Short Story Saturday: "Hey Dad" by Joyce Carol Oates

I love short stories, and I read a lot of them every year- dozens of stories that I find in magazines, on the web, and even a bunch that are emailed directly to me by the Library of America folks.  And, on top of those, I read six or eight short story compilations a year.  

I, in fact, find a good short story to be every bit as satisfying as a good novel, and I am convinced that it is probably more difficult to write a good short story than it is to write a novel of similar quality.  But, for a number of reasons, some stories leave me cold.  Perhaps I fail ever to engage with the characters in a story, or the setting is so sparsely presented that I never get a feel of "place" from the story, or the story is just so vague (especially its ending) that it leaves me shaking my head in confusion.  It is this last type of story that particularly irritates me - especially when I've gone back and read the story two or three more times searching for the clues I may have missed and I end up as confused as I was after the first reading.

That's what happened to me tonight with Joyce Carol Oates's "Hey Dad," a four-page story I found in an old August 2012 issue of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.  

"Hey Dad" is written from the first person perspective of a young Rhodes Scholar being awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree on the same stage that his father is receiving an Honorary Doctorate upon.  The young man is fully aware of his father's presence and has a little surprise cooked up for his father for the second time he walks by the old man's on-stage seat.

The problem is that the old man does not know of his son's existence, having urged, all those years ago, that the boy's mother abort the pregnancy or lose him.  She chose, instead, to keep the baby and move on with her life.  Now, in rather ominous prose the young man speaks of his father's frailties and the surprise he has planned for him.  Early on, he says that his father has nothing to fear, but as the story progresses, the young man's tone changes to a more and more sinister one.

And then there's this, the last two sentences of the story: "Whatever I may be carrying inside my black robe, I will have shifted in such a way that I can grip its handle.  Tight.  And I will say - Hey Dad it's me."

Maybe it's me, maybe I'm just a poor reader, but I really don't like open-ended endings to short stories - and this is a case in point.  Was the young man trying to spring a heart attack on his father, was he going to be him to death with a weapon of some sort, or is it all a big joke on the old man?  Damned if I know...

Short Story Saturday: Ann Beattie's "The Indian Uprising"

Ann Beattie

While explaining what drove her to write her short story “The Indian Uprising” in the “Contributors’ Notes” of The Best American Short Stories 2014, Ann Beattie remarks, “Is this oblique?”  She is referring to her explanation of the story’s origin, but she could easily have asked the same question about the story itself because there is nothing at all straightforward about “The Indian Uprising,” including its title. 

The story begins with a conversation between two unidentified people who do not seem to be much listening to each other.  Instead, each makes his/her point in succession even though the points only occasionally intersect.  But Maude, as it turns out, is pretty much the only one of Frank Chadwick’s former creative writing students who have bothered to stay in touch with him at all through the years. 

The diabetic complications that Frank suffers have made him a man much older than his seventy-one years, and during the celebratory lunch to mark his birthday at a nearby Mexican restaurant, Maud notices that a good bit of blood has seeped through the white sock on Frank’s swollen foot.  In a matter of minutes, Maude has fainted, and is being tended to while Frank is being escorted to the hospital by Savannah, the transgendered receptionist from his apartment building. 

On his way out of the restaurant, Frank loudly announces that he is borrowing one of the sombreros hung on the wall like one borrows “an umbrella” in similar situations.  Someone says, “There might be an Indian uprising if we try to stop him,” and Frank is allowed to go merrily on his way, sombrero and all.  (So the Mexican restaurant diners are the “Indians” ?)

A short while after Frank’s death, Maude decides to write about the experience and her relationship with Frank.  But Maude, a poet, decides that there is no poem to be had from the incident, and decides to try a short story, instead because “a lot of people do that when they can’t seem to figure out who or what they love.  It might be an oversimplification, but they seem to write poetry when they do know.”

I realize (and regret) that my thoughts about the story probably include enough information to spoil it for other readers, but that is how mystified I am about this particular Ann Beatty story being chosen for a “Best American Short Story” anthology.  Perhaps it was chosen because its theme is one that intrigues other writers.  But it is all just a little too much “inside baseball” for me, and it left me feeling rather cold towards it. 

Short Story Saturday: Charles Baxter's "Charity"

Charles Baxter

Charles Baxter's short story "Charity" made its first appearance in 2013 as part of Issue number 43 of McSweeney's.  It is also the very first story in The Best American Short Stories of 2014, the wonderful collection edited by Jennifer Egan that I enjoy dipping in and out of so much. 

