India. She won many literary awards and is known as the voice for Punjabi women. She married and divorced. She worked for several years for All India Radio (AIR) and edited for 33 years a literary magazine. She was also fluent and wrote in Hindi. Toward the end of her life she became a follower of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, an internationally known spiritual teacher.

“The Smell of Kerosene” is set in the rural area of Punjab. The central characters are a happily married couple and the man’s mother. All of them lived together, as was the normal practice. The couple met by chance and the man at once felt love for his future wife. She told him to go to her father and arrange a marriage which he does. Seven years go by and the couple have no children. They are very happy and accept this. The mother- in- law does not. In the eight year of marriage the mother- in- law finds a second bride for her son in the hope she will have a grandchild. The man feels nothing in his heart for the new wife but she does become pregnant. (spoilers ahead) His first wife is heartbroken even though the husband tells her he is married in his soul only to her. Every year the first wife went on a trip to see her old girl friends from before her marriage. This year her husband has a very bad feeling about this and begs her not to go. She does not return when expected. A friend comes to the house and advises them that the wife dosed herself and her clothes in kerosene and set herself on fire. Shortly after this the second wife has her baby. The baby is presented to the husband. He screams that the baby has the stench of kerosene about him and clearly will never accept the child.

“Stench of Kerosene” can be read HERE

Mulk Raj Anand

A Pioneer Anglo – Indian Author

“The Tractor and the Corn Goddess” (1938, 6 pages)

Mulk Raj Anand was a founding father of the Indian novel in English. He along with R. K. Narayan Ahmed Ali and Rajo Rao was one of the first writers from India to gain an international readership in English. Anand (1905 to 2004-99 years-Peshanar, India) after graduating from college in India went to England to receive his PhD. While at Cambridge (the university of choice for Bloomsbury) he became friends with people like E. M. Forester and George Orwell. He was a passionate admirer of Gandhi and a strong supporter of the movement for Indian independence. His first novel, Untouchable (1935) brought him world- wide acclaim as the Charles Dickens of India. He was a friend of Pablo Picasso. His literary output was very large including several novels, lots of poetry and numerous highly regarded short stories. He was a strong force for good in the world.

“The Tractor and the Corn Goddess” is a fascinating story that tells us a lot about how the ordinary Indian felt about his English rulers and the coming of western technology to rural India. I really liked the treatment of the conflict of Indian religious traditions and the British Raj. It also shows the very conservative attitudes of many that in effect worked to keep the British in power. I will tell a bit of the background setting and the plot but I really hope this story will be widely read. As the story opens, the leading landlord in the area has died. His oldest son, who has been in Europe studying (in theory!) and falling into what the residents of the area see as decadent ways is now the major land owner. He proposes something very radical. That he will give most of the land to a collective owned by the people who work the land. The richer people in the area are all totally opposed to this idea and horrified by the suggestion of large scale social change. The people in the area really get upset when the son buys a tractor. Everyone is at first horrified by it and sees its plowing as a blasphemy toward the Corn God. Also they are concerned with the long- term implications for the livelihood of the people in the area when they learn it can do the same amount of plowing in one day that it would take 100 men using the traditional methods. There is a lot in this story I have not relayed.

You can read this story at Google Books. Just do a search for Mulk Raj Anand

Caste Discrimination in Elementary Schools

A Story by a Leading Dalit Author
“Scorn” by Bama Faustina (2004, 3 pages, in translation from Tamil)

Bama Faustina is one of the first Dalit Tamil writers to achieve international attention for her work. I confess I did not know what the word “Dalit” means when I first encountered it. A Dalit person is one whose ancestors were members of discriminated-against castes. The Indian government has classified about ten percent of the populace of India as being of Dalit descent. (The common western parlance for this is “untouchable”.) Caste discrimination is illegal in Indian but it is still very widely practiced, especially in rural areas. Members of Dalit castes by practice and custom live among themselves and face great prejudice. There are 3000 plus recognized castes, 49 of them are considered Dalit castes.

Seventy five percent of Christians in India are of Dalit caste background. When Christian missionaries first entered India, they had their best success among the poorest of people, the untouchables. I know this is a very complicated and sensitive issue which many prefer to sweep under the rug, but writers like Bama Faustina are bringing international focus on the problems of Dalits. Oxford University Press has published translations of her novels and she has also published a successful collection of short stories. She is a teacher in Uthiramerur. She is a Roman Catholic.

“Scorn” opens with a child and his mother arguing. The boy, he seems about 10, does not want to go to school today. He wants to go into the forest with his mother who works as a charcoal maker (once a very common occupation for members of Dalit castes in a country where most people still cook on charcoal). His mother tells him that she and her father are working very hard and sacrificing to send him to school so he will not have to be a street sweeper, a charcoal maker, or house boy. She wants to know why he does not want to go and he will not give her a straight clear answer. She finds out from her neighbors (everybody on her street are Dalits) that he was beaten by higher caste children at school because he forgot his lunch box and ate food (with permission) from the lunch box of a higher caste child. When he went to complain to the teacher, the teacher beat him and said he is was just an ignorant Dalit that does not even know the customs of his country.

The next day the mother and the boy’s father go to the school. The father was terribly upset by what happened. He accepts that he has always been treated as the lowest type of person by accident of his birth but he will not accept this as the fate of his son.

The next day the parents go to the head master of the school to complain. They are told that what happened to their son is their fault. If they had only taught him his place in life this would never have happened. The parents begin to talk to other parents on their street. They find out that one time money was missing and they searched only the Dalit children. The headmaster even tells them that the Dalit children at school are always assigned clean up duties as cleaning up after their betters is part of their heritage. The headmaster tries to be nice about this and says, meaning it as a compliment, “Well the children from your street are just naturally made for clean up work”. Here is how one teacher explained it all to the head master:
“Kattari ran and hugged his father and started crying. Meanwhile, a teacher came to the headmaster and said something to him. At once the headmaster told the headman of his street, “Let them be. Why should you beat a dog and earn the burden of sin? Why do you want to deal with them at all? Just touch these people and they’ll make trouble. These people are not like they used to be. Let them be.”
One of the very saddest aspects of discrimination is that children of discriminated groups begin to believe it is true. There are even terrible TV commercials run here in the Philippines (by big international companies) selling skin whiting cream for early teenage girls.
“Scorn” is a simple story that puts a whole world in a few pages. It was translated from Tamil by Sarsa Rajagopal). I suspect it took real courage to write it. For sure it is worth the minute or two it will take you to read it.
You can read it online at The Little Magazine.

A War Between Cousins in 1500BC

A Story Inspired by the Mahabharata Epic

“Before the Stars Could Foretell” (1998, 5 pages)

Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (1899-1970, Jaunpurin, Uttar Pradesh, India) is best known for his creation of what some would call the Sherlock Holmes or Father Brown of India, Byomkesh Bakshi. After graduating from college, he obtained a

law degree. He began to publish literary works while in law school. In 1938 he moved to Calcutta to be a screen writer for the film industry. By 1958 his works were such best sellers that he became a full time writer. He is famous for his historical tales set in the Bronze and Iron Age in Northern India. He drew

on the great epics of Indian literature and gave them a human face.

“Before the Stars Could Foretell” is set in Northern India, around 1500 BC at the time of the Kurukshetra War. The precise details of this war

are lost to us but Bandyopadhyay does a good job of making it come back to life for us. As the story opens we meet two very good friends who led an army against their neighbors and defeated them. They are such good friends that each one wants the other to have the honor of being king of the area the conquered. They came up with a very interesting way to divide up the ruling of the kingdom. One friend would start out as king and pass the title to his friend on the next lunar eclipse. The friend who is not king will act as head of the army. All goes well in the kingdom for a while until there is a revolt in the southern territories. The general takes the army to fight the rebels.

One of the friends returns with a captured princess. This infuriates the rebels and they renew their fight. The general leaves the princess in the care of the king and asks him to instruct her in their language (as of now they cannot speak to each other) as he intends to marry her. The princess is very intelligent and quickly learns the language. She argues that it is against their mutual traditions and law to abduct women. She is told, in a remark that is a commentary on some of the still prevailing customs of the area, that there is nothing wrong with abducting a woman if you intend to marry her!

There is an interesting and fun twist at the end I will not spoil it for potential readers.

This is a well told story. It is hard to do a short story as historical fiction as you do not have a lot of space and time to set the background but Bandyopathyay does a good job of making the past come to life for us.

You can read the story HERE

Sumil Gangopandhyay

“Three Men” (2000, 4 pages)
Corrupt Corruption

Sumil Gangopandhyay (1934) was born in Faridpur in what is now Bangladesh. He currently lives in Kolkata (Calcutta) in India. He is considered a leading novelist, travel writer, children’s book author and is best known as a poet. He writes in Bengali and English. He was educated at the University of Calcutta. He has had a long a very distinguished literary and professional career. In 2008 he became director of the National Academy of Letters in India. This is a government funded but administratively independent organization whose purpose is to promote literature and the maintenance of the diverse languages of India. He is known partially through his being mentioned in a famous poem by Allen Ginsburg.

“Bangladesh is often, fairly or not I do not know, listed as among the most corrupt countries in the world.) The three men in the story are an ordinary worker, his manager, and the general manager. Tapan, the worker, has begun to feel more and more self-contempt for his role in the corruption of the company. The company was recently involved in a press scandal in which it was documented they withheld baby food supplies in Bangladesh for two weeks in order to make consumers pay much more. This in a country where millions are on the edge of starvation and low value diets in infants cause terrible future problems. Tapan, not in fact a perfect employee himself-he often misses work with no call in for example-is going into his boss’s office to follow up on a denouncing letter he has written in which he gives his resignation. As you might guess the conversation does not go well. Tapan then demands as seems to be his right, to speak with the general manager. As he waits outside the general manger’s office he is advised by someone who does not know why he is there that he will from now on be getting a clothing allowance. Tapan starts to think about his wife (he just got married a year ago and supports his aged father) who wants a house of their own soon.

As he enters the office the general manager tells him he can come in next week to pick up his final paycheck but if he continues ranting in the office he will have him thrown out by security. As the story ends Tapan begs for a second change. Before leaving for the day, he stops in the company comfort room. He spits in his own image in the mirror.

“Three Men” (written originally in English) is a moving story about a man with a consciousness of right or wrong trapped in a web of corruption.

You can read it HERE

R. K. Narayan

“An Astrologer’s Day” (1947, 6 pages)

A Story by a Genius of the Form.

R. K. Narayan (1906 to 2001-Chennai, India) was an immensely prolific highly influential author. He was one of the very first authors from India who wrote primarily in English and was one of the very first Indian writers to be read widely outside of India. In addition to fifteen novels, he published in his life- time five collections of short stories. Many of his short stories were set in a small town he created.

“An Astrologer’s Day” takes place in a small town in India in 1947. In 1947 India gained its independence from the British Empire and was a time of immense change and turmoil. In the world of “An Astrologer’s Day” it might as well be 947 or even 47 for that matter. Our central character left his home village many years ago, under a cloud of trouble we at first do not understand. He has the ability to convince others he can see into the future through reading a client’s astrological chart. He marries and sets up a shop in the market by a highway in which he tells fortunes and gives advice. He has learned to listen very carefully to his clients and ask a few opened questions that give him enough data to seem to have a mysterious knowledge of the lives and future of his clients. He knows he is a fake but he has learned to give his customers what they want and he has a family to support. Here is a great sample of Narayan’s prose style and description of the method of the fortune teller:

He had a working analysis of mankind’s troubles: marriage, money, and the tangles of human ties. Long practice had sharpened his perception. Within five minutes he understood what was wrong. He charged three paise per question, never opened his mouth till the other had spoken for at least ten minutes, which provided him enough stuff for a dozen answers and advices.

One day a stranger challenges the astrologer to look into his past and future. He gets everything right without even asking the man any questions. How he does this provides a wonderful ending to the story that really surprised me and for that matter shocked his wife when he explained to her how her was able for once to really know the truth without being told it.

“An Astrologer’s Day” is a really good example of why I like short stories. In just a few pages Narayan brings to life for me a world very remote from my own experience while allowing me to project myself into the world of the story. I liked the way the astrologer is honestly a fake! The story only takes us back 64 years but it gives us a look at a a very old culture.

“An Astrologer’s Day” can be read Here. It is a very good story well worth the few minutes it will take you to read it.

“The Quilt” (aka “Lihaf” 10 pages, 1944, translated from Urdu by M. Asaduddin) by Ismat Chughtai عصمت چغتائی

A Ground- Breaking Story by the Greatest Female Urdu Short Story Writer

Ismat Chughtai (1915 to 1991-Pardesh, India) was born into a very traditional and conservative Muslim family. Chughtai earned two

degrees in spite of her own parent’s opposition to education for women.

Most of the female, and nearly all of the male authors of the time of the writing of “The Quilt”-1944-advocated only the very slowest changes to the social order as it regarded the rights of women. Chughtai was seen at the time as a radical advocate of women’s rights. For example, she opposed the requirement of the veil for Muslim women and advocated equal educational rights for women. Her writings have been banned as too radical in some countries.

“The Quilt” is an amazing and shocking story for the time and place it was written. It is about a lesbian relationship set in a time when this could result in stoning to death. It is told in the first person by a young woman who was given in married by arrangement while she was at most fifteen or so (normal practice at the time) to a much older wealthy man. Her family expects her to get pregnant soon and fatten up while living a life of forced leisure in the female section of the house. The young woman soon finds out her husband prefers the company of beautiful young men.

The shocking conclusion in the story is slowly and artfully built up to. I do not want to give away any more of the plot of the story. (There is a link to read it online at the end of the post.)

Chughtai was tried for obscenity for this story and found innocent. Even though no words are used in the story that could not be in a children’s story, “The Quilt” does have a lot of erotic power. It is a story about the

effects of long time neglect and loneliness.

You can read “The Quilt” online HERE

“Bitch” by Mrinal Pande (2004, 3 pages)

A Wonderful Story by a Leading Hindi Advocate of the Rights of Women

“Bitch” by Mrinal Pande is another great short story from the pages of The Little Magazine.

Mrinal Pande (1946, Madhya Pradas, India) has had a very distinguished career as a print journalist. She is currently the editor of a major newspaper and has her own TV show. She has served on numerous commissions on the rights of women and children. She has taught at several major universities. She is the daughter of the very famous writer, Shivani (on whom I will, I hope, eventually post). She is married and has children. She published her first short story when she was 21 and basically has been writing ever since then. She writes in both Hindi and English.

“Bitch” (written in English) at once caught my eye as I was looking through the many short stories online at The Little Magazine. It is about a conversation a between a woman who hosts a TV show (as the author does) and her maid about an article they saw in the newspaper about a four year old girl whose parents married her to a dog in order to ward off the evil eye from their family. You can read it in just a minute or two. It told me a lot about how ordinary Indian women seem to feel about marriage. The maid can speak a bit boldly as she is herself a grandmother. (The maid likes her employer because she does not follow her around as she cleans or inspect her bag when she leaves. I just finished The Help last night and this story could be out of an Indian version.)