"Charity" is about Matty Quinn, a man who goes to Africa with only one goal in mind.  He is not there to exploit the situation so that he can come home a richer man.  On the contrary, he is there simply to make a difference in the lives of a few people via the little health clinic that employs him.  Matty Quinn is a kind soul, and as observed one day by Harry Albert, he does the little things that really do make a difference.  Matty is so kind, so empathetic, in fact, that Harry falls in love with him before they speak a single word to each other.

Matty Quinn, though, is an example of the old cliché that "no good deed goes unpunished" because soon after he returns to the U.S. doctors tell him that the fatigue and pain he suffers are due to a viral rheumatism infection that he acquired in Africa.  Their remedy?  Painkillers and time.  But before he knows it, doctors have cut Matty off from the very painkillers that make his life even remotely bearable - forcing him to spend his remaining savings to acquire the same drugs illegally on the streets of Minneapolis.  Finally, Matty does what is to him the unthinkable; he resorts to mugging people to get enough cash to make it through another day.  And kind soul that he is, the guilt drives him nuts. 

"Charity" is told in two distinct voices.  The first part of the story is a third person recounting of Matty's story: who he is, how he met Harry, why he was in Africa, and what happened to him when he came home.  The second part of the story suddenly switches into the first person voice of Harry himself, and in a final twist of voices, Harry reveals that he is also the author of the third person account that makes up the earlier part of "Charity."  This second section delves deeper into the relationship of the two men and brings the story to its somber, but satisfying, conclusion. 

Interestingly, in the "Contributors’ Notes" section of The Best American Short Stories of 2014, Baxter reveals that "Charity" is just one of several stories he had been writing at the time about "virtues and vices."  He had, in fact, been struggling with a plot for the story he wanted to call "Charity" when he remembered a character from the one he called "Chastity."  In that story, a young man is severely injured during a mugging when someone comes up behind him and strikes him with a pipe.  The mugger was never identified.  Baxter says he began wondering who could have done such a thing - and why.  Could the mugger actually have been a good man caught up in a situation so desperate that it drove him to do something completely out of character?  Thus, was born the plot of "Charity," and the rest is history.

Short Story Saturday: "Invisible" by Nik Perring or Caroline Smailes - Or Both

"Invisible" is one of the short stories from Freaks, a collection of short, short fiction from the pens of Nik Perring and Caroline Smailes.  All the stories are about "superheroes," real ones and imagined ones, and in that tradition, the authors have chosen not to identify which stories each has written.  Thus, the title of my post.

As they put it on the contents page:

Some of these stories have been written by Nik. Some of these stories have been written by Caroline. Some were written together.  But in the true spirit of superheroes, we couldn't possibly reveal our identities.

"Invisible" is one of the more touching stories in the collection.  In it, a young girl wants desperately to believe that she possess the power to make herself invisible at will.  All she has to do is follow the recipe, and no one will be able to see her.  Why she wants to become invisible will break your heart.

Freaks is a softcover original with an eye-catching, comic book style cover that contains fifty illustrated short stories.  Keep in mind that the entire book (U.K. edition), front to back, has only 135 numbered pages.  "Flash fiction" fans know what to expect already, and those new to this sub-genre of short story writing are in for a treat.  (Nik Perring's work turned me on to the genre a while back, and I am always on the lookout for more.)

One last thing...illustrations.  Half the fun of Freaks comes from the work of Darren Craske who provides illustrations for each of the fifty stories and did the book's eye-popping cover.  But here is a clue as to what Freaks is really all about.  This is the book's dedication:

To all who, if only for a moment, felt that they didn't belong.

Yes, we are all freaks - but we all have superpowers.  Make good use of them.

Short Story Saturday: How to Be a Writer

Lorrie Moore

I was listening to a book podcast the other night (one from the U.K., but I can't remember exactly which it was) where Lorrie Moore was being interviewed at some London event.  What immediately struck me was Moore's rather quirky sense of humor about herself, her characters, her books, and, well, just life in general.  Even the title of the 1994 book she was being specifically interviewed about was a bit weird: Who Will Run the Frog Hospital?  I guarantee you that if I ran across that title on the spine of a book at a local bookstore, the odds are pretty high that I would pick it up for a closer look.

"How to Become a Writer" is one of Moore's earlier short stories, and it is included in the The Oxford Book of American Short Stories (2012) edited by Joyce Carol Oates.  According to Oates, Lorrie Moore is "the very Jane Austin of the ill-at-ease and the inept."  The story's narrator certainly fits the bill because she is one of the most socially inept characters I've run across in a while.

The seven-page story is a chronology of the events that combine in a perfect storm kind of way to transform one young lady into "a writer."  Not the least among these events is the computer glitch that places her in a creative writing class rather than in the bird-watching seminar she thinks she has registered for, a class she decides to keep only because she cannot face the long registration lines again.

As Ms. Oates says in the story intro, it is both funny and touching.  Well, for me, it is funny - and touching mainly in the sense that I always feel great sympathy for those trying to negotiate their way through life carrying only the most limited and basic social skills in their toolbox.  Our young narrator, however, is not completely lacking in self-awareness, as when she describes her desire to be a writer this way:

"...but you have a calling, an urge, a delusion, an unfortunate habit.  You have, as your mother would say, fallen in with a bad crowd."

Or this observation about herself:

"You will read somewhere that all writing has to do with one's genitals.  Don't dwell on this.  It will make you nervous."

I think I'm going to like Lorrie Moore.  
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I love this book more every week:

Short Story Saturday: "The Breeze" - what the hell was that?

My "Short Story Saturday" post is just not going to work out well this week.  It's not that I didn't pick out a story and read it, though; it's because the story I read led directly to one of those "what the hell" moments for me.  I have no idea what I just read...or why, for that matter.  (Actually, I think I get it...but even if I'm right about that, I'm still underwhelmed by the literary device used in the story.)

The story I chose was a long one by Joshua Ferris called "The Breeze," in which a woman seems to be having some kind of emotional crisis brought on by the first faint breezes of Spring in New York City.  I got that part...but I'm still not sure what happened when her husband got home from the office.  Embarrassingly, that's not because this is not a "good" short story - it was published in The New Yorker, after all, and I found it in my copy of The Best American Short Stories 2014.  So it has to be good...right?

To make this even worse, I like Joshua Ferris's writing and pretty much enjoyed all three of his rather quirky novels: Then We Came to the End (2007), The Unnamed (2010), and last year's To Rise Again at a Decent Hour.  This, though, is my first experience with one of the author's short stories, and it left me bewildered in more ways than one.

Short Story Saturday: La Tristesse Des Hèrissons by Jacob M. Appel

"Love sometimes requires a willingness to indulge unreasonable requests..."  These are the words of a man whose girlfriend does not even begin to understand when the line toward "unreasonable" has been crossed.  It is their story that Jacob Appel tells in "La Tristesse Des Hèrissons," the second offering in his short story collection, Einstein's Beach House.

Because Adeline has been unhappy for a while, Josh is happy enough to go along with the idea of bringing a pet into their home.  But he pictures something like a Doberman or a German Shepard...a hedgehog with emotional problems never even crosses his mind.  Guess what he ends up with?  Now, life with a pet hedgehog and a neurotic girlfriend can't be easy, but it can be funny - and Jacob Appel's tale of perhaps the one man on Earth willing to endure such a life kept me smiling from start to finish.  

In addition to being an author, Jacob Appel is a psychiatrist and a bioethicist.  "La Tristesse Des Hèrissons" is only the second of his short stories I have read, but if the two are an accurate indicator of the rest of his work, Appel's fiction makes good use of his scientific background.  For sure, this one was fun.

I look forward to reading the six remaining stories in the Einstein's Beach House collection, and I plan a more formal review of the book for mid-February.  Look for it then.  

Short Story Saturday: W.P. Kinsella's "The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record"

I will be forever grateful to W.P. Kinsella even if he never publishes another single word because he is responsible for one of my favorite books of all-time, Shoeless Joe.  That novel, of course, subsequently morphed into what is one of my favorite movies of all-time: Field of Dreams.  And now I find out that the novel itself was preceded by a short story titled "Shoeless Joe Comes to Iowa."  I only recently learned about the short story because it is included in a brand new collection of twenty-seven Kinsella short stories (The Essential W.P. Kinsella) that I've been reading.

W.P. Kinsella

W.P. Kinsella may be Canadian but his love for, and deep understanding of, the game of baseball are second to none.  Kinsella is the ultimate fan, a man who appreciates the game within the game of baseball even more than what the box score reveals to the game's more casual fans.  Although not all of his stories are about baseball, it is baseball stories for which Kinsella is best known in this country, and I've selected one of my favorites of those for "Short Story Saturday."