The TV commentator is trying to tell her maid what a shameful even illegal thing the parents have done in marrying a four year old girl to a dog. The maid thinks it is perfectly OK and feels a dog is a step up from most men. I really liked this exchange:

““But don’t you see it is illegal? The police —”

“What police?”
“The local police.”
“No, no, why should the police bother?”
“Because you can’t marry off a girl before she’s eighteen. It’s the law.”
“So? She’s not married to a man.”
“Gauri, don’t you see? Her parents could still go to jail for this.”
“Who will speak against them? The dog?” Gauri collapses in laughter.
“It is no laughing matter,” I say. But I, too, am laughing.
“Oh Ma, at least he won’t come home drunk and beat her. Or arm-twist her family for a wrist-watch or a bicycle, or get her pregnant as soon as he can, and then run off with another woman. A son of a bitch is better any day, Ma, any day, than the son of man.”
“But the girl…”
“What about the girl? She looks happy. She must have eaten her fill of sweets, been dressed in new clothes. What more can a girl want?”
“But why should she be married to a dog before she knows what marriage is all about?”

The maid then begins an account of the terrible events of her marriage.

“Bitch” is a really fun, beautifully written story that packs a lot in its few pages. I liked the spirit and admired the strength of character of the maid and her ability to keep laughing.

You can read it online HERE

The Indian Short story has opened many new worlds of learning and sheer delight for me. It is an inexhaustible reading area that can take us as deep as we want to go. For some of us the stories are about lives very different from our own, others will see their lives and ancestors in these stories. In these stories you can profit from the profound wisdom of Tagore( Yeats was in awe of him and Einstein discussed metaphysics with him) or laugh at the cynical stories of Khushwant Singh. You can learn a lot about the lives of women from the hilarious story of Mrinal Pande about a four year old girl whose parents married her to a dog. If “Kerosene” by Amrita Pritram does not shake you up a bit, have yourself checked over. Then there is R. K. Narayan. He really is a genius at the short story. You can enter for a little while in the lives of Dalits, it won’t be easy, or if you would rather, you can imagine you are a 15th century Maharajah.

I will be reading Indian short stories and longer works the rest of my life.

I wish to thank my quite brilliant cousin S for editing help with this post and Risa for inviting me to be a guest poster.

Mel u

My Guest Post on Getting Started in the Indian Short Story

2012-01-11T17:29:00.000+08:00

Risa of Breadcrumb Reads has honored me by asking me to be the first guest poster for her year long event on short stories.

My post is on Getting Started in the Indian Short Story. I also included some reflections on how I went from the opinion, shared by most, that short stories were simply not a satisfying literary form to a love for the genre.

You can read my post HERE.

Risa has a beautifully done blog and I think if you look around a bit you will want to follow Bread Crumb Reads as I have done for a long time.

Mel u

Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand

2012-01-11T10:51:00.000+08:00

Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand (1935, 161 pages, 206 KB)

There is no literary tradition with roots older than that of India. I will always admire Edmund Burke (Anglo-Irish-1729 to 1797) for telling the English Parliament that England had no right to rule a country with a culture much older than their own.

Mulk Raj Anand was a founding father of the Indian novel in English. He was one of the first writers from India to gain an international readership in English. Anand (1905 to 2004--Peshawar, India) after graduating from college in India went to England to receive his PhD. While at Cambridge (the university of choice for Bloomsbury) he became friends with people like E. M. Forester and George Orwell. He was a passionate admirer of Gandhi and a strong supporter of the movement for Indian independence. He was a friend of Pablo Picasso. His literary output was very large including several novels, lots of poetry and numerous highly regarded short stories. He was a strong force for good in the world.

I have already posted on four of Anand's wonderful short stories. E. F. Forester helped him get his first novel, Untouchable, published in England. The standard cliche, it is on the back of the paper-back edition I saw in a local bookstore, is that in the Untouchable Anand took on the role of the Charles Dickens of India in his amazing depiction of the life of a member of the very lowest class of all, the Untouchables. Among Untouchables or Dalits, it it my understanding that there are 49 different sub-castes. In 1935 and for thousands of years prior to then those of the very lowest class were cleaners of solid bodily waste, street sweepers, and those who removed the bodies of dead animals. A person was born into this caste and nothing could be done to escape it aside from rebirth in a higher caste.

Untouchable is about one day in the life of an Untouchable, a young man seemingly in his late teens or early twenties named Bakha. It is a great book that belongs on any list of 100 best novels. Anyone interested in colonial studies or the history of India who has not yet read this book really needs to do so as soon as they can. It is also so wonderfully written that reading it is a pure joy. The central character totally admires to the point of hero worship the occupying British troops. Anand is simply brilliant in his depiction of the attitude of the central character to the British. Bakha so wishes he could one day have a pair of long pants like the English sometimes wear and he dreams of somehow getting the wonderful job of being a "sweeper" for a British regiment.

There are many very powerful moments in this story. Bakha is treated very roughly by his father. He admires very much his sister who has now taken over as the woman of the family since their mother died. When the sister goes to the well to get water, she is not allowed to draw it directly for fear she will pollute the well. She has to ask a higher caste person to draw it for her. When Bakha walks down the street he is supposed to shout "sweeper, sweeper coming" so no one will have the horror of accidentally touching him. His sister is at the marriageable age, which I am going to say 14 or so, and as she is attractive so the father hopes she will fetch a good dowry.

It was, according to my sources, common at the time for Untouchable women to clean the homes of Brahman priests and they would often seduce them into prostitution or simply rape the women with impunity. Sometimes a "lucky" Untouchable woman might become the mistress of a higher class person and there are vague suggestions Bakha's mother was either a mistress or semi-prostitute also. Bakha's sister is molested in a small way by a Brahman priest.

There is so much in this short novel. I found it a near compulsive read. There is a very interesting scene when a Christian missionary tries to convert him and a very good seen when he and thousands of others go to hear Gandhi explain why idea of Untouchability is intrinsically evil. I could feel how moved Bakha was when he heard Gandhi say that if he were to be reborn he would wish to return as an Untouchable.

All of the action of the story takes place in one day. The characters are all perfect.

All literary autodidacts need to put this on their life time list. It is not a hard book at all. It is beautifully written and the action is easy to follow.

Untouchable is a deeply moving, profoundly wise book. It may change how you view the world.

E. M. Forester wrote a preface to the book that is interesting if no longer politically correct.

Please share your experience with Anand with us.

Mel u

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson-A Year Long Read A Long

2012-01-10T09:42:00.002+08:00

When I saw Joann of Lakeside Musings, a blog I have happily followed for a long time now, was hosting in conjunction with Terri of Tip of the Iceberg, a read a long on Samuel Richardson's huge 18th century (1500 pages or so) epistolary novel I was interested in joining. I read it maybe 15 years ago, it took me about six months of on and off again reading to finish it but when I did I knew I had read one of the great literary masterworks of all times. I was first drawn to read it by the great admiration in which Samuel Johnson held the book saying it was "the first book in the world for the knowledge it displays of the human heart." Because it is so huge many people probably don't want to invest the time. Many probably read his much shorter Pamela and stop there, maybe putting Clarissa on a far distant TBR list.

The letters in the book begin on January 10 and continue until late December. The interesting idea behind this read a along is we will read the letters on the corresponding day this year. The read a long will be for a whole year. As I recall the book, each of the letters is masterfully crafted to reflect the personality of the writer. You may have seen the BBC production of this and a really lot can be learned about life in the late 18th century from this book. It is also a lot of fun. There are people to hate and to love in this monster of a book and at times Clarissa will drive you crazy. Once you have completed it you will know it was a great experience.

To sign up just leave a comment on the blogs of the hosts. I am not sure yet how the posts will be strucrtered and all but I am sure it will be very well done.

Mel u

Sushma Joshi: An Award Winning Short Story Writer From Nepal

2012-01-09T07:49:00.000+08:00

A number of book bloggers stated in their reading goal posts for 2012 that they wanted to read works written by authors from a wide range of countries. This is a very good goal and one which I share.

Sushma Joshi (Kathmandu, Nepal, 1975) was long listed in 2009 for her collection of short stories, The End of the World for the Frank O'Connor International Award for Short Stories. She is also a well regarded documentary film maker. She was educated in her high school years at a school run by British missionaries. It was here she developed a passion for literature and decided she wanted to become an author so she could speak for the people of Nepal. She received grants that allowed her to obtain degrees from Brown University and The New School of Social Research in New York City. She also was awarded a writing fellowship by the MacArthur Foundation. She is also an Asian fellow. She is the leading author from Nepal writing in English with an international readership.

We are fortunate in that five of her short stories can be read online for free. (There will be a link at the end of this post.)

"The End of the World" (2009, 7 pages) is the title work in her collection of that name. As the story begins, a local religious leader who has a large following announces that the end of the world is coming in two weeks. It seems this is a fairly common practice among Holy Men who perhaps are not getting the attention or respect they feel they deserve. Some of his followers take it seriously and are thrown into a despair driven religious frenzy of devotion to their faith. Women rush to the stores to stock up on supplies they need to prepare last meals. Teenagers tell their parents they do not see the point of doing their homework if the world will end in two weeks! (Any parent of teens could see that coming.) Some react with cynicism and derision to the claim the world is coming to an end. I will leave the rest of the story unspoiled other than to say that the world goes right on spinning.

"I Woke Up Last Night and I Cried" was selected for inclusion in the 2010 anthology of short stories, New Asian Writings. In three pages Joshi does a great job letting us see the life of the wife of a worker from Nepal whose husband is working offshore in Saudi Arabia. The husband has been gone for six years now. For the first few years he sent money home regularly. Now the wife has to beg for anything. The wife has very mixed emotions. She loves and pities her husband and she also nearly hates him now. She sends him a letter one week asking him to come home please and says they would be happier together in poverty than with him gone. The next week she will send him a letter telling him not to even come visit her or their children when he comes back. The emotion in this story is real and made me think of the millions of men and women from the Philippines who work offshore to support their families and the very large emotional cost of this.

The stories of Joshi can take us into a world most of us can only glimpse on CNN or The National Geographic Channel.

"The End of the World" and three other of Sushma Joshi's short stories can be read at East of the Web.

"I Woke Up Last Night and Cried" can be read here.

You can follow her blog also.

Her collection of short stories, The End of the World is listed on Amazon. The Kindle edition is only $4.99.

Mel u

Welcome to All Literary Book Blog Hoppers Dec 1 to Dec 4

2012-01-08T19:13:00.000+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.

Here's our question this week:

Here's our question this week:

Do you like to supplement your reading with outside sources, like Sparknotes, academic articles, or other bloggers' reviews? Why or why not?

I just finished reading, for example. Kenzaburo Oe's latest book, The Changeling. After I finished it I did a book blog search for other posts. There were very few posts and none I was familiar with so I did not read any of them but I would have if they were known to me bloggers.

I confess I not familiar with Sparknotes but if it is some form of "homework" helper I would not at all really be interested. I do not have access to read academic articles so I also do not much read them. If I could I would probably not want to read a lot of academic articles as those I have read seem to be devoted to arguing with other academics and possibly published with the idea of using these articles to advance the career of the writer rather than from a real love of literature.

Mel u

First Book Blog Hop for 2012

2012-01-08T12:54:00.000+08:00

I have been and on and off participant in Parajunkee's Feature and Follow Blog Hop for some time now. I have found it to be a great place to discover new to me blogs and meet some great book bloggers.

I will follow back all who follow me-just leave me a comment-I also return all visits from hoppers.

My blog and my reading focus on ever evolving genres of literature but for now I am very into South Asian Short Stories, Japanese fiction, classics, Katherine Mansfield, Elizabeth Bowen and Virginia Woolf. I also read a wide variety of short stories and an occasional carefully selected new work.

My blog is the home of Irish Short Story Week centered around St Patrick's Day as well as Indonesian Short Story Week. I am open to book blog events.

Every week Parajunkee asks us to answer a reading or blog related question.

Q: How many TBR books do you have ownership of right now? About a year ago I began to move over to E-Reading and I also tend to trade read books for unread by me ones if I can. So my number is now about 75.

Mel u