"The Night Manny Mota Tied the Record" takes place in Dodger Stadium on August 7, 1979 during a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros.  During that game, one fan, without once leaving his seat, is going to have an experience that will change him forever.  An old man takes the seat next to our fan and begins talking about the funeral of Yankee catcher Thurman Munson who had died just five days earlier when the great catcher crashed the small airplane in which he was flying home for a short break from the pressures of Yankee baseball.

Things begin to go off the track a bit when the old man remarks just before the playing of the national anthem that, "Death need not be as final as many of us are used to believing."  But it is when the two men have retaken their seats after the anthem, that the old man removes any remaining doubt about his weirdness by saying,"What would you say if I told you that it might just be possible to move time back, like a newsreel being played in reverse, and undo what has been done?"

Ah, but our narrating fan is no fool.  He knows that there has to be a catch to anything with the potential to do that level of good...or evil.  But, because the narrator senses that the old man is as big a baseball fan as he is, he decides to listen anyway - and will be given a chance to impact positively the greatest game of them all in a way he would never have dared dream possible even an hour earlier.

Short Story Saturday: Sherwood Anderson's "The Strength of God"

There is nothing fancy about Sherwood Anderson's writing style.  He has a story to tell, and he generally takes a straightforward approach that allows him tell his story as simply as he can.  It is almost as if Anderson were sitting next to you at some social gathering and telling one story after the other.  His style, in fact, is what makes him as popular, and readily accessible, a writer as he continues to be to this day.

"The Strength of God," is a story from the book that brought Anderson first fame in 1919, Winesburg, Ohio.  It tells the tale of small town preacher Curtis Hartman, a man so filled with self-doubt about his ability to preach an inspired sermon, that from Wednesday morning on, all he can think about are the two sermons he has to preach on Sunday. Self-confidence is definitely not this man's strong suit.

Sherwood Anderson

One night, while working on a sermon in his upstairs church study, temptation comes Reverend Hartman's way in the person of the young woman he spots in a bedroom of the house next door to his church.  Shockingly, the woman is smoking a cigarette and is dressed in a gown that exposes her bare shoulders and throat to the reverend's gaze from inside his church.  A mini crisis-of-faith will follow this unexpected, but not unappreciated, vision.

In his usual direct style, Anderson relates the effect that this sighting has upon the good reverend.  Will he become a regular "peeper?"  Will he succumb to temptation to the point that he dumps his wife and courts the woman in the window?  Will he lose his faith?  In only seven pages, Anderson brings the process from start to finish...and the reader gets another glance into early twentieth-century life in Winesburg, Ohio.

Collection from which this story is taken:

Short Story Saturday: Eudora Welty's "Where Is the Voice Coming From?"

Eudora Welty

Eudora Welty (1909-2001) was born in Jackson, Mississippi, and she was right there to witness the violence and social turbulence that emerged in the South during the push to obtain full and equal rights for America’s black minority population.  Welty knows the hearts and minds of Southerners of her era in a way that only someone of the same background and raising will ever know them.  That is what makes “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” such a disturbing short story.

Scene of the Evers Assassination

Tragedy struck Jackson early on the morning of June 12, 1963 when Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers, carrying a load of “Jim Crow Must Go” t-shirts in his arms, was killed on his driveway by a rifle shot to the back.  His assassin was arrested just nine days later, but an all-white male jury found him not guilty of the Edgars murder.  Finally in 1994, at a third trial based on new evidence, seventy-three-year-old Byron De La Beckwith was found guilty of the murder.   The assassin died in prison in 2001 at the age of eighty.

 “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” places the reader inside the mind of a character standing in for the real Byron De La Beckwith.  In the story, this character kills Roland Summers (a stand-in for Medgar Evers) in the exact way that Evers was killed.  The most appalling thing about this fictional murderer, however, is not his crime; it is his lack of remorse and pride in the act.  Even the man’s wife was only concerned that her husband had left the murder weapon at the scene, not that he had killed a man.

Through the words of her fictional killer, Welty offers some insights into the thinking of people like Byron De La Beckwith:

“He was down.  He was down, and a ton load of bricks on his back wouldn’t have laid any heavier.  There on his paved driveway, yes sir.”

And,

“I done it for my own pure-D satisfaction.”

And,

“Everybody: It don’t get you nowhere to take nothing from nobody unless you make sure it’s for keeps, for good and all, for ever and amen.”

And, finally,

“Anyway, I seen him fall. I was evermore the one.”

With never a thought to the humanity of his victim, or to what that victim means to his family and his country, a simpleton like Byron De La Beckwith can change history.  Eudora Welty’s “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” should scare the hell out of the rest of us.

Collection from which this story is taken: